Former Deputy National Chairman of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Olabode George, speaks with some selected journalists including BOLA BADMUS on issues of national interest as President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration takes shape.
What can you say about the immediate past President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, will you say it impacted Nigerians positively?
Traditionally in our culture, the military culture, you don’t give any report on your senior officer, but this is no longer military; it concerns every Nigerian as it concerns every savannah region in the North. In the minds of the people, has General Buhari’s administration impacted positively? My personal assessment is that he failed, but not completely in every sector. If you write an examination, they will say you must have a minimum of 33 per cent before they can promote you to the next class, but he did not attain that 33 per cent.
If I should assess him, he got about five per cent. Even, the five per cent score requires a lot of introspection touching the economy sector, the education sector, the infrastructural sector, the agricultural sector, and most of the things that he must guarantee to his people, including security of lives. Who is safe now, whether you are a rich man or a poor man or middle class man? When you are walking towards any direction, you have to be looking front, back, left and right. So, it is very disheartening that the number one job to guarantee security of life and property was not well managed.
When he was coming in, oga was telling us, ‘I will fight corruption, secure lives and properties of the people, and all kinds of promises. Let us now move these promises into his departure, which is what will be written of him on the pages of history. Whatever a leader does during his term is on the pages of history. What I am saying now is that we have started another journey on May 29, 2023; we must be full of prayers, because I have worked with Buhari before. I think age is not on his side, it weighed him down.
Again, Buhari came out publicly around the middle of last year and said that he would leave one legacy, that the electoral system in Nigeria will be second to none and that the mess that they refer to as electoral system would become an issue of the past. He told the international community that he would buy a technology that would remove interlopers, and those who try to manipulate election results, saying that election results will be taken straight from the polling units into the BIVAS and direct to the control room. We even celebrated it here, believing that would be the end of election manipulation in Nigeria. We were so happy; we even popped champagne over the declaration.
Money was budgeted for the machines; the money was released. We headed to do the test-run in Anambra governorship election, it was flawless. We did a test-run in Ekiti and Osun States governorship elections, it was flawless, though people quarrelled over it, but the facts remained.
At the 2023 general election, Professor Mohammed Yakubu gave the broadcast and re-assured Nigerians that they had test-run the machines and there was no problem. We thought that the will of the people would prevail, that whatever you vote will be what will be recorded. Then on the day of election, Yakubu told us there was a hitch. It was disgraceful, shambolic, and it drenched my heart, maybe because of my professional calling in the military, especially in weapon system technology, that is as a weapon engineering officer.
I want to relate the story to a typical naval ship at war and your enemy has fired a missile into your ship, your radar picks it up; when the radar picks it up, it sends all the information into our computer. The computer picks it up; the computer will compute the speed of that missile, the flight, the level at which it will hit you, and all the computation will be going into the computer. No human involvement and the results will be passed on. The only thing the captain does is to press the button and fire to counter, and then can you imagine at that hay hour, you now say you have a hitch in your computer. That means the whole of the ship would be blown into pieces, which is exactly what Yakubu did.
People thought there would be justice, fairness and equity and respect for the will of the people, shamelessly he said there was a hitch. Who designed that channel that is not robust? If one channel blocks, automatically you re-route it through another channel to make sure you do not lose that importance of the hour. They now went back to the old way by which election results are collated. What happened to all the money, all the hype and all the facilities? If you look at it that way, yes I retired as a General, but there is a lot of difference between the military and civil organisations. Having got all the training, the best you can do for your country is to bring about that experience, to make sure we do not default, we do not degrade, we do not fall to the lower level. Look, we have almost hit the bottom, just take any sector.
What is your assessment of the economy under Buhari’s administration?
Look at the economy, the interest rate. A few days ago, the suspended governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, increased the interest rate to 18.2 per cent. With that rate, who would go and borrow money from the bank, unless you are a fraudulent person or you want to default? This is because you will pass all those extras to the people. The consumers, what is their take home; what are we driven at, who is driving who? Imagine, the inflation rate was up to 22.2 per cent then.
Inflation simply means too much money chasing few goods. This happens when we are not producing. How can we produce? We must borrow money to get raw materials; you must buy machines; PHCN must supply electricity. I am not a pessimistic person, but facts are facts, jokes are jokes, where are we in the comity of nations as the giant of Africa? Anywhere you find 10 Africans, seven are Nigerians; Nigerian professionals, experts are found anywhere in the world, so, what is wrong?
God did not create us like this. All these problems I am talking about, we inflicted it on ourselves. I hope those who can handle them and put smiles on our faces, will run this country. It is like a ship that is taking in water and you are not stalling it. Who wants us now? The G20 Nations don’t invite us again; they are now talking to Rwanda. We sent our men to help in liberating South Africa; we sent our men, our officers to liberate Zimbabwe; we sent our men to liberate Liberia and Mali. So, what is wrong with us? The tribes are now set against one another; this tribe will be fighting that tribe. For God sake, when you were to be given birth to, did you make arrangements with God that you wanted to be Yoruba, Ijaw or Hausa or Fulani? And from my training, whether you are a Muslim or Christian, the training is to do unto others as you want them to do unto you. That is the basic norm of life.
Generally, we are falling down; we are not moving anywhere. I thought it was a joke when General Buhari said after May 29, if they continue giving him trouble, he would move to the Niger Republic and that he would protect them because the people there would defend him.
Should such a statement come from a commander-in-chief?
I want to see that it was a joke. You led this nation, you were a General, you fought and fought, and people trusted you. You became Head of State, you became President of Nigeria, Nigerians voted for you. Why did President Buhari say if Nigerians come after him, the people of Niger Republic will defend him? Is he telling the nation that he didn’t perform? It should have been people of Nigeria clapping and jumping and saying Baba we will never forget you.
What are your expectations of the Bola Tinubu presidency? Do you see him solving most of the problems Buhari didn’t solve? Again, talking about the inability of Buhari to address most of Nigeria challenges, could it be due to the cabal in his cabinet, because at a time, his wife complained of the cabal hijacking his (Buhari) government?
First of all, if you come to the public to say ‘trust me, I want to contest, I will go there, manage the resources of Nigeria on your behalf,’ it is a promise to be fulfilled. In fact, what should a manager, a thorough bred manager do? He should have sat with members of his party; what are our policies? What areas should we give priority to? You sit down with members of your team that will help you achieve the result, because an individual cannot do this alone. Even in the military, if you are planning, you don’t do the planning alone, you have staff officers, directors, Chief of this, Chief of that, you have to put heads together. If it is you alone, you have just one direction, can you see your back? Such people can see your back and call your attention when there is a mistake.
The totality of it when you now finish will be your plan. Now, immediately they got there, the most striking thing, which I believe was a monumental mistake from Buhari, was to have abandoned the report of the 2014 constitutional conference. President Goodluck Jonathan, no matter what anybody says, will have a special place on the pages of history in the fact that complaints where coming from every part of the country that the constitution we are running is not working, it is too centralised, all the powers is vested in one man in Abuja, Nigeria is too massive, let us decentralise the system and restructure Nigeria. The calls to decentralise were that power for local government, for the state and for the national will be there in the new constitution, but to concentrate it as if it is military organisation is not working.
Jonathan listened to leaders across all the political parties, and he then set up a Constitution Review Committee. The committee members met; they debated all sections, concluded and the reports were handed over to Jonathan. Members of the committee were unanimous in the decisions reached, and I must commend the chairman of the conference, late Justice Kutigi. He was respectable, responsible; he was an epitome of civility. For six months or more, discussions on this country were tabled, what kind of system do we run, should it be a regional government, should it be parliamentary? Of course, you could see we copied the American Presidential System, but it was copied halfway.
The conference members gave the report to former President Jonathan, who passed it to the National Executive Council at that time. The NEC made some corrections and then passed it to the National Assembly which started giving excuses that the election was near and that it couldn’t debate the items in the report.
My assessment of excuses given by the National Assembly members was that the excuses given were not genuine, because they could have handled it. Why did they reject it? Why did they lie? What is wrong in discussing it? You could see all the money that went into it.
When President Buhari came on board, one of the handing-over notes was the full report of the Constitution Review Committee, he just thanked Jonathan and put the report in the archives. But about two or three months ago, Buhari took some steps because he too has found out that the centralisation of the system of government is not good. He now said states can run their railway, and states can now run their electricity because the burden is too much on the Federal Government. Look at the debt portfolio of Nigeria today, who is going to pay it? What is our income? Well, Dangote has set up an oil refinery, but mind you, five years from now, no motor company will be manufacturing petrol engine cars, so what do you do with your petrol? What plan do we have if you buy a car from abroad, and it is an electric engine and what do you do? Now, what can we invest in? Let’s tell the truth to power so that the upcoming generation will not accuse us wrongly.
About the incoming administration, because Nigeria is my country, I will always pray for my country. My personal view about this man [Tinubu], you know the process that brought him into office was shambolic, disgraceful. The chairman of INEC was watching as if he was losing his charge. That’s the chairman of INEC collecting papers and in the middle of the night, he declared the winner and handed over the certificate. The issue of not making 25 per cent in Abuja or not, whether Abuja is part of Nigeria or not, was pushed aside. All this is shenanigan. For God’s sake, power is transient, and I always refer to General Alexander the Great, who came with nothing into the world and died and was buried with nothing despite the enormous wealth he amassed.
I don’t want to go into details, people have been talking to me, I don’t want to look irresponsible, and be accused of being heartless. Vengeance is not mine, it belongs to Almighty God, and whatever you sow you will reap.
The best you can do traditionally, in my own part of the world, is anybody that is going on a journey and comes to your house, to inform you he is travelling, you will wish him journey mercy and guidance of Almighty God. What I will say is, you know there are still cases in court and my party is fighting like a lion and we still hope we will win. I am an irredentist member of the PDP; the day I leave this party, then I will retire from partisan politics.
We are talking of Nigeria, if your phone rings now and the president calls and says look ‘Egbon,’ we are talking of Nigeria, let us forget our differences; let us work together. What will be your reaction?
My reaction, as I have said is nothing personal. Look, I trained in the military. You know in the military whoever is in your trench next to you is your brother. When you go out to say what is our mission in the military? It is to defend our country. If he comes and says look, ‘what do you feel about this? What do you feel about that? Let’s work together in the interest of this country.’ Why would I refuse? This nation also trained me.
I will tell you one thing that happened in my days in the University of Lagos with my colleagues. Lagos was created in 1967, in the ‘67/’68 session, we were in the first year and so as we were going to the dining, they announced that they had given the Western State students scholarship. We went there and we were eating and I said to my friends, we were four, two are late now. We were from Lagos State. I said tomorrow, let us go to the Governor’s Office. They thought I was mad. You know in those days, the military was with force. But General Mobolaji Johnson’s wife, Funmilayo, was my mother’s senior sister. If they locked us up, my mother would fight to get us released. It was on that premise that we all agreed.
So after that, the following day, we headed to the Governor’s Office. We went there, four of us. The first thing they asked us when we got there was what did we want? We said we wanted to see the governor, and they asked us, from where?… You know the ‘godogodo’ outside, shouted at us to vamoose but there was one man who said okay, and asked: Where did you say you came from? We told him we are students from UniIag; he then asked us to show our student pass. We showed our ID cards. He then asked if we got an appointment to see the governor, we said no, and, thereafter, he asked us to write our names and we did. He took the names inside. True story. Now, who were the people inside? Papa Bankole Oki, the Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Adeyemi Bero was the Secretary to the Government, Papa Domingo was the Protocol Chief to General Mobolaji Johnson. Then Ayo’s father, Justice William, the former Chief Judge of Lagos, Ayo Phillip, her father was the Solicitor General. Those were the four; they were waiting for the governor to arrive. So we entered there and quickly prostrated.
They saw the names, and they were looking at us, you could imagine how young we were. We were engineering students of University of Lagos and we told them that every state had been giving scholarships to their students and that we too needed scholarships in Lagos too. Papa Bankole Oki and the Secretary to the Government listened to us. Papa Oki was coming here and later I reminded him one day of this episode. Papa Bankole Oki said okay, we would take it up with the governor. Do you know that three months after that, they established the Lagos State Scholarship Board, and we benefited from it.
Then I joined the military; the military trained me. This country trained us. So we must be able to put something back into the system that would also positively impact the younger ones, to put a smile on their faces. Any time I go to my area, Lagos Island, I have never seen such a negative impact on my people. I grew up there. My family is there. Isale Igangan is our playing ground; campus square was our playing field.
But now, look at those children, there is no future; everybody is running to CMS to be agbero. They are touts, making money there. No future; no skills. Now, it’s not only here, I have been everywhere in this country: the squalor, the poverty, the anger and the hunger are more prevalent in the North than in the South. And those boys [in the North] are educated now; they are challenging their leaders because you exposed them a bit to the university education and they are back. How do you think uneducated persons would derail a train successfully, if not because they’ve been educated and they are angry.
When the president visited Kano, didn’t you see the reception? So they are challenging. They’ve been here in this office: the Northern Youth Council; they said Baba we want to meet the younger people. This is so because the wind of change at that last election was different. What is their party? Labour Party. Is that a party? It was a new wind of change and it went round across and didn’t let them discountenance it. Let them televise the court process live. Though the judge had ruled on it, I am not a lawyer, so I am unlearned but practical men are on the field, we want to see it; is it a secret cult? They were giving excuses on the costs; the court wouldn’t even pay for those television coverage, no, never. We want to see so that we can be convinced.
Number two reason is that the younger generations that are coming who would now go and read law would have that video; it would be part of lectures to discuss. So I want to plead with everybody in this country; we have no other country, as he [Tinubu] is going in there, prayer is key. I will pray for Nigeria, because praying for your leaders is what we were taught, so that in decision making, they will remember the people all over and when he [Tinubu] looks at things objectively, God will direct his mind because the fallout would hit all of us.
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