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| Senator Omisore |
www.tribune.com.ng
Senator Iyiola Omisore, the immediate-past chairman of Senate Committee
on Appropriation, is seen as a force to reckon with in politics of Osun State
and Nigeria. In this interview with STEPHEN GBADAMOSI, he addresses
some current issues in the polity. Excerpts:
To you, does it not appear that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)
is seeking pound of flesh against Justice Isa Ayo Salami over the loss of Osun
and Ekiti states to the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN)?
The PDP in Ekiti and Osun states believe firmly that we had been cheated;
we believed firmly that we were shortchanged. We suspected corruption. We wrote a petition and the National Judicial Council (NJC) set up a panel and he admitted some of these things before the panel. The judgment was just a fallacy. It was not a case of PDP seeking pound of flesh. The PDP complained that they did not get justice from Salami. It is not a matter of seeking pound of flesh. The matter is still going on. Now, Salami has to face perjury for lying under oath.
An attempt was made to cheat the PDP. We now have to clear the judiciary of fraud1. That is why the National Assembly has made the law that litigation over governorship election should now terminate at the Supreme Court, because of the actions of the Court of Appeal; different judgments were coming out from different appeal headquarters. We all believe in the sanctity of the judiciary and the judiciary is the last hope of the common man. We are not out to denigrate the judiciary, no! It was just the aspect of Salami’s handling of the matters that we petitioned about. It is not personal at all.
What is your comment on the case of the Odunayo Olagbaju’s alleged killers that were recently given state pardon by Governor Rauf Aregbesola?
Well, what can I say? It is just for the people to learn what kind of governor they now have. In the last election they had in the ACN, people were maimed. It is just a testimony that these people are just pretenders and propagandists. It’s so unfortunate that we have them there. But we leave them to God, the ultimate judge. He will judge them.
The Federal Government recently backpedalled on its decision to implement the Subsidy Re-investment (SURE) programme in full. What do you think the government should do so as not to have face-off with the people again?
What the Federal Government said was that if the subsidy had been removed fully, it would have been able to do all it promised prior to the SURE programme announcement. Now that the thing is partial, the difference of the partial removal will affect what will be done. The SURE thing is still ongoing within the premise of what is available. It is still the same thing. The money that is saved from the subsidy removal is what was promised to be reinvested. Now that the subsidy is partial, apparently, the amount of money expected from total removal has reduced. So, nothing has changed.
The probe of the oil sector by the National Assembly has revealed some sordid practices. Is that not an indictment on the National Assembly which is supposed to have seen all these in oversight functions?
Oversight function of the National Assembly is not investigative. It is what you see at the point of oversight that you report. When you want to go for investigation, you seek for the mandate of the House. That is what they are doing right now. Democracy is very new in this country; we are all learning. The National Assembly is learning, the executive is learning and the judiciary is learning. As time goes on, we will get there.
What is your assessment of the ACN government in the entire South-West since the party took over the region?
Particularly in my state, I have not seen anything on ground; what we have seen so far is propaganda. They are maligning democracy. They don’t allow you to place advert on the radio. Even they prevented us from using ordinary schools for us to hold congresses. The Alliance for Democracy (AD) did not do that when it was in government. This ACN people are like fighters; if they came to fight the people of our states, I don’t know.
Many people believe that the PDP shot itself in the leg and that this resulted in its failure in the last elections. How do you react to that?
I don’t know what you mean by that. Except for Ogun and Oyo states, which obviously had problems, the ACN robbed us of victory in Ekiti and Osun states. We did not lose election.
What did the PDP do differently?
Look at the provision of water and electricity for example. The Ogbese Dam in Ondo State, Ife Dam in Osun State, the Oyan Dam in Kwara State and the Oke Ogun Dam that can generate about 45 megawatts were all put in place. There were also many motorized boreholes. There is the Ibadan – Ilorin dualisation project. Here, there is the dualisation of Osogbo Township Akoda road, the Ilesa bypass, among so many projects. But these ACN people are destroying things now. They are abandoning projects. What they are doing in government is unionism. I am not sure they were prepared for governance.
Governor Aregbesola was recently quoted to have said any Yoruba person that was not in the ACN was not an omoluabi. Would your own definition of omoluabi be in tandem with this?
That shows the kind of party from where he came. Tinubu who is the head of the ACN, where did he come from? In Yorubaland, when you are called omoluabi, there are certain qualities that you are expected to exhibit. It is not measured by the number of states your political party has captured.
So, we are not comparable; we are far ahead of them. It is like comparing Volkswagen to Rolls Royce. Ti won ba bi eniyan daadaa, a a tun tun ara e bi (if a person is well brought up, he maintains that standard). These are the minimum standard for omoluabi, but you don’t profess what you don’t have.
Do you see reason in the persistent call for national conference?
We don’t need that now. When we were in AD, there was no government; no National Assembly. But now, there is. Why the tautology? That is distraction. It’s a gang up. That is what I was saying; unionism or activism in governance; it’s all distraction. We have a government in power. The duty of amending the constitution lies with the National Assembly which makes the law of the land.
Nigerians are now being turned back from foreign countries, with South Africa and Britain being the latest of such countries. This may compound unemployment problem. Don’t you see this as a failure on the part of the PDP administration?
Unemployment is a global issue. In the case of South Africa, we paid them in their own coin; we turned back their people too and they have apologized. We fought apartheid for South Africa.
The issue of unemployment is global. The Nigerian case is peculiar as a result of upsurge in universities. And government is trying. We are talking of plan to create 10, 000 jobs. Just let’s be patient; we will get there.
Wouldn’t you agree that the ACN governments in the South-West are helping solve the problem with the 20,000 jobs created in Osun and Oyo?
Are you talking of gainful employment or youth employment? This kind of job where they are paid N10, 000 or so is not new. During Olagunsoye Oyinlola’s time, he did have them. He called then Oyin Corps. He was paying some of them N15, 000 and above. The difference is that he didn’t make noise about it. ACN would do N10, 000 project and do propaganda of N20, 000 over it. What they are doing is not strange. Oyin Corps were more than 25, 000. I don’t know about Oyo, but in Osun, it is not new.
On the problem of leadership in the South-West, don’t you think that the ACN people came up with Afenifere Renewal Group as a result of perceived hijack of core socio-cultural groups allegedly by PDP leaders?
Who is in ACN? ACN members are not core Yoruba people. We are the core Yoruba people; we formed the AD. You cannot be more Catholic than the pope. We formed the AD.
How do you see the claim that some people are aspiring to become Yoruba leaders?
You can’t aspire to Yoruba leader; you don’t aspire to leadership. Awolowo did not say he was Yoruba leader. People said he was Yoruba leader. And of course, to be Yoruba leader, you must have a pedigree.
A leader must be clean and above board. Whoever is going to be Yoruba leader has to be an authentic Yoruba person. For all you know that person whose ancestral home we do not know might be a Ghanaian; he could be Hausa; somebody that is controversial all his life.
You don’t get leadership by imposing people or getting position through courts. When Awolowo was made Yoruba leaders, there was no party; no government anywhere; it was in a military or war regime. So, it is not a function of I have won this state or I have won that thing. Being the leader of a political party does not make you a leader of the Yoruba.
Of course, the socio-cultural organisation of the Yoruba is Afenifere. Our leader, Baba Fasoranti, is still alive. How would somebody now be aspiring? Yoruba doesn’t even do that. You said you created Afenifere Renewal Group. What is the meaning of that? That is nonsense. Why didn’t they have their own name and colour? Why didn’t they create their own identity? They want to bastardise Yoruba heritage. Afenifere is alive; Fasoranti is there; Okunrounmu, who is the secretary of Afenifere, is there. They are all alive. Ayo Adebanjo is still there. We are all Afenifere.
So, Afenifere Renewal Group is not known to Yoruba people. It is only a Lagos coinage. All those that went there were paid agents; they were paid to talk there; you would not see any genuine Yoruba man there. It was just an ACN rally in the South-West. They are just out to confuse the people.
And they now started talking about omoluabi. What we know about omoluabi is that omoluabi must not steal; he must not lie. They are just trying to create legitimacy around illegitimacy.
The North and South have been at the throat of each other over revenue sharing formula. What do you think this portent for the unity of the country at this time?
It is all politics. It has no negative after effect for the nation. Everything will soon be forgotten.
The PDP in Ekiti and Osun states believe firmly that we had been cheated;
we believed firmly that we were shortchanged. We suspected corruption. We wrote a petition and the National Judicial Council (NJC) set up a panel and he admitted some of these things before the panel. The judgment was just a fallacy. It was not a case of PDP seeking pound of flesh. The PDP complained that they did not get justice from Salami. It is not a matter of seeking pound of flesh. The matter is still going on. Now, Salami has to face perjury for lying under oath.
An attempt was made to cheat the PDP. We now have to clear the judiciary of fraud1. That is why the National Assembly has made the law that litigation over governorship election should now terminate at the Supreme Court, because of the actions of the Court of Appeal; different judgments were coming out from different appeal headquarters. We all believe in the sanctity of the judiciary and the judiciary is the last hope of the common man. We are not out to denigrate the judiciary, no! It was just the aspect of Salami’s handling of the matters that we petitioned about. It is not personal at all.
What is your comment on the case of the Odunayo Olagbaju’s alleged killers that were recently given state pardon by Governor Rauf Aregbesola?
Well, what can I say? It is just for the people to learn what kind of governor they now have. In the last election they had in the ACN, people were maimed. It is just a testimony that these people are just pretenders and propagandists. It’s so unfortunate that we have them there. But we leave them to God, the ultimate judge. He will judge them.
The Federal Government recently backpedalled on its decision to implement the Subsidy Re-investment (SURE) programme in full. What do you think the government should do so as not to have face-off with the people again?
What the Federal Government said was that if the subsidy had been removed fully, it would have been able to do all it promised prior to the SURE programme announcement. Now that the thing is partial, the difference of the partial removal will affect what will be done. The SURE thing is still ongoing within the premise of what is available. It is still the same thing. The money that is saved from the subsidy removal is what was promised to be reinvested. Now that the subsidy is partial, apparently, the amount of money expected from total removal has reduced. So, nothing has changed.
The probe of the oil sector by the National Assembly has revealed some sordid practices. Is that not an indictment on the National Assembly which is supposed to have seen all these in oversight functions?
Oversight function of the National Assembly is not investigative. It is what you see at the point of oversight that you report. When you want to go for investigation, you seek for the mandate of the House. That is what they are doing right now. Democracy is very new in this country; we are all learning. The National Assembly is learning, the executive is learning and the judiciary is learning. As time goes on, we will get there.
What is your assessment of the ACN government in the entire South-West since the party took over the region?
Particularly in my state, I have not seen anything on ground; what we have seen so far is propaganda. They are maligning democracy. They don’t allow you to place advert on the radio. Even they prevented us from using ordinary schools for us to hold congresses. The Alliance for Democracy (AD) did not do that when it was in government. This ACN people are like fighters; if they came to fight the people of our states, I don’t know.
Many people believe that the PDP shot itself in the leg and that this resulted in its failure in the last elections. How do you react to that?
I don’t know what you mean by that. Except for Ogun and Oyo states, which obviously had problems, the ACN robbed us of victory in Ekiti and Osun states. We did not lose election.
What did the PDP do differently?
Look at the provision of water and electricity for example. The Ogbese Dam in Ondo State, Ife Dam in Osun State, the Oyan Dam in Kwara State and the Oke Ogun Dam that can generate about 45 megawatts were all put in place. There were also many motorized boreholes. There is the Ibadan – Ilorin dualisation project. Here, there is the dualisation of Osogbo Township Akoda road, the Ilesa bypass, among so many projects. But these ACN people are destroying things now. They are abandoning projects. What they are doing in government is unionism. I am not sure they were prepared for governance.
Governor Aregbesola was recently quoted to have said any Yoruba person that was not in the ACN was not an omoluabi. Would your own definition of omoluabi be in tandem with this?
That shows the kind of party from where he came. Tinubu who is the head of the ACN, where did he come from? In Yorubaland, when you are called omoluabi, there are certain qualities that you are expected to exhibit. It is not measured by the number of states your political party has captured.
So, we are not comparable; we are far ahead of them. It is like comparing Volkswagen to Rolls Royce. Ti won ba bi eniyan daadaa, a a tun tun ara e bi (if a person is well brought up, he maintains that standard). These are the minimum standard for omoluabi, but you don’t profess what you don’t have.
Do you see reason in the persistent call for national conference?
We don’t need that now. When we were in AD, there was no government; no National Assembly. But now, there is. Why the tautology? That is distraction. It’s a gang up. That is what I was saying; unionism or activism in governance; it’s all distraction. We have a government in power. The duty of amending the constitution lies with the National Assembly which makes the law of the land.
Nigerians are now being turned back from foreign countries, with South Africa and Britain being the latest of such countries. This may compound unemployment problem. Don’t you see this as a failure on the part of the PDP administration?
Unemployment is a global issue. In the case of South Africa, we paid them in their own coin; we turned back their people too and they have apologized. We fought apartheid for South Africa.
The issue of unemployment is global. The Nigerian case is peculiar as a result of upsurge in universities. And government is trying. We are talking of plan to create 10, 000 jobs. Just let’s be patient; we will get there.
Wouldn’t you agree that the ACN governments in the South-West are helping solve the problem with the 20,000 jobs created in Osun and Oyo?
Are you talking of gainful employment or youth employment? This kind of job where they are paid N10, 000 or so is not new. During Olagunsoye Oyinlola’s time, he did have them. He called then Oyin Corps. He was paying some of them N15, 000 and above. The difference is that he didn’t make noise about it. ACN would do N10, 000 project and do propaganda of N20, 000 over it. What they are doing is not strange. Oyin Corps were more than 25, 000. I don’t know about Oyo, but in Osun, it is not new.
On the problem of leadership in the South-West, don’t you think that the ACN people came up with Afenifere Renewal Group as a result of perceived hijack of core socio-cultural groups allegedly by PDP leaders?
Who is in ACN? ACN members are not core Yoruba people. We are the core Yoruba people; we formed the AD. You cannot be more Catholic than the pope. We formed the AD.
How do you see the claim that some people are aspiring to become Yoruba leaders?
You can’t aspire to Yoruba leader; you don’t aspire to leadership. Awolowo did not say he was Yoruba leader. People said he was Yoruba leader. And of course, to be Yoruba leader, you must have a pedigree.
A leader must be clean and above board. Whoever is going to be Yoruba leader has to be an authentic Yoruba person. For all you know that person whose ancestral home we do not know might be a Ghanaian; he could be Hausa; somebody that is controversial all his life.
You don’t get leadership by imposing people or getting position through courts. When Awolowo was made Yoruba leaders, there was no party; no government anywhere; it was in a military or war regime. So, it is not a function of I have won this state or I have won that thing. Being the leader of a political party does not make you a leader of the Yoruba.
Of course, the socio-cultural organisation of the Yoruba is Afenifere. Our leader, Baba Fasoranti, is still alive. How would somebody now be aspiring? Yoruba doesn’t even do that. You said you created Afenifere Renewal Group. What is the meaning of that? That is nonsense. Why didn’t they have their own name and colour? Why didn’t they create their own identity? They want to bastardise Yoruba heritage. Afenifere is alive; Fasoranti is there; Okunrounmu, who is the secretary of Afenifere, is there. They are all alive. Ayo Adebanjo is still there. We are all Afenifere.
So, Afenifere Renewal Group is not known to Yoruba people. It is only a Lagos coinage. All those that went there were paid agents; they were paid to talk there; you would not see any genuine Yoruba man there. It was just an ACN rally in the South-West. They are just out to confuse the people.
And they now started talking about omoluabi. What we know about omoluabi is that omoluabi must not steal; he must not lie. They are just trying to create legitimacy around illegitimacy.
The North and South have been at the throat of each other over revenue sharing formula. What do you think this portent for the unity of the country at this time?
It is all politics. It has no negative after effect for the nation. Everything will soon be forgotten.
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