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‘Fasoranti, Okunrounmu want to deliver AD to
IBB’
Senator Femi Okunrounmu among other things accused you of being on the
pay roll of the Governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. What is your reaction to this?
How I wish I were. At least I would have had property
scattered all over Abuja like Senator Okurounmu did in his four years in the
Senate if I were on Tinubu’s pay roll. On a more serious note, this is a cheap blackmail members of
the old order in Afenfifere have been peddling against me, by virtue of my relationship
with Governor Bola Tinubu of Lagos State, whom I will never deny as being my
friend. I will say on my honour
that there had never been any decision that I have taken in Afenifere that has been influenced by
Tinubu. It is unfortunate that
people who lack integrity will always want to soil other peoples
integrity. Okunrounmu that I know
is a man who can be very economical with the truth, and whose honesty, when it
comes to political matters is suspect.
I will prove it.
Before you go on, I would want to know why he
would want to soil your integrity as you have claimed?
When people have lost in a battle and they
don’t have any argument, they resort to blackmail. I think that is why he is doing this at
this moment. When you read
Okunrounmu’s interview, you read Ayo Adebanjo’s interview and you
read Fasoranti’s interview, all they’ve been trying to say is that
it is Tinubu that has been influencing whatever I’m doing in Afenifere. They have ignored the message and are concentrating so much
on the messenger. And now that the
message has caught up with them and they have been thrown into crisis, they are
under pressure, running from Apapa to Ijebu Igbo (the residences of Senator Abraham
Adesanya), and because they cannot respond logically, they have to resort to
cheap blackmail.
On Okunrounmu.
I used to have some respect for the man, but certain things happened
that made me to doubt if the man actually deserved the respect that we gave to
him. In the first instance, he
used to come to Afenifere to lambast the AD governors when he was in the Senate. He was saying Afenifere should confront the governors in
the state. So, one day Mr. Jimi
Agbaje said we should start by appointing Senator Okunrounmu to head the
committee in Ogun State that will confront the governor of the state. He said he could not do it because he
was still in the Senate and he wanted his second term ticket. So, after we lost the 2003 elections,
we held a meeting in Afenifere early this year.
And Osoba was present.
Senator Okunrounmu and Gbenga Kaka (former deputy governor of Ogun
State) started running Osoba down.
Then, Osoba got up and said he would not exchange any word with Kaka,
but that he would respond to Okunrounmu for once. He said this was the way he was going to our elders saying
that he (Osoba) was an Abacha man before 1999; that he (Osoba) was the one that
called (Frank) Kokori out for the SSS to arrest during the June 12 struggle,
until Kokori came out and said that it was another person that called him
out.
Then, he said that he remembered that after
Okunrounmu became senator, he called a party in his house and invited all party
leaders. And that at the party, he
was recanting saying that all he said against him were false. He said that Okunrounmu had been going
around saying that Osoba spent all the money and did not give anyone in the
party. But that during the last
election he gave him, Okunrounmu, N5 million. Senator Okunrounmu was sitting down like a statue; he could
not move. But when the meeting
ended, Okunrounmu ran after Osoba, but Osoba shunned him. Then I thought to myself, so, this is a
man Afenifere
had reposed so much confidence in.
Not only that.
After we lost the election in 2003, Papa Adesanya set up a committee
headed by Senator Okunrounmu to look into why AD lost the
election. Three days after the
committee was set up, Senator Okunrounmu wrote a letter to Papa Adesanya (he
sent through me), asking for about N600,000 to carry out that assignment. And this is a man that did not put
N1.00 in Afenifere
throughout his four years in the Senate.
Papa Adesanya was scandalised.
After he called him and he said he could not do the job without that
money, Papa Adesanya now asked another committee to do that job, and we did the
job under two weeks without asking for N1.00. So, who worships money between him and me?
AD leaders in Ogun State can also tell you what he
did with AD fund when he was chairman of the party in the state. It is unfortunate that this is a man
that will now come and start casting aspersion on our own integrity. And lastly on him, he told us at an Afenifere meeting that Sir Tunde Olowu who
was formerly in AD had joined PDP.
So, I called Sir Olowu to confirm the story. He asked who told us, and I said it was Senator
Okunrounmu. He said did he tell
you how he got to know. I said
no. Then he told me and I was
shocked.
He said about four months ago, himself and Senator Okunrounmu met in (Minister of Works)
Senator Seye Ogunlewe’s
office in Abuja. He said he
was in the minister’s office when Okunrounmu came in and the minister
asked him how far he had gone with the job he gave him, but Okunrounmu could
not answer. So, he excused them to
allow them to talk.
If you put all these things together, it will be
clear that with due respect, Senator Okunrounmu does not possess the character
to be able to pass judgement on people who have rendered selfless service to Afenifere.
And to people like him, politics is all
about money and whatever they can make from it. I say, on my honour, that Governor Tinubu does not influence
whatever I do in Afenifere and I’m not on his pay roll. And if he has any
evidence to that effect let him bring it out.
What kind of job was Ogunlewe asking him
about. Did you find out?
It was a contract! It was a contract! And we have it on good authority that
Ogunlewe has been funding Akinfenwa faction of the AD.
Let us forget about the claim by Senator
Okunrounmu. Many observers believe
that there is much to the support Tinubu is enjoying from some of you the
younger elements in Afenifere. What would
you say informed the shift to Tinubu’s side?
Let me make it very clear. The shift that took place is not to Governor Tinubu’s
side. The issue in Afenifere has been a crisis of direction, at
least in the last five years,
There is the old order which are saying that they are repulsive to
change, and nothing must change.
And there is a new order - represented by people like us - who feel that we are in the 21 century;
we must modernise, we must rejuvenate; there must be change; there must be
renewal; things must be done the way they are being done. But this people believe that in the age
when people are dancing makossa music, they insist that we must continue to
dance agidigbo. And that is not acceptable to
us.
We have fought from within in the last five
years. Many people have left the
organisation for them. We are
staying behind hoping that we will be able to carry out reform from within, and
that with Pa Adesanya who was a good leader, we could carry out some reforms,
but he fell ill and everything scattered within the organisation. So, it was the poor leadership that
emerged after sickness took Adesanya out of the fold that made everything to
break into the open.
In fact, after they took the decision that did not
make much sense in Akure, adopting Akinfenwa, we made true efforts one of which
was to get Papa Adesanya to call a meeting in his house, thinking that that will
provide an opportunity for them, and they bungled it. After that, we called a meeting of younger elements within
the group to find a way of cleaning the mess. We were surprised that when we got to that meeting, Supo
Sonibare was saying that the elders had taken their decisions, and that those
that did not accept the decision were free to leave. Afterall, when Alayande (of Yoruba Council of Elders) could
not cope with them they left. And
we said no, that we had put so much into the organisation - a lot of time,
resources. At that time we said
let’s slug it out with these people.
And contrary to the lies which Okunroumu is peddling,
Tinubu never instigated any disagreement in Afenifere. In fact, he came into what we are doing after we had reached
a point that we were no longer going along with these people. We concluded that going with them is to
open our eyes wide open and enter into the lagoon. We can see farther ahead of them. Everything that
happened in 2003, we predicted to them in various papers. We warned them that with all that had
happened, the end was going to be like this. Now they ended in disasster and they want to go into further
disaster and they want us to follow them.
We say no. Afterall,
if you go to the South-East or the
North it is people of our generation who are governors, who are senators, who
are ministers. People we are older
than are ministers in the Federal Executive Council. We cannot be led by the nose by people who cannot show
direction and whose only credential is being Methuselah
Since you said some of you had fought the
battle before Tinubu came into the picture. It appears Tinubu has only seen the opportunity to hijack Afenifere for his political
ambition as claimed by Okunrounmu.
What do you have to say?
When you look at people in the original Afenifere, at Jibowu, you find General Alani
Akinrinade, Senator Olabiyi Durojaiye and a host of others. These are experienced Yoruba people of
integrity that cannot be led by the nose by anybody. And the Tinubu that I know has never told any of us that he
has any agenda that he wants to pursue in Afenifere. If anything, he knows that the people he is dealing with are
those he has to convince that his cause is just and right before they can
follow him. That argument does not
hold any water. Rather, it is the
old order which Okunrounmu represents that has a hidden agenda, which is to
sell Afenifere to
Babangida. And that is what has
bound together, people who had been irreconciliable in the last four years.
But Okunrounmu said you could not back your
claim up with any evidence.
I will prove it. Some weeks back when it was reported that Mubashiru Abiola
had joined the IBB campaign, and I had to make a critique of him. The criticism was widely
published. The second day, Chief
Fasoranti called me from Akure and said that his attention was drawn to my
interview on the issue. He said
that he wanted us to tread softly on Babangida because we didn’t know where we were going yet on him. That shocked me. If somebody said he did not know where
we were going on Babangida, did he not know where we are coming from? Babangida that caused calamitous crisis
for us that Nigeria and the Yoruba nation lost so much! A crisis that consumed Abiola, Kudiratu
his wife, Pa Alfred Rewane, and hundreds of other people. And six years after, you say you
don’t know where you are going with such a man. That clearly
told me that they had an agenda to
support Babangida.
If you read Falae’s interview in the Guardian
of five weeks ago,
it was full of campaign for Babangida presidency. Today’s Guardian is promoting an interview saying that Babangida is a
better choice than Obasanjo. The
same Adefarati has granted an
interview saying that Babangida should be pardoned. Someone that has not admitted that he had committed any
offence should be pardoned? Many of these people have made so many nocturnal
visits to Minna in recent times.
And you ask yourself, what is it that can bind a Falae, Fasoranti and
Adegbonmire together that they want to die over AD. These are people that prior to 2003 elections, were the
bitterest of enemies. After the
elections, Fasoranti came to Ijebu Igbo to say that they lost election in Ondo
State because Adefarati was a bad governor; the following meeting, Adefarati
came to accuse Fasoranti and Falae of working for PDP. That they delivered Akure to PDP. So, for such men to come together just
few months after and begin to adopt a faction of AD shows that there is more to
it than meets the eyes. And from their utterances on Babangida, it is so clear
that there is nothing that binds them together more than 2007 and how to
deliver Afenifere
to Babangida.
I know the major problem is the plan to
separate the AD from Afenifere. What does
any of them stand to gain or lose from being separated from the other?
I think the whole question of Afenifere being AD and AD being Afenifere was a product of poverty of
thoughts. When Awolowo was alive,
he never run Afenifere as a separate organisation as the party was run. Afenifere just came up as an apellation for
the Action Group in the 50s. It
was not an organisation separate from the party. But the circumstances of the 90s and the Abacha era made Afenifere
to stand on its
own. So, when party politics
started and leaders of Afenifere were not ready for politics, Afenifere stood as an organisation on its
own. What should have happened was
that once Afenifere helped to midwife the AD, Afenifere should have allowed the AD to stand on its own, and
should not have been involved in the day to day running of the AD. So, we ended up giving the impression
that the AD is a regional party.
So, AD lost some ground on that platform. For Afenifere, if you had not equated Afenifere with AD,when AD lost the election,
people would not have said Afenifere had failed.
Assuming we even have a Yoruba Republic today, are we going to have a
one party state? It is not
possible. So, why must we say that
any Yoruba man that is not in AD cannot be in Afenifere and he is not a good Yoruba
man. That is wrong. So, it is then we took the decision
that Afenifere
should be separated from the Alliance for Democracy. And that puts a lie to their own argument that we are
interested in anybody... If we are interested,we would not say the party should
be separated. It is they who
don’t have any hold on AD that want to deliver AD to some presidential
candidates who are now insisting that that the two must be the same. They are behaving like a man who went
to work with his two ears bandaged.
His boss asked him why are your ears bandaged, and he said when he was
ironing his shirt, the phone rang, and instead of answering the phone, he
answered the iron. That boss said
that explained one ear, and what happened to the second ear, the staff said the
person called back. If you did it
the Afenifere
way for four years and this is what it earned you, then why do you have to
continue it in that folly. And
that is why we said that they have lost the compass; they don’t have the
map and they are just rutherless
and we cannot follow such people.
Yoruba people are thinkers, they will ask you questions. And for you to continue to repeat the
mistakes shows that you lack the capacity to lead the Yoruba. The new Afenifere we are putting up is political but
not partisan. What we are interested in is Yoruba agenda, the restructuring of
the country so that every Yoruba man will not be denied its own dues within
Nigeria. We want Nigeria restructured that every Yoruba man will feel infradig
to go and become Nigerian president because the centre will no longer be
attractive to anybody. We want the
regions to have the powers so that they can develop at their own pace. Okunrounmu said Tinubu wants to give us
to Atiku over his 2007 ambition.
For what attraction?
If Atiku becomes president the best he can offer us is
vice president or senate president.
We have had No. 1 man for five years, he is a liability on us. So, what will No. 2 or No. 3 bring
us. What every sensible and
reasonable Yoruba man should do is restructuring; getting Yoruba prepared for
the kind of recrimination that will come the way of the Yoruba after Obasanjo
must have left power. If we
don’t get power, they will want to visit the sins of Obasanjo on the
Yoruba people. Those are the
issues an organisation that wants Yoruba people to progress must confront. What they are ready for is how to
negotiate who becomes minister and the rest and not the collective interest of
the Yoruba people.
Some believe that the crisis in Afenifere marks the beginning
of the end of Afenifere. What is your own view?
No, no, no.
It has only pronounced the end of a decadent order in Afenifere and Yoruba land; that a new lease
of life has been opened. That is
why I laugh when I read Okunrounmu saying that those of us who are in the
authentic Afenifere would be reabsorbed into their fold if we repented. Then I ask what is the attraction in
their fold for anybody to return to.
We have said farewell to them; their leadership has been rejected
because it is a wretched leadership.
It is the leadership that has led to a monumental disaster. Infact, they should have resigned and
quit the stage after that monumental disaster. This is a sophisticated nation that boasts of all the best;
we are not lacking people of integrity, people of character, intelligent people
that can lead the Yoruba people.
Yoruba people have given them the opportunity. They’ve wasted it, they’ve lost it. This leadership that is emerging in Afenifere will make Yoruba people proud of Afenifere once again. We will embark on major
programme that will raise the hope and aspirations of Yoruba people and fulfill
them. We will, by God’s
grace ensure that we come out with programmes and agenda around which every
Yoruba man will achieve his aspiration within Nigeria. And hopefully, not out of it. We have
started work in earnest. General
Alani Akinrinade, that respected Nigerian Yoruba patriot has started work and
in the next few days, people will start hearing new things on Afenifere. We have passed the legitimate test, so we don’t have
to be running from Papa Adesanya’s house in Apapa to the other one in
Ijebu Igbo on a daily basis. Only
those who are fighting for legitimacy that will continue to do that.
And we have continued to insist that we don’t
want to drag Papa Adesanya into this crisis anymore because we know the state
of his health and the services he had rendered in the past before he fell
ill. It is only those who want to
ridicule him that will go and be putting him on television with his present
state of health. I can go to papa
today to say he endorses us, but it will amount to ridiculing him, but we will
not do that. We don’t have
any point to prove. We proved the
point to them. We have held our
congress, the whole world has seen where the genuine forces in Afenifere are. Let the rump of the old order begin to run from pillar to
post. We are not moved.
How has this crisis affected the new romance
between Afenifere
and the Yoruba Council of Elders?
We were already meeting before the crisis started and
in fact, after the Akure decision, and they also bungled the meeting in Pa
Adesanya’s house, the office said I should call YCE that they should let
us put that process in abeyance until this civil war in Afenifere is over. Now that the civil war is fought and won, and we are going to
resume that process of engaging other Yoruba organisation so that we can have
an apex all-inclusive Yoruba organisation so that Yoruba can once again speak
with one voice. And that all
the discords of the past which had been caused by those who assumed a
supremasist approach to Yoruba issues, those who are so arrogant, castigating
other people, calling other people names... We want to play politics of
accommodation, of understanding, consensus, bridge building, mutual respect so
that we can bring out the best in every Yoruba man, no matter the party they
belong. Those who are playing
politics in Yoruba land are not up to 25 per cent of the population, so, why
must we allow politics to keep Yoruba people divided. We are saying that enough is enough. We are saying that Yoruba people are
major nation to be reckoned with, and there is the need for sophisticated
leadership.
Okunrounmu said Tinubu had not attended Afenifere meeting for the past
five years and that his appearance this time is to hijack the group.
You know I told you that Senator Femi Okunrounmu tell
lies just the way many other people breath. If Tinubu had not attended Afenifere meeting for the past five years,
was it his ghost that was in Ijebu Igbo before the 2003 election when we were
deliberating on 60/40 per cent issue (on the pattern of candidates for elective
posts between the Tinubu group in AD and the Alhaji Ganiyu Dawodu group in the
same party)? Was it his
ghost? I’m not holding brief
for Tinubu, but the point at which he stopped attending the meetings was after
the 60/40 per cent decision in Ijebu Igbo. The leadership said they were not going to campaign for him
because he said that there was no point giving 40 per cent to Dawodu. He felt Dawodu was going to take the 40
per cent to PDP.
Let us look at the increase in the agitation
for self determination. On Friday,
the Yoruba held a conference calling for an Oodua Republic. What is responsible for the increase in
the agitation.
I think that we are in the age of self
determination. It is a global
phenomenon now. In the world of
today, the issues all over today is not so much about economy, not so much
about ideology, it is so much about who are we. And people are defining that in terms of ancestry, language,
their conditions and situations.
And Nigeria for a long time has pretended as if history will not catch
up with it. To continue to insist
that you want to run this contraption called Nigeria where you force people
together under a unitary arrangement in a supposed Federal Republic of Nigeria
cannot work. And that is why we
are having all these agitations all over the place.
Last week I was reading in the newspapers that the crises in
Plateau State between 2001 and now have claimed 4000 lives. I know there are countries that have
gone to war and have not recorded that casualty. And that is just one state. Do you know the number of people that have died in the Niger
Delta? In Benue? In Modakeke all over the place. That is why there have been agitation
for a Sovereign National Conference.
We have reached a dead end.
Until a few days ago when Obasanjo had had to meet with Asari-Dokubo,
they have been pretending as if the problem was not in existence. We in Afenifere commended the fact that Obasanjo
was able to come down from his horse to meet with Dokubo. But you don’t have to adopt a
piecemeal exercise. It has to be a
wholistic approach. It is clear
now from what we have seen in the South West, South-East, South-South about
agitations for self-determination,that there is only Obasanjo and a few men
around him, who continue to insist that the earth if flat; that this thing can
work; that they can continue to patch it.
Social scientists have argued it that a problem is not resolved by
denying its existence or ascribing it to a wrong source. All what Obasanjo is doing now is like
a man who has a house and put it on a weak foundation, and when the storm
comes, the house begins to vibrate and shake, and he now says let me adjust the
window, let me adjust the roof, let me take care of the door. The easiest and fastest way of
resolving the national question is to call a Sovereign National Conference. I can assure you that the moment that
happens, all the Dokubos of the world will lay down their arms and gather
papers on what to present at the conference.
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