AS a foundation elder of the PDP and contestant for chairmanship, what was the dream of the founding fathers of the party, and why do you consider yourself as the man PDP needs to rediscover itself?
The grey hair on my head is like a bank account; you store your wisdom, you store your experiences. You know you can’t get experiences in the classroom; you acquire them as you pass through life. So, what you would start to use at that age are the things you have stored there. If you store rubbish, what you draw would be rubbish, but if you stored experiences, positive wisdom, you would be able to bring wisdom to the people and bear on your actions and utterances. What I am bringing to the table is simplicita: experience. I want to liken to the current state of PDP to a ship in distress at sea. I was in the Nigerian Navy; I know what it is for a ship to be in very stormy water at sea. If you don’t have a well-experienced, tested captain you may not survive it and that is the state of our party today and that is why you don’t need a bambino; you don’t need an untested hand to handle the affairs of the party today. So, what I am bringing to the table is what I have acquired learning through the process and going through the mill. I was PDP national vice chairman (South-West); I was the deputy chairman overall. So, what experience would you require? What testimony would you require again than all these things that I have said? I animated the PDP national convention many times; I was also one-time director-general of the National Presidential Campaign Organisation that included all the governorship, House of Representatives, Senators, state Houses of Assembly and we won 29 states and our president won convincingly.
What other testimonial would you want on table at this crucial time when our party is in a state of flux and we are facing a formidable opposition? Do you want to bring a person who has never served at any party level? How do you know the unwritten laws of the party? In any community even in Nigeria, we have the Written Constitution and the Unwritten Constitution. The unwritten constitution contains the norms, the culture, the dos and don’ts, the behaviour that is acceptable in a society that is handed over as you grow up. When you go to a normal African setting and even any part of the world, there are what we call taboos. And you learn them as you are growing up. If you misbehave, they hold your ears and give you a knock on the head. It is paramount these unwritten laws are being transferred to the children. That is what is needed to pilot the ship of the PDP back to the Presidential Villa.
Now that you know there is no time to waste for the PDP, why is it becoming increasingly difficult for the South-West PDP to agree on consensus candidate?
Talking about consensus, you know we went into a kind of spin after we lost the 2015 general election. I am talking as an engineer, when you get into a situation that you don’t expect. You know what the Yoruba call a whirlwind, when you are taken in a whirlwind, it seems like you have taken more than 100 bottles of whisky; you would think you are in a long dream but it is real. The human brain is very sensitive, if you are not in a stable platform and you are oozy, it won’t be able to function properly. That is why seamen, an old sailor like me, when you are at sea you are subjected to three dimensional motions, you are perching, you are rolling and at the same time you must keep your balance. So when in a civil life, when you go into a spin, you know how to balance yourself and say I am not drunk; you know you will still be able to function as a civilised human being.
And also, you asked me a question: how do I mean? What I mean is that it is too short a time if you have never been in that situation or one year to a general election. It is no time experimentation. It is only when you are cruising you can hand over the pilotage to your deputy or someone with a little experience to watch him. We have no time for experimentation now, hands down full on the very first day, we cannot. Once the party is stable, we will be back on our toes.
Are you saying all the contestants should be allowed to test their popularity?
It is a family reunion, where you see people of various cultures of this country, various dresses and dancing to all kinds of music from the swampy forest to the savannah, showing the strength of this party, showing this is a true Nigeria party, not going down as 20 persons will be vying for one position and 3,000 delegates will be voting? But, can you imagine what chaos that would bring? The founding fathers of the PDP were very clear about their aim and objectives. They avoided that by adopting micro-zoning and even within the zone, there is also micro-zoning because there are so many other positions. Take the South-West for instance, Lagos and Ogun constitute Zone One; Oyo and Osun (zone two); Ondo-Ekiti (zone three). Presently, in zone three, Ondo has the position of the national vice chairman (South-West), who is the chief manager of the whole of South-West. If anybody wants to come from that zone for chairmanship, is it justifiable and rational? The other two zones will be marginalised. Since 1999, we have never had a crisis like this, where all kind of characters would want to contest. The only thing that is not micro zoned is the elective position on a national basis: position of the president, vice president and that of the Senate President.
This is the first time since 1998 that we are going to be in the opposition. This is the time we need a genuine, trusted hand, who has gone through the mill to pilot this ship safely back to the harbor. We have to still utilise the experiences of the past to actualise our goals, if we don’t. If we don’t and we begin to reinvent the mill, we don’t even know what the outcome will look like. We got to be very careful because Nigeria will be looking at us, curious that if we (PDP) cannot manage themselves, how can they manage Nigeria as a whole? If a man cannot manage a small unit of his family, how can he manage a society? It is an appeal to our other brothers from the zone in the South: let us do what is just, right and equitable for the sake of future of this country. Even the president (Muhammadu Buhari) has asked for a vibrant opposition. We need to stabilise ourselves so as to get our house together and propose alternatives to areas or things that are not going right for this nation.
This is a job of importance. It is sad that even those who don’t even know where their wards can come into the race. There is no record to show of contribution to the purse of the party at their wards; yet you now come out because somebody self-appointed you not elected you to be minister, and now believe you can handle this party. Did you manage your ward? Did you know your chairman? Have you attended your ward meetings, have you listened to people at the base of the ladder? If you haven’t done that, it is up for the delegates of your party to decide? But, I pray we don’t make the wrong choice. So, it is like you want to score yourself a surgeon and you have not undergo the necessary training and at the end you take up surgery knife to carry out a surgical operation. Even if it is a cow you are to operate on, would you know the angle to slice on? Practice makes perfection, we cannot afford any form of experimentation, what we say today will be history tomorrow, am not just shouting at the top of the roof. If it wasn’t zoned to Lagos and Ogun, I would never, even with the vast experience I have acquired in this party, have put myself up for it because I am a respecter of the rules of the game.
Some of your critics say of all the contestants, you are among those that have never delivered their states to the PDP since 1999 in all elections, as some of the other contenders have been state governors?
Who was their chief campaigner? In fact, one of them contested for governorship and lost. It is not by my making, but when I was the national vice chairman, we produced five governors from South-West. Some of those contesting today came under the party umbrella, because if the party is not stabilised and well-arranged, would they have won? One of them contested for the governor that time, he lost. When I became the national vice chairman, we won that state square. The other one, who provided the platform, who managed his campaign, who stabilised his primaries and that the party was solid and we unseated a formidable incumbent. I don’t know how to do; it is divine. The next to that is that Lagos is a mini-Nigeria. The Lagos State economy is the seventh largest in the whole of Africa. The population of Lagos now is about 22 million; the registered voters in Lagos alone for now is 7.1 million; its Internally Generated Revenue as of now is about N30 billion every 30 days. Everybody thinks they know Lagos from outside, even from the selection process, as they will always say they want this one, they want that one, unnecessary interference, and absolute impunity. I don’t want to mention names but in my memoir, I will reveal all the details because they claim that they know Caesar’s house more than Caesar. They even select wrong people who have been lying to them as governorship candidates. The best we have had then was the late Funsho Williams, and when the decision was made then to put his wife there to generate and cash on the sympathy of the murder of that innocent, very cool headed young, trusted, civilized and cultured engineer, who was shot and killed, they three spanner into the works. You would recall that Williams worked in the civil service. He was an engineer and was involved in all the works in the Ministry of Works; he knew Lagos like the back of his palm. He was thorough-bred. He was from sound and enviable background. However, they made overtures that his wife should come, all of a sudden they changed course, manipulated the system in favour of somebody, who collected the money and the rest is history. If I become the chairman of this party, there will be respect for the hierarchy of the party from the ward chairman, to the local government chairman, the state chairman and the zonal chairman. You don’t jump ahead all of them and you begin to select because you are the chairman you know everything. That is the fastest track to destruction. Let people in their various constituencies prove that they are also bosses in their own little way and if they make mistakes, you correct them, which is the essence of mentoring the younger generation.
There was disquiet in the South-West PDP, when Alhaji Shuaib Oyedokun issued a statement technically endorsing you and two others for the chairmanship race on behalf of other PDP BoT elders from the zone…
What I will have to say is that the role of the Board of Trustees, which I am also a member, is advisory. I am a life member for that matter. It is true you can make a statement but it is not affirmative; only the party can make that executive decision. When I read it, I believed it was advisory. He mentioned about six aspirants. The next question was, who were those elders? He pruned it (number of contestants) to three. You saw how he did it, zone one, two and three. We don’t need to get agitated on it; the BoT is just advisory and that is the position.
What would you say stands you out more saliently far above others?
I have acquired the experience, I have been there. I served the party for 10 years at the topmost management level. I was offered to be a minister but, I said no, I love being in the party. Historically and culturally I come from a background: my great grand Uncle Herbert Macaulay, was the first politician in the country, the first Nigerian national leader of a political party. He died 71 years ago and ever since his death, no Lagosian has held any national political leadership position. It is a reminder for me that after 71 years, if I get it (PDP chairmanship), I will ensure to build on what he started: as a nationalist, he went around the east, north, west waking up the people politically that we must be independent. We have the resources and can stand on our own; we suffered from the British. His house is located around where the British built the General Post Office in Marina, the heart of Lagos, in their desperate attempt to get at him because he must have been a thorn in their flesh. But, they cannot eradicate the memories; his popular name in Lagos was Ejongboro, he gave everything he had for this nation; the British tortured him; he was in and out of prison for one reason or the other and his name cannot be erased from the pages of history, and that is my own philosophy of life.
It has been said in more enlightened societies, in this kind of context, when we look at the merits as well as the demerits of the contestants, you see the person who stands out most nobly. Such person would have just been drafted and there would have been no context. What do you think is wrong with us and why is it that people don’t know their own limitation?
Leadership, the father figure, they cannot know their limitation. I just described the quality of the person who should qualify for that position, let me quote from the Book of Ecclesiastes, which says “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance….” This is a time you must get it right; who have the potential of getting it right; our ship is taking in water, which means if you don’t get the right person to stabilise it or know what to do, the ship will go down. We need someone who has the mental capacity to manoeuver that vessel, and for that to be achieved, it means that person must have gone through that training; that he is tested and trusted to take the ship back to harbour, otherwise that is the end of the story. I wish our country well. It is not a matter of life and death; it is service. If you are given the opportunity, you must not disappoint them and I will not.
You said it is not a matter of life and death. So, if the PDP elders in the South-West should prevail on you, would you step down?
If this people decide that this is what they want, and you are not elected, thank God for that. But, they will have to convince me why they choose to do that and the parameters: do I have an albatross on my neck pending before any law court, or what is the basis. I went through my political tribulation, when they (opposition) thought they had caged me, God saved me. You know when you go through tribulation and you repose your trust in God, you will come out like a refined gold, strengthened, toughened, that there is a Being that is bigger than all creatures and that is the Almighty God. If am given the opportunity, I am not going to stay for too long, I want to make a quick impact. I want to re-stabilise the state of the ship, as we are already listed, if you don’t recover quickly, it will be quite dangerous. I look forward to the December 9, because it has always been a special day for me, which was the day I married my first wife; that was in 1972. It is always a reminder to me because that was the day I came out from being a young, vibrant bachelor to become a full grown responsible man.
and then