Why I will contest for Lagos governorship again in 2027 —Rhodes-Vivour, ex-LP candidate

Mr Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, the 2023 Labour Party governorship candidate in Lagos State, in this interview with journalists, speaks on issues of ethnicity in politics, imperative of a coalition by the opposition leaders to prosecute the 2027 elections, among others. BOLA BADMUS brings some excerpts:

The National Assembly Committees on Constitution Review were in Lagos for public hearings and people demanded additional states, true federalism, among others, what exactly, in your view, would you say is the problem of Nigeria? Is it leadership or what is it?

For me, the problem of Nigeria starts with bad leadership, poor leadership, absolutely poor leadership. When you look at what China has been able to achieve in the last 100 years, it is the direct result of quality leadership. Those are the brilliant people that want to do the best for their country and take pride in doing the best for their country, not their bank account, not the cars that their children are driving, but the best for their people.

The fortunate thing is, once everybody is rich, you will become rich. That is what these people don’t know. They think they can steal from the country and develop the country at the same time?  No. It will never work because your mind is constantly on how you will steal money.  So, these are some of the problems. I would say poor leadership because that is where it starts. If you look at our Constitution, well, it might not be perfect, as a working document, if we follow it to the letter, we would have a good country.  Our Constitution says one of the reasons why we should remove a sitting governor is if you find out and are able to prove that he has sworn an oath of allegiance to another country. That is the Constitution of the country. You take that to court and you prove that somebody has sworn to an oath of allegiance to another country, and is also the Chief Security Officer, and the court will bypass that and pretend as if they did not see it, and you think we can have a good country? How does that make sense? Your Chief Security Officer? The Nigerian leader should be the best of us.

Would you say that the loss suffered by the president to the Labour Party in Lagos in the 2023 poll is why you are going to contest again, come 2027?

It’s not about the loss of the president in the last election in Lagos State. President Tinubu was not campaigning when Jimi Agbaje was contesting, and they were calling him Jimi Chukwu, and they were putting banners up, saying that Jimi Agbaje was the governor of the South-Easterners. Once a Yoruba man stands up to challenge the hegemony,  the first thing they attack is his Yorubaness. They will take his Yorubaness away from him. You have a titan like the Late Chief Ayo Adebanjo, because he supported somebody else, they were questioning his heritage. They said his mother is Igbo, they started creating lies. Same thing with Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, a man that delivered the best performing economy, whether you like him or not, the numbers do not lie. I remembered when I was in school when this man was president, all my mates in America, we were all rushing to come back to Nigeria because we were afraid that we were missing out on something, right? He delivered that. Now, because he does not support you, you are now creating stories about his father being an Igbo and all that.

The ADC, a new coalition is a household name, how do you see the development?

So for me, for the longest time, I have made it clear that the only way to face the APC is by forming a coalition. There is no group that can face President Bola Ahmed Tinubu by themselves. You saw how tightly contested 2023 was. If we are fair, you will see that there was an attempt by former President Muhammadu Buhari,  now late, to conduct a free and fair election. There was a genuine attempt that we’ve seen, to ensure that the election would not be monetised. Now, that’s not going to be the case. You have seen huge amount of money that is being borrowed by this government, that is what they are using the money for. A lot of these funds would come in to monetize these elections.

So, you need a coalition. We cannot afford to divide the opposition. And dividing the opposition is not just in votes, it’s in ideas, it’s in strategy, it’s in network, it’s in working together. Those forces coming together will be extremely formidable. So in my opinion, you know, and when you even add Peter Obi’s votes to those of His Excellency, Atiku Abubakar’s votes, they defeated Tinubu’s votes with almost 5 (five) million votes. Now,  five million votes is a very hard number to reach. You cannot just hide five million votes, you can try it and change 10 to 100, 20 to 120, to do that to get to 5 million votes, to cover five million votes, it becomes a very, very difficult task.

I am of the opinion that we need a coalition. We need a united opposition. And my hope is that reason will prevail and we will be able to get an opposition that flies a ticket that Nigerians can truly buy into. I am not talking about a section of the country. I am talking about the whole of Nigeria because the suffering of the whole of Nigeria is not shared by just one section of the country, it is shared by all of us. If government is working, if Nigeria is working all of us will be better for it.

Ahead of 2027, do you see the PDP still maintaining its name as the main opposition? Or are you saying that we need this coalition ahead of 2027 instead of just relying on the main opposition party?

The coalition is a reflection now of the new type of politics we have come into. There was a time when it was not so much about the person, it was about the party. If you have a solid party, there are solid men on ground in every state, they will put everything together to work for you and deliver you. But what His Excellency, Peter Obi has shown is a new type of politics, a reflection of a new type of Nigerian, a new type of person, that is looking at the individual. Also, that is tied to the new type of way we live. Our phones are always with us. So, you can fall in love with a candidate, not necessarily the party. You can watch his videos, you can do research. At the time when you were 15 or when you were 18 and you were coming of age to vote, you did not have a place where you could just Google and see how somebody performed four, five, six years ago. Now you have that at the palm of your fingertips. How did Peter Obi manage his budget? How did Atiku create employment or investment and you get the answer right away? So now, people are not goggling how the PDP performed. No. they are goggling personalities. So, when those personalities come together in a place, the party now becomes strong. Before it was about the party, now it’s about the personalities coming together, and even the individuals themselves. You know that Labour Party did not have any structure, but in most parts of Nigeria, you can see the number of votes it garnered. You can see the effect of Peter Obi, coming into Labour Party and the total votes garnered by the party that has no structure, and in a situation where 70 percent of the polling units were not manned, right. Now, you have a situation where people are more passionate about individuals, because if you really look at it, there is no party with any real ideology. You might have ideology on paper, we are not there yet. So it is not so much about party, it’s about the individuals that make up that coalition.

Don’t you think the strategy of instigating a crisis in the opposition is being used against the ADC? Talking about individuals, there is also this issue of PDP trying to woo Peter Obi back into its fold, in other words, trying to break the ranks of ADC and the momentum already gathering, how do you read the game?

The game is a very dynamic one. I don’t think Nigeria has experienced this kind of dynamism in its politics, at least, since I have been in my adult years to even understand or observe what is going on. It’s a very very dynamic one. The people that we are up against are very solid politicians in terms of their idea of playing the game of politics. Not so much in terms of governance. Their focus and their strength are mainly on politics so that they extinguish the opponents; so that they don’t have to face them. There is fear of competition because they are not doing enough that makes them believe that when you show the people what is being done, you will be given a second term. Because they are not doing that, their main strategy is to destroy any party that wants to stand up and put a mirror to their face.  Now, think about it, if a person is doing well; if you have truly impacted the lives of people you are leading, you will want to show off that. Who are you? Who is your father, come and debate with me, you would say that? Can you imagine a Lagosian like the late Chief Lateef Jakande with everything he did, resorting to bigotry in an election, I cannot imagine it. Maybe, I was too young, I did not know, but I have read a lot about the man. I have to look at the things he did, I have researched about the man, in fact, I am reading a third book on him right now. He was a man that deliberately made sure that his business was completely separate from government and also the businesses of those people around him as well. You can see the car he was driving when he was governor, it was his personal car. When he retired, he remained in his house; he did not take over Government’s Guest House or former Deputy Governor’s House.

How are you galvanising for  the coalition formed by the opposition politicians in Lagos?

We are galvanising because there is a huge number of people that are coming together. There are a whole lot of people coming together; we are having stakeholders’ meetings. We are interacting with people; we are building our structures; we are mobilising. Again, the same thing is going to reflect down here even those that were upset with the ruling party, they have joined us. We have the intention to work together and we pray God will grant us the wisdom and unity of purpose to sail through. So, the coalition has adopted the ADC as its party; whether you are from PDP, whether you are from APC, whether you are from SDP, this is the party we are adopting. So, you have to join the party. The ADC has been adopted by the leaders of the coalition. I don’t see that changing anytime soon. I think that even if other parties are registered, they will be brought into the coalition.

How are you preparing to face the challenge of violence and what should be the role of the police at polling units, come the 2027 election?

We are letting people know from the beginning of our campaign that this is not a situation where you are going to vote and go home. All these thugs, all these Agberos, how many are they compared to us? The reason why they can do these things that they do is because they go after one person, and everybody’s running away. Look at what happened during #EndSARS when they brought buses of these thugs with machetes to Alausa, they were chased and they ran away.

So, we must be organised; our campaign is going to sensitise people. We are making a lot of arrangements, I assure you. It is very painful to understand that the people who have been in charge of the state for over 20 years have to resort to violence and intimidation to win an election. They have had the benefit of over 20 years; I should not even be a threat. I should not be a challenge. I am just 42 years old. I contested when I was 40 years. I should not be a challenge no matter how smart I am if they have touched the lives of the people. They should be able to say ‘omo boy, just sit down, these people are doing well for us; our life is better, our children are in good schools, let them continue.’ These people they are ruling over, what is it that they want? Do you think that the people in Ojo or Ajeromi or  Amuwo do not like Tinubu, just because he is Yoruba? No, it is because they have been dealing with bad governance. Badagry Local Government is made up of indigenous Lagosians, yet they consistently vote in favour of the opposition. Why? It is because they have been abandoned for a long time, and they are also part of the state. For a long time, what the government does is to punish them more. Oh, you did not vote for me, no development is coming to you! Now, it has built that resentment to the extent that it is now what it is. After a while, opposition is making issues, they now went and do that Badagry Road.

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