Why I said I was a spare tyre as deputy governor —Kaka

A former deputy governor of Ogun State, Senator Adegbenga Kaka, in this interview by select journalists, including Tribune’s OLAYINKA OLUKOYA, speaks on his intention to vie for the governorship of the state and issues affecting the nation and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).

HAVING served as a commissioner, deputy governor and a member of the National Assembly, why are you interested in administering Ogun State as the number one citizen?

Something that is certain is that you can’t get experience in the market and you can’t read it in the book. The cumulative experience I have garnered is not meant to be interred with my bones when I am dead. It is supposed to be shared and applied for the betterment of the society. When you consider that over the years, we have been taking one step forward and two steps backward, then you will realise that we really need this experience.

We need the resilience of able, capable and experienced hands to actually right the wrongs. The stage we are in now, especially in Ogun State, is for us to go back to the basics.

The solid foundation earlier laid has been destroyed and we are now trying to build our castle in the air rather than relaying the foundation and building our future on a very solid, rock-steady foundation. In the light of this, looking at other contenders, I felt it is going to be an injustice to the people if I decide to keep the experience I have garnered to myself rather than use it for the betterment of our state.

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You were a commissioner and later deputy governor. You must have had certain dreams for your state. How fulfilled are those dreams now? Or put differently, looking back, do you think Ogun State is in its rightful place?

Don’t let me arrogate any special thought to myself. If you were referring to the time I was commissioner, I didn’t plan to be commissioner. I was with a multinational corporation, Livestock Feeds Plc. We had our headquarters in New York and the combination was for human, health and animal health as well as livestock feeds. So, the totality of it is for the welfare of human being.  I was enjoying it. I was moving pretty well. Within eight years, I moved from Area Sales Representatives to Area Sales Manager to Group Product Manager and National Sales Manager. It was at that stage that the military came calling. I didn’t have any connection with the military. They requested for somebody with solid agricultural background. And the people they sent out to source found me suitable. I was recommended. The announcement came on radio and I put in my best. During that period, we put in place, the first agricultural policy by any state in this federation. That was in 1989, barely one year after I got in office. This was because we discovered that we didn’t have any agricultural policy. People were just doing what they liked the traditional way and we said no. We needed to profile the soil. We needed to know the various advantages of the various strata of soil that we had, the vegetation, the ecological advantage of various vegetations over the others. How could we blend the plant agriculture with the animal agriculture to get the best blend and get the best for our society? We put it in place and we backed it up with implementation strategy. Unfortunately, soldier go, soldier come, the person that appointed me, Admiral Lawal, left within one year.  The person that came after him, though he retained me as a commissioner, he decided to second me to Lands and Housing. I had to go out and learn a new experience. So, when you look at it, it is different from having a mandate of a definitive term of four years and having your manifesto, having your programmes and agenda and executing it in the context of available resources. You can see that there are lots of differences.

Then as deputy governor, yes, I coined the idea of ‘spare tyre’ because of the latency of that position, lack of provision in the constitution and the whims and caprices of the number one. So, it is a general phenomenon. It is not peculiar to me. The best I could do was to give maximum support to whatever programme my boss was having.

As a senator, that is national experience and, of course, legislative experience. So, in the course of all these, I have passed through the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Ministry of Land and Housing, Ministry of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs and then, on top of it all, Ministry of Health, by being a member of the committee on health, on trade, on commerce. So, I am in the very best position to turn the fortune of Ogun State around. That is why I am taking on the challenge thrown at me by genuine people of Ogun State asking me to come and avail the people of the state of my accumulated experiences. And that is why I said it would be an injustice to the society if I decided to turn down the request. I have had a request. I have offered myself. It is now left for them to say that they are ready.

The chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu, has urged the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to monitor candidates and the political parties to as we go into elections next year, to ensure that their spending is within the law. How do you see such a move by the INEC chairman?

The INEC chairman is simply following the law and we have all been violating the law. We have been influencing the outcomes of elections, especially through the use of illicit funds rather than allowing people to make free choices. So, to restrict the amount to be expended on election is a   welcome development, especially by the time you have candidates going into unnecessary debts because they want to win elections. When they get into office, they must necessarily recoup. It is better we limit the amount of money anybody can put in a particular election. And INEC should not act like a toothless bulldog that can bark but not bite. They must be firm and make sure that whoever is in violation is disciplined and denied the chance to benefit from illegality.

President Muhammadu Buhari, who is also the leader of your party, has said that where there is no consensus in picking candidates, there should be an open and transparent primary. With this in your mind, what is your advice for your party members?

Our party should realise that it is not contesting against itself. It is going to contest against 66 other parties. So, any blunder that perverts the course of internal democracy is going to boomerang because with the disappointment people are experiencing in both the APC and the PDP [Peoples Democratic Party], I believe that individuals will be the focus in 2019. So, my party should live up to expectation. They just have to encourage internal democracy. If there is going to be any consensus, the consensus must be openly done with little acrimony so that whoever is picking consensually will be acceptable to not only the party members but to the electorate. This is because if we misfire and pick the wrong choice, people will, at the next level of election, which is the general election, tacitly reject any mis-presented candidate.

How do you see the Senator Bola Tinubu-headed committee set up by the APC to reconcile aggrieved members before the next election?

I am not in the know about what is going on in the reconciliation. All I can do is to wish my leader, Senator Bola Tinubu, a resounding success in the task given to him and for our party members to give him the opportunity to do the job. I have said it before, one would have expected that the first port of call to make that assignment legal is to institute the board of trustees, under which Senator Tinubu would have been able to function more conveniently – welding all the contending forces together. We knew Senator Tinubu and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar were contending for the chairmanship of the BoT. Fortunately, Atiku is out of the party, then what stops us from giving the immediate assignment the legal teeth by formally constituting the BoT and making Tinubu the chairman. That would legalise whatever reconciliation we want to make. That would make the chairman comfortable with what is being done, because we have stipulated responsibilities for the National Working Committee, for the NEC and for the BoT and the combination of the three would have given us the synergy needed to move the party forward.