Elder statesman, veteran journalist and political leader, Aremo Olusegun Osoba, was appointed in 1984 by then Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari as Managing Director of Daily Times Limited. Following his stint in journalism, Osoba entered the political fray and served twice as governor of Ogun State, 1992 to 1993 and 1999 to 2003. In this interview, the leave as is intrepid reporter dissects the composition of the federal cabinet, asserting that in most cases round pegs are in round holes. Excerpts:

What is your perspective on the allocation of portfolios to ministers by the president?

Olusegun Osoba

The President has, through this allocation of portfolios, answered the questions and allegations levelled against him as northernising his government. My feeling is that we now have a highly balanced distribution of governmental functions by the president.

Given the assumption that most of the ministers were the president’s direct nominees, do you envisage the ministers ever being disloyal to him?

I would say that the President has picked people he has observed over time or those whose track records he looked into and believe that they are people with pedigree for the delivery of government activities and performance. For example, Babatunde Raji Fashola was the face of ACN (Action Congress of Nigeria) that we used him as a brand in 2011 to regain our lost ground in the Southwest. Besides his performance as governor, he was fully involved in the presidential campaigns, and he headed many committees.  Take for instance the first meeting of the governors to fashion out a merger of ACN governors, CPC governors and Governor Rochas Okorocha coming from APGA was held in Lagos. I was in the merger committee, and there were divergent views. At the time that we were nearly breaking forth, Fashola was mandated by his fellow governors to come and address us. After he addressed us, we unanimously agreed immediately to adopt the broom. I give that as just an example of his involvement and influence in the making of the APC. Rotimi Amaechi, I can say, was also the face of the party (APC) in the Niger Delta.

I know his involvement, I salute his courage, I know the hell that he went through and I thank God the APC won because, Professor Wole Soyinka, who is very close to Rotimi Amaechi said the then Federal Government (of Goodluck Jonathan) sent a message to Amaechi about his engagement and the might of the Federal Government but that he never delivered the message to him.

And he didn’t mention what the message was….?

I don’t know the message, but it must have been a very difficult, dangerous and deadly message. I thank God for Amaechi that APC won. And for what President Buhari has done, the combination of two of them as strong party men with remarkable ministries is a signal of the President’s respect for the party, for performance and for those who delivered and risked everything for the party to win the presidency.

Having identified the superlative roles and performances of Amaechi and Fashola would you have been disappointed if the local politics in their states had deprived them of the roles that they now have?

I had occasion one time to make a statement to express my disappointment and unhappiness about the destructive actions and damaging and destructive moves weaved by spin doctors. I will call them so, as their aim was to destroy the image and personalities of Fashola and Amaechi. I wasn’t happy about it. Fashola has displayed courage.

The law of this country says nobody should be judged guilty until he is found guilty and the person is innocent. I wasn’t happy that they were branding Fashola as corrupt with award of N78 million website contract, which he himself, might not even know anything about. At that level, that kind of contract would probably be handled by some lower level officers.

In the case of Amaechi having got through all that he went through in facing the might of the Federal Government, in facing former President Jonathan and in facing the wife, Patience Jonathan, who is also from Rivers State, I was amused by Nyesom Wike now going for the jugular and by that I mean that Wike did not learn from history by setting up a kangaroo commission of enquiry.

If the governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, is a student of history, he could have known that former President Olusegun Obasanjo also set up such kangaroo commission of enquiry overnight and found former Vice President Abubakar Atiku guilty and the white paper came out a day after. Turaki (Atiku) went to court and the Supreme Court ruled that commission of enquiry is not enough to disqualify anybody from holding public office, that only a court of competent jurisdiction can convict a person and will now bar him from holding public office.

Commission of enquiry

His commission of enquiry therefore was of no value.

I know people who got to be governors but who were banned from holding public offices. Adamu Mu’azu was once banned from holding public office. Former Governor Kwankwaso of Kano State, now a senator, was once banned from holding public office.

We have had all those mushroom commissions of enquiry and people in future should learn from history. You don’t just set up or spin damaging and destructive information just because you want to destroy somebody. At this point, Ebenezer Obey’s song applies, where he sang that no matter what you do that people may feel is good, they will never be satisfied. And the Bible says, “Judge not so that you shall not be judged.” With what you measure, it shall be measured unto you too.

Do you consider the leadership of the PDP to be unpatriotic given the spate of claims by the PDP against the new administration?

That is the function of opposition, to arouse the government….

…But is this opposition constructive?

They will continue to make noise. They are drowning and when somebody is drowning, he will be struggling and holding to anything that is available (laughs). That is the problem with them (PDP). President Buhari has displayed a highly thick skin in his behaviour so far. He hasn’t allowed himself to be stampeded in any form. They called him ‘Baba go slow,’ he said thank you. He took his measured step to arrive at what he wanted to do.

Can we see your foray into the SDP as a sabbatical?

I don’t want to talk politics. I just talk governance. The President is in office and we should all face governance, bear with him and cooperate with his administration to take Nigeria out of the unfortunate situation that we are now. That should be our focus.

However, perhaps it is important to let you into what exactly you want to know by this tactical question trying to extract what my aims were for joining SDP in the last general election. I had series of meetings with Papa Ayo Adebanjo and Chief Adeniwun Ajayi in the first part and I was part of the team that worked towards MKO Abiola’s mandate, which was one of the reasons I became governor in 1992.

I found it convenient therefore to join the SDP than to go to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and I am happy that I didn’t venture to join the PDP otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to survive the kind of political mudslinging that happened within the party over the issue of Jonathan’s money. Imagine the type of altercations between some politicians over the issue of sharing money that they collected from Jonathan? If I had been part of that scam, my name would have been tarnished even more.

Accusing fingers

But like I said earlier, this is not the time to start pointing accusing fingers but to bury our differences and work to protect the interest of Yoruba as a race and Nigeria as a whole. As an individual, I am ready to play a serious supporting role in rescuing the Yoruba race from the position that we find ourselves now. We need somebody we can all rally round as a leader, whoever the person is.

The role of Afenifere prior to the 2015 general elections suggested the group was supportive of the PDP. Sir, also given that the leader of the SDP, Chief Olu Falae is a major leader of Afenifere, do you find yourself caught in a trap?

I am not an officer in Afenifere. You have to talk to somebody who is probably part of the Afenifere executive.

I became involved in the Social Democratic Party (SDP) at the late hour during the 2015 elections but what I observed is that tactical and strategic errors were made by the organization during the last general election. Most of our elders, who have been trying to showcase the philosophy and ideology of Chief Awolowo ought not to have supported former President Goodluck Jonathan in the last general elections without doing some serious discussions and consultations. The SDP is a party promoted by Afenifere but up till today the chairman of the party, Chief Olu Falae and I have never sat down to discuss the affairs of SDP. And I’m serious about this, that since I got involved in the SDP before the last general elections, Chief Falae and myself have never sat down to discuss the affairs of the party. I’m telling you. The organization turned itself into a spare part by going to support Jonathan in the last elections. There was no concrete agreement between the leadership of the party and the former president in the first instance…

What does the ceding of key portfolios to South West by President Buhari mean?

As one of the leaders of Yoruba Land and as an elder statesman of Yoruba extraction, I will say that President Buhari has thrown a big challenge, a gargantuan one, to the Yoruba Nation by the challenge given to our ministers, and I don’t want to be sectional. I will only analyze those who are party members. The success of Fashola will be a measure of the future of South West and Yoruba in the politics of this nation. I believe that we must all, therefore, rally round party members who are now in the cabinet especially from the South West of the country. This is so because it is big challenge that Buhari has thrown to us and the onus lies on us to perform.

Where is the place of constituency projects usually embarked upon by the National Assembly……?

(Cuts in) I hope the President will discourage this idea of constituency projects where you allocate boreholes, solar energy to members of the National Assembly. The main function of National Assembly members is to legislate and they should now be confined to spending more time on making laws for governance of the country and leave the President and his team to execute projects.

If Fashola and Amaechi can collaborate and be able to revive Warri Port, a very extensive Port but totally empty now and underutilized, that will relieve Tin Can Island and Apapa. Onne and Port Harcourt are underutilized. There is no reason goods going towards the Eastern part of the country should not berth in Onne, Port Harcourt, Calabar or Warri, all of them with high-quality facilities to handle cargoes to decongest Lagos and the nonsense that is happening in Apapa will stop.

Industrial hub of Nigeria

I trust Fashola. We Yoruba have no choice now than to rally around him. Because the party members in South West that have been given major challenges are Fashola, Fayemi, Shittu and by extension Rotimi Amaechi in the South South. We must go all round to support them to succeed. Yoruba people always don’t want crumbs. They want nets to fish themselves. Yoruba was the industrial hub of Nigeria in the old Western Region. What they want is the ability for the industrialists in this part of the country to deliver.

What did we have in 1999? We had Yomi Edu as Minister of Environment, Mrs Adelaja as Minister of State for Defence (Navy) and another man from Oyo State as Minister of Communications. Later we had Martins Kuye as Minster of Commerce and Industry. They were mostly ministers of state. Now we have key ministries where performance is going to be measured…

(Cuts in) You said the South West now has key ministries where performance will be measured and, earlier, you said Fashola has the key. Now, what are the keys?

They have to be focused. From my own experience with President Buhari, he appointed me the Managing Director of Daily Times in June 1984, 31 years ago.

Political connections

At that time, Daily Times was virtually dead because the Shagari government of NPN, National Party of Nigeria politicized everything in the country and young people who had political connections were the ones in control.

When I was appointed the Managing Director and Prince Tony Momoh was appointed General Manager of the Times Publication Division, the Head of State at that time, Buhari, displayed total delegation of all our functions. Throughout the period that he was Head of State, he never for once day invited me to discuss what I was doing in Daily Times. There were those who were complaining about the massive reorganisation that Prince Tony Momoh carried out in the publication division and we had to weed out all those tainted with political leanings. And they were power centres but Prince Tony Momoh closed his eyes, did surgical operation, cleaned the place off. All those who were writing petitions to the Office of the Head of State and so on, both Buhari and Idiagbon were throwing the petitions into the dustbin. So, within one year, I was able to take Daily Times from loss and balance the accounts in the first year. By the second year, we were back to profitability because we were given total freehand. What I have noticed of the President now is that he has the ability to delegate as long as he has confidence in you and he has displayed confidence in young party people who are in the cabinet now like Rotimi Amaechi, Fayemi, Shittu and Fashola.

Would you say it is the same confidence that he displayed in the young lady from your state of Ogun, who is entrusted with the highly challenging Ministry of Finance?

I don’t know her  enough. That is why I talked about party people. I have never had any direct dealing with her. In the case of finance, I hope now that budget has been taken out of the Ministry of Finance, the President will now have to do a delicate balancing to ensure that Senator Udo Udo Udoma and Mrs Kemi Adeosun will work as a team to ensure successful performance.