Senator Rafiu Adegbenga Kaka, former Deputy Governor of Ogun State and chieftain of All Progressive Congress, APC, is currently Senator representing the Ogun East Senatorial District at the National Assembly.

He recently fielded questions from Vanguard editors on the crisis that has shadowed relationship between the governor and associates and followers of Aremo Segun Osoba, the former governor of the state and national leader of the party.
Excerpts:

By Bashir Adefaka

Why is your camp as led by Aremo Olusegun Osoba refusing the pleas of Governor Amosun to work together?
Well, to start with, I want to say that there is no need for our governor trying to blackmail our leader.   I am saying this in the sense that it is hypocritical for him to be sending people to somebody they are supposed to be inside the same house or in the same bedroom.

Senator Rafiu Adegbenga Kaka

It is a well known fact that before the ticket was given to him in 2011, in fact, Aremo’s house had almost became his (Amosun’s) second home. It may interest the people to ask, when last did he visit Aremo’s house and why?   When last did he pick his phone and call Aremo?

But beyond that is the fact that it will be an insult on the people of Ogun State if the governor thinks that asking people to beg Aremo Osoba will be the solution to his problem because, that will be giving the impression that Ogun State is Aremo Osoba or that Osoba is Ogun State, which is far from the truth.

Ogun State is bigger than any individual.   It is even bigger than a collection of individuals and bigger than any political party or a combination of political parties.
And we will realize that Ogun State is populated by highly enlightened, disciplined and, of course, well educated people.   Then under a democratic setting as we are operating, to arrogate the state’s status to a single individual, I think it is very insulting.

Even if Aremo accepts whatever his appeal is, would that be the end or the solution?
If Aremo accepts, then he will be on his own because, like I said, the political space is bigger than Aremo and bigger than the governor himself.   So, attempting a cheap blackmail on Aremo Olusegun Osoba is not the solution to the problem.

Then what is the solution to the problem?
I will advise that one, he should look back to the circumstances of his getting the ticket, in the first instance, in 2011. His target was to take over and, like the expected
dictator, nominate or replace all the other nominated candidates for other elective posts.   You came from a political party and a priced position was ceded to you.

Immediately it was ceded to you, you wanted to take over the entire party and at the same time take over all other positions to the extent that a nine-page letter discrediting all other candidates including my humble self, all the National Assembly members, all the state House of Assembly members proving that those nomadic politicians he was coming with were the only ones that were election worthy and that others had no electoral value.

And that was debunked immediately when the National Assembly election came first and, alas, we lost only one House of Representatives seat but we won all others scoring nearly 95 percent.
And when it was the turn of the gubernatorial election with the House of Assembly, though we won the gubernatorial but we lost a total of nine seats in the House.   So, people can judge there.

Beyond that one, the same Aremo he is saying that he is begging, like he begged him in 2011 and who was magnanimous enough to forget what happened in 2003 and so, the same Aremo that forgave him and tried to put everything behind him was the one he lied against.

After election, the person that contested the position with me, Barrister Bisi Adegbuyi, he (Amosun) started backing him to the extent that as I am speaking right now, we are still at the Supreme Court on 2011 pre-election matter. So, how can he pretend to now be clothing us inside his bedroom after he had already stripped us naked in the public? So, I believe that his begging is height of hypocrisy.

Is it Aremo Olusegun Osoba that should be begged for that?   Can Aremo now go and face the people that are bearing the brunt to say, “Oh I have now accepted the so called appeal,” which I believe is not genuine?

So, that is the crux of the matter.   And beyond that one, I can tell you that it is on record that he sponsored a candidate against Aremo’s son, even after granting him (Amosun) the governorship ticket.   It is on record that for all the National Assembly members, he has positioned series of people to take over their seats while he has been busy fighting for second term for the past two years.

I can tell you that not less than eight people have been positioned to take over my own seat whereas none of us has indicated interest in second term.
Again, infrastructure; I do not want to talk too much about that but, even if you are misplacing priority by concentrating on infrastructure, must it not go round?

Must it be localized in only six local governments out of 20 and you expect people to take kindly to it?   Has our Constitution not made provision for Federal Character principle whereby in a 20-local government structure like Ogun State and with 20 commissioners, we expect each local government to have at least one commissioner.

But what do we have?   We have four commissioners from the local government of Mr. Governor, three from another local government, specifically Ijebu-Ode and all others are either personal friends or cronies that were not part and parcel of the struggle. So, should it be the Aremo that should go and appeal to the people to overlook that?

So, if there is going to be any solution, the solution is rightly at the doorstep of the governor.   He will have to go now and reach out to all the injured people and rectify all the lopsided developments, lopsided appointments within the shortest possible time, rather than going about blackmailing Aremo with begging.

Have you sent him all these demands?
By the grace of God he had been very elusive.   But we have had cause to talk to our leaders; Chief Bisi Akande, Tinubu and others.   Not twice, not thrice and nothing is forthcoming.   Even at the convention, we received Atiku’s high power delegation and we stated everything but not a single feedback till today.

And beyond that, like the hypocritical posture that we are seeing, there had been emissaries, individual and group; religious and cultural, coming to say, “Look we want to mediate because we want peace.”   He will go ahead but after a brief period, they will come back and say they have met brick wall.

Will this crisis not cost APC the state?
Sincerely speaking, I do not have a crystal ball.   So to foresee what will happen after now is beyond me.   The God that I worship, I try to surrender myself absolutely to His will.   So, if tomorrow the will of God is that all of us should vacate where we are, God giveth, God taketh, so be it.   But nobody wants his labour to go in vain.

That is why we say there is room for change.   There is room to disagree and agree.   But where we have somebody pretending to be lover of peace and doing direct opposite, yeah, we do not have choice than to surrender to the will of God.   Whatever happens is immaterial, after all some people lost out before we became the toasts of the people.   So, if we misrepresent the people, naturally, they will show us the way out.

Distinguished Senator, we have speculations of the existence of Gbamole and your camp’s plan to start the Action Group of Nigeria, AGN. Is it true?
Well, thank you very much. The truth is that Gbamole is pressure group of some individuals. They have got nothing to do with Chief Olusegun Osoba and nothing to do with me.   But they are a pressure group of people, who are sympathetic to the harrowing experience the people of APC are going through in Ogun State.

Be that as it may, the issue of having an alternative platform which is the AGN that you referred to, it may be AGN and it may not be AGN, but something that is clear is that, nature avoids vacuum! So if, after trying to agree and disagree; disagreeing and agreeing and no resolution, I am sure that you do not expect us to fold our arms.   Even if we are ready to fold our arms and say we want to remain in APC, our people are already migrating and we need to hold them together.

The truth is, there are those who have gone into the Labour Party, LP, and the People’s Democratic Party, PDP and other parties.   And we cannot open our eyes and watch such a thing happen.   So if Amosun is thinking that he can hold our hands tight and allow dog to bite us, we have to prove to him that he is making a costly mistake.

How do you react to the governor’s claim that the 100% victory by his candidates in the recent council polls is a reflection of his popularity? What is your reaction to the roads and bridges being constructed by the administration in the state?
Well, the issue of grassroots appeal in Nigeria is just like in football whereby every home match must be won by the host, thus making our league to be no more interesting.
So, in situation whereby the incumbent party or ruling party will conduct election and they will return all their own candidates elected, put a question mark on that process.

But they believe that everything is force and that everything is money.   They deployed both and the outcome was disgraceful, hence the picture you are seeing outside.
Having said that, we are talking about infrastructure.

Infrastructure is good.   But in economics, we have what we call prioritization.   Human wants are insatiable; human needs are numerous but the means to achieve them are very limited.   So, when you prioritize, you have a scale of preference and give weight to the one what is topmost, most pressingly needed.

In our own case, all the infrastructure you are talking about is about urban renewal.   And when you talk about urban renewal, I want to tell you that it is not overhead bridges that are the main.   The real, main thing about renewal, if you do not want to throw away money and time, is to go back to the grassroots and develop the rural communities.

When the rural communities are developed and the satellite towns are developed, you will be relieving the urban city of the undue pressure of the likely slums you will be creating.   When you refuse to develop the rural areas and you keep on developing the urban area, you keep on creating the slums so that the more you renew, the more attractive the city becomes and the more people troop into the city having nothing to do there.   So, with the slums, you keep on throwing good money into a bad course.

That is where I want to wonder that in Ogun State where we do not have any serious traffic challenge and where governance is a continuum, somebody would just wake up and say, “Yes, I want to construct 20 overhead bridges at a go.”   And all concentrated in six local governments? I am sorry to say, without consultation with critical stakeholders!   Then there must be more to it than meet the eye.

The allegation in some quarters is that your fight against Amosun is because he has insisted that those of you in the National Assembly should go through primaries to get second term tickets and that you are hiding behind Osoba to fight your personal battles?
At this particular minute, Senator Kaka has not indicated that he is running or not running for any elective post come 2015.
Funning enough, all the positions I have occupied since 26 years ago, there was no single one that I went out of my way demanding for.

It pleases God and the willingness of the people to entrust me with that responsibility.   That is the truth, whether as commissioner, as deputy governor or as Senator.   So, coming back home, yes.

When the governor was coming in, I was coming from DPA and he was coming from ANPP and at that time we had about nine or 10 aspirants to the gubernatorial seat.   We had only two aspirants for the Senatorial seat in my own area.   Even the one in Yewa/Awori, for two years before joining, a single person had been assumed unopposed.

As a result, when he (Amosun) came in and the gubernatorial seat was settled, for God’s sake, nine qualified or overqualified aspirants within the existing party ceded that gubernatorial ticket to him coming from outside.   What moral right has he got to complain about the others he met on ground that had already been settled?   Even the man in Yewa/Awori was replaced amicably with the candidature of Senator Odunsi.   Nobody complained and he still won the election.

In fact, if you look at the interview he granted, he said 71 percent of those in his current executive are followers of Chief Olusegun Osoba.   That is exposing the dirty game somebody is playing somewhere.

Chief Segun Osoba and Ogun State governor, Ibikunle Amosun

So you came into a house and your design or programme is to destroy that house.   I can say, and I stand to be corrected, in 2007 I was not with them but Dipo Dina was their candidate under the Action Congress, AC, at that time.   These same people he was referring to as 71 percent were the people brought by him and they did a lot of anti-party activities with AC at that time.

So, what we are saying is that there must be justice in whatever we are doing.   Justice not only in the political structure, justice not only in your relationship with others, justice not only in distribution of political offices according to the Federal Character principle, but also justice in the distribution of amenities and, of course, there must be justice in the structuring of our political system.

Once there is no justice, I repeat that there can be no peace.
So if there are those that have got no character and can readily go to sell their heritage for a pot of porridge, so be it.

Personally the governor condescended so low under the name of poaching to pick my lieutenants that are working with me, enticing them with positions and money.   That is unbecoming of such high office within the same political party!   I can count one, two, three up to five if not six whom he would tell, “Oh, I will do things for you but not because of Kaka until you come over.”   He would entice them.   Even including a senior legislative aid that has spent one and half years with me.

Specifically, Senator, what are the demands that your group want Amosun to meet before there can be peace?
Number one, all inclusive administration both at the political and government level.   And, in doing so, governance should be detached from politicking.   APC is not Ogun State.   It is a political party and governance of the state is for the entire people of Ogun State, I stand to be corrected.   Then two, he should address the lopsided appointments, discriminatory appointments, lopsided amenity distribution, which will enable us command the respect of the people, the electorate…

(Cuts in) Like what?
Number one, I told you that we have 20 local governments and we have 20 commissioners and that a local government is having four, another having three. I told you that the infrastructure going on is concentrated in six local governments out of 20.

When did you notice this crack in the party at the Ogun State level?
From day one, in fact from day zero because I told you that after getting the ticket, he tried in his own effort to ensure that all other candidates were replaced.
Concession was given and I think about nine were given to him and out of the nine we lost six.   Beyond that we still said let us go ahead.

He requested Chief Osoba to give him nominations for three commissioners.  The man was unwilling to oblige his request but he did after persuasions.