National Chairman of the Alliance for Democracy (AD), Senator Mojisoluwa Akinfenwa, speaks with Assistant Editor (South West), MUYIWA OLALEYE, on his experiences in Nigerian politics as well as issues pertaining to the current standing of his party.
Before the onset of the current dispensation, you had been around. You were a commissioner in the then Oyo State when the soldiers struck. What were your experiences at the time?
It was nothing to write home about, because if I start narrating the ordeal you would cry. We were first taken to a Government House at Onireke, where they treated us fairly well. We spent about three weeks there before they hounded us in an open-roof vehicle to Agodi Prisons. When we got there, they took our luggage and removed our belts. We held our trousers with our hands. They removed our wrist watches and put all 27 of us in a little cell, where there were only three double-decker beds and three floor beds. There was no toilet. In the night, they would bring a bucket and cover it with sack. It was inside it that we would defecate and urinate, right inside the room. When (late) Bola Ige and Bisi Akande were brought in, I had to hand them the bedspread, with which I covered myself. They locked us up from six in the evening till 7am.
How did your relatives feel in the face of all these?
They felt so bad because we couldn’t get in touch with anyone of them for the first nine months. And how did we finally manage to get in touch with them? It was through me. When I was Commissioner for Education, I helped a certain man enrol his child in school without delay, because then, we made it (school enrolment) tough; it was by merit. As fate would have it, that man happened to be one of the warders and he recognised me. Shocked and sympathetic to my plight, he offered to assist us by taking letters to our family members. When it was Papa (Michael) Ajasin’s birthday, he smuggled fried chicken and snacks with which he celebrated. That is to tell you to be careful: the man you will meet on your way up may be the man you will meet on your way down. When I was in grace, that warder met me. When I was on grass, I met him. In prison, I was the Pastor. I conducted morning and evening prayers and full church service on Sundays. If they knew I was going to preach, almost all the detainees would come and they would feel relieved. One nurse came to check our blood pressure and after about three weeks, she stopped checking me because whenever she checked my blood pressure, it was the same 110/70 or 120/80. I knew that I was innocent, so, I was confident. There was no evidence whatsoever against me.
The cars I bought were on hire purchase from the late Abdul Azeez Arisekola-Alao. When I was commissioner, I sat on over 45 percent of the total budget of the state. I awarded contracts of over N200 million. I did not receive a soft drink for a thank-you for those four years. I did not have an inch of land in Ibadan let alone a house. I left government almost as a pauper. There was an occasion my tyre burst on the way from Ilesa to Ibadan and I had to bring out the jerk and fix the problem. A commissioner for education! Bola Ige, our governor, was receiving N20,000 a year and I was on N14,000 a year. That time, money was not used to buy voters. Rather, they donated money to us to contest election. So, what were we going into government to do? We had no money to recoup. We had to serve the people and that was what we did. Governor Bola Ige’s house, a bungalow, in Esa-Oke, was built with mud. The one he built in Ibadan was contractor-financed. His car was a fairly-used V-Boot. That was how we served the nation. But, unfortunately, we were rounded up by General Muhammadu Buhari, our current president, and thrown in jail.
What were your experiences during your tenure as commissioner?
It was indeed very okay. When I was the Commissioner for Education, Mrs. (Tejumade) Alakija, daughter of the Ooni of Ife, who later became the Head of Service, was the Permanent Secretary in the ministry. Our programme of free education was excellent and was fully prosecuted. There were free textbooks, lockers and chairs. We gave each student a set, which they were to use till they would leave the school. We equipped science laboratories and I followed it to the letter. There was no month that I did not visit schools across the state to monitor the supply of free materials to schools and to see the seriousness of the teachers. It was a perfect system. In fact, one of the students attended a conference in Erin and when I was talking, he stood up and said that he was one of the beneficiaries of the free education policy and that he was now a Ph.D holder. It was a successful programme and it can’t be compared to anything now. We were honest about it.
You were rumoured to have had problems with Bisi Akande. What really was it?
Chief Bisi Akande was my friend. Three of us, Akande, Ayo Ojewunmi and I, were very close and were Bola Ige’s Special Advisers. Every weekend, when we were in government, we would either go to his place at Ila, where I had a room, or my place at Erin-Ijesa, where we would sleep in the same room. That is to tell you how close Bisi and I were. I made him governor. He didn’t want to be. He said he wanted me to be governor. If we had gone to the primaries, Bisi wouldn’t have been governor because he would have lost. As soon as he was released from jail, he went to Lagos with his family, vowing not to play politics again in his life because he didn’t want to go to jail – again. But I appealed to him. They said I should be the chairman of our group in Osun State; but I said no, Akande should and that I would support him. Once you saw me, you would see him. I am telling you this to show you how much I loved him. However, when he was in government, he antagonised me, but I didn’t worry. When there was the need for a convention to choose our party chairman in December 2003, I wrote to him that I wanted to contest the election. I asked for his support and he replied that he would forever cherish our friendship and my support for him, particularly during his imprisonment in Agodi, when I testified at the tribunal in his favour and for saving him when he was threatened with impeachment for refusing to be a corrupt governor. He ended the letter by promising to support my chairmanship ambition.
I suddenly discovered that Senator Bola Tinubu had been manipulating things at the National Assembly. He wanted to create a political empire for himself. He wanted to be the Awolowo of his own time. He wanted to form a party that he would control and eventually merge to a party that he wanted. He was the only rich governor among the South-West governors. How he got the money, only God knows. He started to support some AD members financially and he decided that Akande should be the party’s chairman. This was after I had told Akande about my intention. They had a grand plan. So, we met in Abuja to organise a national convention. We fixed the date and venue, paid N750,000 at the Eagle Square. A week to the convention, Tinubu knew that I would likely win the election, so he published in a newspaper that the AD convention would now hold at Onikan Stadium in Lagos. Our delegates didn’t take him seriously, to be modest. Eighty percent of them came to Abuja. The committee set up by Akande, Tinubu and the late Lam Adesina came and conducted the national convention where I emerged as the party chairman. They also went ahead to conduct a kangaroo convention in Lagos, where they said Akande emerged as chairman. We went to court. Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) did not recognise either of us.
Why did INEC fail to recognise your part?
They penetrated INEC. Money is bad! The then INEC chairman, (Abel) Guobadia, was a failure. He knew that the Abuja election was constitutionally convened, yet, he didn’t send anybody there. Akande went to court saying they should compel INEC to recognise him. As soon as I heard that, I asked for a joinder. When they saw my document and realised that they would not win, Akande resigned and withdrew the case and was made the chairman of the Action Congress (AC). Shouldn’t they have left the AD alone? No, they didn’t. They brought Michael Koleosho from nowhere to be the National Chairman of AD. Guobadia kept quiet. A man of honour would have said no to Koleoso. Koleosho was my friend but he teamed up with them and the issue resulted in a protracted court case. All the money allocated by INEC to parties was allocated to Koleosho’s faction, which was not known to the law. I pressed the issue in court until 2011, when God nearly pushed them away. They later said they wanted the AD to merge with the ACN. I had the certificate of the party in my possession and there was no way they could merge the AD with another party without surrendering the certificate to INEC. They agreed that people could join if they wanted to and the rest could hold their convention and remain AD. That was how we held the 2011 election where I emerged as the national chairman. That was the first time INEC recognised me as the national chairman of the party since 2003.