* 2015: ’PDP’s plan to upstage ruling party in Lagos’

BY Dapo Akinrefon

Musiliu Olatunde Obanikoro, popularly known as Koro, served as Senator for Lagos State from 2003–2007, and was later appointed the High Commissioner to Ghana. In this interview, Obanikoro dismisses the insinuation that he is no longer visible in politics. He also explains that the PDP is putting its house in order to enable it take over Lagos State in 2015.
While he berates the state government as not being sensitive to the plight of Lagosians, he picks hole in the proposed elongation of the tenure of local government chairmen in the state. Excerpts:

Many people are worried that you have been absent from the political scene especially since your last assignment. What exactly have you been involved in?
To say I have been active is to say that I have been visible. I have deliberately not been visible because I just returned from a national assignment as an ambassador and, you must also bear in mind that once there is a government in place, it makes a lot of sense to allow it to stabilize before you start criticizing it..

You must allow government to make mistakes and, then, if after you have given sufficient time for necessary corrections to be made and those corrections are not made, you can begin to lash out on things you believe should be done and things that should not be done. May be I have taken a quiet path politically, but I have been quiet in the sense that I have been working within the party to bring about harmony within the rank and file.

Losing elections after elections does not make sense for a politician who wants to add value to the society. And so, what I have been doing in the last one year is putting up very serious efforts towards reconciliation within our party so that we can present ourselves as a formidable force against the ruling government in Lagos State.

Do you think reconciliation is feasible in your party?
Yes.

Especially with the heavyweights in the state chapter always at each other’s throat?
Well, it is feasible to the extent that I and Chief Olabode George are fully reconciled. And, of late, Senator Ogunlewe has fully reconciled with Chief Olabode George. There are still some key political actors who are not in yet, but I want you to know that all efforts are in place to ensure that we are all together and that we can speak, at the end of the day, with one voice.

With all that said, don’t forget that politics itself is about conflict resolution. That we will have graveyard peace in the party, I doubt that because that will never happen in a political environment, but the question is: have we been able to reconcile to the extent that all interests can be protected? The answer is yes. Do we want to go beyond to ensure that the party wins elections? The answer is yes. And so, if politics is about interest and about conflict resolution, then, there is no doubt in my mind that we are together.

But your party appears disadvantaged in the sense that, at the federal level, the perception is that the PDP is just there and in power but we can’t see things. One way or the other, it has an effect on your party at the state level.

It is propaganda and I make bold to say that.

That the PDP is not performing at the federal level?
You cannot claim that we are not performing. Let us take Lagos for instance, which is the economic capital of the country. Today, we have all the major roads in Lagos State being attended to by the Federal Government.

If you look at the road leading to Apapa, you will see that there is massive construction going on there and also the Third Mainland Bridge. We have continually been rehabilitating that bridge, don’t forget that it was done under Yar’Adua and, of late, President Jonathan has also done the same thing. That is to ensure that the major road arteries within Lagos metropolis, which is the commercial hub of Nigeria, does not suffer. That, to me, is being responsible.

If you go beyond that, the railway is gradually finding its way back and it is becoming another means of transportation. Don’t forget that for long, that did not exist. You may say that the power sector reform that we have been doing for over 12 years now is slow in coming to fruition. But I want to tell you that we are beginning to have a grab of the whole situation.

Just of recent, the Federal Government was able to achieve the last part of its disengagement of total control from power management in Nigeria. I am sure that once these private companies settle down, we will begin to see the effect of what we have put in place in terms of power reform in Nigeria.

I know Nigerians are very patient people to the extent that this reform has gone on for quite some time now and people are becoming agitated, they want to see the immediate result of what government is doing. I am convinced beyond reasonable doubt that, given the commitment of Mr President, something will be achieved hopefully by next year. We will see the effect of power generation and distribution. Beyond that is the Petroleum Industry Bill which is key to development of this country. If we are able to get that through, local participants in the energy sector will also get a lot of boost; the restiveness in the oil producing communities will be addressed and, once we are able to get that area right, the derivatives from crude oil can also become another source of revenue generation and employment for the people of Nigeria.

In agriculture, as a government, we have put an end to fertilizer racketing which has gone on probably since the beginning of Nigeria as a country and which became more pronounced under the military administration. But now, our government has stopped that, we are now giving direct value in the area of fertilizer to farmers. In rice production, this administration has concentrated seriously, given the amount of money that is expended on the importation of rice. In the next two to four years, we are going to get to a point of self sufficiency in rice production.

We are working, but the opposition will never see anything good in your government because if they see anything good in our government, then, they have no business asking people to vote for them. The truth of the matter is that progress is being made, it may be slow, but we understand the pains people have gone through and are going through, but we can practically evaluate the steps that are being taken and the results we are getting from all these ventures that the Federal Government is doing to improve the standard and quality of lives in this country.

Would you agree that Nigerians have this perception that nothing is working?
To say nothing is working will be grossly unfair.

Or that things are bad?
Thing are not at the level they should be, I agree. Are we as a government in a hurry to perform? Yes. But don’t also forget that while we are striving to achieve, we cannot afford to make too many mistakes. And when you are so much in a hurry and you are not reflecting on some of these policies that are being churned out, then you will discover that you are just being penny wise and pound foolish. At the same time, we are being careful. But don’t forget that we had policies in the past that did not benefit the people they were intended to serve.

By a PDP government?
No. I am talking about under military rule. We have had policy failures; the problem of Nigeria did not start today and did not start under the PDP. When the PDP came to power, the country was at a precipe and so stabilizing Nigeria became a major agenda for Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. Do not let us deceive ourselves, this is a complex country to govern and on top of that there are other responsibilities. But I will not shy away from the fact that we are confronting huge challenges and we are we solving them? Yes. Do we need to accelerate them? I agree that we need to accelerate them so that people can feel the impact. To say that nothing is being done or that things are bad, I think it is just being unfair to the government of the day.

Do not get me wrong, I interact with people everyday as a grassroots person and I do know their pains but let me tell you that those pains are not being inflicted by the Federal Government.

Then who is responsible?
I will say it is being inflicted by the state and local governments. People are agitating for the restructuring of Nigeria and I will support it. We must change the way we do business; if you have run your business in a particular way for a length of time and it did not work for you, I think it makes sense for you to change the way you do that business.

You did talk about states and local governments and accused them of inflicting pains on Nigerians, but I will say it is an accumulation of long years of neglect. But how will you reconcile the states inflicting pains on the people?
It is very simple. The closest form of government to the people is the state and local governments. Let us take Lagos as a case study. When Yar’Adua became president, there was cumulative revenue withheld at the centre because of the inability of the state to follow procedures as enshrined in the Constitution. Don’t get me wrong, I am  for creation of more local governments in Lagos State, but following due process is  germane in a democracy. And so, the money was withheld by the Federal Government. As soon as the Yar’Adu government came, he released the money to the state government. Do you know what happened? The money was shared.

How?
That money was shared by the leadership of the ruling party in Lagos State.

Imagine if N32 billion had been applied to address key issues. That is why I said that the states and local governments have a role to play in cushioning the hardship in the society.

You talked about local government creation and following the right procedure. Your son contested and was declared winner of a council area but the appeal tribunal later upturned his victory. How do you see the whole process?
That is very sad for our state and for the country. Lagos is the most cosmopolitan state in Nigeria, we are supposed to be a pacesetter, but when Lagos is now reduced to one of the states in Nigeria, it pains me because what we have reduced our state to, with that illegality, is one of the states.

Alhaji Lateef Jakande, Mobolaji Johnson gave their all into the service of the state and we are still profiting from that; there is no doubt in my mind that they ever envisaged a situation where somebody will win an election in this state and his election will be annulled.

God forbid. I doubt it if we are ever going to have a local government election in this state and people will be raped like the last time and you expect them to go to a tribunal. They won’t, they will rather take laws into their hands and that will be sad. They thought they are throwing their weight around, but they are just being ignorant because if they are not ignorant, they will not invite anarchy.

What they have done technically without knowing is that they have invited anarchy. When another election comes and people are raped the way they were raped, they may take laws into their hands. The fight will be on the streets and it will be sad. When you take the last hope of the common man away from them, what you have done is to expect the worst from them.

They dehumanize the people who went out and even took dignity out of the process and they are even contemplating elongating the tenure of those who stole people’s mandate. Tell me, what can be worse than that? And these are supposed to be democrats.

You are sending a signal that it will not be business as usual with the way your son came out smoking in victory. What strategy is your party putting in place for the 2015 elections in Lagos State?

I am not going to discuss our party strategy on the pages of newspaper, but let me tell you that what we did last year, in terms of our participation in the local government elections, was to test run our participation in the 2015 elections. They got the message but they may pretend that they did not, otherwise, they would not talking about elongation of tenure of council chairmen and councilors, That is another rape which shows that this ACN government is arrogant and insensitive. It is like changing the rule of the game in the middle of the game. There is a law in the state that says people must serve for three years.

Let us put aside the illegalities that happened in council areas like Ikoyi/Obalende, Badagry, Epe and Shomolu, the fact that they are even deliberating on it is an insult and an assault on the sensibilities of the people of Lagos State. We know what is going on and we will resist it. They think they can just do things and get away with it, but those days are gone. We will challenge them on the streets of Lagos and in the court of law. Let them dare elongate the tenure of council chairmen and you will see the massive protests that we are going to lead in this state to tell them that enough is enough.

Let me also explain to you what we have discovered and which has now been exposed about the ACN’s plot regarding tenure elongation for local government councils in Lagos.

Will that see you coming out in 2015?
There is no doubt that we need to engage these people seriously and if you look at the arrogance and insensitivity that is going on in the state, then there is need to save Lagos. When a government goes to Makoko area and displace people who have been there for close to 70 years, they have lost legitimacy; they went to Ijora and did the same thing.

They are reclaiming land not in the interest of the public but for personal reasons.
Alhaji Jakande sand filled the entire Lekki axis during his administration; he does not have a plot  there as we speak today. He didn’t then and he does not have now. We have deviated and that is violating peoples’ rights and violation of the environment.
That also is greed in every sense of it. I can go on and on. Is it the LASU school fees that was hiked from N25, 000 to N250,000 that we want to talk about?

There are so many issues going on in Lagos State today that make me nauseated and all it takes for evil to thrive is for good people to remain quiet in the face of rape, gross violation and injustice.

Can we get value for our money? I tell you we can and that is why people like us are worried because we have given them enough time to work. This is the time to point out the areas that the state is suffering and why Lagosians must throw ACN or APC, whatever they call themselves, out of Lagos in 2015. They have lost touch with reality, they have lost touch with the people of the state and it is about time we usher in a new era.