Reno Omokri served as an aide to former President Goodluck Jonathan between 2010 and 2015. The outspoken gospeller is an activist in his own right. In this interview with TAIWO ADISA, he speaks on Atiku, Obi, his open support for President Bola Tinubu and his association with the National Security Adviser, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, among other issues. Excerpts:
You were a loyalist of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar until after the 2023 election. Why have you abandoned him?
I helped Atiku Abubakar put together his Media Team and, in the course of doing that, I brought one or two persons who have served quite well in the Team. But a few of them turned out to be backstabbers and very disloyal to me personally. And I sat down and gave Atiku the opportunity to do the right thing because loyalty must be met with loyalty. When I am loyal to someone, it is 100 percent loyalty and I expect loyalty back, and with the kind of almost blind loyalty I gave him, I expected him to take action. And when he did not take action, I didn’t take any action publicly until I went directly to him to say, ‘Sir, listen, because of this thing you have done, I can no longer be with you and Iam going to pitch my tent somewhere else’.
Was that after election?
Yes. I had made up my mind even before the election. I called a trusted person that was trusted between me and Atiku and I told the person that, whatever the case, after the election and either Atiku wins or not, I am going to leave him because of this thing. The person is still alive. Atiku Abubakar will continue to have that problem because he is not able to know the difference between loyalty and sycophancy.
Other than that, Waziri Atiku Abubakar has what it takes to be Nigeria’s leader. He is almost at the par with Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
There are people that believe that you are being unleashed on Peter Obi by the current government. What do you say to that?
That is absolutely untrue. This present government does not view Peter Obi as its main opposition. So, why will they unleash me on him? They view their main opposition, rightly or wrongly, as core northern politicians who are against the president.
If you look at the 2023 election result, Tinubu got more votes from the North-West than from his own region in the South-West. If I were him, I would be more concerned with what people from the North-West and other part of the North are saying. The entire voting population of the South-East is probably not up to that of Kano State and the president is a very brilliant electioneering strategist. So, there is no point in unleashing someone like myself, with the capacity I have, on Peter Obi.
So would it be right to say your support for the president is a way of backing your sister, First Lady Oluremi Tinubu?
My support for President Tinubu is propelled by three factors. Two years ago, I went to Nigeria and I said that any government that has Mallam Nuhu Ribadu in it, I cannot fight that government. This is because I value my relationship with Ribadu more than the relationship I have with anybody other than my father, mother and immediate siblings. This man has been close to me and has trusted me and I won’t fight any government that he is in. I also said, while we were campaigning, because I was part of the people that helped Waziri Atiku to put together his manifesto. I said we were going to do four major things; we will remove fuel subsidy; float the Naira; restructure the country for the local government to have autonomy and give students loans. Now, what we planned to do, Tinubu is now doing. My disappointment with Waziri is that, on some of the things we said we were going to do, which Asiwaju is already doing, he now said to me that Tinubu should not have removed it the way he did. But I said there is no way to do it because Nigeria could not afford this thing because we were borrowing to sustain it and it was affecting our economy. And what were Nigerians using the subsidized Naira to do? $200m importing human hair. $75m importing French champagne. 25m pounds sterling importing Scotch whiskey. We were not using the money to transfer technology, maybe like buying books, getting heavy equipment and all that.
I was a bit disappointed when Atiku was taking back what we had agreed we were going to do. When I saw that, I said I was going to support Tinubu. Yes, there was pressure on me by prominent Itsekiris, but it was not because of that. If it can be put down to one person, it is not an Itsekiri person that has done a lot for me other than my parents. You might not know this – I became a Special Assistant to president (Jonathan) because of Nuhu Ribadu. So, I am not going to turn around to fight a government that has somebody who has been so good to me. The man did not ask me to do what I am doing, though.
You’ve spoken about Ribadu and the policies, what is the other factor propelling your support for President Tinubu?
The other reason is historical in nature. Nigeria, as it is presently constituted, is not what we agreed with the British. It was forced on us by General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, after the coup staged by mostly Igbo officers, which wiped out the best of our post-independent leaders.For the first six years of our existence as an independent nation, Nigeria had regions with full powers of resource control and who were free to do as they pleased, except to secede.
For example, two of the three regions (the West and East) had diplomatic relations with Israel, while the North rejected it. There was economic competition, which spurred growth. At that time, the South-West was so advanced that the Saudi Royal Family used to have their medicals at the University College Hospital, Ibadan. Western Nigeria had universal free basic education before many European countries and was the pacesetter for progressive policies in Nigeria.
The immediate post-independence Nigeria was not a British construct. Our leaders sat down and agreed to form a loose union. We would have even got our independence before Ghana, but the North was not ready, and there were quarrels between Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe.
Chief Obafemi Awolowo mooted the idea of a secession clause in 1954 during the Lagos Constitutional Conference, but Nnamdi Azikiwe rejected it, galvanising a majority of the conference attendees to kill the idea. After this was rejected, Chief Awolowo again wrote to the then Governor General of Nigeria, who rejected the clause on the grounds that the majority, led by Nnamdi Azikiwe, did not support it. Because of Nnamdi Azikiwe, section 86 was inserted into our constitution with the proviso that if any region should secede, it would be an act of treason.
With the coup of January 15, 1966, in which several of our best leaders were killed, there were initial nationwide celebrations until the dust had settled and the rest of the nation realised that the Igbo coup plotters did not kill leaders from the Eastern Region. And when Ironsi replaced the elected Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa, instead of installing the next ranking member of parliament from the ruling Northern Peoples Congress (Zanna Bukar Dipcharima), protests broke out.
And then, rather unwisely, Mr. Ironsi promulgated Decree Number 34 on May 24, 1966, which effectively ended regionalism, took control of all resources, including oil resources, and domiciled them in his military government. That decree ignited the counter-coup of July 29, 1966, during which Ironsi was killed and replaced with Lt. Colonel Yakubu Gowon. Over the years, there have been relentless calls for restructuring, a return to something close to what we had pre-1966.
So my support for President Bola Tinubu today is because he is the first Nigerian President to try to bring Nigeria to that utopian state we were before the January 15, 1966 coup. One of his cardinal programmes was the promise to reform Nigeria by devolving power to the lower levels of government. With the judgment of the Supreme Court on Thursday, July 11, 2024, that is coming to fruition.
And by the time the Tax Reform Billsare passed into law, Nigeria will begin to look more like the idyllic pre-January 15, 1966 paradise before we were cast out of the Garden of Eden.This leads me to see President Tinubu as our own George Washington, the father of modern Nigeria. This is beginning to look like the Nigeria we agreed with the British to have as a country.
Some people will also say that as a cleric and social critic, you should be criticising government policies that are harsh on the common man but we are seeing the opposite. Don’t you see confusion in that?
I have criticised Tinubu. The thing there is, he is doing many more things that are praised-worthy than things to be criticised. If he does things that demand criticism, I will definitely criticize him. Let me give you an example; if you recall when they had the days of rage in August, I wrote a public letter to him demanding that he comes back from France because you cannot be in France while your country is in turmoil. I cannot just be attacking somebody for the sake of attack. There must be a reason. You can’t be doing well and I will be criticising you. There must be a basis. When Buhari was there, I commended him seventeen times. Was I his friend? No.
Are you still a member of the PDP and if Atiku comes out in 2027, will you support him or Asiwaju?
I will support Asiwaju over and over again and I have reasons for that. Look at his reforms, they are working. For the first time in Nigeria’s history, we have six cycles of trade surpluses, which means that we are now exporting more than we are importing. And this last December was a big example of that. The reforms have made the Naira to lose a lot of its value and, because of that, Nigerians cannot afford to buy imported things. It means there was an influx of foreigners from Europe and also Nigerians in the diaspora who came to Nigeria, particularly Lagos and South-West for what they call ‘Detty December’. Things are now cheap in Nigeria for them because of the low value of the Naira.
Also, agricultural exports are going up because of the low value of the Naira. This is the same thing that happened in Vietnam. This was how they revamped their economy in Vietnam. They devalued their currency so that it made their people to stop importing and then you now ramp up local production and when it is so much that it cannot be consumed by the domestic population, it makes you to export.
When this man took over office, Nigeria was a net importer of PMS. We didn’t have a single refinery and in 18 months, we now have three refineries that are working. And for the first time in Nigeria, the price of petrol went down. It always goes up but this time it went down and there was no scarcity too.
You met Tinubu sometimes ago, what did you tell him or what did he tell you?
I told him that he is doing very well, at that time, Nigeria has just broken a record with our all share index of our stock exchange. We had two records last year. The first one was in February last year when we passed the 100,000 share index for the first time. In August, we got to about 108,000 all share index. In February, we were the most profitable stock exchange in the whole world. And by August, we had slid back and became the second most profitable stock exchange in Africa. Zimbabwe is the first and Nigeria is the second
So, what I told the president was that, see, you need to sing your praises more often. You are not singing your praises enough because a lot of positive things are happening. And because you are not blowing your trumpet, your enemies are blowing their trumpets. I gave him more examples to say that you have been in the office for about 15 months and there has not been one incident where the Abuja-Kaduna rail line has been bombed. People now drive from Abuja to Kaduna and are not abducted. I also told him that we have gone up to almost two years whereby we have not had a single major Boko Haram activity. These are major improvements but if you are not talking about them, people won’t know.
I told Mr. President that before he became President, there were 42 police stations in the South-East, which were not working. They had been destroyed and the police officers had run away. As I speak to you, all of those stations have now been rebuilt and occupied.I said in the eight years of former President (Muhammadu) Buhari, not one bandit leader was killed. In 15 months, that you have been president, Boderi has been killed, Sani Dangote has been killed, Ali Kachala has been killed, but you are not telling Nigerians and if you don’t tell Nigerians and Peter Obi and other critics begin to tell them all sort of things, they are going to believe. So, you have got to find a way to blow your own trumpet.
Your recent post on the social media on ‘Detty December’ called attention to the tourism potentials of the economy. How would you rate government performance in using tourism to boost the economy?
There are a lot of things that can be done. One of the reasons why people come to Nigeria is mostly for religious purposes and, in Nigeria, two people were the biggest drawer for tourism – TB Joshua who is now late and the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG). So, what I would recommend for the government to do is to work with the RCCG, Synagogue Church of all Nations, Living Faith Church (Winners’ Chapel) and Christ Embassy to offer packages so that anybody coming from any part of the world can just get these packages and picked up from the Airport with security and then taken to Holy Ghost ground. That is going to be the number one source.
Also, a lot of people are not aware that UNCTAD(United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) has said that Lagos is now becoming the top global hot spot for health tourism. So, we need to help the Lagos State government. So when I heard somebody like Nasir El-rufai complaining that the FG is being very partial to Lagos and the Yorubas, I had to break that down. For instance, in the military, there are twenty heads of security organisations and only five of them are being headed by Yorubas. And out of those five, you cannot really say one of them is Yoruba because her husband is from Plateau State. So, if the South West has five and the North West has seven, who is dominating?
READ ALSO: Reno Omokri explains Tinubu’s floating Naira policy, mocks Peter Obi
