If Tinubu had agreed to restructure Nigeria, there would not have been infiltration of Yorubaland by bandits from the North —Dr Akin Fapounda

Dr Akin Fapohunda, the Director of Research of the pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, retired from the Federal Civil Service as Director of Space Science in the Office of the National Security Adviser. In this interview by SAM NWAOKO, he speaks on the disposition of the Afenifere to the current socio-political situation in the country and, especially the South West Region.

The current tension in the South West of the country must concern you. The tension isn’t as much from politics as it is from insecurity. Is Afenifere looking at this, and how are you as a group addressing the security situation in the South West, sir?

All we could do and all we have been doing is to speak reasonable sense to the government in power. But President Bola Tinubu, who is from extraction, has chosen to be a man on his own, he is not deferring to any reason at all. The mantra of Afenifere is that Nigeria should be restructured such that every unit of Nigeria will be able to do things according to their own way. And, if Nigeria were to have been restructured, Western Region of Nigeria – the Yoruba territory, would have been able to protect itself. We would have heightened the organisation of Amotekun to be totally integrated to the fabric of Yoruba society. There would not have been any room for any infiltration from anywhere at all. But President Tinubu chose to be on his own, to be in Abuja to control power and never caring about what happens to all the other components of the country.

Quite unfortunately, we have said so much. We have advised him that he has been on the wrong course but he has chosen to just ignore all entreaties to proper governance. And the result is what we now.

President Tinubu is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and as such has a duty to Nigeria. Would you say he is ignoring the old tenets of Afenifere because he needs to balance governance or it because he didn’t really believed in the tenets?

We never believed in Tinubu. He ought not to have been the governor of Lagos State in the first instance. It was just because Afenifere leaders wanted to stick by the rules technically. At that time, before the election in Lagos, it was said that any area where there is a problem with the results of the primaries, that the results of such area would be cancelled. It happened to be that Tinubu manufactured crisis in an area where his opponent was strong and the election was cancelled. So he became the governorship nominee. It was an act of rigging at that time too. But, Chief Adebanjo said, ‘well the rule is that if there is a problem with the results of the primaries, the figures from the area will be cancelled’ and the figures were cancelled. That was how Tinubu emerged. And he has been doing that, he quickly took AD out to AC to ACN and he has been on his own. He has been out of control all this time. And, so he emerged and smashed Afenifere into two. He never really believed in Afenifere all along. He brought in Fasoranti because of some unwholesome politics. But the core Afenifere mantra is that ou must be Omoluabi. Omoluabi means that you must respect your pedigree, you must respect the people on whose shoulders you rose to get to where you are. But Tinubu refused to honour people who were ahead of him. Abraham Adesanya, OlaniwunAjayi, and all those giants of Yoruba race, he ignored them totally and we are paying the price. We are now down and almost out in Nigeria. It is so unfortunate.

Restructuring has always been on the front burner when matters come to Afenifere and those elements that stood up against the military back in the days. But it has now been relegated. How do you think this can be made the issue again in the country as Afenifere still holds on to the topic?

It is because Tinubu used Emilokan Mantra to smash his way into power. He broke all norms – Muslim-Muslim ticket, money politics, buying this, buying that because of the way we have a corruptive society handed over by the military. So, he appears to have been succeeding. However, when the dog steals salt, what would he cook with it? Now that you have got power, if you have no control is that not disaster? We knew all along that Boko Haram banditry started from Borno State, it came to Plateau, it came to Benue, it came to Niger, it came to Kwara. It is all there to see, but because our president just wants to be elected for a second term and nothing else, and maybe even a third term, that focus has made him to lose all entreaties that would have guided him to do what is right for the Nigerian people. It is so unfortunate.

Now the elections are almost upon us, but the people are worried because of insecurity and they are concerned. There have been protests. What are you foreseeing because there are complaints all around the country? Do you see us going into this election as a whole or a fractured country?

This is the third time… in 1959 the government that was formed was not legitimate. It ended in the coup of 1966. In 1979, the NPN power chose to oppress the Yorubas or Unity Party of Nigeria then. In 1983, they won ‘moonslide’ and ‘landslide’, Walter Ofonagoro declared then on NTA that they had won in Nigeria but by December 1983, the government came crashing down. We are now in the third cycle. When you have mis-governance, when you have a government that is not for the people, not by the people, it will come crashing down. The government now can go ahead and declare election results at 4am or whatever time again, but to what end? The country is not at peace. They are just borrowing money. We have three budgets, no one knows which one is being operated; they are doing some failed projects, they are not funding the health sector… in Abuja, some contractors protested on Tuesday because they had not been paid, yet there is subsidy removal. Yet, there is so much money in the system. We are running government by voodoo economy. So, elections? Well, it is just a ritual and it will not be organic. Once you have a polity that is not organically supported by the people, sooner or later, there will be consequences.

But some believe that after the elections and, hopefully when Tinubu has secured his second term, he may begin to implement some of the programmes Afenifere has proposed and then, the South West and others who think alike would begin to see the difference and a more egalitarian society. Do you also foresee that after the elections?

The morning shows the day. Once you are deceptive, once you are not truthful and you do things by not being transparent… a leopard cannot suddenly change its skin. In any case, between now and February is such a long time. Is it when you capture Ogun State? Is it when you capture Lagos? Is it when you subdue Ondo State? Do we really think we will survive till February next year in good form? It is two weeks now that children and their teachers have been in the forest and all the government did now was to dress up Gbajabiamila and Ribadu and others in big agbada and went to Ogbomoso and returned to Abuja. Is that the way you are going to leave the children in the forest like Chibok? This has awoken the sleeping giants in the country. When you have associations like the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) now rising from slumber… the people are being sensitised now to know that we have no government in place. I cannot see how we can sustain this together in the next coming months, at this rate.

The gloom hovers all around the country – in the economy, in infrastructure, security and other sectors, but some believe that Afenifere and a body like the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) can propose some urgent measures to not just ease the tension but also proffer lasting solutions. Are there plans like that on the part of Afenifere to spur government into action?

All we have is moral authority. Afenifere is not in political power as it was in the 1960s when it was Action Group; we are not in political power as it was in the 1970s when we were Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN). Afenifere is not in political power as it was in 1999 when we had Alliance for Democracy (AD). The real Afenifere now has only moral authority; we have no senator from our ranks, no House of Reps member, they are all on their own. They are out of control. All we have done is to keep setting the agenda for what is to be done properly, and our own people who are in government now have chosen to be deaf and dumb, and by these I mean the Reps, the senators and even the governors. We have no true leadership in Yorubaland as at today. They have decided to work outside Afenifere’s belief of Omoluabi mantra because they bought their way to power. All the governors now don’t even meet. There is no common agenda like we had when Afenifere was in charge. And that is the price we are paying now because we let people who are not our best (vagabonds) to be in control. Who controls who becomes governor in Lagos State? Who controls who brought Makinde to Oyo State? Who brought in the governor of Ogun State? They all bought their way into the electoral system and they are occupying the political space of Yorubaland. And all efforts to reach out to them privately and even publicly through releases, they feel they are on their own in the leadership in Yorubaland. That is what it is. As it is now, Afenifere is endorsing SDP, a different political party that brought in Moshood Abiola. We don’t know how it will perform but the political space now does not allow for regular elections anymore. Moral authority cannot bring you to win elections now in Nigeria, the same thing in Yorubaland. Being a good person even disqualifies you because, how can you collect N50million to buy form to contest for any office in Yorubaland? You cannot. So Afenifere with Omoluabi membership has been bought out of the political system. And that is the rot we are in now. It is a terrible situation. We do not do money politics, Awolowo’s mantra is to be selfless and to contribute to the society without taking anything back. People who are there now are outside the orbit of Afenifere. We are only praying to God to save us from the problem we are in in Nigeria today.

You retired as a Director of Space Science from the Office of the National Security Adviser. You must have, at least, discussed various means of securing the country through the air, even if nothing was done in that regard while you were in service. Is it so difficult to secure Nigeria through the air and thereby do something about festering insecurity in the country?

Even though I left the post 25 years ago, I still reached out to my colleagues in the space science sector just this week. I called them, including my friends in the military. They all agree that they have been recommending to the Federal Government means of solving the problem. I can say it in good authority that they have done their best as professionals. They have made proposals to the government, but it appears that the government has a different agenda, it will appear as if the people with political power believe that Nigeria ought to be terrorised to submission. Otherwise solutions are so elementary and are so available out there in the public space. You don’t need to go to school to know that satellite can now see everything. If you are using google map on your phone, can you not locate where you are going? It is a basic space science application. With google maps, you can zero in on a village, even on your phone. That is the general commercial technology. The sophisticated ones are also available to track people, to take the temperature of people to know who they are in a cluster, and then you can deploy means through which you can liberate and rescue any hostage. Did we not hear that a military man telephoned to withdraw soldiers from guarding a school in Kebbi State, and within two hours bandits struck at the school? Up till today, Nigerians have been asking that the official, who telephoned to withdraw the soldiers from their Kebbi State location, should be named. Have Nigerians been answered by the government? No. So, the bottomline is that the political people have their own agenda. The scientific community knows what to do but since they are not in charge, the people at the top are not doing anything. Like I said, it will appear as if terrorising the society is a means to stay in power, and they are just doing what they like. It is so unfortunate that human beings can be doing this to another set of human beings. The Nigerian political leadership can ignore scientific information, scientific modalities, scientific equipment, which agencies of government have recommended to them? Professionals in space science are all aware and they have written to government about it. The powers that be feign ignorance, all they do is send delegations wearing white robes from Abuja as if they are going for a wedding. And bring rice to people whose families are in detention. Of course they rejected their rice in Ogbomoso because it looked like they were in Ogbomoso to bribe the people. Can you imagine that level of reasoning?

Space science is vast but can we not narrow space science to enhance the quality of our elections? A lot of young, tech-savvy Nigerians would be wondering why our elections are still this controversial and there is little or no trust in the electoral umpire. What do you think can be done?

Very simply: we all use debit cards. With your debit card, if you are in Port Harcourt, you can pick your money and if you are in Kaduna, you can pick your money. If you are in Lagos too, the same thing. All the kiosks that we have in the banks can be configured in one day to do elections. It is very simple. We all use debit cards, and if you can withdraw money with it, you can cast your votes with it. But we don’t want the truth; we are a lying country. We lie about our population. Are we 250 million or 220 million? We don’t want to know. We have 93 million registered for elections, only 23 million will vote. 23 out of 200, that is about 10 percent voting. Is that possible? We lie about everything. We lie about economics. We don’t want to do two plus two equals four, we want to do two plus two equals twenty. Can’t you see the lie? Ordinary Option A4, to count people, you are jumping figures from one to four to 20 then 200…

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They said it is mathematical progression, as a scientist you may understand it sir…

That is fraud. It is simply evil in broad daylight. It shows that we don’t want the truth. Once you don’t want the truth and believe in lies, you will harvest the result of lies. So technology of space can help us.  With google map, you can locate any address and it is even free on your phone. Then, there are more advanced technology with which you can track human beings, to locate a house, street or a person. But when somebody is asleep and he says he is awake, he is deceiving himself. We are in the mode of deception, science is about truth. So, we have made a choice as a lying country in all respects.

Is it all gloom… what hopes are there for the country?

As at today, we are hopeless and there is no need to sugarcoat it at all. But God is on the throne, and something will happen. Nobody who can forecast it, not even all the men of God who spit fire in the television. We have no hope but somehow, this Ogbomoso matter might be a catalyst to open our people’s eyes to know that there is no miracle anywhere there is injustice, oppression or cheating. You rise as one people to fight injustice. The wall of Jericho did not just fall, people rose and made noise. It is an example. The wall of Jericho has to be pulled down in Nigeria. It could be tomorrow, it could be next year, and it could be in 20 years. Until we rise and chase away bad people like it happened in Romania, when the people rose. I pray that the people at the top now would see reason quickly that this Ogbomoso incident is a defining moment where a human being was cut in the throat like chicken! And there are two-year-olds kept in the forest for over two weeks. God of justice is still on the throne, and all these people who are feeling invincible must realise that God of justice is still on the throne. Something will happen. Religion aside, we have to rise and say no to oppression and also say no to injustice.

Is Afenifere tired? Should Yorubaland be weary?

No, we are not tired because we are speaking. Our leader, Oba Olaitan has spoken. I am speaking. We speak and we will continue to speak. But when the powers-that-be feel they are in control of everything, playing god, then your voice appears as if it is feeble and powerless, the people who think they are powerful would exhaust their power and they will become like ordinary mortals. At that time, they will be demystified and it will be disgraceful. I wish they can listen.

Afenifere had written to the president. I delivered it by hand myself to the presidency. The message was ‘restructure Nigeria’. One term is enough for you, leave with a restructured Nigeria: Igbo for Igbos, Ijaw for the Ijaws, Yoruba for the Yorubas, let everybody go and run their own affairs according to their own worldview, and protect themselves. But the voice of reason appears very feeble now. Eventually truth will arise and we shall be free eventually.