Former National Vice Chairman, South-West of the Peoples Democratic Party, Dr Eddy Olafeso, shares his thoughts with PETER DADA on the 2023 general elections and other national issues
How is the PDP preparing for the forthcoming general elections?
Yes, for Ondo State, I think we have taken a very bold step. About three or four months ago, we started our reconciliation. The party in the state constituted three committees; one for the Northern Senatorial District, one for the Central and one for the South. I’m the Chairman of the Reconciliation Committee for the Northern Senatorial District; Dr Dairo is Chairman for the South, while Bakita Bello is for the Central. We have gone round the 18 local governments of the state; we have gone round the 203 wards and we have appealed to our people. Matters that arose from the last congress and convention, many of them came up and they have been dealt with, and we have reported adequately to the state chairman and the State Working Committee. So, in that regard, we have taken the bold step earlier on to ensure that we bring our people together. We see great opportunity for our party to be able to win the general elections in 2023 and help in rebuilding a damaged country. So, for our political party here, we have done well to ensure that we rally our people and we begin to see each other as one.
With the crises in the PDP, many think the party is not ready to take power from the ruling All Progressives Congress. Do you share the same sentiment?
We are ready. I don’t think it is unusual to have certain disagreements within a family. The Peoples Democratic Party, ably guided by its constitution and the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, will do everything to make it possible to make it an all inclusive agenda in rebuilding Nigeria. That is what we are currently doing. Please, note that reconciliation is a process and we are getting better by the day and we know for sure that we will get there at the appointed time so that we can focus on ensuring that we move into the election far more united and far more formidable than we are today. So, for me, I know that we are moving on. We have inaugurated the National Campaign Council, we have done the needful. We are holding meetings and very soon, all the other committees will be in place so that we can focus on the five-point agenda of Waziri Atiku Abubakar and so that we can continue to rebuild our country once again.
Nigerians should have confidence in us that as we make progress on this journey, there will be a need for us to equally reform our party, ensure that the constitution of the party works and we don’t do anything to arbitrarily create further crises beyond what is on the ground. There is enough time to strengthen the party in terms of ensuring that there is a balance. But what is on the front burner now is to concentrate on the agenda of the party for the people of Nigeria in 2023, and that is exactly what we are doing.
What have been the roles of the past leaders of the PDP on the project, leaders like former President Olusegun Obasanjo, former President Goodluck Jonathan and others, because they all seem aloof?
Just wait and see! But the who is who in Nigeria understand that the nation called Nigeria needs rebuilding; this nation needs revamping; this nation needs to begin to attain its greatness at this moment and anybody that believes in those things I enumerated is equally of the opinion that our decision is right to rebuild Nigeria from this moment on.
It was learnt that some young ones in the PDP are on the move to ensure that the old ones are retired from the party. How do you feel about this?
I will not like to answer any question from the realm of rumour. If it is not substantiated, it is in the realm of rumour. So, are you saying intelligence and knowledge belong to only the youth and the elders don’t have? How old is the Prime Minister of Malaysia? How old is Joe Biden? This thing has nothing to do with age. Don’t let us delude ourselves, whoever believes that the young will do things right is fooling himself. How many young people have failed in the assignment or responsibility given to them? Let us bury that idea and let us move forward.
As a national and state leader of the PDP, how are you managing the leadership crisis in the party in Ondo State?
I live by example and I am open to all. I speak to everyone about my party. I have been a member of the PDP since 1998; I never for once left the party and I am a believer in hard work and committed to goals. Those are the things that are very important. I do speak to all my colleagues and they have adequate regards for me and I do have for them too. So, for us here, we have been okay. We will find answers to all the challenges; we will begin to mobilise our people. Not quite a week ago, we went to Ore to receive some leaders of the APC to our party in readiness for the 2023 elections.
What about the litigation by members of the party against each other over the outcome of the last primaries?
It is advancing the constitution of the party and that of Nigeria. If you have anything that you feel is not right, you approach the court and once the court takes the decision, the party takes it up from there. It is part of entrenching democracy. People will have to fight for their rights within the framework of the law.
In the last presidential election, the PDP won in Ondo State. Are you sure the current issues will not affect your chances this time round?
No, they can’t. We will even win with a wider margin this time round because the fate of our people is hanging in the balance. There is so much poverty in the land, so much denial, there is so much that needs to be corrected. Ondo State is getting poorer; I don’t think those who are still being owed gratuity and pensions are being paid. Even civil servants across this state are battling with inflation that their salaries can no longer take them home. I think everybody is tired of the APC government. Insecurity, the economy and the fiscal policy have actually rendered the entire county hopeless; everybody is hooked under the yoke of the APC. That is why all of us must do everything possible to push them out in 2023. What are you going to vote the APC for? Is it a continuation of eight years of extreme poverty and misery? Is it a continuation of unemployment for the youth? They have exhausted every patience; Nigerians have endured for the last seven years. I think we are better positioned and we have to work very hard.
But the APC has been claiming that the problems in the country today started when the PDP was in government. What is your reaction to this?
Compare notes; if they say it did not start now, they took over the government to be able to redress and correct those problems they may be referring to. What was the strength of the naira in 2015 compared to today? What was the unemployment rate in 2015 compared to what we have today? What was the rate of inflation in 2015 compared to what it is today? How about security or theft of national assets? They confessed that they don’t really know where our oil is going. In all facets, they have failed the nation and they are not even remorseful about their failure. People stay three, four days on the road, just because the roads are impassable. It is almost a national shame that we are still talking about the APC. In a decent environment, they will be leaving because they don’t know exactly what to do to improve the state of the nation.
But the presidential candidate of the APC said he would fix the nation, because he did it in Lagos. What is your take on this?
What is the debt profile of Lagos today? There are a few things they have done and many things left undone. What he did in Lagos, is it what he is trying to do in Nigeria where one single company takes virtually 30 per cent of the revenue? If that is what he is coming to do, Nigeria may as well commit suicide from now. There is no comfort; there is no happy ending to the misery that has been visited on the people of Nigeria. Lagos is a state without facilities; it is overpopulated without any hope despite the quantum of internally generated revenue that was finding its way into private pockets. It is sad; there is no victory song to be sung anywhere. Believe me, Lagos is worse off in the last 20 years. Go into the neighbourhoods; have you been to Ladipo and Agege lately and other places across Lagos? You will feel ashamed. How about flooding? That is a state on the precipice. God forbid bad things, with severe weather, Lagos State may be under water and that will be untold misery, pain and loss for the Nigerian people. They need to buckle down; there is nothing to campaign about. If you have done so very well in Lagos, how come you took ill and you cannot get better treatment of yourself at home? They should please keep quiet and bury their heads in shame.
With what happened in the past, people seem not to have hope in the PDP, what can you say about this?
People should have hope in the PDP. We are reuniting Nigeria; we are revamping the education sector; we are developing infrastructure. We are thinking seriously about restructuring the country to make it more efficient and more equitable. We are thinking about security. This five-point agenda is aimed at rebuilding this country. The government has no business in business; it should create an enabling environment for the teeming population to create more businesses for themselves, make it worthwhile for them, reduce wastages, make the government more efficient by ensuring that power is devolved to the nearest of the people at the state and local government levels and let them begin to work. That is our agenda; a total revamping and total re-engineering of the political landscape to make it more efficient so that it can deliver to the ordinary man on the street. We have been working hard on this and our presidential candidate has spent sleepless nights re-evaluating our status and seeing what we can do to make it better.
We need to unbundle many white elephants; we need to make amendments where we have certain bureaucracy becoming an issue in delivering dividends of democracy to the ordinary people. The Federal Government is having many issues and is not making any success of them. Just wait till when our candidate will begin to speak to Nigerians about his agenda. We will see a clear departure from this very tragic situation; we are working on the issue of exports, where more money will come into the country. The law must begin to work for everyone so that some people will not be sacred cows that cannot be touched. I read recently that some people started a pipeline, four kilometres, where they stole Nigerian oil and this was not detected over the years. What are we doing in the area of technology to combat crime and criminality? Those are the things we are thinking differently. Nigerians should go to bed and be sure that from May 29, 2023 when our presidential candidate is sworn in as the President, we will begin to have a great moment to put our hands on the plough and work for a better Nigeria.
All the presidential candidates are promising restructuring. This current government also promised it, but nothing has been done in that regard. Do you think the people will take that promise seriously again?
There is nothing wrong if all of us are saying the same thing; it depends on how serious we are. When you put your hands in the place, and you have the experience, education and knowledge of the place and you continue to work very hard at it, you will get results.
But people don’t trust politicians; they are tired of fake promises. What is your take?
Trust comes with performance and actions. The people have the ace. In another four years, they will evaluate them (politicians). But what you can take home at this moment is evaluate every other candidate that is running for any position. It is not about making promises, it is about delivery and if you don’t deliver, you will be kicked out. We all agree that the APC has failed Nigerians, which is why we are looking for the best so that we make tomorrow better than today and give a very prosperous country to the future generation. The uncertainty of yesterday and the doubt of yesterday must be laid to rest by looking eyeball to eyeball at the candidates and making them tell you what they want to do when they get to the office. It is your examination of them that will make you vote for them. But for the PDP, we are very committed to a better Nigeria because that was the reason the party came into existence and that is why we are still pushing ahead.
The ‘Obidient’ groups are everywhere in the country, holding rallies all over Nigeria, even abroad to show their readiness to support the Labour Party candidate in the presidential election. The PDP and other parties are said to be jittery. How will you react to this?
I have been in politics for over 20 years. No serious politician will make a decision based on the crowd you see on the streets. A serious politician will look at the structure of his party from top to bottom. How many members of your party (LP) from the unit to the ward to the local government to the senatorial to the state and then to the national can you put together? Also, if a party does not have a structure that organises elections, what kind of dream is that? It is like building your castle in the air. What makes a party is the structure. It is not noise and it is not being abusive or garrulous that can win elections. We are not afraid of any party coming up; we are doing our own bit. You saw us in Bauchi; you saw us in Ibadan, and you saw us in Lagos. We are coming heavily and you will see the hurricane arriving and we are sure of winning the coming elections.
What is your take on the argument that a northerner spending eight years should not be succeeded by another northerner at the Presidency?
I am a Nigerian; I have lived outside this country before. I never told anyone that I am a Yoruba man. I never told anyone that I am from any part of the country. For me, it is Nigeria that is very important. We are far too blessed and nations never develop with those parochial reasoning. Believe me; a set of twins from the same biological mother who are identical will perform differently. So, in this matter, it is not as if every Fulani man would behave like President Muhammadu Buhari. So, why on earth will we be looking at Nigeria on the basis of tribe? When are we going to leave that behind and build Nigeria to be a formidable country, where all Nigerians will be united and see themselves as one and not by those parochial reasons, but by virtue of the fact that you are judged on the basis of your character and who you are.
As a matter fact, if all these zoning or zonal systems; Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba zoning systems, have been working, how come that for over 62 years, we have not had a breakthrough? Are they going to be better than when you look out for a leader with capacity, with strength of character, with adequate intellectual ability to rally round everybody to make us a united nation? For me, I don’t look at that. I will never judge a man on the basis of his tribe. I do judge a person on the basis of his capacity, of his knowledge and of his vision. Nations are built by vision, knowledge, integrity and character. It is not on the basis of where you are from. It is a very long way to look at our challenges. Our people may be exasperated that we are not getting it right but the day we get it right, we forget all those things we did in the past that never worked. So, for the PDP, by virtue of our own history, we have decided on the choice of a candidate, who is not controversial.
What is your history in this regard?
The history of the APC is not the history of the PDP. We came in 1999 as a party and we won the election under Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. He spent eight years there, and we did our rotation too at that time. It went to the late Musa Yar’Adua, who did it for two years. But after the death of Yar’Adua, the doctrine of necessity came. If we were very insistent on zoning at that time, there wouldn’t have been the doctrine of necessity. We would have been thrown into a constitutional quagmire, because there would not be a room for Goodluck Jonathan. The North conceded to four years for Jonathan, who was not in consideration of the zoning at that time and he became President for six years. So, if you add eight to six, it is 14, and then we contested the presidential election in 2015 and lost. So, the imbalance still exists and if the imbalance exists, it needs to be corrected in our own party. That is exactly what happens. The Fulani taking over from Fulani doesn’t arise. It is the history of our party that we are pursuing and from there on, after the doctrine of necessity, Jonathan did it for six years, making Obasanjo/Jonathan 14 years. It means that if the North has done it for two years, it will equally be good to have considered them. What is wrong with fairness, equity and justice?
If you are talking of inclusivity, how has that included the North? This is not a unitary state; the decision of the APC should not be the decision of the PDP, and for me, what is most important is the quality of the candidate. Truly, if it is coming to the South, if the South is laying claim, should it have gone to the South-South or the South-East within our own party? If all the aspirants decide that it should be open, we have conducted our convention and somebody has emerged, then why are we going through all these? Are we really fighting for the southerners or we are fighting the cause of our own personal ambitions and interests? I’m very convinced that this moment calls for a very deep reflection of the history of a nation since 1960. But what is most important today is selecting a leader who can begin to help us rebuild this nation, where all will see one another as one, no matter where you come from, no matter where you were born.
You said rebuilding the nation, but people say it is restructuring. Restructuring is regarded as a southern agenda. What is your view on this?
Was the abolition of slave trade the Black people’s agenda? We should not be thinking that way. Anyone can reorder Nigeria. The problem may have been created by a northerner; it may be another northerner who will solve the problem. I used the example of the slave trade to let you know that White people, who were the beneficiary of the slave trade did more than the Blacks to stop it. If the slave trade was left in the hands of the Black people till today, it will still be going on. So, whoever decides that this (restructuring) can be done should be supported. Do you believe that there is imbalance, inequity and injustice in the system? If someone says he can do it, why are you antagonising him for belonging to one region or the other? I will stay with Waziri (Atiku Abubakar) for a lifetime because I know he can do it.
What is your message to people out there?
We are coming; hope is on the way and this will be totally different from the past. Nigeria will be great again.
Seven months to the expiration of this present administration, as a Nigerian, do you still have the hope that things can improve?
What hope do you have in this headless government that allows the younger generation to be denied education for over seven months and they are causing division among the teachers who are fighting for education, fighting for a better learning environment? Seven years is gone already, is it six months left that they are going to build something upon? Nothing decent can come out of the APC. They were never a political party and they will never be a political party. They are just carpetbaggers, who hijacked power and never knew what to do with it except stealing the resources of the country.
There is a belief that your party caused it because if it had done well, the APC might not have got to power?
What did we cause? Life was better during our time if you can still reminisce. The reminiscence will let you know when we had a better life. People were doing very well during our time, but now, are the people doing well? Are you better off today than how you were eight years ago? So, if they are saying we caused it and people are living a good life, why not tell them to stop the lying, and that they are the one that ruined this nation and not those they took the power from.
