The Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland, Gani Adams, on Thursday spoke with the press in Lagos on the state of the nation. Deputy Editor, BOLA BADMUS who was there brings excerpts:
Not a few Nigerians were surprised reading your recent open letter to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. In that open letter, you used some very harsh words to describe Tinubu’s government to the extent that you said the president has failed. Couldn’t you have been more lenient on him and his government? Some feel that you, as a Yoruba leader, should not have made the letter an open one, what is your reaction?
I will start from the last question. I, as a Yoruba leader, if I keep quiet on the wrongdoing of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in four years, or even in eight years, if another tribe becomes a president, if I talk, what would Nigerians say? The perception of some people is that because I kept quiet for about 16 months, I had been bought over by the government. Let us start from the beginning of his government.
When he came on board, the first day, from part of his speech, he laid down sorrow for the entire Nigerians. We read the speech that was written for him. There was no removal of fuel subsidy there.
Verbally, he said the fuel subsidy is gone. That day, we had a meeting in Lekki, and we tried to watch the inauguration. Immediately after the closing of the ceremony, we moved. You know, the speech became a policy immediately. All the fuel stations closed down to wait for the arrival of the new pump price. The sorrow started from that day. Some people called me, I said, let’s wait for him in the next six months, he is our brother.
We tried to digest him and after six months, we realised his policy is multi-taxation in various sectors. The people always rush to get an admission in federal universities because they are much cheaper. Now when you get an admission to a federal university, it is even costlier than some state universities. I’m not talking about private universities.
Look, if you are being destroyed by the government and you keep quiet, the person destroying you did not commit the sin, it is you that kept quiet that committed the sin. Ordinarily, I could not have waited for 16 months to react to this government, it is because he is a Yoruba man and we have to be conscious of tribe in politics.
The issue of tribe is number one in any politics in the world. The first thing that decides any politics is tribe. The second is religion. The third one is establishment to decide what will happen in any political space. So, for the seat I occupy as the Aare Ona Kakanfo, I was very, very careful to issue a statement against him.
This is because ordinary people on the street will say why is Aare Ona Kakanfo attacking his kinsman that is president? I was reluctant. When the #EndBadGovernance protest held, and it was painful what the Nigeria police and other security agencies did to the protesters. I had been in that shoe. I started protesting against the military, against anti-democracy, against the annulment of June 12, 1993 election at the age of 23 years. As I was watching it (the protest) online, I was reluctant to say anything. I asked what would I say? These are the young ones protesting for good governance, but I could not say this as I do not want to them to say Aare is encouraging them to destroy my government.
I listened to the demand of these young guys. I do not know them. The only person I know in that protest is Sowore. Sowore and I have not seen eye to eye for more than 20 years and Ebun Adegboruwa happens to be my lawyer. But I listened to the demand of these young protesters. The 10 or 12 demands are what Nigeria needs.
Okay, you made an arrest of about 3,000 people after the protests. In normal protests, police know what to charge protesters for. You charged them for treason and terrorism.
If you charge a protester with a placard with terrorism, what will you charge Boko Haram? What will you charge the terrorist that is disturbing people in Zamfara State, who is even taking money from the community every month?
Now Mr. President has increased the pump price of petrol three times. When he came on board, it moved to N530. After about four months, they jacked it up to N680. Now you jacked it up to N870. Three times within 16 months. Even if you are paying N70,000 salary to civil servants, how can they survive? Fuel is being sold at the petrol station for N1,000 to 1,500. For someone working in the office, salary cannot even solve the problem of fuel, not to talk of feeding. We are talking of a bag of rice that now sells for N95,000 or thereabouts. How will the people survive?
Some people might be seeing the kind of letter you wrote as simply as jelousy, that you are the arrowhead of a group of Yoruba people who are jealous of Tinubu and his ascendancy to the office. How would you react to that?
How will I be jealous of his office? When he came to power, even before he came to power, I did not antagonise him. I did not make a categorical statement when they were campaigning. His people came to me, I said, ‘okay, go ahead.’ In his wisdom, Peter Obi was here for three hours. This man said a lot of things that were encouraging to make me endorse him. But because I was being very careful, I could not endorse him and I could not endorse anybody. This is because my conscience will not rest. This man (Obi) can come with his personality to my house for three hours early in the morning, I did not endorse him, in fact it was in the media. He (Tinubu) did not come, though he is my brother.
He did not even invite me that we should meet in any way or to come anywhere. But he sent people and at the end of the day, started poaching on my structure but I kept quiet. This is because I know the implication of saying anything against him as a Yoruba man.
I kept quiet, I played my neutrality. It is not because I am afraid of anybody. Politics is of local interest. Every human being is a political animal. When he was sworn in, I wrote a letter of congratulations not even in private, I sent it to the media and I have written about three letters to him on the state of the nation. There was no reply to any of the letters. Most of the things I said in this letter, some of them are part of the letters I wrote to him earlier about the fuel price increment. I said even if you cannot bring it to the price of Buhari, reduce the amount you added to it.
I advised him about social security. I am a regular traveller. One of the issues that solve the issue of insecurity in Western world is the social security.
I advised him about structural imbalance in the letter, no reply. In my own lifetime, I had had dealings with Obasanjo, Yar’dua, Jonathan, Buhari and himself. I wrote the four leaders before him and they replied me through their Chiefs of Staff. They might not have replied all the letters but they normally acknowledge.
Whereas it is my kinsman that is there, I have written four letters, no reply. People started calling me, ‘you are the Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland, will you be watching us? All these things are bouncing on us, what’s your effort?’ Before you know it, people will be saying different things on the social media, like what is the reason for creating Aare Ona Kakanfo stool? Before I became the Aare Ona Kakanfo, I had been fighting for the cause of Nigerians and Yoruba people. Now I am on this seat, will I be silent on what will destroy the future of my children and the generation that is coming?
You cannot keep quiet when somebody at the helm of affairs wants to destroy your future. Multi-taxation, anti-people policies and you are trying to justify them, that you are doing reform? When the people you want to govern die… you lose thousands of people who are dying every day, and you say you want to reform. You want to reform and you are not stopping corruption. Any person that comes to your party will not be probed by EFCC. Any person that is your ally, no matter how much he stole, you will not probe him and you want to reform? There is no way you can institue reforms anywhere in the whole world without fighting corruption.
When Jonathan was in power, you supported pro-democracy activists on various protests. Even Tinubu himself and Buhari protested to the National Assembly against the PDP-led government. When Jonathan increased the fuel price, your local state television, LTV, was the television that was transmitting the protests in Ojota live.
Now you are in government, the first thing you did was to go to court to say that Labour must not go on strike, must not protest. You went to take an injunction. I have never seen a government getting injunction in Nigeria because it does not want Labour to go on strike.
Strike is that if you do not pay us, we will sit at home, we will not go to work. You went to court. As a government, you took injunction against the Nigeria Labour Congress!
So you took injunction, you held Labour to ransom for six months. The people that were already tired said you should reduce the price of fuel, you should reduce hike in electricity tariff. They made 10 demands. They said they wanted N250,000 as minimum wage. In dollars, N250,000 is not even up to $200 as the minimum wage.
At the end of the day, you said you will pay N70,000. You did not allow the Labour leader to rest. The police were inviting him every time. They were harassing him. But we do not blame the government. Some Labour leaders have turned coat.
We do not have a strong labour leader like the ones we had before. TUC was not helping matters. TUC was not flowing the way NLC is flowing. Even Labour is still trying. TUC is so weak to the extent that anything government said, TUC would first appreciate it before the NLC. Assuming the Labour as a body is so active, all those young guys will not come out to say they want to protest.
This is because the Labour Congress is the parent body of a lot of activists. It is because every civil society is always affiliated to the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC). But because the shoes they are supposed to wear, they did not wear the shoes, young people just came and said they could not continue with the inaction. The other day when they arrested the Labour president, they started bringing up things. When I heard that the NLC funded the protest with about N80bn, I laughed.
If somebody has N2bn, he can even start a guerrilla war. You cannot be running government on the basis of deceit, propaganda, and going on with it. I am a Yoruba man. I will tell you I love my race to the core. I am not a tribalist. But politics is about local interests. I love my person/people in power, but I believe in justice. This is because the Yoruba person is not the only person in Nigeria. If we still believe Nigeria should be the commonwealth, we have to share the positions.
Are you not worried that Tinubu’s government might come after you for writing that kind of letter?
When you are a freedom fighter, you prepared yourself beyond that, government is not God. For you to think that somebody will be after you and you represent the people, you would not say the truth, and you would now lose your good name when you are still alive. You will lose your good name if you don’t say the truth.
It’s better you don’t occupy a position than to occupy the position and you don’t represent the people. What I wrote to him is just an advice. Those who might see the letter in another light are not democrats
Buhari was there before Tinubu, I was saying my own mind. Do you know how many letters I wrote when Buhari was in power when there was security threat on Yoruba land? I wrote more than six letters. I even issued more than 50 press statements against the government and Buhari was a military man, a General.
Buhari did not go the extra the mile to get an injunction to stop the Labour from going on strike. Buhari did not even call protesters terrorists, but you, a political activist, are doing that, in a democracy! Look, one of his offices in Victoria Island before he got to power as president, do you know what he wrote there? “Freedom House”! A man that wrote “Freedom House” as the inscription on his office; who, when you were campaigning, you said ‘we want to fight for you, we want to make sure you have freedom’, and you now became president and you want to turn Nigeria to a police state!
But you as a Yoruba leader, did you have to make your advice public?
Yoruba is quite different a tribe. When Obasanjo was there, we Yoruba criticised him. We are different from the Northerners who pampered their people when they are in power. This is because we always think about the future, that if you don’t act with justice, the power would shift from us to another tribe. That is the way we think in Yorubaland.
Even as I am talking about the Tinubu-led government, if anything wants to happen to him, when I know he is doing the right thing, I would defend him. When he went to the Supreme Court on the local government issue, we issued a statement and applauded him.
But now when you are bringing a policy that wants to destroy us, our guardian angel would not be happy with us if we don’t speak up about it. This is very important. The level of hunger in Nigeria is becoming alarming. Hardly can you see someone who is not a multi-millionaire that will take three square meals.
Now if you want to go to Ibadan with one vehicle like a jeep, going to Ibadan to and fro, you will spend nothing less than N250,000 to fuel your tank. That’s just on one vehicle and people like me, I always travel with four or five vehicles. Where would I get such money, and you want me to keep quiet because I am a Yoruba man? So you are telling me that going to Ibadan, just Ibadan here, which is about 120 or 140kms distance, I would be spending about N1million to buy fuel? If I go with six vehicles, that would be N1.5million.
Some people are saying that were the president not to be your kinsman, would you still have written this kind of letter you wrote?
I wrote a lot of letters to Buhari. Go and see the one I wrote to the United Nations about Buhari. I wrote about four or five letters to Buhari and we saw how Buhari acted on them. What is happening to the letter, did I call him a thief, did I call him a criminal? More than six letters were written to Buhari. Somebody you don’t have access to, how do you communicate him?
You don’t have access, but did you ever make a move to have an appointment with him at any point in time?
If you were the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, do you need people to tell you they want to see you before you call the stakeholders and meet them for good governance?
As Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland, do I need to write the president that I need to see him before he says haa! to one of his aides, call Aare for me, I want to meet him. Did you know how I met Jonathan? I did not write a letter to him before I met him. I did not write letter to Obasanjo before I met him. I met Obasanjo as president through National Peace Forum, and Okorocha was Special Adviser to Obasanjo then.
When we held the conference, Okorocha now said we were going to the Villa. I dodged the vehicle because I didn’t want to go to the Villa. Okorocha now entered the vehicle and asked, “where is Gani?” I wanted to dodge that meeting at the Villa but Okorocha found out that I was not in the bus that would take us the Villa. He looked for me and told me “you have to go with us, Mr. President wants to see you.” So when we got the Villa, I sat very far from where the president sat. Okorocha removed the person on Number 4 seat to the president, saying he wanted me to sit very close to Mr. President and repeated: “Mr. President wants to see you.”
Given the state of the nation, what advice would you give to Mr. President on the way out for the country?
My position is that the president should reduce the price of fuel to either N300 or N400. That’s my position. He should reduce it for Nigerians to have peace, so that the people you said you want to reform the country for will not die before you even get to 50 percent of that reform. He should also reduce the price of electricity and should equally work on the multi taxation policy of his administration. He should be lenient on the people. That’s my position.
The electricity tarrifs have adversely affected the cost of living a lot. Aside the fuel price hike, the issue of electricity has also affected a lot of things negatively. And power is transient, power is not forever.
Buhari started in 2015 as if he would not finish his tenure. Gradually, he left in 2023. How many people are saying good things about Buhari now? And Buhari’s policies were not even as harsh on Nigerians at once within one year. He was doing it gradually, but within 16 months, Tinubu had imposed harsh economic policies on Nigerians. So, I am appealing to Mr. President that he should reduce the price of fuel in the interest of Nigeria and Nigerians. If they want to make money to run the government, they should allow Dangote to take crude oil, refine and sell it at his own price and even the Port Harcourt Refinery, let it start working.
The issue of insecurity, being the Aare Onakakanfo of Yoruba land and OPC leader, do you have any constraints in addressing this in the South West and what advice would you give to Northern leaders on this as the region is majorly affected?
It is not about Northern leaders, it is about the government and the need for them to restructure. If you don’t restructure, you are wasting your time. Our leaders will continue to be blamed. When people say President Tinubu is used to taking hard decisions, why can’t he take hard decisions to restructure Nigeria? Emeka Anyaoku, one of the globally respected citizens, led a group to meet the president recently. They told him to change the constitution. To me that is the solution and they even told him that he should allow people to form a Constituent Assembly. In my view, they have given the president a blueprint, the recommendations of the National Conference in 2014, about 640 items are there, even state police is there. But in the wisdom of the senior citizens, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, Chief Segun Osoba and the representative of that group was seated at the front, they are representatives from the six geo political zone – they met Mr. President. What did Mr. President say? He said he was not interested in touching the constitution or even to have a new constitution but that he was interested in working on the economy for now. The man that told us they wanted to work on economy increased fuel prices within three weeks after the meeting.
Do you know who convinced Jonathan to organise National Conference? It was Professor Bolaji Akinyemi. He single-handedly did that. A lot of people from the Ijaw National Conference had earlier been telling him to organise this conference and restructure the country, and that if he did it for Nigeria, everything would be well, but he did not listen. But Professor Akinyemi went to him and sat with him for just 25 minutes. Jonathan said Prof., you have convinced me, I will do it, and within two weeks, he set up a committee to start the national conference. Professor Akinyemi and Chief Anyaoku, a former Commonwealth Secretary-General came to you. They are well respected citizens. They said Mr. President please let us have a new constitution for this country. Diplomatically he threw the idea away, saying it was not in his plan to have a new constitution, that he wanted to work on the economy. You said you wanted to work on the economy, and within two or three weeks, you increased fuel price from N630 to over N800 and even more. Where are we going?
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