Our memo that shaped 1998 transition to democracy —Olawepo-Hashim

GbengaOlawepo-Hashim, a former presidential candidate, in this interview with Abuja Bureau Chief, SANYA ADEJOKUN, recalls how a chanced early knowledge of former Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha’s death led to how his group convinced the military junta to direct the incoming transition programme and eventual formation of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

 

What informed your decision to join the All Progressives Congress (APC)?

One, it was clear after our last outing that we had to make a pick between either PDP or APC, and the Peoples Trust (PT) was one of the parties that was deregistered- the small party that I picked during the 2019 elections after I had stayed about 10 years abroad since I stepped out of politics. Upon my return to the country, I wanted to appraise the political situation. I also wanted some independence to be able to say my vision for the country without being inhibited. So, I was not interested in going for any of the major parties. It was, as we call it in oil and gas business, an exploratory activity. When you want to develop a field in oil and gas, you will first of all take a portion of the asset to sink an exploratory well, so that you can understand the geology and formation. It was an exploratory move, and there were lessons learnt. Number one was that most of the small parties were registered by different factions of people in the established political parties. So, as we poured in resources into one of those, the real owners of the parties would show up and say we were moving the party in the direction that they did not want. We were developing structures rapidly and they didn’t want that. It was like we were even treated as if we were the opposition within the party. It became clear to me that there is no need to fool around. After that engagement, we just had to either belong to APC or PDP.

I was one of the founders of the PDP in 1998, with great men like Dr Alex Ekweme, Chief Solomon Lar, AlhajiAbubakarRimi, Professor Jerry Gana, AlhajiBamangaTukur and other great minds. But you know what happened. While some of us were idealistic about the great country we wanted to rebuild, there were few people there who were ready to kill and maim, and they quickly shoved to the corner some of those great men, including myself. On one of those encounters, we were all expelled from the party at a National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting because they were intolerant of democratic values. By 2003, the character of the PDP had changed almost completely, and was underscored by the fact that the people we contested against in 1999 were the ones now who were the leaders of the party by the end of 2003, whether in Oyo, Kogi, or Kwara; our main opposition were brought into the party to lord it over us after we had delivered government, and this thing cost a lot of lives. Eventually, I left in 2006. I resigned and we started experimenting with some small political parties.

So for me, PDP was never an option to return to if I had to pick between APC and PDP. We had a bitter experience with PDP, and it looks like they have not learnt any lesson. As a matter of fact, thigs are getting worse and worse with them, and it’s like they also like to advertise their newfound posture as a corrupt party, and are always looking for people who are corrupt to give assignments to. They have indignation for anyone that is credible. Now, I can’t belong to such a party. I am someone, who really believes in the unity and indivisibility of Nigeria, and for me, the APC is where I have a very clear commitment from the leadership about an indivisible Nigeria. Some other political parties are one leg into Nigeria, and one leg out of Nigeria, I can’t belong to such political parties. The APC came for me as one of the only available options, and I believe that we can make the APC to be an ideological party because one. It already subscribes in its name to the doctrine of being a progressive party. So, let’s make it a progressive party that it has already announced itself to be, and we are called progressives. And I would like to see us like we have the progressives in the Democratic Party in the United States of America. So, I am comfortable with the APC; that’s why I picked it.

 

You have always been seen as a progressive but back in 1998, PDP would appear to be a conservative party. What led you there?

No, it was not. Chief Solomon Lar was one of the progressive governors of the Second Republic. AlhajiAbubakarRimi was one of the progressive governors of the Second Republic. In fact, majority of the northern progressives, who were in the peoples Redemption Party (PRP) and the Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP) were driving forces of the PDP. As a matter of fact, we formed the PDP with late Chief Bola Ige. They walked out of the PDP because they wanted us to automatically zone the Presidency to the South-West. I was in that meeting when there was a big confrontation between Chief Ayo Adebanjo and Alhaji Abubakar Rimi and then Chief Adebanjo led the walkout. He stormed out of the meeting and there were other issues. I cannot blame them for storming out because they have the right to do that, and then they went to form the Alliance for Democracy (AD.) As they stormed out, they went to the All Nigeria peoples Party (APP), where they saw something worse, and they decided to rather go and from something smaller in the South-West and they were effective in doing so. So, the PDP did not start out in 1998 as a conservative party. The thinking behind the PDP then was: let’s form a big party that will be able to win power in Nigeria and will be able to create a stable democracy that will solve military intervention. That was achieved, but it did not now transform beyond being a vehicle to transit to democracy, and that was the problem. There was a small fraction of it that participated in that big party that had a very dictatorial tendency, and that is what the pan-Yoruba organisation, Afenifere was afraid of. And that fraction eventually triumphed and killed everything progressive in the PDP. If we were to roll back time, I would say that the fears of Afenifere leaders were accomplished eventually because the progressive wing of the PDP was eventually marginalised. Even the people you will call the conservatives, Chief S. B. Awoniyi, Alhaji Adamu Chiroma and Alhaji Bamanga Tukur were completely marginalised. A small group that had a militarist disposition completely destroyed the bigger groups not because they were many: they are so few. In the South-West, you could count how many of them were in that group. They operate like bandits. They just go, put money into the things, and then falsify results, they fight for appointments and make sure that their guys are the ones who are appointed whether they won elections or not. In fact, they destroyed the party. Because of the experience of the Afenifere with this group in the South-West during the Social Democratic Party (SDP), they didn’t want to work with them because this was the same group of people who claimed Alhaji Lateef Jakande lost election in Lagos State. So, they had their own very ugly experience. For the benefit of hindsight, I won’t say they were wrong, but maybe because those of us who are progressives from the North then, who were in the PDP just wanted to move forward. To be honest, we wanted to end military rule and we were probably not paying attention to the warnings of the Afenifere at that time.

 

So, PDP was like a rainbow coalition of sort?

Definitely. It was a rainbow coalition and the progressive forces, who suffered for democracy played a major role in it. Let me tell you one of those roles: When Abacha died, I was in the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) office. In fact, I was in Adamu Adamu’s office because that was one of the people that was helping out as consultant to the Public Affairs Department and I was in charge of the PTF news then.  And Adamu Adamu and all of us were on the editorial board. I was in that place when the signal was sent that Abacha had died. Immediately, I left that place and went to Professor Jerry Gana because we had been organising for civil society. I said Abacha is gone, now, we need to present a memo on the way forward to the Military High Command. And so, the question was: who was going to take the memo there? It was in the memo that we drafted the name, Independent Electoral Commission. We proposed a composition of an Independent Electoral Commission, and a whole lot of other recommendations. That memo was signed by Pascal Bafyau, who is late now and my very self. We took that memo to Fort Ibrahim Babangida, and that was the night people were still struggling about who was going to be head of state. I remember the Chief of Army Staff then, who surrounded himself with many armoured tanks with flashing of lights in the middle of the night. And as we were going, I heard a loud noise: “Stop, the Chief is coming.” Our vehicle swerved into the bush; there was IshayaBamaiyi surrounded with armoured tanks. Eventually, we settled down with Bamaiyi. He took the memo and said we could go. He didn’t say a word, and thankfully, 80 percent of what constituted that transition came from that memo.

I’m saying this publicly for the first time. Anything could have happened in Fort IBB if there was a shootout because they were all struggling as to who was going to take control. But we knew we had to make an input that night. And swiftly, we started putting the party together. I was at the secretariat, and Professor Gana was the general secretary of that formative initiative. I was in charge of publicity and information as his deputy. Dairo Awesu who is now late, was deputising for Professor Gana. We ran the whole machine and put a government in place. The rest is history. Some other guys did what they did, and everybody started walking out of the party peacefully. And by 2003, the party needed to rig election massively to be able to return to power in 2007 because all the goodwill that they had in 1999 had been lost.

 

So eventually you were driven into exile?

Yes. Look,let me tell you about the circumstance of my going into exile in 2007. God bless OgonnaOnovo. He was the Deputy Inspector General of Police in charge of operations when Mike Okiro was IG, and he tried to protect me. He knew what was happening in Kwara State then. But by the time, UmrauYar’Adua had taken over. You know those who were controlling the Yar’Adua’s government, I won’t mention them. One Sunday, Onovo told me, ‘Look Excellency, I have tried my best; I will not allow them to come and kill you. But now, you have to leave the country. There’s a petition they have brought to our office and they claim you have arms in your house in Ilorin. I know you don’t.’ At that time, we were in the tribunal challenging the election. “They’re coming, and you know when they are coming to search for things, they will find what they want to see. So, my advice is ‘leave the country. Whatever they find is not your business.’ On Sunday, I just asked somebody in the church: ‘Elder, you’re going to take me to Lagos.’ I pretended as if I was going on a visit. He drove me out of the compound. None of my security detail was with me. Nobody knew about it. I was in Lagos, and the next day, I was already in England. The next morning after I had departed, they came, led by an Assistant Commissioner of Police with a lorry load of policemen to search my house and the people at home said ‘oga is not around.’ They were so sure I was around. That’s how I went into exile. Even the Chief of Staff to President Olusegun Obasanjo then, General Abdulahi’s son, was shot at in Ilorin. Before that encounter, we had very rough confrontation where some people wanted to ambush us in one of the neighborhoods but our security team was very alert, and thank God, we escaped that and a whole lot of terrible things. A lot of people died on the Election Day. Four of my agents were killed on the Election Day. Even members of the state House of Assembly were killed in the open, and nothing happened to the killers. Even thugs killed policeman and nothing happened to those thugs. Even a Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) chairman in Kwara State was stabbed while they were having an NUJ election by thugs that were known. These things were recorded on tape and the police did not do anything.

 

You have joined the APC at a time when many Nigerians have become disillusioned. The party has been in power for about six years now, and people are complaining about all manner of things such as insecurity, hunger, unemployment. So, how do you think you can change the system?

It is not new to me how government functions, and I do believe that we can make a difference even in APC right now. Look at some of the advocacies that they are making about the need for decentralisation, particularly in the police. Some three weeks ago, I saw that the House of Representatives had gone into second reading of the bill to decentralise the police. This is going to make a huge difference. So, I believe that especially at this time now, what we need to concentrate our energies on in Nigeria really, is how we can solve the problem rather than keep adumbrating about the problem. Let’s speak more to the solution. And I believe that my presence in the APC will help the country to benefit from any of these recommendations that we can make. Nigeria is in a very serious crisis, no doubt about it and the way for all patriots to help in salvaging the situation is to make your candid advice available to those who are in charge. And when we’re in the same political platform, it reduces suspicion, and everybody can clearly understand your genuine and patriotic intentions, that whatever you say or propose is not because you don’t like anybody’s face, but because we want this country to work.

 

What you did in the PDP, or how you described how PDP started until there was trouble, do you think it can work in your new party?

I think it can work better. There’s no human being that is perfect. President Muhammadu Buhari has a lot of limitations, but he has integrity. And if he agrees with you on a thing, he is going to do it. He’s not going to say something and do something else. Now because of that, I believe that if you are able to give him a one-on-one genuine advice, and he is convinced about it, he is going to do it. That’s the difference between him and some other people. There are people who will agree with everybody and at the end of the day, they will do nothing. He is not somebody like that. So, I don’t have any fears about the APC.

 

In a recent interview, Babangida described his tenure as saintly, when compared with what is happening now in terms of corruption. How would you react to that?

You can’t fault that to be honest with you. There’s a way with which things have happened in this country that we need to apologise to some people. That’s the man that gave out many oil blocks, and he didn’t keep one for his son or any of his relations. He doesn’t have a house in Abuja. I know that the only place he has houses is Minna. He has no house in Lagos; none in Switzerland; none anywhere in the world.

 

What I am saying is: How are you absolutely sure?

I don’t want to make this whole interview about IBB. Let’s just say that there are some things that are not necessarily true; that are assumptions. Most of them in their generation didn’t focus on some of the things that younger politicians focus on now. Look, Chief Solomon Lar, the first chairman of the PDP did not have a house in Abuja. He had been everything: minister; member of the parliament in the First Republic; he was the governor that built infrastructure all over, but never had a piece of land in Abuja. Anytime his rent expired, we were the ones who put money together to ensure that the rent was paid. I know about that, and I know a minister of the Federal  Capital Territory (FCT) in the first PDP government that today stays in a three-bedroom rented apartment in Abuja. He does not have a flat in Abuja, that is his own. That is the difference between the new mandarins of the PDP and those who formed the PDP or a Babangida, or a Buhari or a Ciroma. It’s a question of lifestyle at that time. And that is what we are talking about, that ideology, lifestyle, values, etc, must be a basis of choosing leadership.

Now you see somebody who has never done anything in his life privately, but you get into his house and you see like 10 to 20 Jeeps. That person should be automatically disqualified from public office. But it is now what qualifies some people: display of obscene wealth in the middle of poverty, in the midst of poverty and wealth that cannot even be justified or accounted for. That is one of the reasons I like the APC because such people cannot win elections in APC. But, they may win in PDP because in PDP with the new PDP people, that is in fact what will qualify you to be their candidate. You have to be able to demonstrate your obscene wealth for them to choose you as their candidate. In APC, the more you are seen to have money, and demonstrating it, the more you are being disqualified from being a likely candidate.

                         

I know that APC is your new party, but we are all Nigerians. Nobody has attempted to join APC and was rejected, no matter how corrupt.

In PDP at a time, they were rejecting people from joining. People were deregistered in PDP, when Ahmadu Ali was chairman of PDP. Even the Vice-President, AtikuAbubakar was deregistered in Adamawa State. So, you see that PDP and APC are not the same thing. At least, nobody has been rejected in APC. And anyways, the constitution of the country does not allow any party to reject a person. The only thing that would disqualify you is the vote of the people. When it’s time to go for the primaries, you will see who they will vote for. They are not rejecting anybody who has stolen money, as long as the person has not been tried and convicted, but you see, the practice that I have seen in the APC that I like, is that people who display obscene wealth do not get supported by the mainstream political decision-makers in. I like that.

 

When you talk about ideology, what exactly do you mean?

You see, there are tested ideas on how society is to be governed. Socio democracy is a brand. The ones that we saw in the past on display among the progressives in Nigeria, Awo, Aminu Kano among others, then we have those who are liberal democrats, we know what they stood for. We know those who were a bit conservative and what they stood for. Political choices in the past in Nigeria were based on what you stood for on those ideas. And that made decision-making easy for the electorate. You knew why you were voting NPC, you knew why you were voting NEPU, or in the second Republic when you were voting GNPP. You knew what they stood for, and knew what their leaders stood for even before political parties were formed, you already knew their party platform. Now, that made development faster. You will agree with me that the economy grew better in the First Republic. After 100 years of English rule in the Western Region when the colonialists were leaving, there were only 27 hospital beds in the whole of the Western Region that was in the University College Ibadan. In five years of limited self-government under Chief Awolowo, they had thousands of hospital beds because it was driven by ideology. Everything was discussed. How many hospital beds are we going to create? What is the policy on university to education and all that? So, there was never money that was there not for anything. Everything was programmed from the beginning. How much are we raising in taxes, and what is its going for? So it was not just a nebulous budget that was open ended and filled in by civil servants. It was a budget that was programmed and informed by the program of the dominant party. That is what I’m saying.

 

So, how do you see that coming back not to APC or PDP alone, but to the Nigerian system in general, because if we look at what is going on now, there is absolute chaos?

That is what I stand for, and that is what I am preaching. The first step to making an idea dominant is to get it received by the mass of the people. Even the scripture says out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. As a man thinketh, so he is. It’s first at the level of thinking that change occurs before it becomes material force. So, we are having a conversation about the direction for our country going forward, and once this conversation percolates to the mass of the people, then it has power to cause change, and that is what we are doing right now. And the more we have a critical mass of people in politics that subscribe to this, then you begin to see change in various wards. The engagements we are having on our platform on Facebook is very animating. People ask questions, throw their own things. They’ve never had this kind of engagement before, and we’re having it almost two years to the next set of elections. So, nobody’s going to comment and ambush voters. Nobody is going to come and say everybody is the same, so, just take what you can take. No, everybody is not the same, and it shouldn’t be. We know where everybody is coming from, and so we’re not going to allow a situation whereby people would just bring out stolen money and begin to confuse the electorates. And then, once you have ideological politics, return to mainstream electioneering. The tendency to use mundane issues like oh, I’m Yoruba, that one is Igbo or Hausa, as if that makes any difference, will disappear because policies are not going to be based on mundane issues anymore. You cannot impose a criminal in that kind of electoral process. So, it is important that you returned to politics where the ideas and principles of actors will be the basis for choices.

 

And you see this taking a root in two years?

Look, Nigerians are desperately looking for a way forward. And anyone that is not talking now has nothing to offer. That is why they are not talking. Anyone who has something to offer should say it, let’s know what they stand for, let’s have a debate on every sector of the economy, let’s have a discourse on how we are going to organize the future of this country. The futures of millions of people cannot be left in the hands of people who say nothing about their roadmap to where they are taking us to.

 

So now, you are doing all these to what end? What exactly is in it for you? Why are you doing this?

I have always done this for 35, 36 years. Today, something happened and very interesting. One of my tailors in Abuja here said he was going to bring somebody to me. He brought the guy and he turned out to be my classmate in A-level. Then he told the tailor “thank God you’re with him, I’m glad that you are with him, these things that you said he is saying now, and he’s a good man. He has always said those things 35 to 36 years ago”. So, I’m not saying these things because I’m looking for office. I am saying those things because that is the only sane way to organize a country for development. So, that is number one. Number two, to answer the second leg of your question. Once the timetable of the primaries come out for my Party, I will be very clear to you about what exactly is way forward. But for now, I think what we want to do is to ensure that we create a critical mass of people that can make politics better even on the platform of the APC. And as I said in my statements, we are called progressives, and we are the platform of the progressive party, and we will advocate without ceasing, without relenting, those progressive values that will make our country to be a better place.

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