A former Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon Lasun Yusuf, in this interview by SAM NWAOKO, speaks on his absence from the Nigerian political scene and on a number of issues in the polity.
You’ve been quiet for some time. What have you been involved in?
I’ve been quiet politically but as an entrepreneur, my private life has been very busy. I shuttle between my businesses and so, I do a lot. I have some established businesses and I do a lot of engineering projects, and I’m also a farmer. Politically, I have been quiet but as a private citizen, I’ve been very busy attending to my businesses.
Now that you are politically quiet, which political party do you belong to or which one should we say you belong to now?
Of course I am a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Until 2022, I was still a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC). I actually took part in that primary that gave Gboyega Oyetola the ticket to run for the governorship in the 2022 election. When I discovered that I had been muscled out of the system, I had to leave the party and later went on to run for governorship on the ticket of Labour Party and after the governorship election of 2022, I moved to the PDP and I’ve been there since before the federal elections of 2023. So, I am a member of the Peoples Democratic Party.
So, should we assume that you are a part of the coalition that was launched by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar?
No, I am not in any coalition. What I know is that I’m a member of the PDP. I can say that I am not a member of any coalition yet.
What is your opinion about the coalition?
The so-called coalition you are talking about is still opaque. Nobody can really describe the type and colour of the coalition because I have not seen any coalition other than that politicians have been meeting up and down. I think they are trying to fashion out how they can coalesce and come together and see if they can repeat the kind of coalition of 2015 that brought Buhari into power. As far as I am concerned, I don’t think it has been concretised in any way. So, there is no opinion to be expressed yet other than that politicians have been going around, speaking with each other to see what they can do. Whatever I know about the coalition are snippets which we read in the newspapers, there is nothing concrete yet, and nobody has come out in the last few months to say anything concrete. The closest to that which we can say is going on now is the defection of Nasir El-Rufai from the APC to the Social Democratic Party (SDP), and that is the only thing that I know which has happened politically in the last few months. I have not seen the so-called coalition and it has not concretised in any form, in my opinion.
In your native Osun State, your friends, Rauf Aregbesola and Gboyega Oyetola are currently not on good terms. As a stakeholder in the state, what do you think is responsible for the rift and how do you think it could be settled?
It is a long story. I was the publicity secretary of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and we got into government in 1999. In late 2001 and early 2002 crisis had erupted within the party and in the state itself. The crisis that led to the death of Honourable Odunayo Olagbaju continued up to the unfortunate killing of Chief Bola Ige. So, Alliance of Democracy as a party did not come out of the crisis clean, and the election of 2003 was lost by the party. It was the election that brought Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola. Yes, you can say that Obasanjo rigged the 2003 election and so on, but that of Osun was never rigged because by 2003, AD was already factionalised and there was no way it could have won the election. The crisis led to a great exodus from the AD. Even my father, who was a member of the party too, also left for the PDP in 2002, and he has been there till today.
I got to know Aregbesola in 2004 and we started the struggle to win Osun in 2004. We worked together with Fatai Oyedele popularly known as Diekola; Gboyega Famodun, who later became the chairman of the party; Wale Afolabi, Adeoti and others. All of us got to know Aregbesola in different forms but I met him in 2004 in the company of Fatai Oyedele (Diekola); then Nike Omoworare, Gbenga Fayemiwo and one other person. We started the battle which lasted until 2010 when our party was eventually declared as the winner of the 2007 election. I also contested in the election for the House of Representatives seat of Irepodun/Olorunda/Osogbo Federal Constituency.
At what point did Oyetola come into the picture?
All the while, between 2004 and 2010, we didn’t know (Gboyega) Oyetola. He was not in the picture, I never even heard of his name then. I am not saying he was not a ‘big person’ or not, but we didn’t know him and he was never in any picture. We didn’t know him. The first time I saw Oyetola was around December of 2010. We were in Oranmiyan House – Aregbesola’s office and meeting place – when one gentleman just walked in and went straight to where Aregbesola was using as his office. My younger brother of blessed memory, Jare Adebisi, who served as Aregbesola’s Chief of Staff and also served as Oyetolea’s Chief of Staff for the first one and a half years, came to me and asked if I knew who had just entered? I told him I didn’t know him and he said: ‘That is Gboyega Oyetola, Tinubu’s brother. He has been brought here to become the Chief of Staff and he is likely to take over after Rauf Aregbesola.’ So, it was Jare Adebisi who told me about him in December 2010. I didn’t know where he got the information. I wondered how somebody who did not take part in our political struggle of almost seven years would be brought in to become chief of staff and was primed to become the governor after Aregbesola. I thought it was a joke! In Fairness to Governor Oyinlola, he ran a grassroots government, the people of the state were heavily involved in his administration. That is one advantage he had and another person that did that was Isiaka Adeleke. They ran governments that heavily represented Osun people. But my friend’s government had a lot of foreigners inside and when it came to Oyetola’s time, we didn’t even know those who were running the government.
At this level now, what do you think can be done for the rift to be resolved?
In most cases, if you bring in people who did not suffer in the struggle to achieve a particular result, they are not likely to be able to use the result well. Don’t forget that Oyetola became governor on a rigged primary. It was my own primary that they rigged for Oyetola. Aregbesola wanted someone else but Tinubu insisted that his brother must be made the governor. That was the beginning of the crisis. Aregbesola will not agree but we knew he wanted someone else, Tinubu insisted that he should use his brother. So, that thing started from that point.
Another thing that is not known to the public is that people don’t treat the fact that Oyetola and Tinubu are brothers. So, what I think is making the thing very difficult is not about government itself, but I think Oyetola is of the opinion that ‘see this is gentleman that my brother made – Aregbesola – how do you now think you can come and be rivalling me and think I can subject myself to you’. I stand to be corrected on this opinion. It is a fight of ego and when ego is involved, here is nothing that can be done.
And I don’t know why people are clamouring that they should come together and settle their rift. What has their rift got to do with the political situation in Osun? That APC is out of government, do they want APC to come back? I don’t know. They are not talking, they are fighting and this has become a personal thing which is no longer relevant in the politics of Osun. Their own fight did not degenerate into the Wike/Fubara fight, so why is it important to the political happenings in Osun? It is no longer important and I am not going to suggest how they are going to settle the fight because the two of them took away governance from someone like me. So, why will I wish them well? How? If they can, let them fight to death, I don’t care.
Another angle to it all is that the national secretary of APC, Ajibola Bashiru, said recently that a state of emergency should be declared in Osun because of the local government election dispute. How justified is this call sir?
One thing that surprises me about Ajibola Bashiru is that he is a young man, very brilliant and he has achieved a lot for himself. He has a PhD in Law, had been commissioner for eight years; was a senator for four years and is currently the secretary of the APC. At that age he has done so well for himself but Ajibola Basiru, more often than not, is not able to draw the line between being trivial and facing the reality of life. I like him, I like the fact that he has achieved a lot for himself as a young man. But to call for a state of emergency in Osun is way out of it. To what end? If not that I had interacted with him at all levels, I would have been saying ‘do you want us to start querying your certificate’? This is a very brilliant man but calling for a state of emergency in Osun? Based on what?
People have forgotten that the so-called local government election that APC said they conducted was never an election. If you go to the ballot paper they used, there was no logo of any political party there. It was a paper they marked: Osun State Chairmanship Local Government Election 2022: ‘YES or NO’. Go and find out. There is no logo of any political party. Should that election be challenged in any court, the judge should throw the case out with a lot of rebuking because it was not an election. That was a referendum paper and not a ballot. To now say that the judiciary had given you victory… over what? And so, for Ajibola Bashiru to have called for a state of emergency, I felt sad. He is my younger brother, I like him. But I will advise him to start becoming more mature in his presentations so that people will not begin to question his intellect. I know he is very brilliant, but that was too low. He knew that there was no local government election during Oyetola’s time. He knows what happened, that Oyetola just printed a paper with YES or NO on it, which is not a ballot. Even the APC that conducted the so-called election didn’t put the logo of APC there.
So, my reaction to the call is that I like the young man because he has done well for himself but as per politics, he trivialises politics too much. He is too childish when he speaks about politics. His opinions about political matters are always shallow but as a young man, I like him but he is too shallow in politics.
There are notions in some quarters that APC is desperate and that the party is forcing its frontiers. What do you make of this notion?
People who are saying that, are they just waking up? The man who is the president, we all know how he became the president, so why are they just realising that he is forcing his frontiers? All the frontiers that were supposed to be pressurised and so on, he forced it in 2023 and he is there now. I remember Sule Lamido saying in an interview with Saturday Tribune that it is difficult to push Tinubu out in 2027 because, without being a president he forced himself into the office. Now that he is the president, it will take an act of god to take Tinubu out of the Villa. Anybody that does not agree with that can go and try or should just be resting in his house. A man that had no government apparatus other than that of Lagos State got the presidency. Is it now that he has the power and all the paraphernalia that people are now sweating and ganging up to remove? Those Nigerians are jesters. I am not being defeatist, I am only being realistic. It will take only an act of God to remove Tinubu from office in 2027.
Would you say the declaration of emergency in Rivers State is part of that expansion of frontiers?
No, what is happening there is a separate thing. He might, at the end of the day, have seen some loopholes which he capitalised on, but it is a separate thing. There are four issues in the case of Rivers State that must be analysed: there is a moral angle, there is a political angle, you have governance angle and lastly, a constitutional matter to what is happening in Rivers State. Faust Theory is when you sell your soul to the devil to gain a benefit. This theory is relevant in Rivers because Siminalayi Fubara was not a politician. Somebody made you a governor. At the point where you are being made the candidate of a party, and eventually the governor, you have already sold your soul to the devil. So, there is no way you can wriggle out of that. On the moral angle Fubara was wrong because he sold his soul to become the candidate of PDP and to be declared the governor of Rivers State. Those he sold his soul to will have to control him until the end of the tenure of that government. I’m not justifying Wike but I’m looking at Fubara on moral grounds based on the Faust Theory. Secondly, the moral angle for Wike is that there is nothing wrong with godfatherism in politics, but godfatehrism should not be limited to one person. It must be a collective leadership of godfathers who will always see things from different angles. So, the kind of godfatherism we are practicing in Nigeria that is known with the president and Wike is not the ideal godfatherism that would bring any good to anybody or any system. So, Wike is wrong on that angle. Yes, you foisted Fubara on PDP and the people of Rivers State, that is not the kind of godfatherism that should be promoted. So, on moral ground, the two of them are wrong.
On political grounds, Fubara was wrong to think that he can rubbish all the politicians that had been in the system for a long time. Then, it is equally wrong for Wike to think that he can speak for all politicians at all times. Like when he said ‘I bought all your forms to contest’… who are you to say you bought forms for everybody? You cannot speak for everybody at all times. So, politically, both Fubara and Wike are wrong.
On governance, this is where I don’t like Fubara at all. Abraham Lincoln defined democracy as “government of the people by the people and for the people. However, what we are practicing today is a form of democracy which is called ‘representative democracy.’ Democracy itself is a system of government in which everybody would come and vote on a decision. But this is not practicable and therefore it was modified to elect representatives. That is why it is called ‘representative democracy’. About representative democracy, the first thing that comes to mind is the legislature. In the constitution of Nigeria, it is the Legislature that is listed as the first arm of government. So, how can you be a governor and you muzzle the first arm of government? At that point, democracy is no longer being practiced because it is representative democracy. So, as a legislator, I don’t just like the man because he does not or did not understand that aspect of governance.
To Wike’s side, it is unreasonable that 27 members of the legislature, at the heat of arguments and tension would go public on several occasions to say that they have defected to another party. You can’t eat your cake and have it. I know that we have a legion of hypocrites in Nigeria, but nobody in his right senses will say that those people had not defected. They defected but when they discovered that the governor was just muddling the whole issues up, they now kept quiet. So Fubara was completely wrong to have muzzled the legislature. It is not right, you can’t be governor with three or four members of the legislature.
On constitution, the president now crashed everything because there is no provision of the constitution that allows the president to suspend elected officials. Some schools of thought hold that the declaration will save Fubara from impeachment. That is rubbish. Democracy is about testing your laws, your traditions, your precedence and when you do this, you will be strengthening your laws. Don’t forget that the so-called 27 Assembly members started an impeachment process against Fubara. If it had held and Fubara was removed, by my earlier contention, those ones do not have the locus standi to send impeachment notice to Fubara because they said they had defected. So, you cannot put something on nothing. So, there is no provision of the constitution where it says ‘declare a state of emergency and suspend the elected officials.’ The president just crashed everything.
Having considered the moral part of the issues, the politics, the governance and the constitutional, the president now saw a loophole in pushing his frontiers towards 2027. In Rivers State, nobody was right. Fubara was naïve and Wike was a bad godfather. The moment you discover that Fubara was not going to listen to you, you should have just keep quiet and face your job in Abuja. If I was in his shoes, that is what I would have done. Finally, the president bungled everything, you can’t suspend elected officials, it’s not right.
But your colleagues in the National Assembly expressly approved the president’s action?
I was a former presiding officer so I will not talk about my colleagues in public. I was one of the very few Nigerians who had been privileged to sit on that chair, so I won’t desecrate that chair. They are my colleagues, they are fantastic people. The only thing is: Whatever you sow, you will reap.
READ ALSO: I inherited N500bn debt from Aregbesola, Oyetola’s govts — Gov Adeleke
and then