Senator Olu Alabi, a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) elder, is a former chairman, Federal Capital Territory Development Authority (FCDA) and erstwhile Senator representing Osun West Senatorial District in the National Assembly. He speaks with OLUWOLE IGE on the reconciliation within the PDP and 2019 general election, among other national issues. Excerpts:
SOME critics have accused President Muhammadu Buhari shielding corruption within his government, citing the relegation that the Secretary to the Federal Government (SGF), Mr Babachir Lawal awarded a contract for the cutting of grasses, running into over N200million. What is your take on the response of the government to the issue?
I don’t have details about the allegation of corruption against the SGF. From the little that I know, the SGF allegedly used one of his companies, where he claimed he had resigned, to award contract for the services of the IDP in Borno. Whichever way you look at it, if you are the owner of a company by Nigeria parlance, and you said that you have resigned, whether you put your children there to deputise for you, or you employ people to help you manage such company, it still remains your company. There is no way you will not benefit from it. This is because, when you resigned from such company to join the government, all the infrastructure left behind in the company were not sold. They are still left behind with the intention of coming back there to continue after serving the government.
All the letters that his lawyer wrote to the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) did not help matters. If you want to resign from a company, there are procedures, including the relinquishment of your shares.
The reaction of this government to anybody affiliated to the APC regarding allegations of corruption has been very unfortunate. If you want to fight corruption, you should be seen to really be fighting it. If you want to witch-hunt, let us know that you are witch-hunting people and everybody would leave the country. I cannot understand a situation where somebody, who is being investigated for corruption, who is a PDP man, crosses to APC and such a person is exonerated all of a sudden or the investigation is dropped. It is unfortunate that this government is pulling wool over our eyes.
Is there the possibility of the PDP resolving its internal wrangling before the 2019 general election?
By the grace of God, sooner than expected, there would be resolution of the crisis within the PDP.
What gives you the confidence that the crisis would be resolved in earnest?
What gives me the confidence is that we are expecting a court judgment. And the two factions of our party have agreed that whichever way it goes, they would accept the judgement of the Court of Appeal and nobody would appeal the verdict at the Supreme Court.
So, I am optimistic that once we are able to settle the wrangling at the national level, it would flow down to the states. This is because all the factions we are having at the states’ level are the reflections of the factions at the national level. Right now in Osun, PDP is the preferred political party. All we have to do is to get a very good and credible governorship candidate for 2018 governorship election. We would field a candidate that would be acceptable to the generality of the PDP in Osun State. This state is up for take for the PDP now.
What is your view on the current economic recession the country is going through and what do you think is the way out?
It is very bad that Nigeria as a country is going through this turbulent economic recession. I don’t like criticising any government, because I was once in government and I know that it is not easy to run it. But the Buhari government is even worse than a military administration. I said this because a military government comes into power through coup and when the military are planning a coup, they would not be too sure if it would succeed. When you are planning a coup, you won’t be able to sit down and project what you intend to do when you assume power. It is when you get there that you say ‘now, we have taken over the government, let’s think of what we are going to do.’ Unfortunately, that is the kind of situation we have found ourselves now. APC never thought they could win the March 2015 presidential election. For a long time after they won, the president was still a bit baffled that he had won, and he kept thanking former President Goodluck Jonathan for conceding defeat, because he never thought he could win. Buhari, up till now, has no economic blueprint and the APC is an amalgamation of strange bed fellows, coming together for the purpose of taking over power at all cost and not for the purpose of good governance. When former President Olusegun Obasanjo, took over as a democratic president, how much did former military Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar leave in the coffers of government. It was under $5 billion in the Foreign Reserves. What was much internatioanl price of crude oil per barrel? But, Obasanjo was able to manage through and he was not passing the buck. And if there is any government that can steal without being questioned, it is a military government. Obasanjo was not blaming the past governments of Abacha or Abubakar for the country’s woes. He faced the task of governance squarely and tackled the problems to the extent that the debts to the Paris club, which we had been carrying over right from the days of President Shehu Shagari, was cleared. So, if you are prepared for governance, you will have a blueprint. But the Buhari government has no economic blueprint.
The only way we can get out of the recession is to increase our income through oil. We have no other source of revenue now. Buhari should go and negotiate with the Niger Delta militants so that we would be able to produce crude oil maximally and sell more. All these talks about diversification into agriculture are laughable. The gestational period for agriculture to start yielding would take nothing less than seven or eight years. For instance, in the poultry sector, the hope of surviving this year is dicey, because the main ingredient for the production of feeds for the poultry, fishery and piggery is maize. This time last year, we were buying maize for N50,000 per tonne. Now, maize is N138,000 per tonne and the price of egg cannot be increased without resistance from customers. The worst part of it is that the government is not doing anything to bring down the price of maize. Farmers are now making more money by exporting maize and the Federal Government has silos dotting different parts of the nation with half of them not functioning and there is no strategic grain reserve, which they can pump back to farmers.
When I see my friend Audu Ogbeh, the Minister of Agriculture, talking gleefully about diversification into agriculture, I just laugh. Crude oil is the only thing you can pump today and get money immediately. The kind of agriculture we are doing in Nigeria is not productive. I watched television recently and saw the government distributing tractors, which would take farmers sometime to learn how to operate. Which farming season are these tractors for? How many tractors were bought and for how many farms or hectares of land? If they can negotiate with the Niger Delta militants and attain maximum level of crude oil production from that region and we get market for it, that can be our saving grace for now. Then agriculture, industries and other sectors would generate revenues for us at the second stage. To get out of the recession, we just have to get more revenues through crude oil. All these plans to sell our national assets and obtaining loans are ridiculous and won’t work. One government pulled us out of the bondage of the Paris Club loan and another government wanted to push us back into it. It does not make sense. Buhari has done a lot in checking corruption but, he cannot stop corruption, because corruption is like prostitution, which is the oldest profession in the world. They tried to erase prostitution or red light zones, but it is impossible. You cannot stop corruption; but you can reduce it. The people, who want to fight corruption, are also nurturing it by awarding contract for the cutting of grass or weeds in IDP camp to their own company. It is ridiculous. However, Buhari has created awareness and fear that corruption is wrong. But where is the money they have recovered from fighting corruption?
The impression from the APC government is that the foundation for the economic recession was laid by the inaction of the immediate past government of President Goodluck Jonathan…
When Obasanjo took over, the country was in a bigger mess. It was a transition from the military to a civilian government. Everybody closed his or her eyes to whatever allegedly misappropriation of funds that must have taken place when General Abubukar was in power. The level of misappropriation that was discovered during military regime was bigger than what was discovered under politicians. Yet, we were able to recover and move the nation forward. The last administration was lucky that there was a lot of money even though parts of it were allegedly stolen. But, we must be conscious and sincere to say a lot of good work was also done by the administration of Jonathan. Now, they want to close the Abuja Airport due to repairs and make use of the Kaduna Airport. Because of it, they would also make use of Abuja train service. Who executed the railway projects? It was Jonathan. When they talk about Kaduna-Abuja train, you will think it was Buhari who conceived the idea, implemented and commissioned it. Buhari only went there to commission, Jonathan started and completed it. Jonathan did a lot in developing the country. The bit of increase in electricity supply was as a result of the bold step Jonathan took in privatising the PHCN and the Integrated Power Plant (IPP) he built. Those projects cannot be done overnight. What we are now seeing is the result of thes activities of the previous administration, which took at eight years to 10 years. It started from the administration of Obasanjo. If you now say you have increased power generation 5,000 megawatts, is it by magic? The transmission lines were started during Obasanjo’s time. The IPP were started also during his time and continued during Jonathan’s tenure. All the hydro and power stations were all there. So, in a nutshell, it is a layman’s excuse to say the previous government laid the foundation for economic recession. The APC are good in giving excuses. When the PDP was in government at the federal level and they were not able to perform in Osun, they claimed that it was the PDP-led Federal Government that was starving Osun of funds. That was the general story we were told by those in power in Osun and some other APC-controlled states. So, who is starving Osun of funds now?APC are fond of excuses.
In Osun, the governorship election will hold next year. How prepared is the PDP, considering the factionalisation of the party?
PDP is the government-in-waiting and the party that would produce the next governor in Osun. We are government in waiting. Right now, if you know the number of gubernatorial aspirants that we have, you will be convinced that Osun people still have confidence and support for the PDP. We hear comments from the people and all they are waiting for is that the PDP should present a credible and acceptable candidate for the election. It would just be like when former Governor Bisi Akande was swept out of office when he sought for reelection. Akande came in on a popular vote; I contested against He and I was the first gubernatorial candidate of the PDP in Osun State. When I went to campaign at Iloko Ijesa, the king there then said I was a better candidate, but my party was the probleme. The late Bola Ige was the Baba Oba of Iloko. But the Iloko monarch said I was the better candidate, because he had known me since I was a Commissioner for Health in the old Oyo State. Yes, Akande won and came in as a popular governor, but, he lost his popularity before the end of his four year’s tenure. The APC, as a party now, has lost credibility and all the goodwill. We elders in the PDP are holding meetings day and night to ensure that we field a very good candidate for the 2018 governorship poll.
I don’t have details about the allegation of corruption against the SGF. From the little that I know, the SGF allegedly used one of his companies, where he claimed he had resigned, to award contract for the services of the IDP in Borno. Whichever way you look at it, if you are the owner of a company by Nigeria parlance, and you said that you have resigned, whether you put your children there to deputise for you, or you employ people to help you manage such company, it still remains your company. There is no way you will not benefit from it. This is because, when you resigned from such company to join the government, all the infrastructure left behind in the company were not sold. They are still left behind with the intention of coming back there to continue after serving the government.
All the letters that his lawyer wrote to the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) did not help matters. If you want to resign from a company, there are procedures, including the relinquishment of your shares.
The reaction of this government to anybody affiliated to the APC regarding allegations of corruption has been very unfortunate. If you want to fight corruption, you should be seen to really be fighting it. If you want to witch-hunt, let us know that you are witch-hunting people and everybody would leave the country. I cannot understand a situation where somebody, who is being investigated for corruption, who is a PDP man, crosses to APC and such a person is exonerated all of a sudden or the investigation is dropped. It is unfortunate that this government is pulling wool over our eyes.
Is there the possibility of the PDP resolving its internal wrangling before the 2019 general election?
By the grace of God, sooner than expected, there would be resolution of the crisis within the PDP.
What gives you the confidence that the crisis would be resolved in earnest?
What gives me the confidence is that we are expecting a court judgment. And the two factions of our party have agreed that whichever way it goes, they would accept the judgement of the Court of Appeal and nobody would appeal the verdict at the Supreme Court.
So, I am optimistic that once we are able to settle the wrangling at the national level, it would flow down to the states. This is because all the factions we are having at the states’ level are the reflections of the factions at the national level. Right now in Osun, PDP is the preferred political party. All we have to do is to get a very good and credible governorship candidate for 2018 governorship election. We would field a candidate that would be acceptable to the generality of the PDP in Osun State. This state is up for take for the PDP now.
What is your view on the current economic recession the country is going through and what do you think is the way out?
It is very bad that Nigeria as a country is going through this turbulent economic recession. I don’t like criticising any government, because I was once in government and I know that it is not easy to run it. But the Buhari government is even worse than a military administration. I said this because a military government comes into power through coup and when the military are planning a coup, they would not be too sure if it would succeed. When you are planning a coup, you won’t be able to sit down and project what you intend to do when you assume power. It is when you get there that you say ‘now, we have taken over the government, let’s think of what we are going to do.’ Unfortunately, that is the kind of situation we have found ourselves now. APC never thought they could win the March 2015 presidential election. For a long time after they won, the president was still a bit baffled that he had won, and he kept thanking former President Goodluck Jonathan for conceding defeat, because he never thought he could win. Buhari, up till now, has no economic blueprint and the APC is an amalgamation of strange bed fellows, coming together for the purpose of taking over power at all cost and not for the purpose of good governance. When former President Olusegun Obasanjo, took over as a democratic president, how much did former military Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar leave in the coffers of government. It was under $5 billion in the Foreign Reserves. What was much internatioanl price of crude oil per barrel? But, Obasanjo was able to manage through and he was not passing the buck. And if there is any government that can steal without being questioned, it is a military government. Obasanjo was not blaming the past governments of Abacha or Abubakar for the country’s woes. He faced the task of governance squarely and tackled the problems to the extent that the debts to the Paris club, which we had been carrying over right from the days of President Shehu Shagari, was cleared. So, if you are prepared for governance, you will have a blueprint. But the Buhari government has no economic blueprint.
The only way we can get out of the recession is to increase our income through oil. We have no other source of revenue now. Buhari should go and negotiate with the Niger Delta militants so that we would be able to produce crude oil maximally and sell more. All these talks about diversification into agriculture are laughable. The gestational period for agriculture to start yielding would take nothing less than seven or eight years. For instance, in the poultry sector, the hope of surviving this year is dicey, because the main ingredient for the production of feeds for the poultry, fishery and piggery is maize. This time last year, we were buying maize for N50,000 per tonne. Now, maize is N138,000 per tonne and the price of egg cannot be increased without resistance from customers. The worst part of it is that the government is not doing anything to bring down the price of maize. Farmers are now making more money by exporting maize and the Federal Government has silos dotting different parts of the nation with half of them not functioning and there is no strategic grain reserve, which they can pump back to farmers.
When I see my friend Audu Ogbeh, the Minister of Agriculture, talking gleefully about diversification into agriculture, I just laugh. Crude oil is the only thing you can pump today and get money immediately. The kind of agriculture we are doing in Nigeria is not productive. I watched television recently and saw the government distributing tractors, which would take farmers sometime to learn how to operate. Which farming season are these tractors for? How many tractors were bought and for how many farms or hectares of land? If they can negotiate with the Niger Delta militants and attain maximum level of crude oil production from that region and we get market for it, that can be our saving grace for now. Then agriculture, industries and other sectors would generate revenues for us at the second stage. To get out of the recession, we just have to get more revenues through crude oil. All these plans to sell our national assets and obtaining loans are ridiculous and won’t work. One government pulled us out of the bondage of the Paris Club loan and another government wanted to push us back into it. It does not make sense. Buhari has done a lot in checking corruption but, he cannot stop corruption, because corruption is like prostitution, which is the oldest profession in the world. They tried to erase prostitution or red light zones, but it is impossible. You cannot stop corruption; but you can reduce it. The people, who want to fight corruption, are also nurturing it by awarding contract for the cutting of grass or weeds in IDP camp to their own company. It is ridiculous. However, Buhari has created awareness and fear that corruption is wrong. But where is the money they have recovered from fighting corruption?
The impression from the APC government is that the foundation for the economic recession was laid by the inaction of the immediate past government of President Goodluck Jonathan…
When Obasanjo took over, the country was in a bigger mess. It was a transition from the military to a civilian government. Everybody closed his or her eyes to whatever allegedly misappropriation of funds that must have taken place when General Abubukar was in power. The level of misappropriation that was discovered during military regime was bigger than what was discovered under politicians. Yet, we were able to recover and move the nation forward. The last administration was lucky that there was a lot of money even though parts of it were allegedly stolen. But, we must be conscious and sincere to say a lot of good work was also done by the administration of Jonathan. Now, they want to close the Abuja Airport due to repairs and make use of the Kaduna Airport. Because of it, they would also make use of Abuja train service. Who executed the railway projects? It was Jonathan. When they talk about Kaduna-Abuja train, you will think it was Buhari who conceived the idea, implemented and commissioned it. Buhari only went there to commission, Jonathan started and completed it. Jonathan did a lot in developing the country. The bit of increase in electricity supply was as a result of the bold step Jonathan took in privatising the PHCN and the Integrated Power Plant (IPP) he built. Those projects cannot be done overnight. What we are now seeing is the result of thes activities of the previous administration, which took at eight years to 10 years. It started from the administration of Obasanjo. If you now say you have increased power generation 5,000 megawatts, is it by magic? The transmission lines were started during Obasanjo’s time. The IPP were started also during his time and continued during Jonathan’s tenure. All the hydro and power stations were all there. So, in a nutshell, it is a layman’s excuse to say the previous government laid the foundation for economic recession. The APC are good in giving excuses. When the PDP was in government at the federal level and they were not able to perform in Osun, they claimed that it was the PDP-led Federal Government that was starving Osun of funds. That was the general story we were told by those in power in Osun and some other APC-controlled states. So, who is starving Osun of funds now?APC are fond of excuses.
In Osun, the governorship election will hold next year. How prepared is the PDP, considering the factionalisation of the party?
PDP is the government-in-waiting and the party that would produce the next governor in Osun. We are government in waiting. Right now, if you know the number of gubernatorial aspirants that we have, you will be convinced that Osun people still have confidence and support for the PDP. We hear comments from the people and all they are waiting for is that the PDP should present a credible and acceptable candidate for the election. It would just be like when former Governor Bisi Akande was swept out of office when he sought for reelection. Akande came in on a popular vote; I contested against He and I was the first gubernatorial candidate of the PDP in Osun State. When I went to campaign at Iloko Ijesa, the king there then said I was a better candidate, but my party was the probleme. The late Bola Ige was the Baba Oba of Iloko. But the Iloko monarch said I was the better candidate, because he had known me since I was a Commissioner for Health in the old Oyo State. Yes, Akande won and came in as a popular governor, but, he lost his popularity before the end of his four year’s tenure. The APC, as a party now, has lost credibility and all the goodwill. We elders in the PDP are holding meetings day and night to ensure that we field a very good candidate for the 2018 governorship poll.
and then