…Govt officials, senior officers complicit in worsening insecurity
• Says Tinubu’s handling of anti-corruption fight poor
By Tunde Thomas
Elder statesman and former Secretary General, Afenifere, Senator Femi Okurounmu has advised the Tinubu administration to pursue national legislation on the establishment of state police if the All Progressives Congress, APC, is serious about fighting insecurity.
In an interview, he dismissed the political actors forming a coalition against the present government as individuals whose records in public service were abysmal. While expressing disappointment with President Tinubu’s handling of the fight against corruption, Okurounmu also reflected on the current state of Afenifere, the pan-Yoruba organisation, describing it as an embarrassment to the Yoruba nation. He blamed the late Pa Adebanjo and Pa Fasoranti for the crisis in the organisation. Read more…
The present state of insecurity across the country has become a matter of concern to many Nigerians. What’s your reaction to this?
Insecurity has become a growing source of concern to many, if not all Nigerians, and I’m certainly one of those who feel deeply concerned about the security situation in the country. The insecurity became worse during the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, and since then, the insecurity has been getting worse. It looks as if members of the armed forces are even pampering the terrorists.
In what way?
Look at somebody like Sheikh Gumi, a popular figure in the North, well known to the authorities. He has become more or less a go-between for the terrorists and relations of people they have kidnapped, arranging for ransom money between the terrorists and the victims’ families who pay the ransom demanded. They should have investigated him to determine whether he had any relationship or link with these terrorists. Recently, he was deported from Saudi Arabia, perhaps over some kind of offence. But here in Nigeria, he is being allowed to move around freely and nothing is being done to monitor or investigate him. For somebody who has been publicly identifying himself with terrorists, our security agencies and even the federal government should have investigated him. How can you be a go-between for terrorists and relations of victims that have been kidnapped by these insurgents, and you are doing so to the extent of such an infamous act almost becoming a vocation for you? Definitely, Gumi should be investigated.
Also, many military officials have complained publicly that when they captured some of these terrorists, they received orders from above that they should set them free, and if they didn’t comply, they would be sanctioned. So, brilliant and patriotic soldiers, who are risking their lives to fight these insurgents, don’t have the full backing of the government. Very frequently, we used to hear government saying that they have released some repentant Boko Haram insurgents. They often allow these so-called insurgents to go and join the Army. And when these so-called repentant Boko Haram members are allowed to join the Army, they become informants to their co-terrorists, and in doing so expose the lives of soldiers to danger. This is why I said that the government knows about these terrorists, and they are also complicit in the activities of these terrorists. This is why Nigerians should feel concerned. Is there a hidden agenda behind these insurgent attacks, and if so, what is the hidden agenda?
How can the government tackle insecurity?
The best way is for the government to show seriousness in tackling it. The government should show more determination. They should equip the armed forces adequately to make sure that they take the battle ferociously to the strongholds of these terrorists. They should also reward soldiers fighting the insurgents, as doing so will motivate the soldiers to put in more effort. They should provide our soldiers with all the necessary modern fighting equipment that will help them to subdue the insurgents. If we can’t defeat terrorists within Nigeria, then how can we defend ourselves if Nigeria is invaded by external forces, or by another country?
Another solution is for us to create State Police. It is an idea that I have been canvassing for long. Everybody has now agreed that state police needs to be created. There is a nationwide consensus that we need to create state police. There should be no further delay in creating state police. We cannot hold state governors responsible for security in their states if they have no police under their control, and governors are supposed to be in charge of security in their states. But to do this, state police needs to be created. State governors need state police or what you call local police to complement the efforts of the federal police. This is what is applicable in almost every nation of the world. This is also what is obtainable in the United States, the nation that we have been copying in everything that we have been doing. We have been copying America blindly. But we have only been copying bad things, and not good things from them. In America, they have the FBI, which is the equivalent of our own Nigeria Police. Then every state in the US has its own state police. Not only does every state have its police, every city has its police, and they all cooperate.
What’s your assessment of the mid-term performance of President Tinubu’s administration?
Tinubu is trying his best, but so far, the results have not been visible to Nigerians. One of the areas in which I have been personally disappointed with the President is his attitude towards fighting corruption. Corruption and acquisition of wealth by those in government are very disappointing. While the poor masses are suffering, and experiencing grinding poverty daily, those in government including members of the National Assembly and ministers are living luxurious lives, even more than ministers from affluent countries of the world, and it appears government is not doing anything about that.
The Executive, Legislature, and Judiciary are all swimming in wealth at the expense of the suffering masses. This is not good enough. Where people are hungry, where people can hardly afford to eat one good meal a day, you find that our leaders are swimming in opulence. Where people are suffering, it is not right for our leaders to be roaming about in luxury. Tinubu should pay attention to these officials living opulent lifestyles with a view of curbing their excesses.
What’s your reaction to the coalition being put together by some notable politicians in the country to unseat President Tinubu from office in 2027?
My take on that is that a coalition of thieves will always be a coalition of thieves. The problem with Nigeria is that it is not that all bad people are in one political party. All the political leaders in the country today, no matter which party they claim they belong to, particularly in the major parties, namely PDP, APC, Labour, or whatever you call it, are all dishonest people. They are people who are in politics mostly for wealth acquisition and power and not for service to the people. The coming together of these people is to put them in a vantage position to loot the public wealth. Those who are not in the ruling party today feel that they have been shut out of looting the nation’s treasury. Their aim is to push out APC, and then have their own opportunity to loot and plunder the nation’s treasury. This is why they are forming this coalition. Nigerians should not be deceived by these coalition promoters. These people are out to serve their own personal interests, and not the interests of Nigerians. For some of these politicians championing the coalition idea, we have seen their records; there is nothing to write home about them. They have terrible records in public service.
What we need is a new generation of leaders. We need a new breed, a new set of patriotic leaders who are genuinely committed to serving the nation. These coalition promoters are deceitful people, and Nigerians are advised to be wary of them.
Is it Atiku Abubakar that Nigerians don’t know his records? Or is it El-Rufai or Rotimi Amaechi? What else do these people have to offer? The media should help educate the masses about the antecedents of these people so that they will not be fooled.
Some Nigerians are worried that the wave of mass defections to APC might turn Nigeria to a one-party state. What’s your take?
The people expressing such concerns are right. All major politicians are defecting to APC and this may lead to Nigeria being turned into a one-party state. The reason they are all defecting to APC is that they want to have access to the nation’s treasury with the sole aim of looting.
Apart from that, some of these politicians are joining APC so that their corruption can be covered up. All the anti-corruption agencies will look the other way as soon as these corrupt politicians join APC. This has become the practice now. The anti-corruption agencies are simply going after political opponents of the ruling party. They are not being impartial. They are not going after corrupt APC members. What a shame!
If you look at members of the Senate today, including principal officers, some of them have cases with the EFCC but today nothing is being heard about their cases again just because they belong to the ruling party. What a nation! What a country. But the anti-corruption agencies have always been used as instruments of persecution of political opponents of the ruling party since the time of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. Different administrations have been using, to different degrees, the anti-corruption agencies as instruments of political oppression of opponents of the ruling party.
What’s your assessment of 26 years of democracy in Nigeria?
I don’t think we are making any progress in democracy in Nigeria. Everybody can see in Nigeria that we are going through the motions of democracy, like registering voters, having elections, and asking people to go and vote, but all these are just motions. But substantially we have no democracy. Democracy in Nigeria since 1999 has been a subject of manipulations. Every administration since 1999 manipulates democratic processes to produce the kind of result it wants. INEC is an agency of the federal government; the government appoints all the electoral officers including the Chairman.
The results declared by the electoral body often don’t tally with the votes of the people, and in the end, the whole process will end up in court. The court will then become the final arbiter in terms of who wins an election, and not the people. In democracy, it is the people who should determine who should be their leaders but in our system here, that has not been the case. It is the court that decides who wins an election, and this is a mockery of democracy. This is an aberration.
Democracy has become a burden on Nigerians. Our judiciary needs urgent reforms and urgent redemption. INEC must be reformed. INEC must be composed of people of integrity that will not compromise. The INEC that we have in Nigeria today doesn’t fit that description. The Chairman of INEC should not be appointed by the government. All the RECs should not be appointed by the government. We should find a way of appointing another electoral body that will be truly independent. Calling INEC an independent electoral body is an insult to Nigerians because INEC is anything but independent. Once you don’t have an independent electoral commission, all the electoral processes are subject to fraud.
What’s your position on the loans being taken by the government?
When you borrow a lot of money from foreign governments, then you end up being in a debt hole from which you may not be able to get out. The more you get into that debt hole, the more you enslave your country because, after so many years of being unable to pay your debts, the country that lent you the money can take over some of your national assets. They can take over so many things, and there is nothing you can do about it because you are a debtor. By taking these loans, which our political leaders don’t use for productive purposes, because the money is often diverted to private pockets our leaders are selling us into another form of slavery. Anybody that is going to serve as a leader should go in there with the mind that they are going to serve Nigerians’ interests, and not their own personal interests. That’s what governance should be all about. When you go into government, it should be to protect national interests and the welfare of the common people.
What’s your take on the shadow government formed by Prof Pat Utomi?
You can’t have a shadow government when you are not in a parliamentary system of government. Nigeria is practising a presidential form of government, and there is no provision for a shadow government under that arrangement. Members of the shadow government must be in parliament to be effective, and when members of the shadow government are not in the parliament, they can only shout, and make noise; nothing will come out of it. This is what will happen to Utomi’s shadow government. It will just become another talking platform. DSS should not have bothered taking Utomi to court.
Restructuring used to be a popular topic before 2015, but it appears nobody is talking about restructuring again. How do you see this development?
People are still talking about restructuring, but it appears the government is not going about it the way people expect. Several people are disillusioned that Tinubu’s government is not going about restructuring the way they had expected him to do it. I think most progressive Nigerians still expect him to do it. Maybe he has his ideas about how he wants to restructure. That’s why I say that he has not been going about it the way some Nigerians expect him to do it. Maybe we should still give him some time to see how he goes about it.
Afenifere today has become factionalised. We have those loyal to late Chief Adebanjo while some others belong to Pa Fasoranti faction. As a foundation member and former General Secretary, where do you stand?
The present state of Afenifere is very embarrassing. For those of us that have been in Afenifere all our political lives, the state of Afenifere today is very embarrassing. Not only that, Afenifere has become an embarrassment to all Yoruba people. Afenifere has lost its potency. It has lost its credibility. It has almost lost its relevance. It has almost become a laughing stock because Afenifere is no longer the organisation that people trust, that always defends and protects the interests of Yoruba people.
Since 2003, Afenifere has been on steady decline, very steady decline, worrisome decline, and the steepest part of the decline started about four years ago, when the leader, Pa Fasoranti, appointed late Chief Ayo Adebanjo to be Acting Leader when Fasoranti was advancing in age and felt that he didn’t have the energy anymore to effectively lead the organisation. When he appointed Chief Adebanjo to be Acting Leader, that was roughly about four years ago, it was then that this steep decline began. Right from that moment, Afenifere became split, and the split needed not to have occurred. The split occurred because we departed from the honoured tradition of Afenifere.
What tradition did Afenifere depart from?
I think Papa Adebanjo was ill-advised – that is if he was so advised. Or maybe it was his own decision or maybe people advised him but it was a mistake to have moved the meeting of Afenifere right away from Akure to Ogbo Ijebu. This is contrary to the tradition of Afenifere. As you would remember, even during the NADECO period, when late Pa Abraham Adesanya was acting as the Acting Leader, when Pa Adekunle Ajasin who was then the substantive leader of Afenifere was not feeling fine, Adesanya became more or less the de-facto leader of Afenifere in Lagos but everything was still being done with the consent of Ajasin. All our meetings were still being held in Owo. All of us were still going to Owo to hold meetings in Ajasin’s house, even though Adesanya was taking the brunt of Abacha’s dictatorship in Lagos. It was not until Ajasin died that we elected Adesanya as the substantive leader of the Afenifere, and it was not until then that our meeting was moved to Ijebu-Igbo. Also when Adesanya himself became a little ill, and couldn’t continue leading the organisation, he appointed Fasoranti as the acting leader of Afenifere. All the time he was the acting leader, we continued to meet in Adesanya’s house in Ijebu-Igbo in Adesanya’s home. The meeting was never shifted to Fasoranti’s house in Akure. The meetings continued in Ijebu-Igbo until Adesanya died. It was after Adesanya’s death that the meeting moved to Akure. So when Adebanjo was appointed acting leader, it was expected by most people that the meetings would continue to hold in Akure until Fasoranti died. But immediately Pa Adebanjo decided to move Afenifere meetings to Ogbo. That was a big error that created friction. And a second mistake which the late Chief Adebanjo made was that as acting leader of Afenifere, he should have still be carrying his leader, Chief Fasoranti along in whatever decision he wanted to take. For instance, a decision as critical as, and monumental as, to who to support in an election during the presidential elections in 2023 is not a decision that should have been taken unilaterally by Adebanjo.
Without consulting Fasoranti, his leader, (because he was only the acting leader,) Adebanjo decided to support Peter Obi of the Labour Party without consultation with Fasoranti. These two factors I have mentioned created bad blood within the organisation. For instance, moving Afeniferte meetings from Akure to Ogbo when he was appointed acting leader alienated Afenifere members from Ondo and Ekiti states. Right from that moment, most of the Afenifere members from that axis stopped attending Afenifere meetings. Some of us tried to advise Adebanjo but he didn’t take to our advice. A lot of young members of Afenifere were trying to nudge Adebanjo to consider himself as the substantive leader of Afenifere, and not as acting leader. All these created bad blood. It has been very unfortunate. Unfortunately, we lost Chief Adebanjo a few months ago. I think with the acting leader no longer alive, the leader, Pa Fasoranti should have asserted himself, maybe by appointing a new acting leader of Afenifere. But what he has done is neither here nor there.
If you followed what happened in the last two weeks, there were two different meetings by Afenifere. One meeting was held in Akure by the Akure faction, and another meeting was held in Ilesa by those who now call Oladipo Olaitan their leader. They now refer to Olaitan as Afenifere leader. That is how bad the situation is now. So some people refer to Fasoranti as Afenifere leader while another group refers to Olaitan as Afenifdere leader. What Fasoranti also did in Akure has not helped the situation. What he needed to do was to have called a meeting of all Afenifere members to Akure after the burial of Adebanjo with the purpose of appointing a new acting leader. But instead, he appointed Chief Olu Falae as Chairman of Afenifere executive committee. That is further compounding the problem because the appointment is neither here nor there. There was no such position in Afenifere before. So he left room for people to claim that another person was the leader of Afenifere. Afenifere needs a lot of re-engineering. I think Papa Fasoranti was being misadvised. The way out of the quagmire is for Pa Fasoranti as the Afenifere leader, and Yoruba leader to call a meeting of all Afenifere in his name in Akure in his capacity as the Yoruba leader and Afenifere leader. In that meeting, he should appoint a new acting leader for Afenifere. This is the only way forward.