Over the years, there’s been this agitation for zoning of governorship away from Ibadan. What’s your take on this?
I support the agitation 100 percent because you cannot have peace and stability in any system where significant percentage of the people feel they are second class citizens. So if you have a situation where only one part of the state dominates the office of governor, people can’t be happy in that system. And when you accumulate the sadness of individuals, they have a way of affecting the stability of that system.
There’s no doubt about it that what we’re having in our state is not the best. You can’t have Ibadan alone dominating the office of governor and then you think all other parts of the state are happy with it. They may be helpless because of the demographics of the state.
More than 50 percent of the votes are locked up in Ibadan. So any political party that wants to win will look in the direction of Ibadan. But that does not make it right. And that does not promote peace and unity. Definitely, it does not promote unity. People are not happy with the system, no doubt about that and I support the agitation 100 percent.
Prof Adeolu Akande, political scientist, lawyer, ex-presidential aide and a former Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), spoke with YINKA ADENIRAN, on his senatorial ambition in Oyo North District and other national issues.
What does public service mean to you?
Just as the name implies, it is service, service and service to the people using the instrument of government to cater for the welfare of the people. And when you talk about welfare, you ar le talking about security, well being, and education, skill acquisition, development for the youth, for women, addressing social problems as they emerge. And luckily for me, if you combine all my experiences as a teacher of political science, as a journalist, as a lawyer, all of them point at one thing, working for the public good, using the instrument of government to better the lot of the people. So that’s what my career path has been. And that career path prepares me adequately for a life in government and parliament as a member of the Senate.
Why have you not tried to come into politics as an active player rather than on an appointment basis before now?
Well, it depends on the trajectory of your life. You know, when I was teaching in the university, there was a limit to the partisan politics you could play. And that was part of the reasons I read law, because as a lawyer, you have more freedom to be in politics than somebody who earns salary in an institution. So I think at this point, I’m fully prepared to play partisan politics.
Over the years, there’s been this agitation for zoning of governorship away from Ibadan. What’s your take on this?
I support the agitation 100 percent because you cannot have peace and stability in any system where significant percentage of the people feel they are second class citizens. So if you have a situation where only one part of the state dominates the office of governor, people can’t be happy in that system. And when you accumulate the sadness of individuals, they have a way of affecting the stability of that system.
There’s no doubt about it that what we’re having in our state is not the best. You can’t have Ibadan alone dominating the office of governor and then you think all other parts of the state are happy with it. They may be helpless because of the demographics of the state.
More than 50 percent of the votes are locked up in Ibadan. So any political party that wants to win will look in the direction of Ibadan. But that does not make it right. And that does not promote peace and unity. Definitely, it does not promote unity. People are not happy with the system, no doubt about that and I support the agitation 100 percent.
You’re a leading voice from Oke Ogun zone. What are you and other stakeholders doing to make sure that the agitation yields result?
There are different ways to approach it. I’m giving my own background, we are practicing democracy and regardless of how you feel, you are constrained to work within the system. And every time they say, okay, if an Ibadan man finishes two times, then it will go. And then when you get to that point, they will say, if we pick somebody from outside Ibadan and this other party picks from Ibadan, then it will be the Ibadan man that will win.
It has been the same argument again and again. And the question I keep asking them is, will this argument ever end until the return of Jesus Christ? Because you can always play that game. If we pick, yeah, we have good materials from other parts of the state. The only problem is that if party B picks somebody from Ibadan, it is that man that will win. And then you wait. After another eight years, you say if party A now picks Ibadan, then we are good. So we keep going. It has become a vicious circle. Unfortunately, as long as it is democracy, the minority cannot impose its will on the majority.
So, we need to engage. Luckily, we have people who have shown good understanding in Ibadan, who believe, yes, power should rotate among the parts of the state. But the key issue is, if the party focuses on winning, then you go back to the scenario I’ve explained. Unfortunately, we do not have very strong parties that can say, we are picking our candidate from any part of the state and has the muscle to push it through.
In the Second Republic, the candidate of the UPN was Chief Bola Ige from Osun part of the state. The deputy was also Baba S.M Afolabi from Ire, Osun part of the state. But they won the election because the Unity Party of Nigeria was a strong party. The parties we have now are just coming up. They are not that strong. And they’ve had quite a number of instability. I mean, PDP is virtually gone now. The APC had been a transformation, had been perpetually in transformation from AD to AC to ACN and now APC. So it has not really crystallized into that formidable party that can say, regardless of where the candidate comes from, he will win. So as a political scientist, I must also be realistic about this analysis.
Yes, I want an Oke-Ogun man to be the governor, I also want to be governor, but can I impose myself? We have limitations because of the power configuration in the state. Luckily, we have prominent people in Ibadan who are sharing that views. And I hope with the passage of time, we are going to have enough of such people that will be able to let others allow power to rotate among the parts of the state.
Looking back years after you left Oyo politics to the national level, do you think the state is making good progression, building on the legacies?
Definitely every government will build on the legacies of his predecessor, so there’s no doubt about that, as long as you have stability, security, it is whatbwe called disjointed incrementalism, there is no government that comes that is not going to add something to what the previous government had done, except you find yourself in a worse situation.
So, basically, the situation now is that with the coming of President BolaAhmedTinubu, the finances of the state have improved phenomenally, such that the kind of resources that are at the disposal of the state governors, it’s only a governor who doesn’t know what he wants to do that will not be able to do basic things like fixing roads, drainage clearing. But what I think we need, the key things, the transformation that we need, I’m not sure we have seen it, we are still dealing with the basic things of tying roads, putting solar light. I think we ought to have gone past that.
I’m not surprised to hear that you want to be governor, maybe not in 2027. Why do you think it’s not your time?
No, basically, I’ve explained to you now. The power configuration in the state does not make it a realistic dream.
I’ve aspired to be governor before. We’ve argued and all of that. But after all your arguments, you still come back to the black stacks of politics. Each time the party wants to win. They keep going back to the same arguments. They will say, yea, you guys are good, but if we pick you and the other party picks somebody from Ibadan. The people in Ibadan will vote for that person and the party will lose. No party wants to lose.
So that’s the unfortunate reality of our situation.
Over the years, you’ve worked closely with the executive arm of government. What is this desire to try the legislative arm? What’s the motivation?
Well, I’ve told you that our democracy has evolved in such a way that now there is no very clear demarcation. Our democracy has evolved into very tight cooperation between the executive and the legislature. In such a way that many of the aspirations you can have for an executive office, you can see push it through the legislature. Because we are talking basically about what our people need. How do we transform our society to provide for the needs of the people? Education, healthcare service, skill acquisition for the youth, employment, women empowerment. All of those you can see put through the legislative arm of government. It may not be as direct as someone in executive would do, but don’t forget that executive office is only one per state. And there can only be one governor maybe for 8 years. And then if you don’t make it, you wait another 8 years before you can be. We have 109 senators and 360 members of the House of Representatives.
So I think there are more opportunities there to get into government and impact on the lives of the people. Particularly against the background of the realities of Oyo state politics that I’ve explained to you. There are so many people who want to be governor out there who have clear visions outside the battle. But what can you do?
You are a politician, elitist, yet not far from the grassroots. What do you think are the major things your people in Otu need that you want to help them drive?
Well, I am not looking at Otu alone. I will rather talk about Oyo North Senatorial District because if you are talking about bringing anything to Otu, then I should be thinking of running to be a Councillor. But, definitely, I am looking at a bigger picture more than that. I am looking at Oyo North Senatorial zone.
One, we are late starters in western education and that affects our people a lot. We talk about youth employment at the national level and we talk about it at state level. I believe it is worse. We see thousands of our youths who struggled through the educational institutions. They have degrees and they are not gainfully employed. Probably three out of every ten Okada riders you see in Oke-Ogun holds a degree. That is unfortunate. They need to be well placed. In my own individual capacity, I have helped quite a number of them. I’ve helped people into a total of about 49 federal institutions provided employment apart from the ones I’ve been able to do in the private sector. But, an individual cannot do enough. It is the system itself that should provide opportunities either through direct employment or opportunities for youths to employ themselves and become employers of labor. That would be my focus.
If you look at Oyo North, the mainstay of our economy is agriculture. Our people are involved in agriculture. If you go there now, the average age of farmers in Oyo North is 60. Most of them are old. They are aging population and they are gradually being phased out. How do you bring the youths into agriculture? How do you do agriculture in the modern way that you do not rely entirely on rain-fed agriculture?
The federal government, I do know, has so many initiatives to help agriculture. If you go to the northern part of the country, you marvel at the number of dams, mechanized farming going on there. I can’t see any of that in Oyo North. We say we are the food basket of Oyo State. So, if you are the food basket of Oyo state, I don’t know whether you know, is there any federal government agriculture project going on in Oyo North? There’s none. We used to have Ogun- Osun River Basin Authority and all of that. All those ones are gone. So you must have federal government presence in Oke-Ogun to reflect our status as the food basket of Oyo State and the food basket of the country. It is said that the food consumption in Lagos is approximately estimated to be N40 billion, in a day. How much of these monies come to Oke-Ogun? That’s my own vision. How can we integrate the agriculture of Oyo North and Oyo State into feeding into this opportunity in Lagos?
So, I want to focus on getting those federal government initiatives for agriculture and food security for our people, so that they can be integrated to feed the people of Oyo and take advantage of the huge market that Lagos provides.
If you are familiar with Oyo North, we are very good with solid minerals. Not less than 60-70% of our local governments have gemstones. And most of them are mined illegally. You have miners all over the place not organized in such a way that it could provide jobs for the youth, that it could protect the environment, and it could enhance community development. So if you do mining appropriately and according to the best practices, it’s going to create wealth, it’s going to protect the environment, and it’s going to lead to the development of the community where mining takes place. So that would be my job as a parliamentarian to look at all the opportunities that the federal government provides. The federal government has numerous opportunities, intervention projects, but you cannot sit back and expect that it is the ministries that will now bring it to your doorstep. Somebody has to harness them and call the attention of the government to the opportunities here and also call the attention of the people in that business and the community to the opportunities that abound in the federal government. So you become like a liaison officer between the two of them.
So I believe that if we harness the instrumentality of the legislature, we can turn mining, solid minerals deposits of the area, into a means of creating wealth for our people, a means of protecting our environment, and a means of creating community development.
Then I have some projects that are dear to my mind. There has been a project on the drawing board for years, Okerete International Border Market, which is to provide an international border market between Nigeria and the Republic of Benin.
By World Bank estimates, it is said that it will create about a million jobs. So when I see the youths of Oke-Ogun unemployed, I’m not sure they alone can feed one million openings. So what are we doing with that? You need to really show interest so that the federal government will be interested in that project because you market it and talk about the opportunities it’s going to bring to the people and to the Nigerian economy.
So if we’re able to get that done, we would have solved in a good measure the problem of youth unemployment. And of course, if you have an international border market, it’s going to create limitless economic opportunities for our people beyond those who are going to be directly or indirectly employed. It’s going to boost the commerce of the area in terms of trading, in terms of banking, in terms of insurance, and all of that. So it will come with so many opportunities. So those are the ideas I have. I believe that the Senate will afford me the opportunity of enhancing the development of our people within a short time.
Q: Two things peculiar to Oyo North Senatorial District: agriculture the vast land for agriculture and the availability of mineral resources, they have also been the cause of some form of insecurity in the region, if you will agree, do you have anything in the pipeline for your people in that aspect?
A: You see the key problem I’ve alluded to it, if you do exploitation of minerals in an unregulated environment it’s going to lead to insecurity. It’s clear because it is money buried under the ground and those who are looking for money will go there and anywhere there is contest for money in an unregulated environment it leads to insecurity there’s no doubt about that, that’s the linkage, so if you are able to get it regulated you would have removed the roots of the problem. If you go there now which companies are operating there? there are no companies. Individuals, just vibrant individuals with money they just go there and they map out an area they are armed and then they scare everybody away they mine the resources that’s just all and then when they go into contest with rival groups then they harm the communities or they sack the communities and they bring armed men and these armed men now stray off the mining sites into communities to hack people down to go to people’s farms and fight to go and sack people from their villages or homesteads. The basic problem is that mining is taking place in Oyo North in an unregulated environment, so the moment it is regulated you know with which company is handling which area, you identify the people who are doing business there, then there is accountability between the businessman because the becomes accountable to government and government becomes accountable to the community and the bulk of the money you take there you don’t take it away a percentage under the Nigerian law goes to the community but because it is unregulated now, what is supposed to go to the community it’s not going so you have people making billions of Naira in those communities but the communities are becoming more impoverished because the individuals no longer have access to their farmlands, they can no longer farm and because they are scared away, their land has been taken away by those who are mining, so there is a rising poverty which itself is leading to insecurity at a small level within the communities but there is also the larger scale violence which is being perpetrated by the companies mining the minerals illegally.
Q: What is your relationship with the current senator from a Oyo North like?
A: Senator Fatai Buhari is my friend. We were together in the Abiola Ajimobi government. When inwas the Chief of Staff, he was the Special Adviser on Water Resources. We are friends.
Q: What platform are you looking at contest in the next election?
A: APC. Is there any other party in Oyo state?
Q: You are a politican and a good brand at that, it is possible some other parties are offering you their ticket and playform too?
A: No. I told you my background, I started as a teacher of political science when I begin to crisscross and I meet my former students, what will I tell them, when I’ve told them in classes that the politicians are not serious thats why they are decamping, I’ll now go to the party and I’ll now start decamping, then what value are you bringing in, no I don’t. I am APC 100percent.
Q: As a political scientist, with what is playing out between the two major political parties, the APC and PDP. There are insinuation that the crisis in the PDP is the handiwork of the APC. Do you agree with that school of thought? Is that doable in politics?
A: Is it your duty to make sure that your opponent are doing fine? So, the APC should set up a department that will cater for the stability of PDP? that doesn’t make any sense. Your duty is to within the limits of the law make sure that your opposition or other parties does not get strong enough to defeat you in elections. So, the APC don’t need to do anything because those who are fighting among themselves are PDP people. The truth of the matter is that the political parties in Nigeria are ideologically deficient, people in parties not necessarily because they share identical views about how party should be organized or how government should be organized, so any little differences, there is fight, there is factions, they set up new parties. There have been parties having crisis before this time and I don’t think we need to waste time talking about that, it is the duty of a political party to protect itself and ensure that it follows its own rules and regulations so that its members are kept within the limits permitted by the party.
Q: Its almost a year to the next election governance across the states seems to be on hold, is this good for the electorate? is it good for democracy? as a political scientist is this the norm in advanced democracies.
A: Well I’m not going to agree with you that governance is on hold, no. It is just that all the political activities are on a high tempo, and they are not mutually exclusive. People can be in government and they do politics, in any case you get you get into government through participation in politics, so it does not mean that you have high tempo of politics now because we are getting nearer elections, but that’s does not mean government has stopped. Government officials still go to work, I mean you see the President almost every day attending to issues just as he’s attending to APC issues so you don’t need to abandon government to do politics, no it’s just that now because we are approaching an election, we are paying more attention to politics than you used to do before but it doesn’t mean government is on hold.
Q: How are coping with pressure from your supports who believe you shouldnt settle for anything lesser than the governorship seat, now that you are looking at Oyo North Senatorial ticket?
A: A politician and somebody who wants to be a leader should be able to manage those who supports him and as a leader you also need to be realistic. Your duty is, many of them are not as astute in political analysis and you are not supposed to lead them astray, if something cannot work why should I lead them. I am in politics, I’m not in activism. It is a different thing if I mean to civil society agitation, but I’m not, so you must be able to define your goal and go for it and be realistic. You don’t need to lead people astray, I wish, I mean as a politician I wish to be governor and that’s what I keep telling them when they say no it is governorship I should go for, I tell them, I’m the one who wants to be governor, if I’m governor today will you enjoy it more than me? and so if I tell you that there is no way there, you should accept. I wish I could be governor, so it’s not as if I’m running away, but, if it is not realistic in the present situation. We have APC, now we have two factions of PDP, maybe one of them will end up with ADC then we have ACCORD with Oriyomi Hamzat, which of them will go outside Ibadan and pick a candidate, so what they will simply tell you is that, as weak as Accord Party, they are already saying that, if the other parties pick there candidates from Oke-Ogun and Ogbomoso, Oriyomi Hamzat automatically becomes the governor because that’s where the people will vote, that’s the situation we find ourselves and it’s pathetic but that’s the truth. Its the truth.
Q: How optimistic are you that your party will reclaim the states come 2027.
A: Well, I believe that, with what we have witnessed in APC in the last six months, if we continue in that way, the unity of purpose and the transparency among the key players to obey the rules of the game, we are going to win because we have what it takes in terms of the personalities, in terms of the support base of the individuals who are involved. On the last two occasions that APC lost in Oyo state, it was because the party was divided in 2019 and 2023 we didn’t present a united front, but as at today, we have a united party, I pray that by the time we go through the primaries we are going to remain one. If we remain one and PDP is already splintered into two anyway, so it will be a united APC defeating which of the two sides of the PDP present itself, either as PDP or another party as been speculated.
Q: Words of assurance to your supports and members of your party in Oyo North Senatorial District?
A: Well the truth of the matter is that with what I’ve said, I have very clear vision, I have very clear idea about the purpose of going to the Senate and I believe that they are going to see a transformation in the dividends of democracy, in terms of programs and projects that will impact on the lives of the communities, that’s what we are going to do. We are going to represent our people in a way that they will look back and that they will be happy that they made the right choice, because you don’t just go to the Senate and sit down, it is not a place where people go and sleep, it is serious business and before you get there, you have clear idea of how government operates at the federal level you must have clear idea of how government operates at the federal level and you must be able to build network nationally if you are unable to do that you won’t be able to bring something substantial to your people because people there, they are not father Christmas, you don’t just go there and say because you are there they will give things to your constituency, no, you will work for it intellectually, so if you don’t have the intellectual capacity, your people would just find that after four years, that they are left with crumbs from the master’s table. We need to move to a situation where in four years you can look back and see three four projects that impact, that would transform the lives of the people and have been attracted to the constituency.
Q: You are going there as a first timer. Do you think the political profile you have built across the various arms of government you have worked is an advantage for you going to the Senate? because we all know as a first-timer you sit at the back but you think this profile is an advantage for you over others?
A: Definitely, the first thing you need is, you must have a knowledge of government not only of the legislature you must also be conversant with how the executive operates, you must be conversant with the operations of the legislative arm, you must be able to build a national network. There are people in that National Assembly, and you have experience of it even in Oyo state, you have first-timers that are able to attract better federal government presence to their communities than people who have been there two or three times. So, being there two three times can qualify you to become a principal officer it does not necessarily translate into dividend of democracy for your people. We’ve had people who are principal officers and people are saying they are not performers. Yeah being a first-timer may not give you certain things, and that also is not cast in stone, we’ve had instances where first-timers become principal officers but more importantly when you talk about attracting federal government presence to your constituency, it’s not exclusively for certain people. You are not at a disadvantage if you have the knowledge, if you have the experience of government and you have the national network and you are ready to work hard to attract federal government presence to your constituents.
Q: How optimistic are you between you and your people that, this is a done deal?
A: Well it’s a democracy and as a student of political science, I will not say it’s a done deal, it’s a work in progress, you have to convince the people, you have to convince the party, you have to get the party ticket and then you have to convince the general populace to vote for you. I rather say, it’s a work in progress even though I’m confident that I’ll get it, but I believe you will get there when we work for it.
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