He appeared on the political scene like a thunderbolt. His name is Olapade Agoro. Bursting his way onto the scene on the platform of the National Action Council, NAC, Agoro was not to display the stuff of which he is made until the nationally televised debate between him and President Olusegun Obasanjo, just before the April elections of last year. Recently, Agoro was a guest of Vanguard and he fielded questions from journalists. He made some assertions, just as he also made some claims regarding what transpired at the polls. For instance, he asserted that without true federalism, Nigeria as a nation would not work.
He is right. And many others before him had said that much. He also punched holes into Obasanjo’s reform agenda. Hear him: “One positive thing about Ibrahim Babangida’s Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) was that the SME’s started to grow, and it was very difficult to get this welders to work for you. Then it was difficult to get brick layers to work for; now they are not doing anything, because that aspect of economic revival have been eliminated by Obasanjo’s reform initiative. ”On claims, he claims that he scored over five millions votes, that at some point during collations of results, he was the leading contestant in Adamawa State, just as he also claimed that God told him President Obasanjo would hand over to him. However, asked why he didn’t last year May 29, or why he hasn’t, he said God did not need a time frame. He could be right. But Agoro made it clear there are problems confronting the Nigerian nation, stressing that President Obasanjo’s approach would not solve Nigeria’s myriad of problems. You would find Agoro very interesting. Excerpts:
How does it feel losing the last general election to President Obasanjo?
I respect Obasanjo, and so I do not lose my sleep because I lost the election to him. It was my first experience in party politics and in running a campaign. As you know our political party was not registered until 17th December 2002, before we were called out for the election. Before we were allowed to become part of the electoral process President Obasanjo had been campaigning since January 2002, with government machinery behind him. Furthermore, Obasanjo has a name apart from being a high caliber statesman, and he was hell bent on winning a second term, nothing would have stopped him. He had money and a lot of support from well heeled people, and for you to come out of nowhere to upstage him was going to be difficult.
And record had it that I scored over five million votes, and according to one INEC top echelon official, he said at a stage my performance was causing confusion. So my defeat was not to Obasanjo, but to the system. It was a challenge and I believe that given another chance in future it would not be the same again. One interesting thing was that I had people working for me during the election in far flung places like Enugu, Sokoto, Kano; I was leading in Adamawa, which was embarrassing to Atiku Abubakar; Lagos went all out to give me some good votes. But in the end things went the way they did.
How did you come about forming your political party?, and what was at the back of your mind when you started political activities, specifically your entry into the presidential contest: Were you expecting to become the president of Nigeria?
My party the National Action Council ( NAC) is the only action party in Nigeria. But let me add that I caught my political teeth through being a spiritual leader to Chief Bode Olajumoke, and I was guiding him. I started NAC when it was clear that he was going to be denied the opportunity of releasing his political aspirations, but before this move could come through he had become a board of trustees member of PDP; I still thought that the NAC was the vehicle he could use to reach his aspirations. Initially we thought that only the three old political parties- PDP, ANPP, AD would remain, but suddenly we were called out for election; but before this time I had people firmly on the ground in 28 states, and then we were not registered and I lost some ground.
However, I had this vision, a divine revelation from the Lord that until NAC was registered there would be no election in Nigeria. People laughed about it, but there was no election until we were registered. As soon as we were registered I called Olajumoke to come and take his load, but he made me realise that he was no longer interested. For me having built up this party since 2001 and with Olajumoke not showing interest I called the convention, and the convention approved that I should be the party’s presidential candidate since I was the one that has the vision. I was not prepared for it, and this thing was happening during the lenten period.
However the press can be very good and virile, because one way or the other they recognised what I could do, and then they started writing about me. And then there was the presidential debate which shoot my fame right to the sky. My debate with Obasanjo was very important. This thing happened during my fasting period and I had to break my fast with water and I went in there and the questions were flowing and the Lord was guiding to give the answers.
By the time the event finished there were many people waiting, some Europeans were waiting to shake hands with me, it was an embarrassment to Mr President, I was carried high, and by the time I arrived the hotel we did not sleep, all through the night people phoned me saying that if election were to be judged on the debate I had won. I had a vision to turn Nigeria around because what is missing in the equation is leadership, we Nigerians are good followers. Obasanjo is good but then he is bereft of ideas, the man has been overused, he has been over flogged. Then his problem is that he is too attached to the western powers, and western powers would not want Nigeria developing into another super power, because they believe that would not be in their interest.
What plan do you have for the future, are you going to run again?
I believe that unless the Lord builds a house whoever labour, labour’s in vain. I believe my future is in the hands of the Almighty. And I believe that what Nigeria needs now is not an ethnic based president, but what we are looking for is a leader that would be a Nigerian. I am praying God that we would not have an Igbo president, an Hausa president, a Yoruba president; what we need is a Nigerian president.
On this issue of power shift I think what we need to shift is power from moribund leadership to real and aggressive goal pursuing leadership. We do not want power shifting from the north to the south and all that, that is rubbish.
You once said that God told you that Obasanjo was going to hand over to you, what happened?
Yes, I told the world that Obasanjo was going to handover power to me.
Are you sure that you really heard from God. Because Obasanjo said God spoke to him, and Pastor Chris Okotie said the same thing?
I have heard people asking me that, but God does not tell lies. We have only one living God, and I was born a prophet, Obasanjo wasn’t and Okotie wasn’t. I went into the election not because I have much money, not because I was known all over, but you can see what God had made out of it. Today, I am a force to be reckoned with; at a stage, before Yoruba leaders said they would not want me confronting Obasanjo openly, I was leader of the CNPP (Conference of Nigerian Political Parties); for a man who became a politician in 2001 to suddenly start leading all the opposition formation in Nigeria, you would know that God was not telling lies.
Okotie is a young brother, if God spoke to him, well, I am leaving that aside. But if you judge the antecedents since 2001 you should give credit to God; but I still believe it is never too late. In any case how Obasanjo will hand over we do not know, but don’t let us rule out God.
Before your public declaration on this matter, the pronouncements of God in the Bible to his prophets always come to pass, but it seems something went wrong in your case?
No, in my case nothing went wrong. Obasanjo is still there and remember there was no time frame for the prophecies that I gave. And remember we are still moving gradually, and again I never said God said Obasanjo will hand over to me. I said he ( Obasanjo) will handover to me, but what he will hand over to me that is left with God.
What is your view concerning government’s policy of deregulation of down stream sector of oil industry?
To begin with, is it not embarrassing that today we are import dependent on fuel supply, when we should be exporting fuel to the world. In 1990 when I held the first international oil conference in Nigeria, we recommended that we should even be refining outside Nigeria. If we had done that today we should be refining oil for Benin Republic, Togo and all the rest. One of the areas we would have addressed would have been setting up small refineries to at least tackle the problem. We do not need to have big prototype refineries to deal with this problem, but then those small refineries would have been for local consumption, or for small geographical area consumption.
In that instance there could be allocation of say fifty thousand barrels of crude to serve the locality, and this will be within the ambit of a small time investor. This was our recommendation in 1990, and Nigeria was in a position to have established upstream refineries. What Gaius Obaseki did which Funsho Kupolukun is now benefitting from is having petrol stations spread out; but they have only in Lagos they should have had it in all the states, that would have brought the supply and marketing under the powers and control of the government.
What is your position on Obasanjo’s reform agenda?
We are in trouble in Nigeria because we are not running a federal state. What we are running is autocracy in federalism, otherwise how could the centre say they are holding on to allocation to the local government. In a federal state no president can send for a state governor. A state in a federal state is an autonomous state, the federal government should have been in control of central bank, foreign affairs, defence only. But in Nigeria the federal government is control of everything. Under me I would have setup a federal state allowing the federating units to carry on what they are best suited for; until we have that kind of system we are wasting our time.
As it is the centre will remain attractive to the extent that the states will be redundant. Obasanjo says he is carrying out reform, but he has to reform first of all, the stomach. What we have on the ground now is the reformation into poverty. His reforms are creating nouveau rich and weaker poor, now the per capita income has been driven down to below one dollar per day, which is N140; how many people are earning that much per day in Nigeria. The first reformation would have been to empower the masses, when the masses are strong the manpower requirement to sustain the economy is there. But when the masses are weak then you have a lot of stealing. We read from the paper that Nigerians have over 107 billion dollars stashed away in foreign accounts, yet we are begging for debt forgiveness, who will forgive us. One positive thing about Ibrahim Babangida’s Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) was that the SME’s started to grow, and it was very difficult to get this welders to work for you.
Then it was difficult to get brick layers to work for; now they are not doing anything, because that aspect of economic revival have been eliminated by Obasanjo’s reform initiative. There was a time we had battery manufacturers like Berec, now we do not manufacture any battery in Nigeria; at a stage we were almost at the point of making local components for local vehicle industries. In Peugeot for instance, its components are mostly imported. In an economy where the vehicle industry are going down, then you know that something is seriously wrong. As these companies are going down what you have are churches taking over industries, which should be the other way round. For instance after the second world war in England what you had were industries taking over churches. But in Nigeria the reverse is the case; in other words what you are saying is that people should listen to sermon in empty stomachs, that should tell Obasanjo that something is really wrong with the economy. I heard the other the manufacturers association lamenting that they had gone down that their industrial out put had gone down to 40 %, but I say that the real industrial capacity in Nigeria by careful calculation is nothing more than 25%, if you want to talk of real manufacturing with local content not assembling together parts already made abroad.
What do you have to say concerning national conference?
I am one of those supporting national conference, even though I do not see how we can have a sovereign national conference. But we need a national conference, and until we hold a national conference to deal with the problems of the Niger Delta, from where the bulk of the economic resources to run Nigeria is gotten from, then we are fooling ourselves. We need a national conference to tell us a lot about how to organise ourselves, is it federation, or confederation. Do we need a master and slave in the federal system that we are operating. Do we need 36 stats, when many of the states are nothing more than local government areas. Obasanjo seem to think that holding a national conference will cause trouble, but I think it is the other way round, because I would prefer jaw-jaw to war-war.
