Dr Fola Akinosun was the Deputy National Chairman, Contact and Mobilisation (South West), Buhari Campaign Organisation (BCO) and a formal senatorial aspirant in Oyo South. The chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) speaks to TAOFEEK LAWAL on sundry national issues.
What would you say about the state of the nation?
We are not really where we ought to be but there is hope. And keeping that hope alive rests with you and me. We can start by deciding to turn around our situation. I am positive about this nation and I am convinced that together, we can make it better. The problem lies with our mindset; the orientation is wrong mostly from secondary school. A lot of people are of the belief that you must cut corners or steal to survive in Nigeria. There are very few people that are willing to help this nation; virtually everyone believes in tearing it down and taking their own part of it, and I did say this kind of mindset started from secondary school. Secondary school students would inflate school fees for their parents. Do they love their parents, let alone the nation? The problem emanates from poor orientation, poor beliefs, even about life.
We were all in this country when a woman-minister was alleged to have stolen $20 billion or thereabouts. What does a woman want with that kind of money? People are just crazy about acquiring materials that are not even useful to them. All these come from lack of orientation. So, people’s orientation has to change and the way to achieve this is through education, and I don’t mean acquiring a PhD; I mean education that would make you love your country; education that would make you want to do everything to make the country great and make you become a proud Nigerian anywhere in the world. A lot of people don’t believe in this country and so they run to other countries, but that is not the solution.
As I said earlier, education will adjust the mindset of the people and make them realise that it is good to be a patriotic citizen and treasure one’s country. Lack of belief in our country is responsible for the agitations for nations inside our nation as currently being witnessed. Biafrans want a nation; some Yorubas want a nation and it is because we don’t agree that Nigeria is ours. But that orientation can be changed because unfortified character is our problem and this is the time in the history of our nationhood that we must fortify the character of the younger ones. There is a missing link. The older generation failed to educate us properly and we must, as a matter of fact, not make the same mistake about the generation coming behind us otherwise everything will scatter and the hope I was talking about could be dashed. Some people are of the belief that there can never be a good government in Nigeria because everybody is corrupt. But who is going to change the narrative? That might as well be me.
What are those things you think should be done differently for the country to become healthy?
There is a party in China called the Communist Party of China (CPC). The party has up to 3,000 schools and they are meant for the party members. What do they do with these schools? They teach history, government, military and all cadres of government so that you know the next thing to do when the mantle of leadership falls on you; so that you don’t come to power as a novice. But here, you see strange bedfellows coming together to run a government. Somebody would become a governor and would be looking for whom to appoint to run the state with. That is wrong. It means party ideology is missing. That is why I keep hammering on education.
The security challenges in Nigeria have proven intractable. What do you think is the way out?
There are three solutions, one of which I have mentioned earlier – reorientation of the people. People must be made to know that if they destroy this country, they will have nowhere else to go.
People are hungry and a hungry man is an angry man. A hungry man surely is ready tool in the hands of insurgents. Our society cannot care less about these children referred to as Almajiri in the North and now some of them have come of age and are having access to guns and firearms to attack us. I think it is not too late to correct the mistakes of the past. Every Nigerian should be worried. We should not leave the problem of the North to the North alone. Whatever is happening to the North is a threat to the whole country. Have you ever seen a fuel station on fire and people who have houses around it snoring? It is either they help in putting the fire out or have their houses consumed by the raging fire. It is time to provide honest livelihoods for these people because they have passed through a lot. We need a constitution that will clearly define how each region will be governed without affecting the country. A typical example here is the United States of America. Each American state has its own constitution and the federal constitution still exists. The issue of Boko Haram spreading to our area will be taken care of by our own constitution in the South West. Nobody will stop us if we want to go to the North as well but we will have to abide by their constitution. The viability of the so-called states in Nigeria needs to be assessed, too. How can you say we have 36 states when most of the states are struggling to pay workers’ salaries? Their only source of funds is allocation from the federal purse, which is eating deep into our common wealth. Remember that all the states were created during the military era. The states were created not to make the country better but to make us be in one problem or another. Why the proliferation of states? What we need is just three states or at most six. All the geopolitical zones become states and you manage your resources, pay your workers and maintain the infrastructure in your place. How do you think a Hausa man who becomes president will be genuinely building facilities in Ibadan? And if he is doing it, he is doing it for election and not because he wants Ibadan to develop more than his own place and that was where the problem started. If we have had one republic since independence, Nigeria would have become like Europe because we have the resources. That is why we need to guard our utterances and learn from past mistakes. We must see Nigeria as our own and whatever that is yours, you guard jealously. Dividing Nigeria will take us nowhere because there will still be agitations among those who have broken away because everybody would want to have a taste of government in their separate territories.
As it were, the most you see about federal lawmakers is their so-called empowerment: giving out motorcycles – and in parts of the North, giving youths wheelbarrows. As someone who has been gunning for the membership of the National Assembly for some time, what exactly does lawmaking entail?
Lawmaking is about knowing the people and their areas of need and providing the solutions through the instrumentality of the law. How will I do that? I will meet my people from time to time and know their problems, although there are certain problems that I don’t need them to tell me about. Many senators, and even governors, in Nigeria are only interested in the office; they don’t have a blueprint or even any idea of what to do with the office. They get to positions of authority on emergency. But it is ideal to be prepared for an office and know what you want to do so that all manner of people will not have control over you. Grassroots politicians are the most successful in Nigeria because they understand the needs of the people even before getting to power. I have been identifying with the grassroots and I thank God for that. By the grace of God, I am going to change the narrative and I am not going to do that through magic.
The next general election is just two years away and there have been agitations as regards whether the next president should come from the North or the South. What do you make of this?
A true democracy should be about the interest of the people. It is what the people really want that should be given to them. I am of the opinion that the opinions of the people must be sought first through a referendum. Get the people’s opinions and know what they want. I believe that this can be part of the job of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Since INEC is the umpire, it can conduct the referendum through e-voting to know what the people want. Democracy, as we know, is all about giving people what they want. I may want the next president to come from the South West because I am from the South West but will that give us the best government? What I will suggest is for each of the regions or geopolitical zones to have its own constitution, which will in turn give birth to a federal constitution. With a federal constitution, we can now rotate and every region would have a sense of belonging.
Where do you stand on the ongoing Value Added Tax (VAT) controversy?
The VAT issue must be thoroughly discussed and understood for us to move forward. There are experts who will argue this in the court of law, which is the best way of settling disputes in a democracy. That is my take. Let those who have the absolute understanding of the workings of VAT be the umpires.
At the federal level, your party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has been in the driver’s seat for more than six years. Are you happy with how far the party has taken Nigeria?
Glory be to God for the party that Nigeria has not sunk beyond where we are. We still have our necks above water. It is not that we have done enough but the truth is that we have passed through serious calamities which did not consume us. We still have hope. At least the government has things to show for the loans they have taken so far and these are not ostentatious things that would only beautify the environment. The focus is more on internal generated revenue which, if well managed, will help us. However, my plea is that the Nigerian people who are actually the problems of Nigeria should not destroy the country. Imagine some people having the effrontery to blow up rail tracks while the government is trying to save lives. The train gives more comfort and security to Nigerians, considering our roads and the insurgency we are battling. All these could be through loans but the rail system has really bailed us out because it saves lives. I give kudos to the government for, at least, saving our lives but I plead with Nigerians to remain patriotic. Let us guard and secure public assets in our domains so that we can make Nigeria a better place to live in.
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