From Priscilla Ediare, Ado-Ekiti
Dr. Adebayo Orire is a practising Medical Doctor and a frontline politician in Ekiti State. In this interview, the All Progressives Congress (APC) stalwart spoke on various issues, including the current administration of President Bola Tinubu, and insecurity among other concerns.
Come May 29, President Bola Tinubu will clock two years in office, how would you assess his performance in the last 21 months?
It is too early to assess the president because he is just barely one and a half years in office and the parameters for assessment are not symmetrical, things are changing. When you are talking of economic reform, the backdrop of which you have insecurity, when you are talking of deliberate devaluation of naira, and you are not having any good side to manufacturing how do you assess productivity, and all those things, especially the political instability. You cannot say APC is strong, the opposition is totally disorganised. So, assessing the president on a straight term is not easy for somebody like me. To say he is making progress; to say he is not making progress will be premature but there are no indices to show a good prognosis for the future of this era in Nigeria yet.
You said it is too early to assess President Tinubu’s performance, what about assessing him in terms of the impact of his policies and programmes?
Yes, his policies and programmes on the surface to one segment of the community is good, on the surface to another segment of the community is pro-western world, IMF, World Bank, Paris Club and these people want you to destroy your economy so that you remain perpetually weak, so that they can say you are strong, because you are tied to their apron’s string and they say you want to grow your economy by making your money weak, by increasing productivity. When you don’t have money do you increase productivity? In fact, if you put one hundred countries that have followed IMF tenets you will not have three percent succeeding because by the time you are through with IMF, your country is weakened, corruption would have set in, poverty would have set in, insecurity would have set in and nothing ever gets better. But if Tinubu sits down as an Accountant, look at the tax reform, everybody knows that tax reform is superb. But because of the nature of Nigeria, you see a big chunk of Nigerians from the North, they are totally against it. He wants to do agriculture; he wants to do youth empowerment and some other things for the youth. But, how does he do it in a place ridden with insecurity, Boko Haram, banditry, ISWAP and these new ones that are coming?
Tinubu has to go to the basics, but there are no basics in a disorganised society like ours. The basics will just not go well with some people and it will not work because the country has been designed not to work, because the people that have been at the helms of affairs for so long have been blindfolded, they are not seeing that the whole thing is crumbling. If you say his policies and programmes are going to yield results, the parameters are not straight forward. In a good community, the tax reforms would have yielded very good results but look at what is happening now. He has some good intentions but good intentions don’t work in evil areas. In evil communities, good intentions don’t work.
How do you mean when you said Tinubu should go to the basics?
Let’s say security, let’s say economy, let’s say food security. When you talk about poverty level, you start from agriculture. When you start from agriculture, you know what to do in agriculture, you know how to start from the basics in agriculture, from expanding what you have Pari-passu with mechanisation and then large scale, state by state. How is it going to work with banditry and insecurity?
Industrialisation, have you started teaching your students what to do? How to orientate them? Look at Artificial Intelligence (AI). I don’t think there is any school where they do artificial intelligence in Nigeria and the world is moving to that level now. And if there are schools may be in very few private schools. These are things which the government can do, but you need some stability in the economy, you need some stability in the security system, you need some systemic maturity, the system must be mature. Now it is a weak system with big players, it should have been big system, weak players. Tinubu is a big politician, Buhari was a big politician, Obasanjo was a big politician but in a very weak system, whereas, if it was the opposite, the system would have taken care of the weak leaders and make them strong.
For example, America is a good system, so it will be able to clean the winds of demeanours or misdemeanours of Trump, but if you bring Trump into this country, you will crush this country within months. So, we have to go to the basics. Our morals have to change. In those days, if you are a civil servant, you are proud being poor and being honourable. You are contented with what you have and you pride your honesty, dedication to duty and moral, until we go back there nothing will work. Not even a secondary school student is ready to work again now, not to talk of graduates and when they go out, they won’t find anything to do again, so they go to the vices of the situation. We have to reorientate ourselves before Nigeria can come back to the central stage of goodness and it is not going to be possible because the Igbo man does not have the same goal with the Yoruba man, the Yoruba man does not have the same goal with the Hausa or the Fulani man. The middle belt is confused, it is angry, and complaining. You can only resettle in a good family setting, but in a broken home, you can’t resettle. Everybody will have to still go on his own way, and start afresh with these basics, that is the way it is going to be easy.
Some Nigerians have said that criticisms don’t go down well with the APC government, citing the way and manner the party has handled criticism, right from the administration of former President Buhari to the current administration of Tinubu. What is your take on this?
There is no country in the world where this freedom of speech, freedom of criticism, freedom of expression is 100 percentage allowed and there has been no government in this country, I am over 70 years now I have seen governments. There is no government that has been friendly with criticisms. At my age and my level, I am not seeing what is happening about the tolerance in this government as spectacular, it is just normal. And there is no opposition anyway, what is the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) going to say about APC? The PDP is already torn apart, they are flinging chairs against themselves when they are not in the House of Assembly or in the Senate, the Labour party is dead, you only hear about Obedient Movement and Peter Obi moving around to talk. If we have election today, Obi cannot win a street anywhere again. There is no political party that is visible now. But fortunately, or unfortunately for them, APC too is not settled but APC is still ten times more organised than all of them put together. And you should expect internal scuffles, internal schisms, internal conflicts in any party just like a family.
So, I don’t see what they are talking about either Tinubu or APC that should warrant anybody losing a sleep. Moreso, Tinubu was an activist, he has not been over reacting. After all, he has been called so many names and nobody has said anything. He has been handling criticisms with maturity and his aides, handlers and media team, they have not over reacted, after all, the other guys that were with Buhari, you could see them doing their master’s job. Tinubu and his aides are not insulting people, they are not clapping people into detention. At least, they have to be seen as debunking some of these things, they have to be seen as classifying the opposition as wicked, as unfair. And when you compare it with the era of the PDP, Obasanjo, it was a different story. Obasanjo will attack you back himself. He will shut you down even as a party man or get you impeached as a speaker or senate president, that is a different ballgame.
Yar’Adua was a gentleman. Jonathan is more like a civilian gentleman who was taking all the blushes. The reactions of the APC to criticisms in this country have not been too brutal. Majority of the people talk about what they don’t even know, they don’t have their facts and majority of them should actually be in jail. They don’t do enough of investigation; they just go with emotions. But generally, I can really score us good on the handling of criticisms.
How do you see the fight against insecurity under the current administration of Tinubu and the APC government since coming to power in 2015?
The fight against insecurity can be correctly assessed yet, it is getting worse in the North. It is spreading to Lagos. The South-East is experiencing another surge. The South -South is not left out. Every bush in the Middle- Belt and Yoruba land is bandit infested. There is a new terrorist group in town. Killing, kidnapping and marauding are still ongoing. Farmers are still being attacked. No one is brought to book. Soldiers are being murdered by the terrorists and the barracks are not spared. Official claims of curtailing their onslaughts cannot be relied upon. Governor Seyi Makinde gave a panic cry some weeks ago. We are all potentially captured by the pervading ambushes in our streets and forests. When the inevitable war breaks out, Nigerians and the Nigerian Government will know what has hit them. The imminent self defence will definitely snowball into the war we are yet denying. Insecurity is still the menace around and it may ultimately end the Nigeria state. To your tents O Israel!