In this interview, a former governor of Ekiti State, Engineer Segun Oni, spoke on the crises in the major political parties in Nigeria, performance of President Muhammadu Buhari in the last six years, among other issues.
You were a deputy national chairman (South) of the All Progressives Congress (APC) but now a member of the National Executive Council (NEC) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), why are there crises in the two major political parties in the country?
It is because we are not yet fully acclimatised to democracy. We see democracy as what some others should do. If they don’t do it and it affects us, we shout, but we don’t see it as what we should imbibe and practise. You will see that internal democracy is still backwards as far as the Nigerian system is concerned.
The political parties are not yet as democratised as they should be, and that is why there are always crises. Everybody that gets into a position wants to find a way to stay put, but we know that if the system is governed on the stay-put- attitude, we won’t even have democracy at all. It means there would be no basis for you to expect the government to change every four years.
Even within the smaller parties, the leadership is also personalised, so it is not a matter of big parties alone, it is the attitude of our people. Everybody that gets a position wants to keep it for life. Maybe when we are acclimatised to democracy, we would know that it is a come-and-go process. We hope that as things are getting better, it will become the culture.
What ruined the First Republic was the attitude of politicians who didn’t want to leave. It was the same attitude of manipulating internal democracy to ensure that people would not have to leave when they should that also ruined the Second Republic. The Third Republic fell because the people who designed it truncated it.
Generally, our attitude is not in favour of democracy, either internally or externally; that is why we are always having problems.
We have had 22 years of uninterrupted democracy in the Fourth Republic; are you satisfied with how far we have gone?
I will say I am because it is a process. Acclimatising to democracy itself is not what you can command to happen. It must happen as part of the development process. So I will say we are not doing badly. We often compare ourselves to places where democracy is over 200 years old. I am sure that at the level of 20 years that we are now, they also had their own hiccups. My hope is that we would go through it learning; and eventually, not in our time but in the time of those coming behind, it would get to the level it should.
There are people making calls for secession, while others are clamouring for restructuring; where do you belong?
Where I belong is good governance. Let me say that it is because of the failure of governance that we are hearing all these agitations. If governance had not failed us, they would have created hope, excitement and expectations. When people are excited to elect a government, and somewhere, along the line their hopes disappear, what else would they be looking for? They would be thinking that maybe there is no hope in democracy. It is because people are despondent and are really run down. Democracy has not fulfilled their expectations. If the people are governed this same way for a couple of years again, they would become even more frustrated.
I must say, without mincing words, that I have been around for over 60 years and I have seen governments: military and civilian. This is the worst performing of all. I can say it with emphasis. I can plead guilty as I am part of the coming to life of the Buhari administration, but we had expectations and were always saying it.
Yes, we were not going to solve all the problems but we promised to solve insecurity. Of course, we had a candidate who had a reputation as a no-nonsense General, so we believed we would solve insecurity. We had somebody who had proven through his lifestyle to be averse to corruption. So we said we would put together an administration that would narrow the foundation as far as fighting corruption was concerned. We believed that with all these, we would work on the economy and make it work. But are we better off, economy wise? When this administration came, N180 was exchanging for a dollar. It is now over N500 to buy a dollar, so the economy has failed.
A part of Nigeria was under insurgency in the North-East and we were all complaining loudly. Today, almost the whole of Nigeria is under insurgency. If you are travelling now you will be reading Psalms, and if you are a Muslim you will be praying. So would you say that security wise, this administration has justified its coming? Even primary school children will mark this script based on their own experiences and what they are hearing.
Also, corruption may not be too visible to assess objectively, but we see the way people display wealth. Somebody was criticising the wedding in Kano (Buhari’s son’s wedding) and I said Nigeria hasn’t started to develop. There was an occasion in Maiduguri during the Shagari government, where we had many private jets; and that was one of the reasons the military truncated that administration. It only shows that we are all opportunists. When you are not at the dinner table you criticise the choice of meals, but when you get to the table, your whole concentration is on the meal.
This government has let us down, but some of us will not compromise with evil. Probably, that is why we are not good politicians – we will say it and stay away from it.
Critics would argue that you are saying this because you didn’t get a juicy appointment in the government or because you are no longer in the APC, could that be true?
I have always been talking, they know it. Did I ask for a major appointment? As at the last count, I was the chairman of the Board of the Nigerian Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA). It is not a small Board. I have never been disadvantaged. The only thing you can say about me is that I have never been comfortable with advantages I cannot defend. I cannot defend being in a democratic government that parades largely non-democratic institutions.
I left the APC because I was suspended in my ward by executives who were the smallest officeholders on the democratic line, and I had risen to the level of deputy national chairman. I believe you cannot ask small people to try imams or bishops. The imam or bishop can be wrong, but if you want to try him, put the process in such a way that he would be tried by his fellow imam or bishop. How would you put your deputy national chairman at the mercy of ward executives to accuse and pronounce judgement on? They just didn’t accuse, they also pronounced judgement, and I believe that was wrong. I was waiting for the party to say that it was wrong.
Those who were suspended with me wrote to the national chairman then, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole and he didn’t glorify us with even an answer to say they were looking at our complaints. It didn’t happen. The Yoruba will say ‘the gods of olden days took time to arrest, but gods of nowadays go in jet.’
The same issue that made me to leave also led to the suspension of that same national chairman at his ward. You can imagine the highest official of a party being accused, tried and suspended at the ward; and that led to his exit. If he had reacted and called us, we would have treated the issues. We are not saying a big man cannot offend a small man, but don’t put it within his subordinate to accuse, try and execute judgement.
It is still about acclimatising to the democratic process. We are not there yet, but whenever we see opportunities to make things better, we should always utilise it.
Don’t you think this government is fixing the problems created by the 16-year rule of the PDP, as they claim?
If you cannot fix the failure of your predecessor in four years, you are supposed to be there for only four years; going further should be a reward for doing it right, not an excuse. We should all know what democracy is. When people make excuses for failure, it clearly shows that we are not ready yet. A failure is a failure.
People coming into governance need to know that they are supposed to make sense out of whatever they meet, in four years only. Then they would build on the sense in another four years. If you can’t make sense in six years, you have already failed. That is the way we should look at ourselves. If any institution fails, it has failed. Let us all agree that our standards will be high. If you fail, we would look for other people who may be able to pass.
If the PDP failed in the eyes of the Nigerian public and they voted us out, but the people that were brought have failed, people should also vote them out. If we continue to vote people out even after one tenure until politicians get it right, Nigeria will be better off.
What is the state of the PDP in Ekiti as there seems to be a disagreement between former Governor Fayose and Senator Olujimi, over who is the leader of the party in the state?
They are not fighting over who the leader is. Yes, we are divided, sort of, but we are coming together gradually. Democracy also confers freedom of choice, and that can be very difficult to handle. In a human society where freedom is really freedom, we cannot but see disagreement and division. However, as far as I am concerned, it has not gotten to a crisis level. We are being tested with the ability to choose among ourselves properly and resolve our differences.
For the delegates, go and do your homework and know the people controlling them. No individual controls the whole delegates. If you have been in the field you would know who controls them.
There is a call that the southern part of the state should produce the next governor. You have indicated interest to run but you are not from the zone, why?
We have been running Ekiti for over 20 years and there has never been a time that any zone has been zoned out of contention. But we also know that as brothers and sisters, if there is anywhere we see that things are not getting to, we should try and ensure that we divert attention in such a way that it would make it possible, but we cannot impose.
People are not giving former governor Fayose credit. He did that because when you are a party in power you can decide to support the zone you prefer. Bring out your candidate from there, support that candidate vigorously with the resources and let the candidate win. A government in power can do it. And Fayose has done the right thing to have done it.
We are a political party eyeing power, so our priority should either be to be in power or zone. I am sure that if you ask any reasonable person in my party, they would prefer to be in power so that they can use it in future to zone, just the way Fayose did, than to say we would have to continue to zone, whether it favours us or not.
Some people believe that politicians should not be speaking the truth because they want to be loved. No, I want to always say things as it is and should be. We don’t have anything against our brothers and sisters in the southern part of the state; we have worked to support them and we will work to support them when it will be convenient for us to retain power. Now let us all work towards who can deliver. It might be from the south; we are not ruling them out. We will make it a level-playing ground.
What is your assessment of the Governor Fayemi administration? Why should people vote for you now?
The people are in the position to assess any government. People are seeing their governor and they can assess him and the government he presides over. Every citizen should know whether life is better for them under one government or the other, it doesn’t require big sermons.
I ran a government for three and half years. People came across me and they can assess me. If the kind of leadership I gave then was suitable, they know, and if not, they know as well. This is an opportunity for them to reject what they do not want and embrace what they want. How do they feel about my government compared to others? If they score me higher, they should embrace me, but they should reject me if they score me lower. The reality is that human beings, not angels, will always be in charge. But the people of Ekiti will be able to mark my score sheet.
Do you think the PDP should zone the presidency to the South as being agitated?
It is the same logic I used for Ekiti. I do not shift logic due to circumstances. I said that when a party is in power, it enjoys additional benefits of being in charge of government infrastructure, which it can deploy to support any objective it wants to carry out, but when you are not in power, the first objective should be to get there. I believe when we take into consideration where we are and where we want to be, our primary focus will be to win the next elections.
