Many were surprised when you dumped your police uniforms and joined politics straightaway. How would you describe the difference between the uniform and being a member of the House of Representatives?
The journey has been good in terms of legislation. We have been able to formulate some laws, motions and bills. It is left for the President to sign the bills as required by the provisions of the law. Of course, there have been issues of the assent of the President and the legislators too have been able to stand their ground, relying on the provisions of Section 58 that if the President refuses to assent to any bill, it can be vetoed by the decisions of the National Assembly. If we feel that these laws are good for Nigeria and the President declines assent, the best thing is to override the President.
Are there no other ways of politically resolving this issue of override and veto which some people believe create sharp divisions and tension?
There are ways of resolving those issues that are not necessarily in the Constitution. But in situations where the executive and legislature is at loggerhead over the provisions of the Constitution, it is not the best. Who initiates that kind of succour to settle such quarrels? Like a case where the presidency declines assent to the Peace Corps bill, it is very reasonable. Did you see legislators arguing about it? There was no argument about it because we know that the establishment of Peace Corps means that it would be funded by the government. There are security organisations that have been established before now and the Federal Government is providing for their needs. They have been established for a very long time and have been serving Nigeria. If, by now, the activities of those security agencies are not enough then it is left for the Federal Government to reactivate them. That goes a long way to justify the need for the establishment of the Police Trust Fund that has gone through the third reading in the National Assembly here. For example, we can push the number of people going into Peace Corps to other security agencies, push them into the Army and the Police. Let them provide security for this nation. There was rumour all over the country that people were paying money to join Peace Corps. They said the money was for kit. Have you ever heard of the military paying money for kit before they are recruited? Have you ever heard of the police paying for kit before they are recruited? It is not so. The police laws came on stream in 1861 and it has gone from strength to strength. It was from the police force that the fire brigade was carved out, customs and immigration came out, etc. Even during the civil war, the police went and took action and when the police was overwhelmed by the presence of artillery, soldiers came in.
Recently a video in which the Governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, was addressing a traditional ruler on the need to demolish some structures went viral. Would you say the traditional ruler went beyond his bound by asking the governor to reconsider his decision?
If a government is going to establish anything in any place, something that would make people lose their land, property, the government must embark on enumeration. You enumerate people, their property with the view of compensating them. I think the traditional ruler was right in asking that the people should not be intimidated even as their houses are going to be demolished because of road or any government project. The traditional ruler is very reasonable in his quest to make the government see reasons. The people deserve some level of information before any action is taken. People cannot just leave their homes and return to find their houses demolished. Here, we know how frustrating it could be to take the government to court. When will the case be heard? The government will be the ones telling the judges the judgment to deliver and the poor man continues to suffer in the hands of government.
What is your take on the decision of the governor to unilaterally pick his deputy as his successor?
I want to tell you that democracy in Ekiti State has been democracy of Fayose, by Fayose and for Fayose. Since he was inaugurated as governor, he does not consult with anybody or listen to anybody. The people with him are brigands that have been ruling Ekiti for the last three years.
Even when he was to come to this second term, we stood our ground that there must be primary election between himself, Olubolade and Adeyeye. Those people were relying on consensus, we said no. It was resolved that everyone must go for primaries and we went for primaries. How come he wants a repeat of what we kicked against the last time? He is the one playing, dancing to the tune and acting it, it is undemocratic.
Are you saying the governor is repudiating the resolutions of the peace committee headed by former Senate President, Senator David Mark?
I was not called for any reconciliation by Senator David Mark, no one has ever called me, I hail from the Central Senatorial District of Ekiti State. Even at that, if it has been resolved that everybody must go for primaries, I want to tell you that there was a meeting at the Government House in Ekiti where Fayose asked all the people who were delegates to the primary election to come and seat in, as they entered, he announced openly that anybody for Adeyeye should stand up, he asked them to come to the front and when they did, he told them that it was an Eleka meeting that was taking place and these were statutory delegates, he walked them out. He has been using security agents in the state, especially those attached to him, to carry out these nefarious activities.
Are you planning to report him to the national secretariat?
The national secretariat has done its best by arriving at a conclusion that everybody must go for primaries. He is going to change the names of those going to the primaries so that when delegates come, those who are for other candidates will never show up there. Even if they come, they will not allow them enter into the venue. I am saying it categorically.
What does this scenario portray for the party?
Doom. If the leadership of PDP can be magnanimous enough to tell him to his face that what he is doing is not known to democracy, that it will damage than repair the party, then maybe there may be a way forward.
You both belong to the same party, have you tried to have a one-on-one conversation with him?
Fayose and I have not been in talking terms since September 2015 for two reasons. The party executives that conducted his election and nominated him, two months after he became governor, he sacked all of them. My younger sister was the state woman leader then and he came to Abuja here to have meetings with me and told me that he was going to drive my sister because she had sexual relationship with someone to the extent that I told my sister to resign her appointment if it will settle the quarrel. He brought people from my ward and used police to make them sign that they have expelled her. This was someone whose life was threatened when she was campaigning for him. Her life was threatened four times by thugs from the opposition party. If you are going to look for a window for peace, you will have to do it with the view that the person you are having issues with is a repentant person–one that can show remorse.
Where would you say that Ekiti PDP missed it?
Poverty is so written in all the faces of everyone in Ekiti. Go to Ekiti now, gather some people together and give them N2000 each and they will start shouting your name, Fayose will see what you have done, gather his own people, call for a press conference and give them N5,000 each and they will turn around and start shouting his name. But can that sustain the people? He does not allow the people in the House of Assembly make laws, he passes budgets by himself. He has announced so many times that he is the Alpha and Omega in Ekiti State, with no checks and balances in the state. If he sees you as a rising star in the state, he will send people to monitor your movement so he can bring you down.
Will you be contesting for the governorship post in that state?
Yes, I will be contesting for the governorship post. I will be unveiling my plans soon. And I would not be contesting under PDP because the procedure and process under PDP are not free, That is why I said the trait of democracy in Ekiti is government of Fayose, by Fayose and for Fayose. All the congresses that were conducted took place in his house. They will bring all the people to his house.
I have been sponsoring parallel PDP in the past two years in Ekiti and I have been holding meetings with my wards in my constituency. We are still in PDP, but they have not seen reasons why they should stop following this kind of person. I have been relating with Fayose since 2011, I was the only one that sponsored his election from my local government to the Senate in 2011. If that election was not cancelled, he would have been a Senator.
Why is the National Assembly insisting on changing the sequence of election?
If you followed the election of 2015, you would that what happened was some sort of bandwagon effect and that do not give room for good democracy, oppositional democracy and good governance. If the presidential election was conducted first and a President emerges, the next election is likely to follow the same trend and people would want to belong to where the president is. But, if the sincerity of the electorate has been tested, it does not matter if the party of the President has ten lawmakers and the other party has more than twenty lawmakers. The President can still get things done through the procedure of lobbying which is allowed in our political system. The executive is at liberty to lobby people to its side. You may be in the right party but you may not be the right candidate.
The nation is under threat by herdsmen, if you were to advice those in authority, what will it be?
In 1981, we had what was called the Maitasine riot in Kano, the police were able to suppress the riot without calling on the military. There was mass recruitment ordered by Shagari then into the mobile police and they drafted them to the place with massive supply of equipment and the riot was suppressed. I was a product of that mass recruitment. I was recruited as an Inspector of Police in 1980. 40,000 policemen were recruited and that is the highest that has ever happened. Judging by the level of civilization by now, expansions and urbanization, the Nigeria Police Force and security organisations should have advanced than this. In the area of general recruitment, inadequacy of manpower, the police force is lacking despite the fact that the strength of the police for now is 345,000.
Out of this number, VIPs, governors and who is who in the society want to be with police before they can perform their duties. If we have one million police officers today, it is not enough to cater for the security situation of this country. We have about four to five thousand police stations in Nigeria, 80 per cent of these stations were built by officers who went there to be Divisional Police Officers (DPOs). I was a DPO in ten police stations and I built the ten stations to my taste and they became Federal Government property. I built them through Police Community Relations Committee (PCRC) and companies in the vicinity that you beg to come and build such stations. I believe there must be a standard.
When I joined the police force, when you go to the back of our police stations, you would find a petrol dump for patrol vehicles. When you patrol, you go come back and refill. According to data now, they give police stations N45,000 in three months which won’t fill the tank more than three times. We have not even talked about the cost of repairing and servicing the vehicles. This is why you see them collecting money on the roads. The welfare is poor and the morale of the officers is low. In those days, we believed in the principle that wherever we were should be our headquarters. Since then, more local government areas and states have been created and most of these are left without security coverage. The first attack in Benue State was Agatu, I was one of the people that visited the place from the National Assembly. Agatu town is about 300km to Makurdi and I am telling you that, in Agatu, there is only a village police post, commanded by five men and the police post was built with mud. So if heavily armed herdsmen are coming and you are a policeman, would you wait for them? It goes a long way in showing that civil authority needs to be established in every nook and cranny of this country. In the aspect of policing, people will feel more secured when they see police and police stations around. If it is at the border, immigration and customs must be established there. We have always neglected all these things in this country. That was one of the reasons why I am pushing for the passage of the bill for Police Trust Fund. If the budgetary envelope system cannot satisfy the position of security for ordinary citizens, there should be funds created to provide logistics, equipment, training and re-training of policemen. You can see that in the Army. When you are due for retraining, you must go. But, in the police, when orderlies are sent on a course, their principals will say ‘no, he is very important to me, he will not go.’ And he wants promotion? I believe that if Nigeria wants to address this insecurity, we will need to do more for the police. When the Minister of Transport, Chibuike Amaechi was the Governor of Rivers state and I was posted to the state, I was living in the bush. When the insurgency in the state was becoming a major threat, Amaechi called all the security personnel in the state including the Army, Navy, Police to a meeting and asked us to patrol. For my group alone, he gave me 60 new Hilux vehicles, six armoured cars and we were able to suppress militancy and insurgency in Rivers State. At that time, we saw ourselves as equals. There was no rivalry between the police and other security agencies. We shared information. But now, one of the reasons we are feeling the insecurity is that security networking us not working out. In Nigeria, the Department of State Security is responsible for gathering of information. They have abdicated their responsibilities and are now involved in investigation and prosecution. If they do that now, how are they going to carry out the gathering of intelligence? We need to retrain our officers to be dedicated and we need to retrain them on the technics of how to carry out their security assignments. There are so many officers that, since they enlisted, they have not gone for further training. What fresh knowledge can those ones bring into the job? As for the National Intelligence Agency, it is their job to carry out information gathering within and outside the country. These herdsmen that we are talking about, what is the NIA doing? Money was made available to them more than any agency and they are responsible to gather any information that can cause external aggression to Nigeria.
Since you said you would not be contesting under PDP, is it safe to say you would be looking at the Social Democratic Party?
Definitely, that is the alternative for any serious-minded person especially in Ekiti State. The way we know politics in Nigeria, without money to use, you will always accept whatever has been decided by either your opponent or enemy. I want to tell you that in Ekiti, there is going to be a protest vote.
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