…Former Lagos deputy governor angry over state of the nation, says Nigeria’s democracy has derailed
By Emma Njoku
Former deputy governor of Lagos State, Senator Kofoworola Bucknor-Akerele, has given a damning verdict that Nigeria’s democracy has been derailed. The Octogenarian said the country is currently running a mafia system of government where the mafia decides ‘who gets what and who gets shut down’.
She viewed the wave of defections from the opposition political parties to the ruling party as a deliberate attempt at one-party rule and vowed that “quite a lot of us are going to resist it”.
Senator Bucknor-Akerele, therefore, called on Nigerians to rise up and ‘fight’ those who derailed the nation’s democracy before they succeed in enthroning a full-blown dictatorship which, she said, would portend a disaster for the country.
She also spoke on other crucial issues in the country’s political landscape, as well as the problem of insecurity.
In your view, has the President Bola Tinubu government delivered on its campaign promises so far?
No, I don’t think that the government has been able to fulfill their campaign promises at all. In fact, what we are seeing at the moment is completely different from what we expected.
With the gale of defections from the opposition parties to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), is Nigeria not tilting towards a one-party state?
Well, it looks as if we’re on our way to a one-party state, but I think there are quite a lot of us that are going to resist it. I was in National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) and we know how we resisted the military rule. Therefore, we’ll start again to resist any attempt at one-party rule because it implies a dictatorship. And we did not fight for democracy to be turned into a dictatorship.
…But President Tinubu was part of the NADECO team that fought for the enthronement of democracy, isn’t it surprising that all of these are happening under his watch?
I’m not sure whether he actually believed in the struggle, though he was in NADECO abroad. He was not with us here. But it could be that, at that time, the struggle was not really about democracy. His participation in the struggle at the time was for him to realise his dream of becoming the president of Nigeria. Oh yes!
I know you’re a member of the PDP or has anything changed?
No, nothing has changed. I don’t think I’m about to hop from one party to another (laughs). I’m still a member of the PDP.
Are you not bothered about the wave of defection from the PDP to the ruling APC? Is it not an indication that PDP is dead as claimed by the ruling party?
PDP is certainly not dead. PDP is very much alive and well! There might be a little bit of misunderstanding within the party, but certainly, PDP is not dead. I wish you had attended the Congress in my local government here, last week; you would have witnessed that PDP is not dead. We had people contesting for all the positions. And, in fact, we had more than one person contesting for every position, and we managed to sort it out and we picked our candidates.
Based on what transpired at the last elections in 2023, do you still have confidence in the electoral process? Will votes count this time?
Well, as long as we still have the sort of people who oversaw our last election, I do not have any confidence in the electoral process. But I think it is up to us, as members of this community and as Nigerians, to make sure that we change the process because we saw what happened in the last election. For instance, I hear somebody has proposed a Bill to make it compulsory for people to vote. I think it is utterly ridiculous! Why would you force me to vote when I don’t want to? I think what we should try to address are the fundamental problems that stop people from voting. And the fundamental problem is that the people feel that their votes don’t count. They believe that the votes are going to be written and handed over to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and INEC would actually announce those that the people in power gave to them to announce. And that is why you see that the average Nigerian has no confidence in the electoral process at the moment.
Does it then not look like President Tinubu is unstoppable for a second tenure come 2027?
Nobody is unstoppable, I’m sorry to say so. Nobody on this earth can say I’m unstoppable; because it’s often said that man proposes and God disposes. Also, we have to look at the gale of defection as you said. APC has said that once you come to the party your sins are forgiven. So, as I said, it must be those people who have sins to be forgiven that are defecting to the APC.
So, where does that leave us as a people, as a country?
Well, I think it is up to us to decide whether to allow the ‘sinners’ to continue to be our leaders or look for new credible leaders.
I’m aware there are moves by the opposition parties to merge against the ruling APC for the 2027 election. How do you resolve the issue of the presidential candidate in the coalition party?
I don’t think that it is everybody from the different opposition political parties that are going into the merger. We have to decide, what sort of political merger do we want? Is it a political merger that would satisfy individual ambition? Or is it a merger that would try and effect concrete change in the system? Those are the things that one would consider before jumping into any merger.
The zoning formula has always been an issue in the PDP. Do you think it will not affect the party’s chance again in the presidential poll in 2027? What’s the party doing to address the seeming overbearing influences of the Atikus and Wikes in the party?
Well, I know that both Atiku and Wike have their personal ambitions. I believe that sooner or later PDP will go back to the formula it was using, which was what kept it in power for 16 years because it maintained that formula. We lost because we came out of the formula. And I think that Atiku should be gracious enough to realise that if he keeps on upsetting the apple cat, he is not going to help PDP at all.
Do you think that the PDP will be bold enough to tell Atiku not to run for the presidency in 2027?
I think there are people who will be bold enough to tell him that. Look at what is happening in the East over the position of the party’s secretary at the moment. Some people are now threatening to leave the PDP if we do not follow our own rules. I’m sure that issue will be resolved before the next Congress. You’ve got to look at what is happening in the country at the moment. Whether people defect from one party to another or not will not affect the next election. What is going to affect the next election is the situation of people, the voters themselves. Are they better off? They’re not. The middle class has been destroyed, so you only have the very rich and the very poor now. Many people can hardly eat one meal a day. So, those are the people who are going to vote. Whether Senator A or Mr. B defects to another party is not going to be the issue. The issue is going to be who is going to put food on our table? Who is going to make it easy that when I’m sick I can get medical care without having to pay extortionists for it? Who is going to make sure that my children can go to school without paying exorbitant school fees? Who is going to provide housing, because so many people do not have houses to live in? Who is going to give us roads? These are the issues on the ground. It’s not whether one senator defects or not. People are not going to care about that. They are going to look at who they think is going to make their life better.
But we have a situation whereby the politicians appear to have weaponised poverty such that people accept pittance to vote for them?
I think we have a new breed of politicians coming up, younger people who will be able to tell the people, “if you take two cups of rice and N2,000; N5,000; N10,000, or even N20,000 in some cases from politicians to vote for them, how long do you think that’s going to last”? The thing is to educate the masses that the pittance that is being given to them is not going to change their lives. It can only solve a problem for a day or two, and that’s all. They should look for people who are going to solve their problems permanently.
What do you make of the drama between the Senate President and a female Senator Natasha which borders on sexual harassment?
Yes, I’ve been following the drama, and I feel that it is really a sad situation that such a thing can happen at all. When I was in the Senate I was the only woman there, and at no time did anybody make any improper proposition to me. I think the problem has to do with the caliber of people currently in the Senate and the entire National Assembly for that matter. The caliber of people that go to the National Assembly now has changed. It seems that all you need to get there now is money and nobody cares about how you made that money to be able to get there, whereas at the time I was in the Senate, most of the people there didn’t have so much money. Most of them were professionals or business people who wanted to serve the nation. But people now go into political office in order to acquire wealth.
What do you make of the situation in Rivers State which led to the declaration of a state of emergency in the state vis-a-vis the drama in Lagos, where the state assembly followed due process to impeach the Speaker, only for him to be allegedly reinstated ‘on the orders from above’?
You earlier asked if we were heading for an era of dictatorship, and these are the fundamental things that are going to affect us if we do not stamp out this attempt at dictatorship. At the moment, I do not believe we’re running a democracy. I believe that we are running a mafia type of government, where you have a mafia who decides who gets what and who gets shut down. This is what is actually affecting the country right now. How can a State House of Assembly take an action and somebody decided that what was properly done be pushed aside for an imposition? In the case of Rivers, it is sad that there’s a state of emergency there, because I don’t think that in our Constitution you can declare a state of emergency simply because two politicians have a disagreement. You didn’t declare a state of emergency in Borno where terrorists are killing people every day. You didn’t declare a state of emergency in Plateau and Benue where people are being killed every day; but you declared a state of emergency in Rivers where two political combatants are having a face off. That’s why I said the whole democratic system has been derailed. And until we sit back and try and return to a truly democratic system, we are heading for disaster.
What’s your perspective on the ambition of President Bola Tinubu’s son, Seyi, to become the next governor of Lagos State in 2027?
Well, I don’t know whether he has actually declared his ambition or it is a mere rumour. If I were him, I would quietly enjoy being the president’s son, look after my business, and forget about trying to run Lagos State as its governor. One, you’re not from Lagos State, and we Lagosians have had enough of people who are not Lagosians being imposed on us that we’re now going to take a firm stand against anybody who wants to come and take over our state.
What if he (Seyi) has the backing of his father as the sitting president, do you think you can stop him?
Why can we not do that? NADECO consisted of ordinary people and they stood up against the military. So, why can we not stand up against a civilian president?
How would you score President Tinubu in the fight against insecurity in the country?
I will score him zero in the fight against insecurity because the situation is getting worse. People are being killed every day. People are being sacked from their villages and towns. People are being kidnapped. I was talking with somebody recently who said he was thinking about attending a meeting in Ilesha, but he’s scared because the road to Ilesha is so bad that one could easily be kidnapped on the road. And Ilesha is in the western part of the country where President Bola Tinubu comes from. Before now, insecurity was prevalent in the North. It has now moved to the South. So, I don’t know what is being done. The sooner we have state police and a restructuring of the country, the better for us, so that we’re not being ruled from Abuja, but each region or state or whatever is decided upon in the restructuring would be able to control its own area. Until we do that, we will not have a secure country.
By the way, to what extent would you say President Tinubu has addressed the issue of restructuring which he strongly advocated prior to his election?
I have not seen anything to show that he is restructuring. And I’m not sure whether he was genuinely for restructuring because he started his political career in the Alliance for Democracy (AD) when he came back from exile. The people in AD were for restructuring, so he joined the bandwagon at the time. Since then, he would support whoever he thinks will support him to become president. That’s the way I see President Tinubu as a person.
What would be your final word on Nigeria as a nation?
First of all, when we, in NADECO, were in the struggle, we never imagined that Nigeria would get to this sorry state. We thought that Nigeria would move forward and become one of the leading nations of the world. What I would say is that if we want any change, then we must be ready to fight for our rights. By the way, we don’t need to take up arms to fight for our rights. We can do so peacefully. After all, look at what Martin Luther King did in the United States for the blacks to get the votes. And, in the same way, we NADECO, too, were able to get democracy. Unfortunately, our democracy has been derailed. And if we want to get real democracy, then we must be ready to stand up and say ‘enough is enough’, and get rid of the people who have derailed democracy and replace them with new hands.