Hunger protest: Sponsors, leaders not peaceful, want regime change –Oshiomhole

By Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye

Adams Oshiomhole, the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator representing Edo North, speaking on Arise News Morning Show on Wednesday, monitored from Abuja, challenged those leading protesters under the EndBadGovernanceInNigeria, to lead from the front and not hide under hunger in the land to demand the ousting of President Bola Tinubu’s administration.

 

 

What’s your thought on the protests, people talking about end bad governance, regime change and security agencies saying under their watch they will not accept regime change or flying the Russian flag in Nigeria? Secondly, President Tinubu has spoken, do you think he has met Nigerians halfway or is it the usual rhetoric that hope will be renewed?

First, let me congratulate you with the way you spoke on regime change yesterday (Tuesday). I watched you, which is that it must be clear to anybody that the only way to change a legitimate government is to go through elections as recommended in the constitution. There’s no room for regime change, there’s no room for military take over of government in Nigeria. We have gone under military rule for several years. If it was a successful solution from 1996 till 1999, Nigeria would have been Eldorado. For the courage with which you speak, you didn’t sit on the fence, I was quite pleased with that along with your colleagues on this programme.

On Wednesday, the 2nd of August before the protest began, I saw many people including some of your colleagues calling for peaceful protests emphasising that the constitution guarantees peaceful protests. I have led so many countless protests whether in the public sector, private sector and at the national level.

However, I did say then, that was on the 2nd of August, let nobody talk about peaceful protests, it’s impossible. Why did I say that? Because I recognise the rights to peaceful protests which I exploited and I enjoyed it. I expanded it, I practicalised it, I also said when you exercise those rights to protest, you must also look at what are the demands. I’m happy because after seeing that these people are faceless, I looked at the totality of different voices I can put together from social media, and I said my take away from it is that a lot of these guys are only hiding under hunger, unemployment. What they are actually asking for is regime change.

And I said you cannot legally, wrongfully and peacefully demand regime change under the Nigerian constitution. And those who have lost the presidential election, those two candidates who spoke in favour of so-called peaceful protests, I have had the opportunity to interface with them when I was the president of the NLC and at different fora, each of these guys lecture me about the need to avoid “miscreants”, “hoodlums” from taking over whatever we call a legitimate thing.

And I said, sociologically, it is absolutely impossible for an amorphous group, I emphasise amorphous and it is not a degrading word. Amorphous in the sense that they are not organised, not structured, the faces are unknown, they talk from time to time, different guys talk both within the country and outside the country. And so who are you going to engage? They are not accountable to anyone, they are not elected by anyone to whom they will report to as to what point do we start, at what point do we stop. And where was the fora where they gathered, met and agreed on this demand?

And my summary of it is that what they were demanding cannot be achieved peacefully and will still lead to illegal demand for regime change. I heard some of them say they want to revise a repeal of the 1999 constitution. And I said you cannot peacefully demand that because the power to change the 1999 constitution, if that is what Nigerians want, is not vested in the President of Nigeria. The only way to amend the Nigerian constitution is as provided for in the Nigerian constitution. That power is not with the executive, that power is not with the federal legislature alone, that power has to be shared by both national and state legislatures. And a lot of eminent Nigerians even though I don’t agree with them, have canvassed various ways whether we should return to regionalism, parliamentary system.

All those are legitimate ways to express people’s opinions but I see confusion among the elite because, it is the same elected including a good section of the media that celebrated Rotimi Willimans 21-man wisemen who under the military after consulting “Nigerians”, those Nigerians are the elite, the speaking class, those who are invited to conferences, who told us given the Nigerian experiences that led to the overthrow of the regime in 1996, that we now need to have a strong president, and so they moved away from the parliamentary system to presidential system and they enumerated how beautiful the American system is. And so here we are.

If people for whatever reasons, people carrying sticks, people carrying leaves, this has to be done by people who are seasoned and knowledgeable about those issues. Now, what does the 1999 constitution has to do with the fact there’s removal of the fuel subsidy, what does it have to do with the fact that people are hungry, about changing from NEPA to generator, will that bring food on the table? No! Those canvassing these views I was clear, are not those guys who are hungry.

I saw one young man in Plateau and I was excited that that young man shouldn’t be more than 22 or 25 and he looks like a graduate by the way, if you listened to his language. He said we have spoken, we don’t want this thing to get out of hand the first day, I believe the president has listened.

Your second question is about the president’s speech. I commend the president wholeheartedly from the bottom of my heart; the patience of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the way in which he addressed those issues and I will explain why. First, he acknowledged that there’s hardship in the country, but he didn’t dismiss it. It is important that a leader acknowledges the legitimacy of what people are saying. However, he said I have listened, I have heard you. A leader, a father who is talking to his children who are crying. My children, I have heard you, stop crying, I will do something. If you are faced with those numbers, saying we are hungry today, what do you do today?

In any case, the immediate thing the President has to do which some of us don’t even agree to, we now have to see governors, president commissioning of rice. I would like to see the commissioning of factories that will provide jobs, I would like to see a return to Agriculture. The government of President Tinubu had to return to what is now called palliatives which have resulted in a huge scandal in many states.

As a comrade who had exploited protests to say people shouldn’t protest, the question is, are people hungry, has the level of poverty increased since occupied Nigeria protests, is the situation not worse now? Do you think people are justified to come out and peacefully protest, not necessarily to remove the government?

I don’t always agree with your views but that is what makes democracy work, the right to defer. Your evaluation with profound respect is wrong. As the Yoruba, my part of the country, Edo will say and I think Abiola of blessed memory popularised this, that when you see some birds dancing on the highway, the drummers are not far from the bush. Without those drummers, those birds will not dance.

Now, it is not about if there’s hunger… I said so, if the president acknowledged it, who are you and I to deny it? That is not the issue. The issue is, the people use what they see as what everybody can feel. Why do you feel that President Tinubu resorted to giving states N570 billion to do quick win palliatives?

In my days, I don’t know how many times President Obasanjo went to buy rice to distribute to Nigerians. He said Nigerians should go and farm which is the legitimate thing to do. The President realising the pain and so on has had to resort to this short measure in the short run and in the long run it has to be that we produce what we eat and we eat what we produce. But this cannot be decreed by 10 days protesters; the President has spoken.

Why I said it is not legitimate and I have no question about that is that at no time in my protests history did I demand that there should be regime change. If I see politicians trying to hijack it by their comments and so on, I was always quick to say look, we are not here to change the policy maker.

When you have an amorphous group, unknown faces…you referred to occupy Nigeria, I saw people like Pastor Tunde Bakare. You will recall when I was in the NLC, not only was my face known, we shared platforms with Professor Wole Soyinka now at 90. I’m happy he is ageing gracefully and God will continue to bless him and give him good health. I shared a platform with Femi Falana, Beko Ransome Kuti. And I remember on one occasion in front of Alausa, Gani Fawehinmi collapsed while addressing workers. These are Nigerians that are known, they have responsibility, he spoke for human rights, he spoke for hunger.

Nigerians need to understand that a man of my background refused to understand that peaceful protests cannot be used for regime change. I emphasise regime change because I understand the logic. I led from the front. These people you are mentioning, I don’t know them. If I don’t know them, I don’t know their faces.

You don’t know Take It Back Nigeria?

When you say take back Nigeria, I ask who has occupied Nigeria? In fact, this was the one that suggested that people wanted regime change. When they say we want to reclaim Nigeria, I say is Nigeria currently under foreign authority? Is Tinubu not a Nigerian? The Southwest he comes from, is it not part of Nigeria? Who is that group who wants to reclaim Nigeria for Nigerians? All the names you  mentioned here, I listened attentively, if I don’t know some of these faces, at no time did they sit on a common platform to say this is who we are. Excuse me, the business of governance is not a tea party.

At the heart of your question was, was President Tinubu’s address appropriate? I said yes. One word summarises that, I have heard you, I have opened dialogue. Even that one, I heard people saying set up a panel to negotiate, to negotiate with people who are in Washington DC, people without address? You may know them but I don’t know them.

When you people including the current president went out for Occupy Nigeria in 2012, protesting against subsidy removal, you were saying the word occupy Nigeria didn’t threaten regime change and all of that. But the truth is the group that organised this protest is not faceless except you refuse to know them. Are you saying you don’t know Deji Adeyanju, Yemi Damolemokun, who are frontline civil society activists who have made inputs in other protests? They are valid groups. You said the President’s speech was a good speech but a lot of Nigerians say no, aside from the reconciliatory part because people died which he is being blamed that if he had come out to address the people in the first place, people would not have died. He left it until after people have died which is an abdication of responsibility. He went ahead to rehash promises that we already know.  As at 2023, Timipre Sylva’s target was to get 5 million CNG cars on the road, President Tinubu promised one million CNG that is even a backward walk. He said he was going to cultivate 500,000 hectares last year, but we have not seen it.

He is celebrating the fact that we have 9.1 trillion in revenue, that is we earned more compared to last year. But don’t forget that you politicians come out to tell us how broke the government is, in fact the deficit is also increasing. He said he is going to give 570 billion to the states, some of the states came to say they’ve got nothing. When they are sharing palliatives, people can’t feel the impact, so a lot of people say it’s another campaign rhetoric empty on promises and less on impact and did you say that speech was okay?

You are entitled to your evaluation. One thing you have to agree on is that one man’s sense of objectivity is not another man’s idea of objectivity. When people say I’m being factual as you have said, I’m being objective, you are objective sometimes only to the extent that you are not aware of your own bias or not aware of your own subjectivity, this is fact in social sciences. And to say that one evaluation, standard, deviant is wrong is not valid in social sciences.

I told you one word, it is not about all those which the president mentioned but he came to remind people that he has not been sleeping. If people say till we farm, we would have farmed and produced all the food in one year. If it was that easy to produce the food in one year, from Obasanjo’s return to school in his first coming as a military Head of state, I saw him with joy as a villager, I saw him with the then chief of general staff, Yar’Adua, saying school to farm programme. I remember President Shehu Shagari saying we want a Green Revolution, all these governments have promised this.

This man is only in office for one year. He outlined what he is going to do and how long did it take to set up incredible and now highly competitive television? From the day my dear friend conceptualised the idea, I said it was impossible. I said how is he going to compete with CNN, Channels, but today it is a reality. It’s not just in existence, Arise has become an authoritative network. Between conceptualisation and actualisation, it takes a huge time.

Why I say these people are faceless and that they wanted regime change, I have listened to all these names you mentioned, I don’t know them. You can’t say I know them because you know them. Which Nigerian doesn’t know Wole Soyinka, who didn’t know Gani Fawehinm of blessed memory, who doesn’t know Femi Falana? You see, the issue is that we know some individuals how much trust does those individuals command in the bar of the average Nigerian? Those people carrying sticks in Kano…

Do you know Sowore?

I know Sowore as a defeated presidential candidate and when you are defeated in an election, you wait for the man who won, you give him time. Sowore should know… he has interviewed me in Washington and I have met with him. I think he should have…I think he became one of the authoritative online publishers, SaharaReporters. What you get from SaharaReporters, I often wondered how he got his information. In my view, he was at his best. But once he dragged himself into politics and contested an election, he has become a politician.

So Sowore cannot be seen as speaking… people will see him as nursing the grievances, the pain of his defeat. We want the guy to speak for those who carry sticks in Kano, those who threw bombs in Maiduguri, for those who hijacked vehicles.

Number three, what did you expect the president to do when he is mourning the death of people avoidably. No president will throw ice cream when the nation is under stress. He didn’t have to smile unnecessarily because he wasn’t celebrating October 1st or Democracy Day, he was addressing rioters and protesters that have claimed lives. He needed to wear a face of a President that recognises…did you watch the British Prime Minister? Did you see how he addressed the British people following the riots in Britain? He didn’t deny the fact that three innocent children shouldn’t have been killed, however, that is not a justification for looting and violence. And he said we will deal firmly with these right wing protesters, extremists, we will deal firmly and decisively. I didn’t see him say Mr Ice Cream increase ice cream from Harold’s and distribute it to them.

No leader will watch those smokes from different parts of the country and then come and wear a smile and say, my children I have listened to you. He told the children, I have listened to you, I heard you. That is loaded, minimum words with maximum wisdom. You want him to decree out of existence… even if it’s lawmaking, can he decree a law? He is not in a position to do so.

Now, I have listened and I heard you say he should have made the address before, let’s face it. Play back your own coverage of the villa, you will see at different fora, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu say, I understand the unintended consequences of some of the bold decisions I have taken. Now, I had a huge challenge to make between matching the exchange rate to avoid a situation where these rent seekers be in business where a central bank governor, if he likes you allocates to you $5 million and you become $5 million richer overnight, you don’t need to work again…

At least you have admitted you know one of the organisers, Sowore?

I said I don’t recognise what he is sitting in Washington and doing. No, those are absentee leaders, those are absentee desktop leaders. I led from the front, I collected teargas in the premises of Guardian Newspapers, I did it in the premises of the federal secretariat, I did it in Shomolu in Lagos. So, when we are talking, how can you ask a serious President, a president elected to now allow one of those he defeated to go to the comfort of Washington and be shouting from there and say I am directing you, I am hungry. If he is hungry, is he going to fix Nigeria from Washington?

Let’s be serious, protests are not a Christmas party. Sowore should at best come to Nigeria…when I was NLC President, Obasanjo increased fuel price to a level I considered injurious to our economy from N10 to N30, I came back from Geneva where I was a board member of International Labour Organisation, because for me if am not home, what am I doing in Geneva, I came back home. Let us lead from the front and I told my colleagues let’s go to Abuja.

I don’t think it is about the identity of the protesters, this is a Gen Z issue, they are just saying they have a right to protest, they don’t need to be big names. We have seen what the Gen Z have been able to do in Bangladesh for example, they don’t have leaders they just said they are students.

But let’s go to Edo State, Monday Okpebholo, the APC candidate is being supported by Philip Shuiabu and Philip Shuiabu joining the APC and bowing down before you, how comfortable is that for you? Secondly, the allegation that you seem to have subtle sympathy for Asue Ighodalo, the candidate of the PDP. What’s you comment on Edo State politics? Let’s leave President Tinubu, he will worry about his own issues?

I’m sure he (the president)  is taking charge because during your newspaper review, I saw that that only yesterday, the vice president chaired a committee to bring the textile industry back. And they recognized that they can create 1.5 million jobs in the textile industry every year. Today, I am going to celebrate because I have been talking about that since this president came that the job has to come from the manufacturing sector.

So, back to Edo Politics, Asue Ighodalo is not electable. Right now, he fraudulently according to the Federal High Court, manipulated and disobeyed the constitution of the PDP, he violated the electoral law that the primary that produced him was done in clear bridge of the law of the constitution. So as we speak, he is not a candidate.

Number two, Asue Ighodalo cannot even speak the language of the people where my late wife came from. Asue Ighodalo is not electable. Nigeria doesn’t want double breasted consultant, transaction experts, with one hand in the pocket. He has never been identified. He said he was chairman of Ala Ighodalo, what was the achievements of Ala Ighodalo other than spending billions of naira in consultancy. He is not electable, he doesn’t speak the language of the people, he doesn’t know the people. Even the day he went to announce himself, he carried an interpreter to speak to his own villagers. When he finished he went to Benin, he didn’t sleep in his village because local people in his view are all witches and wizards. Typical of some segments of the elite; a man like that can’t govern.

My dear friend, you know I can never sit on the fence, Asue is not electable, how can I secretly support him? Support him to do what? He is the worse version. All these people that say that they are technocrats let them remain in consultancy whether they are lawful or unlawful. He managed a bank that is in business with Edo State, we will have to investigate how much he made in consultancy between Edo State Government and his own private…including where he chaired some banks.

Please fact check yourself where you talked about the court judgement, Appeal Court in Abuja actually upheld his judgement…?

You are not current. There are several cases one has to do with the one filed by Philip Shuiabu, that one, the court said Philip Shuiabu has no jurisdiction because he did not participate in the formal convention. Without going into the merit, even yesterday the issue or not of whether he forged his registration card with INEC, and INEC has said the card in question was not issued by them.

So what ruling were you referring to then because we need to be sure it’s facts we are speaking…?

I’m not wasting time on this thing. If he thinks he doesn’t have a case he shouldn’t have filed an appeal, he filed an appeal and the Court of Appeal dismissed it yesterday or day before yesterday. I have certified true copy signed by the judge. They are now heading to the Supreme Court, I am praying for him because we don’t want a short cut, we want to defeat him so that he understands that the Edo people are wiser now. Last time they used ethnicity and all sort of things, this time…

Now, let me go to the issue of Shuaibu. You said you saw Shuaibu kneeling down before me in public, I didn’t ask him to kneel down. He said he is a prodigal son and that is biblical, who am I to stop him? Now a father must have a large heart. We have welcomed him back to the APC family, it is not about whether he disrespected me, he did things that I wouldn’t have approved of and I spoke so in another channel and I am not going to repeat it today.

So, I am not going to now get myself detained by the fact that one of my children misbehaved, I have forgiven him and I hope he has also learnt his lesson that you don’t throw everything away. If I don’t forgive him, how can I ask God to forgive me? I am a Catholic and one of the prayers I say every day including this morning is that father, forgive me my trespasses as I forgive those who trespass against me. So, in the Catholic doctrine, you are not entitled to seek forgiveness if you, yourself not capable of forgiving those who wrong you.

So, I have forgiven him and someone asked me, can I trust his future loyalty and I said that is a matter of time but for now, forgiveness is the name of the game and I have forgiven him. And I hope he will never do so whether in our party or any other party.