The former governor of Ekiti State, Chief Segun Oni is celebrating his 70th birthday anniversary. In this interview with ‘YOMI AYELESO, he spoke about his life experiences, contributions to the public service, state of the political space in Ekiti and the country, among other issues. EXCERPTS:
AT 70, how do you feel celebrating this milestone and what are the key life lessons you have learnt?
I feel very grateful to God because while we were growing up, it was not part of my own imagination that I would be 70 or beyond; but here we are. I want to thank God with all gratitude. In 70 years, I have learnt to trust God more and believe in him more and to know that if God does not do a thing, it will not happen. My greatest achievement outside politics is my family.
Now that you are at this milestone and considering your exploits over the years, do you still have intention of making yourself available for active politics or public service and what is the most striking intervention you made in office?
Yes, I will always make myself available to contribute to society but not in the way some people might think. I am grateful to God for what I have seen and what I have achieved so far in public service and I believe that God has done well for me. People talk about what they saw and I know that it is not likely to be sycophancy because they are saying the same thing over and over from different perspectives. It’s not likely to be sycophancy and I am grateful to God for that.
The state governor, Biodun Oyebanji, was in your residence a few days ago and you used glowing words to describe him and his administration. What informed your decision?
I do things out of truthfulness and that is the way I see him. I have not been compelled or romanced to do it. That is what I feel. He is trying to bring everybody together and we should encourage the spirit.
But are there no areas you would like to draw his attention to in the state of affairs of the state, are there no areas the state can be improved on looking at him in almost two years in the saddle?
There are and I have discussed some of it with him and I don’t want to sound like a critic and everybody knows that one of my areas of concern is people who are owed a backlog of salaries and allowances. I know he is working on them and if he can also double his efforts because this is a state that you can say is for civil servants, former civil servants and other government entitlement people. When people are being owed, you will see it in them and some people that are not even owed would take it as an excuse. It will become their song that they haven’t paid us. I want him to double efforts and ensure that he clears that, so that it does not become an excuse. That’s how I felt when I was governor that people would be making me an excuse for their failures, or what I didn’t do. God being my help, I wanted to ensure that all owed salaries, allowances, gratuities and pensions are paid on or before July 31st 2007 and it was done. I thank God and I think it is a power of the tongue and I prayed to God about it. I didn’t know where the money would come from when I started saying it and I was praying about it. As far as I am concerned, it was also like a miracle and I wish that for him, that he should be able to attract the funds so that it doesn’t become the excuse for some people’s feelings on what he does not know about.
You have been governor of the state and you know the roles the opposition played during your time but in almost two years of the Oyebanji-led administration, are you not worried there are no viable opposition voices to put the government on its toes?
I am worried and I am not worried. There is one saying that as you make your bed, you will lie on it. The way we are making our bed in democratic practice here now, is not the best for durability and that is how we must sleep on it. Everybody wants to belong and if you don’t belong, people will pressure you. We do not see government as what we can all contribute to from different perspectives. I will say that it surely must get better; It is what we all need to do to contribute to make it better. The person in government needs to be encouraged and to do well in government, part of the encouragement to do well from my experience is the encouragement of positive criticisms; I gained from that. In fact, I cracked jokes when I asked my media team what people were saying about us newly? And if they said there is nothing new yet, I told them it means we are sleeping. Positive or negative but mostly negative, that’s what we are expecting because the mostly negative are the criticisms that we trust more.
When you criticise us as a government then, we trust you more but if you say we are doing well, we take it with a pinch of salt. But If you criticise in a way that exudes acrimony, we know and we can shift but let the criticisms come and it will show us what we have not done completely right. How you define opposition is the problem because the lines are getting joined in such a way that you cannot really identify clearly who is on what line.
So, what do you think is the cause that the line is joining in the state?
Hunger, when a lot of people can no longer stand in the queue when nothing flows, I know the pressure I had every day. So, viable opposition is very difficult in a society where poverty has been so weaponized. Poverty is weaponized that a pang of it will make a lot of people think twice but that is not how it should be. There should be dignity wherever you are. When I was in government I am saying this because some of the people concerned are still alive and will know. There are times I will deliberately ask my Personal Assistant to go and see our other friends because you don’t want to condemn them to hardship because they are staying on principles but I hope the government can be done that way in Ekiti. We are brothers and sisters. We are not supposed to be hostile to one another. In fact, the Ekiti I will like to see in future is the place where at the night club, sitting side by side will be advocates of two diverse fiercely different sides of what government is doing right and what they are not doing right and they will be able to share a beer and both of them will sincerely hope that government will do the right thing tomorrow.
You have mentioned poverty and hunger as the greatest challenge now and in early August, citizens, especially youths trooped out to protest against poor economic life in the country which they tagged #EndBadGovernance. How do you think the Federal Government can address the excruciating economic situations?
Government should continue to review its acts and practices and ask themselves what can we do to ease the burden. There should be people thinking round the clock about those whose responsibility is to think round the clock because Nigerians, including me, are all opportunists. Even the people who are criticizing the government, if you give them the opportunity, they will do worse. If you give what should be enough to feed a whole community to two or three people, before you know it some of them will relocate and if you have not given them the opportunity, they will be the loudest critics. When you see it, you will ask yourself how did we get there? It is becoming more excessive.
But people want to see the implementation of the campaign promises of the All Progressives Congress (APC), knowing full well they promised renewed hope for the citizens.
Government must have people whose business is to continue to review all the indices that show their effectiveness and ask themselves what can we do and without being forced or people coming on the road to protest. Whatever needs to be done should be done. If people make a show of things like #EndSars, #EndBad Governance, I do see them as professional agitators most of the time. Yes, they have their own contributions but with or without professional agitators, the government must have its own ways of finding out how it is with people and what they can do to make life better.
You have been a governor, what do you think the impact will be on governance and development, especially at the grassroots the recent judgment of the Supreme Court on financial autonomy for local government?
I will say that largely we are scapegoating people and always looking on people’s heads to place the blame. We ran a government in this state where the beneficiaries are still there. They can come out to say whether the state government touched local government funds at all but what were the people’s reactions to it then? Did their reactions enforce that this is the way we want to be governed? It did not. So, why are people now going to say that the government is wrong if it has not done that? If we do not acknowledge small wins, we are not going to be able to recognize even bigger wins. I challenged people, what we did when we were here, and how many ways we were wrong so that other governments will learn from it. If you are now saying it was right then, why did we not as a people acknowledge it then. It’s frustrating and I see us as just scapegoating to say if they give autonomy that they are asking. I believe in it anyway, even when it was not asked for, I gave it because that is my own model of development flowing round very quickly. But if I believe in the other way, that’s what I would have done. As far as I am concerned, we try to look for whom to heap blame on and to make the rest blameless. That is not the attitude that will take Nigeria further. Let’s wait for it and see if another round of scapegoating will emerge.
A group of eminent Nigerians called The Patriots, led by a former Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku has met President Bola Tinubu and demanded a new people’s constitution; even an elder statesman, Aare Afe Babalola (SAN) has been consistent in this call. How do you think a new constitution will help the country?
If Baba Anyaoku and Afe Babalola are calling for a new constitution, they know what it means and they know what they are seeing in the present constitution. But from the eyes of a small boy that I am to them, I will say that even if we can commission God, (excuse my blasphemy) to authorise a constitution for us, and the mindset of a Nigerian does not become more acceptable in constitutional practice within a few years, we will begin to say the same thing. Personally when I was young, I thought that parliamentary democracy, let us go for Executive Presidency and so on. I thought the end to parliamentary democracy will end our problems; we have seen almost all of our developed years in the Executive presidency and if you ask now, just give one option of going back to parliamentary system, the majority will fall for parliamentary democracy. In Nigeria, we are always not doing enough to reform whatever we have at hand. I wish The Patriots well and personally, I am for whatever will make Nigeria better.
At 70, what are your hopes and concerns for the future of Nigeria?
I am clearly not happy and I can’t be happy. I have not seen a clear line and this is what we are saying. We are still talking of fashioning a constitution that will be right for us. Even in these 70 years, I have seen attempts to use the constitution to foster development. We still remain Nigerians, attitude and also the attitude of desperation in the political actors; our quest to make money in the system which also propels a lot of people to also become desperate to get there. Personally, I am not sure. If there is anything we can do to drive into the consciousness of Nigerians, the key ingredients for decent living, I will say maybe we should ask our university system, especially the social sciences, to work more on things that will change us as people. As it is now, we have very limited hope because I am not seeing it arriving. But, I am a Christian and things you cannot see, you pray to see.
What are your expectations from young Nigerians towards the development of the country?
First, everybody must try to make contributions that are positive. We must try to contribute to Nigeria moving forward. We all know what to contribute to Nigeria moving forward and we all know some practices and behaviours that will retard Nigerians. Let us reduce our desperation so that we can make our contributions more positive towards the future of Nigeria and I believe that if we all decide to make one positive contribution tomorrow, a Nigeria of the day after tomorrow will definitely be better.
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