Senator Femi Okurounmu is a veteran Nigerian politician. He was a former Commissioner of Works in Ogun State. He was elected Senator for the Ogun Central constituency of Ogun State at the start of the Nigerian Fourth Republic, running on the Alliance for Democracy platform. He held office from June 3, 1999 to June 3, 2003. He ran for reelection in 2003, but was defeated by Senator Ibikunle Amosun of the People’s Democratic Party. In this interview, Okurounmu speaks on the state of the nation, corruption in Nigeria and his assessment of President Bola Tinubu’s two years in office. Excerpts:
What do you think can be done to address the worsening insecurity in the country, especially the killings in Benue and Plateau states?
As regards the killings in Plateau and Benue States, you and I know that this didn’t just start today or yesterday. The killings are not new. It began during the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari.
I was one of those very outspoken persons against all these herdsmen going about, killing farmers, killing their women and even destroying farmlands. I was very much outspoken against it throughout the eight years of Buhari’s administration. It was one of the things I had against Buhari’s government. Buhari, as the president was not given adequate attention to the killings all over the country.
The belief then was that Buhari was behind the influx of strange Fulani herdsmen that were causing havoc and mayhem in the country.
So, one of the factors responsible for the influx of the strange Fulanis was that a lot of them were brought into the country by Buhari to fight the 2015 election and protest if he eventually lost the election.
Another factor was Buhari’s administration’s ‘no visa’ policy. It was a deliberate policy to bring in lots of these Fulani because they had held a Fulani Congress somewhere outside Nigeria, where they believed that Nigeria was destined to be their home.
They believed that the conditions were favourable to them, to come and make Nigeria their home and Buhari policies encouraged them.
Because of the ‘no visa’ policy, many of them were encouraged to come into the country, so they came in large numbers, and they wanted to settle down in Nigeria. They had to resort to displacing our local people. This brought about the killings in Benue, Plateau, Southern Kaduna and other parts of the North.
They killed the local people, chased them away from their ancestral land, taking over their farmlands and communities, occupying the villages.
In many instances, they have taken over several local governments, formed parallel governments to the Nigerian government and even collected taxes from the people. All these atrocities by these strange Fulanis were not without the support of some elements in the government, who believed that God had destined Nigeria to be their home.
This was one of the reasons I was personally crying out in 2023 that we should not reelect the All Progressives Congress. It’s one of the reasons I was against APC being re-elected because Buhari was going out of office.
But do you think the state police will address insecurity?
If we say a government should preserve and protect the lives and property of its citizens, it must have a force with which to do it, which is a Police Force. So, a government without a Police Force is not a government, because it can make laws, it cannot enforce the laws that it makes.
The State House of Assembly can make laws and pass laws, if the Federal Government does not support or does not cooperate in the enforcement of those laws; those laws are empty, because as long as the police are controlled only by the Federal Government, you have no police of your own to enforce your laws. You are not a government. So, you are at the mercy of the Federal Government.
The only solution to the insecurity in Nigeria is for each state to have its Police Force, and that Police Force to be under the control of the governor of the state. Then, they can effectively maintain law and order and protect the lives and property of their citizens.
“Babangida was the one who brought up this idea of new-breed politicians in politics. All the politicians of old were almost afraid to be corrupt till the end of the Second Republic”
Some people argue that the state governors will abuse the state police and therefore, there should be no state police, are the people controlling the Federal Police, not Nigerians?
Are they different from those who will control the state police?
How would you assess the present crop of leaders in the country, especially those in the judiciary, executive and legislature…
In the present crop of leaders, their motivation for seeking power is not to serve the interest of the people, but to have power and to acquire private wealth. Those are the two motivations for those in power today. The first is to have power, and the purpose of seeking power is to acquire wealth for themselves.
As for the people, they can go to hell. They don’t care about the people. To sustain themselves in power, they make people poor.
And that’s what many of them try to do. They suit them to poverty. The poorer the people are, the more you can get them to vote for you by just throwing little crumbs at them, people who have not eaten in the last week. They know better that they are hungry.
They want to eat. If you give them money, they will take and when they take the money and they know that you are monitoring them. They will vote for you, but if you are comfortable, I have enough food to eat, then you can listen to what the politician is saying and know whether he is telling lies or not.
You know whether you are going to vote for him or not based on what he’s telling you, but a lot of our people are so poor, give them some grains of gari, some bags of rice, some cash. 80% of the voters are invaluable.
In government, when you have bad people at the top, then everybody, even if they are inclined to be good, becomes bad. For instance, people like power. They campaign based on what they will do when they get to power.
During the First Republic, the Action Group, NCNC, and others campaigned based on what they would do and their governments came to office to do something, and they had something to show for it.
Though they were not perfect, even when they wanted to steal, they did it quietly and secretly, because there were sanctions. If they were caught, they would be sanctioned, they could be jailed and disgraced.
But Nigeria became bad during the period of General Ibrahim Babangida. It was during his government that corruption became acceptable, became a fact, became a sign of wisdom, that you could be corrupt, and there would be no repercussions.
During the regime of General Babangida, corruption developed roots in Nigeria.
Babangida was the one who brought up this idea of new-breed politicians in politics. All the politicians of old were almost afraid to be corrupt till the end of the Second Republic.
Up to that time, corruption was something that people were embarrassed to be accused of and to be ashamed of corrupt people.
When Buhari came in 1984 as the Military Head of State, he put a lot of politicians in detention, so people were scared. That would have reduced the tempo of corruption, but when Babangida got to power and throughout his regime, he was protecting and promoting corruption and that was when he promoted a set of new-breed politicians, people without experience, who did not go through the ropes, who had not acquired the culture of politics. Because of his personal and selfish ambition, he ordered and promoted these new politicians to go and become governors in their various states, in preparation for his becoming president.
This is where all the corruption started. You will notice that the kind of primaries we do today started with the Babangida regime. At that time, we had only a two-party system, that period was the first time that political parties were funded by the government.
Before that time, political parties used to be funded by the people, by the masses themselves. When you want to join a political party, you have to pay some money. During the Babangida era, he bought cars for party chairmen from the local to the state levels.
They did everything for them, gave them salaries and whenever they went to party meetings, they were given money. The corruption and the type of primary elections we have today started with the primary elections organized by both the SDP and NRC during the Babangida regime, where money was distributed at the party primaries.
The corruption will continue until we have a committed, patriotic leader who is determined to stamp it out. Until then, we are in trouble.
My hope and belief is that we shall get somebody, someday, because it takes only one person, a good leader to make Nigeria sit up.
If we have a good leader, who is determined to be righteous, determined to be honest, and who is determined to serve Nigerians, everybody will sit up.
As politicians are jumping from one party to another, some people are saying that Nigeria is drifting towards a one-party state. Do you agree?
The politicians are jumping from one party to another to be enriched. Nobody wants to be in the opposition. You want to be in the ruling party because you have greater access to the nation’s wealth. If you are in the ruling party, not only do you have greater access to the nation’s wealth, you are also protected.
If you are corrupt, you can get away with a lot of things if you are in the ruling party than if you are in the opposition. So that’s why everybody is going to the ruling party because everybody wants to be in government.
That’s why our country is going down the drain every day.
In any case, we have no democracy in Nigeria. That’s the way I see it. As a nation, and as a people, even right now, we have no democracy in Nigeria. Anybody who says we have democracy is deceiving himself.
Though we’re going through the rituals of democracy, we just pretend to ourselves that we are operating in a democracy. We ask people to go out and vote, and we have an INEC, but usually, the votes of the people do not count. It is the wish of the powers that be that determines who finally comes to power that they control. INEC will declare the winner.
As it is today, everybody is under the control of the executive. In the presidential system of government we run in Nigeria, we are supposed to have the balance of powers between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. There’s no balance anymore.
There’s only one power centre. The only power at centre is the presidency, and the presidency controls the legislature. The presidency controls the judiciary. So it controls everybody and controls everything that goes on in the country. He controls the police, controls INEC, and controls every organization, every institution.
Afenifere leader, Pa Ayo Adebanjo, died at a time Nigeria needed him, what would you miss about him?
What I will miss most in Pa Ayo Adebanjo is his outspokenness.
He was a very outspoken person for his age. So, when he believed in something, he would speak out. He was not the type who would say I am an old man, I will just keep quiet. And usually, when he speaks, he speaks on the side of truth and justice and equity.
Presently, Afenifere has two groups. As a former National Secretary of the group, what would you recommend to reconcile the two groups?
There’s no doubt that the Afenifere has become a shadow of its former self, a shadow of what it was.
I was the National Secretary of the organization during the NADECO era. There’s no doubt that today, Afenifere has become a shadow of itself, a shadow of what it used to be. For example, during the NADECO struggle, I was the Secretary General of Afenifere. I knew what Afenifere was at that time. Afenifere was the life wire of NADECO then, but today the Afenifere has been split into almost seven camps.
When people are talking of the crisis in the Afenifere, they only talk in terms of Ogbo Afenifere and Akure Afenifere, but the split is even more than that. It’s worse than that.
The several splits in Afenifere began in 2003.
If the Afenifere will ever regain its force, its potency, it must regroup, must become reunited and become potent forces as it was when it was the life wire of NADECO.
All the present groups must come together to form a very vibrant and inspirational group, that will inspire young people to even want to join, and that will inspire a lot of patriotic Yoruba to embrace the Afenifere.
Now, when I talk of the almost seven groups, the groups I have in mind are the Akure group. We have the Ogbo group. These are the major groups that people talk about. Also, we have the group, including former governors of the AD and by extension, there are some of their successors in the office right up to the present-day governors. That’s group three.
There is another group called the Yoruba Council of Elders…
They were all part of us. During the crisis, they broke away from YCE.
Another group is the Yoruba Unity Forum, which was established again because of the crisis in the Afenifere, followed by the advocates of the Yoruba Nation.
All the advocates of the Yoruba nation, including Professor Banji Akintoye have been kept at a distance because of this constant crisis and friction that the Afenifere has been going through.
We must bring all those groups together again to have a vibrant and inspirational Afenifere that will embrace the interests of all patriotic Yoruba.
How can they be reconciled?
I think that the best honour we can give to Pa Ayo Adebanjo is to bring about this revived Afenifere that will again make Yoruba proud, an Afenifere that will be the intimidating force, political force in Nigerian politics. This will be possible when all these groups are reintegrated into one fold and under one umbrella.
We have to resolve all disagreements between the Ogbo and Akure groups. And the opportunity has never been more right for the two groups to resolve their differences than now. After all, the basic difference is one group supported Peter Obi of the Labour Party, while the other group supported Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress during the 2023 general elections.
“I think President Bola Tinubu has done his best. He’s doing his best. He met with a lot of problems when he assumed office almost two years ago. When he got to power, Buhari had ruined the country before Tinubu got to power, so taking the country out of that ruin is not an easy job”
This is not enough reason to divide a serious and visionary group like the Afenifere…
This was not the first time Afenifere would be supporting a candidate during elections, we have done that at one point or the other, but the practice was to form its party.
The Afenifere formed the Action Group, then later formed the Unity Party of Nigeria. A lot of us there formed the Alliance for Democracy. The practice was for the Afenifere to have its political party and then try to seek allies across other parts of the country.
In 2003, after the first term of President Olusegun Obasanjo, though we did not wish to support the PDP, we supported Obasanjo for a second term. We encouraged our people to vote for Obasanjo in 2003. In 2007, we supported Buhari, because he promised restructuring, so we came into alliance with him. In 2011, we supported President Goodluck Jonathan and also in 2015, but eventually, President Buhari won the election.
The division that the 2023 election brought in the Afenifere should not have occurred simply because a group wanted to support Tinubu and a group wanted to support Peter Obi.
If we had operated the way we normally do, we ought to have debated the matter within us, taken a decision and the majority will carry the day, but unfortunately, that procedure was not followed. This is what led to the crisis.
That is why I believe there is nothing substantial dividing us. We should come together to take Nigeria to where we want Nigeria to be. Where do we want Yoruba land to be? What do we want for our people? That should be our vision.
If we have a common vision for the Yoruba people because of their progress, and their welfare, we have the same vision for Nigeria in terms of where we want Nigeria to be 10 years, 20 years.
All the forces must come together as Yoruba people because Yoruba people are very critical in that role.
In achieving that goal, but critical in achieving the progress, and vision for Yoruba people, we are also critical in achieving our vision for Nigeria and Africa as a whole.
So the unity of Yoruba is very critical. Divided into split groups, we need to have a revived area.
What is your assessment of Tinubu’s government in the last two years?
I think President Bola Tinubu has done his best. He’s doing his best. He met with a lot of problems when he assumed office almost two years ago. When he got to power, Buhari had ruined the country before Tinubu got to power, so taking the country out of that ruin is not an easy job. So, I believe Tinubu is doing his best. There are many challenges that he is facing.
If I were in a position to advise him, I would advise him that he should lay greater emphasis on tackling corruption, because it is simply a disease that has eaten deep into the nation’s body politic.
Though President Tinubu is a human being he is not perfect and because of his imperfection, we should start to condemn him. No. That should not be so.