Without Restructuring, 2023 Polls Will Be Futile — Oyinlola

PRINCE Olagunyose Oyinlola, former governor of Osun State, in an interview, insists that without restructuring, the 2023 general elections will end in futility.

The former military administrator of Lagos State and former National Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in an interview with Vanguard, gave insight on how he and others approached former President Olusegun Obasanjo to support President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015. He also spoke on his regrets for leaving PDP for APC, the level of insecurity in the country, Amotekun and other burning national issues.

On your 69th birthday, when Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State visited you in Okuku, you said the PDP crisis started when you were removed as the secretary of the party. What did you mean by this? And did you regret leaving the party at the time?

When we were to elect the National Working Committee, NWC, in 2013, there was an understanding between the President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, and the Governors Forum to the effect that Mr President would give us the chairman and we would supply the secretary. Jonathan declared that Bamanga Tukur was the one he would want to be the chairman.

The chairmanship was zoned to the North-East. A shadow election was held where Shehu Babayo, my predecessor in office as the national secretary, won but his emergence was not meant to be because of the understanding between the governors and the president.

Then, Rotimi Amaechi told him, ‘don’t worry, it is not only the North-East that will elect the chairman, but it is also the whole nation.’ That was how, through the Governors Forum, everybody was brought on board for Bamanga Tukur to emerge as chairman and for me as the secretary of the party.

We started working peacefully, harmonizing things for the progress of the PDP. Then the issue of Mr. President running after the first four years he had come up. And the feeling was that Oyinlola would not come along in that project.

And anything that is not based on sincerity, I would not because of what I want to gain support it. If I know it is not just and right, you will not find me there. And to start with, nobody asked me. At least, you should have asked me first and let me decline. The suspicion was that ‘he will not support it; he is Obasanjo’s boy; he is Babangida’s boy’.

A boy at sixty-something. Why wouldn’t they accord me some level of intelligence to know what to do on my own? To make matters worse, many a time, the NWC would decide on an issue and another committee, a shadow one, would go and change it in Bamanga’s house but it seemed Mr. President (Jonathan) approved of what Bamanga Tukur was doing. One day, I said to Mr President, ‘This your chairman, to me, is behaving like a mole in the party’.

President Jonathan only laughed, and I am happy I was proved right at the end of the day because he (Tukur) did not support his (Jonathan’s) cause at the election. There was a cooked-up story, a very unthinkable one, that I was not duly nominated from the South-West before I became the national secretary.

There was no issue of nomination. Just as the chairmanship was zoned to the North-East, the secretaryship was zoned to the South-West. I paid for my form – I think it cost N500,000 at that time – and I went for election at the national convention in Abuja and I was elected.

When Bamanga was playing his game, I was trying to steer the administration of the party in the right course. Then out of the blues, a court judgment said I was not the secretary, based on what they said, that I was not duly nominated by the South West.

That was an absolutely wrong premise which had no bearing with the process of electing the national secretary. I appealed the judgment. There was a stay of execution of that court order but they would not allow me to go back to my office.

They said when you win, you come back. I went to the Court of Appeal and won. The judgment was given on a Thursday, and on Friday, there was a pronouncement from the NWC that I had been suspended from the party.

That was illogical, in the sense that there must have been a disciplinary process. An offending party member must be taken through the process of a disciplinary action before it comes to handing down punishment. I was never called before any disciplinary committee.

Some newsmen asked me about the pronouncement and I said that could not be and I quoted the section of the party’s constitution which says that you must put an offending party member through this process.

I was not notified of my offense, to start with. Some of them who had some legal brain pointed out to them that ‘what that man is saying is right’. Then they formed a disciplinary committee headed by Umaru Dikko. I received their letter inviting me to appear before the committee.

And I wrote back that while I was on that seat as the national secretary, I took a memo to NEC on the setting up of the disciplinary committee. An observation was raised that our disciplinary committee was not gender-sensitive, that is, there was no female on it and as such, we should include a female as a member of that committee. That memo was therefore withdrawn.

There had not been any NEC until that time that they were calling me. I said the committee was illegal. And two, the last time I knew Umaru Dikko, he was chairman of another party.

I didn’t know when he joined us that he was now heading a disciplinary panel. And finally, by the dictates of the contents of our constitution, as the national secretary, I could only be tried by NEC, not any other organ of the party. So, I did not appear before the committee.

That was when the battle started and the Governors Forum felt short-changed. The initial plan was to make a scarecrow; that if you remove the secretary, change the chairman as well, because we had an agreement. Jonathan refused to change the chairman.

Three people, including David Mark and Adamu Mu’azu, who eventually took over from Bamanga, appealed to him to see reason but he made them empty promise that I would return to my office the following week.

When I was making up my mind to leave the party, I called Tony Anenih of blessed memory and I said, ‘I wouldn’t want you to hear that I took this decision without telling you. I am moving.’ He said, ‘No. I’m in London.

When I return, I will go and meet him (Jonathan) myself because this thing ought to have been settled. When I come, I will either tell you ‘welcome or say bye-bye’. He met Jonathan and he, again, made him promise like he did the before, which he never fulfilled. Seven governors, on that basis, decided|: ‘let’s move out of PDP. Let’s start the movement from PDP so that they will call us and listen to what we are saying.

The leadership will call us.’ Instead of calling us, Bamanga Tukur said those governors who were trying to leave were of no electoral value. Serving governors in the states? At the end of the day, because Bamanga and his team were too full of themselves and would not retrace their steps, a decision was taken that we should move.

Greatest blow to Jonathan and the greatest blow which I know hit President Jonathan was the manner in which we moved. Although it was seven governors that planned the movement, two of them, Jigawa and Niger, backed out at the last minute.

But before the two backed out, the seven states with the governors and all the delegates, in the course of the national convention, walked out and went to the Yar’Adua Centre where we formally declared the New PDP. And that New PDP, too, was a way of saying, ‘We have grievances. Let us talk’. The intention was not to go. But they called our bluff.

And today, the whole thing is history. If you take the votes that President Buhari had from those states out of what he had, Jonathan would have won the election.

That is why I said it was because of me. Looking at what was done to me by the (defunct) ACN, there ought not to have been any relationship with them. with the decision of the seven governors anchored on the unjust removal of Oyinlola as the national secretary, I had no alternative.

They were fighting my cause; wherever they said they were going, I would go. Some of my people asked me, ‘You are going to the ACN despite what they did to you?’ I said, ‘It is not my decision; it is the decision of the group and I have no alternative but to follow them’.

And that is why I said it was all because of me. So, do you have any regret going to the APC? There is a regret in the sense that we thought we had the worst of government in Jonathan but what we went to, honestly, was so incomparable. It made Jonathan a saint. And that is the only regret I had.

Giving the antecedent of President Buhari, being a retired General, and a flash of his action as a military head of state, we had believed that he would straighten things security-wise, economically, and infrastructure wise. Now, mention an area of development that he has been able to tackle boldly, taking an inference from what he did as military head of state.

He is a shadow of what we used to know. Could this be because of age? Or what could be the problem? Honestly, I have not been able to fathom what the reason could be. He is not as old as General Olusegun Obasanjo. And that one is kicking all over the world.

My expectation was that besides being a former head of state, having ruled the country militarily, he had the privilege of having many living former heads of state and presidents that could be a source of information and counseling for him. Yakubu Gowon is there. IBB is there. Obasanjo is there.

Abdulsalami Abubakar is there. He could consult with any of these men at any given time. Nobody has a monopoly of knowledge. Obasanjo was the last human being to buy into the project of making Buhari president and this was because of his knowledge of Buhari. He has been proved right.

So, you were the one who convinced Obasanjo to endorse Buhari? It was a team of Bola Tinubu, Ibikunle Amosun, Bukola Saraki, Kashim Ibrahim , and myself that went and ambushed him at home as early as 7 o’clock in the morning, to convince him.

We said AOBJ, Any Option But Jonathan. If Jonathan was out of it, we asked him why he was reluctant to back Buhari. Baba didn’t agree with us on Buhari but he eventually did. His hesitation has been justified. We promised Nigerians good governance. Our manifesto talked about restructuring.

APC now says it doesn’t even know the meaning of restructuring. You spoke about your former party, APC’s reluctance on restructuring. Do you think it should be a condition that without restructuring, there would be no election in 2023?

It must be noted that without it, the exercise of election in 2023 will be a futility. It is germane to the outcome of that election. That’s all. Talking about the zoning of the presidency in 2023, where do you think the next president should come from?

The constitution of the PDP allows for zoning. If a northern president has held the position for eight years, we said the presidency should move to the South. And in moving to the South, one should consider the zones. There are three zones in the South and three zones in the North. So, let it come to the South before we know which of the zones should go for it.

If, on the basis of equity, we have had a democratically elected president from the South-West, we now have a democratically elected vice president from the South-West and we have had a democratically elected president from the South-South.

In the southern divide, I want to believe the South-East is the only one that has not had the opportunity to produce the president. If we belong to the same Nigeria, equity, fair play should be the watchwords.

So, you are advocating that the South-East should produce the next president? By my analysis, it goes without saying. Some people would say regional outfits like Amotekun can resolve the security crisis the country currently has. What is your opinion on this?

When the national agency that is charged with the preservation of life and property seems to be so hopeless that lives are lost at an alarming rate, then somebody would think of how to protect himself and his people.

And that is why I was mad with some people that asked why anybody should form Amotekun. You can’t protect me, can you? I can’t go on the road without being exposed to the risk of getting kidnapped, robbed, or killed and you are telling me not to fortify my area to protect my people. If that is what will give us security, let everybody do their own Amotekun.

The North-West and North-East should probably do theirs to resolve the Boko Haram, bandits crises there… There are recognized authorized security outfits there like the civilian JTF etc. and they are operating.

You must take some drastic steps to address a serious situation. I recall when I was in Lagos, when, as a by-product of the agitation for the actualization of June 12, the situation was getting to a point of lawlessness; robberies here and there.

That was what led us to institute Operation Sweep. And that took care of all the nonsense. It was replicated in almost all the states of the federation. So, the concept of Amotekun is nothing new.

Ayooluwa Joshua