A story of survival : My battle with Cancer, Prof Omo Omoruyi (2)

Prof. Omo Omoruyi

*Reveals how he was wheeled out of Nigeria
*Discloses Why Olu Falae should have succeeded Abdulsalami

In this concluding part of the interview with Professor Omo Omoruyi of the then Centre for Democratic Studies, CDS, you would read about what General Ibrahim Babangida told Olu Falae and Papa Adekunle Ajasin when they met.   You would also read about how Prof.  Omo Omoruyi escaped assassination.  But who were those behind the attempt on his life? Why is Omoruyi still carrying eight pellets of bullets in his body since 1994?  How did Omoruyi survive cancer? He is a survivor and you only need to read his story and then understand and, perhaps, convince yourself about values and virtues of being a public office holder in a country where anything can happen.
Excerpts:

By Jide Ajani , Deputy Editor & Anthonia Onwuka

You were talking about how Papa Ajasin and Olu Falae were invited by Gen. abangida for a meeting?
Papa Ajasin also said  my friend, that is General Babangida, picked Olu Falae; and that he (Ajasin)  accompanied Olu Falae. And I have never said this to anybody before but I am revealing it now.  Papa Ajasin said he accompanied Falae to see Babangida and this was during that transition programme.

At that meeting, according to Papa Ajasin, General Babangida assured Olu Falae that he would be his successor.  That was when Olu Falae started to nurse presidential ambition, that was 1991/1992. Olu Falae, at another stage, came to see me at Harvard, and Olu Falae reminded me of that incident and I told him, ‘Olu, I  know, because Papa Ajasin told me of this incident’. When Babangida told him, he went to Papa Ajasin to accompany him to see Babangida and Babangida confessed and said, ‘Olu, yes’.

You know Olu Falae was so many things to Babangida – Minister and Secretary to the Government of the Federation. It  was just confession time, about events that had predated the June 12, Presidential Elections of 1993.

That was even before all the presidential aspirants were disqualified, including Olu Falae himself. So, Olu Falae felt bad; that after assuring me of this, why disqualify me again! All the  post 1995 arrangement which saw the emergence of Olusegun Obasanjo negated that earlier promise. I would have thought that at that time, just before the heat of that 1998/1999 transition programme, with the gift of hindsight, here was a man we brought in at about 1991 and 1992 who should be encouraged to win and not Obasanjo who was imposed.

Olu Falae should have been the direct successor to Abdulsalami Abubakar and not Obasanjo. The reason why I am saying this and I will be ready to say it anywhere is that Obasanjo has no democratic credentials  at all.

You  know  better than I do!  He wasn’t loved by Yorubas.  The people believe, rightly or wrongly, that he did everything to undermine Chief Obafemi Awolowo. And of course, even in Otta, where he lived, he did not get the votes, he did not get the support.

But Olu Falae at that time represented the leadership and followership f Papa Awolowo.

Even when Papa Ajasin was in the hospital in London, it was Olu; Olu was in one room there in the hospital where Papa Ajasin was.

So, that is the picture; Olu should have been the one who should have been encouraged to succeed Abubakar – but of course he wasn’t.

Now this issue of INEC, the 1999 Constitution and the roles expected of that Commission without powers of enforcement, would you blame the individuals in INEC, the head of INEC or who would you blame, especially when you put that within the context of your experience as DG, Centre for Democratic Studies, CDS?
You know, I once delivered a lecture in Zurich, Switzerland. The late Beko Ransom-Kuti was also there.  In that lecture I said election could be free and fair but may not be credible.  But elections could still meet the three characteristics.  Whatever you say is based on credibility of the process.

And I went on to talk about the international requirements of election and process must have three parts:
One is the pre-election activities that consist of voters’ registration; the laws governing the election (electoral law) and the environment of the media and so many other things.
Two, is the election-day activities.

Then we also have the post election day activities.
So, the media must go back to enlighten the people about the pre-election day activities that must be met for an election to be credible and once these pre-election day activities are not met, then you can never have a free, fair and credible election.

In most cases, the outcome of an election would be determined by the way and manner you handle the pre-election day activities. Now, please don’t push me to start enumerating all that because I know that would be the next question.
Therefore, if you want to rig any election, you rig at the level of voter registration; at the level of number of political parties; at the level of electoral law and all these things must be dealt with and they have to be dealt with. For me, Attahiru Jega, must first have to deal with some of these issues and they are many.  How he’s going to deal with them, I don’t know.

Do you have confidence in him?
Do I have confidence in him?  Oh!    Yes!  I do.

Is he competent to handle these issues?

Yes I believe he has confidence.

Prof. Omo Omoruyi

Let’s marry two things and see if they’ll mix.  You talked about rigging an election ab initio and you mentioned the registration of political parties or the number of political parties.  I would want you to expound on that, please?  I have my understanding of what you mean but I would not pre-empt you because whatever response you give, there ’ll be a follow up?

INEC and Obasanjo who came about with this number of political parties numbering over 50, they knew very well that they were working for the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, as a permanent large party that would be there forever.  Oh! We are the biggest party in Africa! That cliché, they know that all the other parties are no parties and I’ll explain what I mean.  When you have that large number of political parties in one country, how would they be strong?

Look at the Action Congress, AC, they’ve cut its head.  What is left, I don’t know.

The All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP, they chopped it up into many pieces.

Which are the other parties?  All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA?

Good, how do you relate the freedom to associate, independence of choice and democracy if you adopt this position on the number of political parties?
I can answer that easily.

Freedom of association is there in the United States of America, USA.  But in terms of its integrity, what do you have?  Two parties!  It’s not by law, it’s by practice.

So, you can have a third party.  We had it before.  But what do you really have in the USA? Republicans and Democrats!  Even when you have an independent senator like Joe Lieberman, he caucuses with the Democrats.  We have the other one, he caucuses with the Democrats.

Then when you come to the United Kingdom, you have three but then it’s actually two.

There is a political order and it can never be sustained with 51 political parties.

Whoever came with that really wants to promote one political party.
It is a one-party system that we are running in Nigeria as of today and that is the problem we have.

Look at how long it has taken the PDP to produce a chairman because of this their zoning thing.  Igbos must permanently produce a chairman.

The other time when they said the Igbos must produce the president of the Senate, of course, you know what happened; that they couldn’t produce one for long.

Look at the line up: Evan(s) Enwerem; Chuba Okadigbo; Pius Anyim; Adolphus Wabara; then Ken Nnamani; all within just eight years.

It was even so bad that their rule was subverted.  They said you can only be Senate president if you have two terms but Nnamani had only one term and Wabara also had only one term but these people became Senate president  because they exhausted all the people that they wanted to use, so they went for anyone and anyone at that time included those who had spent just one year and when you have that type of person as president of the Senate.

I can not in my wildest imagination or dream believe that the majority leader of the senate in the United States’ Senate, would be somebody who has just done only one year. It is not possible because they have a history and in the case of Nigeria where even there was no history, they had their rules which they violated.

So a Senate president with just one term, because of zoning, you know that person can never be competent.  Yes, they would be  president over those who have been there much longer. Just take a look at Dimeji Bankole, the present Speaker of the House of Representatives!  I have nothing against him but when you look at his conduct, he doesn’t have the experience of a legislator, of managing that kind of system, but PDP’s zoning provided for this kind of situation where anything goes.

For a while you were out of the picture, what brought you back to Nigeria now?
You know I left this country in 2008 in a wheel chair, very sick.

What went wrong?
I didn’t even know what was wrong with me until I got to the United States.

Within few hours I was diagnosed that I had cancer.

Why are you scratching your head now?

Eight tumours were removed from my back and they were very cancerous.  I have been battling with that. I had a second and a third surgery. I had radiation. I had rehabilitation. And then suddenly, it was discovered that the cancer had spread to my lungs, because I was coughing profusely; to my femour bones and so on and so forth.
Therefore, they told me, it can only be dealt with through chemotheraphy.

I had 12 and the last was January 13, this year and things started changing about me.

Then I asked myself because people were losing faith in me.
The people I call my friends, sometimes when I call them, they will pick the calls, some other times, they would not and they would ask if it is a spirit they are talking to and so on.
By May this year, a  good Samaritan sent me a ticket and said come home and show yourself to Nigerians.

And I came, flew to Abuja, and when I saw some people in the leadership of this country, they started wondering, ‘is this professor’?

And I will say ‘it is me-o’!

And I will get up like this and I will start dancing, for them to know that I am not what they thought I was; that I have  not lost my mental and physical balance.

(He actually gets up from his chair and starts dancing just to prove that he is hale and hearty)

I also wanted to prove to them that I am okay.

I am not saying I could get up and go to the World Cup tournament and play, but definitely I could walk about with no walking sticks, no walker, with no wheel chair; and that I could walk any distance.

I had to try to convince them that mentally I could recall many things and I have  done so. With you now I have done so and I could recall events from as far back as possible and I could know colleagues I worked with in the past.

You must be a survivor?
Yes and I thank God Almighty.  I also recently attended the Weekend of Hope, in a community in Vermont, in the US, very near the Canadian border, where over 1500 survivors of cancer came together.  The whole community catered  for all of us; hotel, I paid nothing.  It is that type of thing that this country should have but we don’t have it. When people have cancer they begin to hide, they don’t want people to know that they have cancer or that they are surviving cancer. I also turned 72 years on May 31, this year. I came back for my birthday and also to let people know that I am alive. I have message of hope for people because I survived.

The two critical moments in your life, the gunshot incident in Benin, which I will come to soon  and this cancer thing, what do they tell you about the mortality of man, despite all that we chase?

Trusting in God Almighty! I believe very strongly in that. This is because I remember the day my wife telephoned me from Benin in 1994 that somebody telephoned my home and said he was going to shut my mouth; that
I was talking too much because really, after the annulment, I was talking and two expressions I made, in an interview I granted Segun Adeniyi, when we drove together and we were talking about the election and I said this election was free, fair and credible and that was the headline of the interview. After the annulment, some people did not like that statement; then came another discussion that was not meant to be published but which a journalist  secretly recorded, where I also said ‘we made history and I don’t know what else anybody wanted me to do’.

These were two occasions where anybody in government ever agreed or said we had an election because as far as they were concerned, the thing had been annulled and, therefore, there was never an election.

So, when people in authority begin to admit that oh yes, we had an election, I just said  to myself, ‘well, people are coming to terms with reality and this history must be told’.

In the light of your comments in the media, that telephone call made to your wife must have been meant to send a clear warning?

I called my good friend, Brigadier-General Halilu Akilu, I said ‘Brigadier, they called my wife in Benin that they were going to shut my mouth because I was taking too much’.

In fairness to General Akilu, he provided six policemen on 24 hour basis to guard my family in Benin. Of course,  in Abuja I had all these security people around me but only God Almighty protects you.

I went to Benin one day and why did I go?
General Jeremiah Useni called me and said General Sani Abacha wanted to see me and I began wondering, ‘why would Abacha want to see me’? Some people had also told me not to resign because I wanted to resign at that time. General Useni sent a note to me that I should go to Lagos because Abacha was in Lagos then and Useni gave me a number to call once I was in Lagos. When I got to Lagos and I called, who was the person who received the call? It was Major Al-Mustapha.

After calling Mustapha, he said ‘Oga knew you are around and he would call you’. I was their guest. They never called me, first day, second day, third day.  I took off. Very early the next morning, I ran away.

I went to a media house to talk profusely because I knew something was going on.

I said so many things, too; I talked about Nigeria, I talked about Ken Saro Wiwa’s travails and I knew something was likely going to happen to me and if it did happen to me, I had said everything I wanted to say.

So, I got to Benin and my sister had lost her  husband and the plan was that I would go back to Abuja, to try and arrange to come back for the funeral. While I was there in Benin, I told my driver to close for the day so I could go to my house.

As I entered my compound, one gunman – it was a gunman – I found him by my side and I said to myself, ‘Oh! It is happening now’.

I opened the door of the vehicle, it was a Nissan Pathfinder. The man fell.

He thought I was going to overpower him.

It was the second person, I was told, who opened fire on me.

The third person, entered the vehicle, and they left with it. They abandoned the vehicle along Asaba Road. There was N50,000 in the car, they didn’t take it. My agbada, they didn’t take it.

The only thing that was missing was the key of the vehicle which they threw away.
So, one started battling with life, thereafter.

How about the gunshot wounds?
Today, I still have eight pellets of bullets in me. In fact, that was another problem on its own when this my illness started.

At the National Hospital, they said they couldn’t conduct MRI Scan as long as I had pellets in me. But in the USA, it was not an issue. If it was an issue I would have died.

So, MRI and all these things were conducted and they discovered that I had those tumours.
In the report  they always said the man ‘had eight gunshot wounds from war’.

That was the way they always wrote their report, as if I went to Iraq. The thing about medical reports is that once they put it there, they don’t change it. So, that’s it, those were two events in my life that, if God, in his mercy could make me alive then I must always praise Him.

My way of looking at my life then was that if God gave the opportunity to live, then He must have a purpose for my life, He must have a purpose for my life and that is why I am still alive and I thank Him. Jide I think e don do now! (General laughter)