Afenifere chieftain and Chairman of the defunct Presidential Advisory Committee on National Conference, Senator Femi Okurounmu, speaks with Assistant Editor (South West), MUYIWA OLALEYE, on the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, corruption in the land and the North’s attitude to power.
How would you assess the federal government led by Buhari after the first 100 days?
Buhari’s administration is not different from those of his predecessors, knowing he is a military man. Military man will always be a military man. When Buhari ruled this same Nigeria as military head of state, we knew what happened concerning his achievements. Though no one is perfect, he needs to buckle up on the security of the entire nation. On the recent anti-corruption move by him, I can give him a pass mark, but he has a lot of work to do to take Nigeria to greater heights.
Do you see President Buhari implementing the recommendations of the national conference?
Those of us who believed that only former President Goodluck Jonathan was committed to implementing the resolutions of the conference made it clear before the elections that if Buhari won, that would be the end of the recommendations of the conference. We predicted this and shouted from the rooftops, but the people knew better and they have chosen him. So, I am not surprised that he is not keen on implementing the resolutions. We support all the measures taken by Buhari so far, like the war on corruption, but we believe that if we implement the report of the National Conference, the tendency towards corruption will reduce permanently.
You recently applauded the president on his anti-corruption war. What informed the action?
Corruption was a way of life to all previous administrations. However, it became pronounced and institutionalised under Ibrahim Babangida. He made it a national culture and then his successor, Sani Abacha, took it to a higher level, followed by Abdulsalami Abubakar. It kept on getting worse, up to the Olusegun Obasanjo regime. We are not saying that Jonathan’s regime is not corrupt, but we are saying corruption is not the only problem. If we are going to tackle corruption, let us do it holistically and really begin from Babangida’s regime because all the characters of that regime are still alive.
The evidence of their corrupt acts is still available, like the Halliburton scandal. The report of the investigation that was conducted is still on the president’s table. All those involved were mentioned, as well as the bribes they took. The report has been available long before Jonathan became president, but nothing was done. So, what we are saying is that corruption has always been entrenched in our government. To blame Jonathan for it is unfair. If you remember how Umaru Yar’Adua and Jonathan got into power, in fact, they were funded by the most corrupt governors in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) at the time. Most of the governors that sponsored Yar’Adua were the most corrupt and had even been indicted by the Nuhu Ribadu-led Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). The Commission gave the report to Obasanjo.
Obasanjo then blackmailed those governors to shelve their presidential ambitions because he wanted to impose Yar’Adua and he made them to fund Yar’Adua’s campaign. And you know when a person is funded by corrupt people, how can the person turn around and fight the same people? When Yar’Adua got to power, the closest people to him were those corrupt people who funded him. When you owe your electoral victory to those corrupt people that funded your campaign, it would be too much for you to fight them. So, that hampered Yar’Adua and Jonathan because their administrations were products of corruption.
How do you see the current appointments by Buhari?
Being a Yoruba man, I am not happy with the unbalancing of the appointment. Buhari had a reputation for ethnic bias and when we said it during the election, they said we were lying. The change the All Progressives Congress (APC) was talking about meant two different things. The APC in the North saw change as an opportunity to return power to the region, while those in the South West were looking for genuine social change. At the end, the North just used the South West to climb back into Aso Rock.
But the Yoruba have Bola Tinubu as one of the stakeholders in APC.
We are all human beings, and I believe no one is perfect. The tale of Tinubu is a long one, which can be compared with the former Afoja in Ilorin in 1817. Ilorin used to be under the Oyo Empire and was the headquarters of an Oyo General, Afonja. But Afonja rebelled against the empire and helped bring about its collapse with the assistance of the Fulani. Afonja was assisted by Shehu Alimi, who was a Fulani leader. In 1824, Afonja was assassinated and Alimi’s son became Emir and Ilorin became an emirate of the Sokoto Caliphate.
It was naive of Tinubu to think that Buhari would just get power and he (Tinubu) would become the kingmaker of Nigeria. That was what Tinubu expected and that was why we kept reminding him of the Ilorin episode. We told him that once Buhari got power, he would turn around and just forget about him and implement a Northern hegemonic agenda which Buhari is doing now.
In 1960, the Sardauna of Sokoto, Ahmadu Bello, made a statement publicly that the Northerners should regard Nigeria as their conquered territory and that they own Nigeria. He said the entire South West and South East should be regarded as conquered territories and that the North should never allow the South to govern. This statement was widely reported in the media. It was in the West African Pilot of October 12, 1960. The quote was boldly published. So, the keys to the chains of slavery we thought we could use to break free were just given back to the North by the APC. The APC became an agent of oppression and enslavement. We can all see that Buhari only tricked Tinubu to get power back to the North.
First of all, a Vice President has no power. A Vice President can just be sitting at his table and be reading newspapers for four years. A Vice President in a presidential system anywhere in the world does not have any power. Even in the American system which we copied, most people do not even remember who the Vice President is. Even when Jonathan was the President, what powers did his deputy have? Nothing much. So, we should stop saying we have the Vice President.
We, Yoruba, are very educated and we shouldn’t be fooled so easily. Look at the 36 state governors and their deputies. How many deputy governors have power? The relationship is the same between the President and his deputy. The Vice President is as powerful as the President wants him to be. If the President doesn’t want him to see anything happening, he cannot see anything and he has no choice. So, being a Vice President is not anything to be proud of.
Look at the power configuration in Nigeria today. There are three arms of government – the executive, legislature and the judiciary. The executive is headed by Buhari who is a Northerner. The two houses of the federal legislature (the Senate and the House of Representatives) are headed by Northerners (Bukola Saraki and Yakubu Dogara respectively). The Chief Justice, Mahmoud Mohammed, who heads the judiciary, is also a Northerner. So, the entire government is completely in the hands of the Northerners.
To compound it all, look at all the appointments that Buhari has been making. About 90 per cent of his appointees are Northerners. In the first appointment he made, eight were from the North while only one was from the South. Subsequently, he made about 30 appointments and only six are from the South and the rest from the North. And if you look at all the important offices today, they are all in control of the North including security agencies like the Comptrollers General of Immigration and Customs. Even those surrounding the President personally are all Northerners, except the Senior Special Adviser on Media, Femi Adesina, who is in charge of polishing Buhari’s public image.
So, is this the change we were asked to vote for? I am sure this was not what Tinubu had in mind and this is what we are getting. Southerners have never had it so bad in Nigeria. We have a President whose plan is to extend the Fulani empire to the South and to the Atlantic which has always been their goal.