Chief Samuel Oluyemisi Falae was a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation from January 1986 to December 1990. He was also a Minister of Finance in 1990. Falae, 86, is now a traditional ruler as the current Ilu-Abo in Akure North, Ondo State. He was recently appointed the Chairman, National Executive Committee of the Pan-Yoruba socio-political organization, Afenifere. In this interview, he bares his mind on President Bola Tinubu’s reforms, state police, division in Afenifere, the relevance of June 12, amongst other burning national issues. Excerpts:
Mixed reactions have trailed the two-year administration of the Bola Tinubu administration. Would you say the economy and security has improved under him?
I’m not going to assess President Bola’s Tinubu’s government. l have channels through which I can assess it. Since he became President, I have had at least one meeting with him. So that channel is always open to me. I am no longer a politician. I’m now a traditional ruler. If it was in the past, yes, I would say all I wanted to say, but not now. But I will tell you, the reforms that have been carried out were necessary reforms, which required great courage to carry out.
Past governments shied away from them because of the possible consequences, but he had the courage to carry out those reforms. There were things that could have been done before the reforms were initiated that might have made the negative consequences more bearable.
But by and large, I am of the opinion that those reforms are essential. For example, in a non-serious country, we have six exchange rates. One for investors. If you want to go to America, another one. If you want to pay your children’s school fees, another one. People are buying from favourable windows and selling in other places.
You are making multi-millionaires who are not doing anything at all. So to me, it is a necessity.
The second one is the oil subsidy. My position has always been that there’s no reason the government should participate in the fixing of prices.
Oil is not as important as food. Everybody eats food daily. Not everybody uses petrol.
You can do without using petrol for a year, but you cannot do without food for a day. And yet, the government does not fix the price of food. Therefore, there was no need for the government, all these years, to have been fixing the price of petrol and giving subsidies so the price will not be too high so that people will not be angry.
They will not refuse to vote for them at election time. So to deregulate the oil industry is something I’ve been calling for, for a very long time.
But as you now know, there are cabals and interest groups that were profiting from what used to happen. So I’ll just touch those two areas.
The reforms are absolutely necessary, but the fixing could have been done to minimise the negative effect.
“Past governments shied away from them because of the possible consequences, but he had the courage to carry out those reforms. There were things that could have been done before the reforms were initiated that might have made the negative consequences more bearable”
The worsening insecurity especially in Benue, Plateau and Borno States has continued unabated. Do you suspect sabotage considering funds spent on security?
Well, various players have told us that there are all kinds of groups that are sabotaging our security. There are foreign entities that are mining essential minerals in parts of Nigeria, and those are the areas where the terrorism is greatest. They are mining essential minerals, selling and buying guns and ammunition to continue to protect their illegality.
Domestically, the governor of Borno State, Zulum, said elements of the security forces have been compromised. Rather than be on the side of the government, they give information to the terrorists, thereby sabotaging government efforts.
So when Boko Haram started, it started as a dangerous local political gimmick.
The government wanted to use it so that they could get the votes of the people by showing the opponents as not being genuine Muslims. By having Western education, Boko Haram, that book is haram. Education is bad.
So, those educated people, they are your enemies. That’s how it started. But unfortunately, they lost control, and other elements came in, and the thing has taken on a life of its own with international complications.
So my position about security is that security is a local matter. Security is local. What do I mean? If I am able to secure my territory and you secure yours, the whole place will be secured. Each locality must have its security operators to secure its territory.
You know, we must decentralize security so that local leaders, traditional rulers and political leaders assume responsibility, along with the government and the police, of course, for securing that locality.
Buying aircrafts and tanks is okay, but how many tanks can Nigeria buy to ensure their security?
We must decentralize and use local leaders, strengthen their arms, give them support, logistics, maybe equipment, so that each area can secure their locality.
So it’s a major change in strategy that I’m advocating for the government to continue to fight Boko Haram, but to make sure they don’t go to other areas, strengthening local arrangements to keep them out. Here we have Amotekun, it’s part of the localisation of the security effort.
But beyond Amotekun, for example here, I’ve organised the hunters, traditional hunters into a fairly disciplined force. They operate with the police. When the police are going on patrol now, my hunters can go with them.
When Amotekun operatives went on an operation that was led by their commander, Chief Adetunji Adeleye, my hunters were part of that patrol, because we developed them to a level where they can work with the police and Amotekun to enforce security.
This also means that, for example, most of the criminals arrested in this area in the last two years, by day or at night, were arrested by hunters and taken to the police station. That’s the truth of the matter.
Policemen don’t go into the bush at night. My hunters do. They can go into the bush and be there for three days, day and night. And if they arrest strange elements, they take them to the police.
So, for security to be substantially improved, we must decentralize security arrangements. Let local leaders, traditional rulers, play a greater role than they are playing now. Try to do what I’ve been trying to do here for the past two years.
I’m not a magician. I’m not saying kidnappers don’t come here. Some time ago, they kidnapped about 14 people.
But those ones came from Akure to do some survey work and were kidnapped in the forest near here, but not within Ilu-abo. Of course, they kidnapped someone on a farm and they had to pay a ransom to get them released. But soon after that, my hunters, in joint patrol with the police, arrested two of the kidnappers.
So, you know, a thief can enter any house if they are determined, but they would rather go to a house that is not well defended than go to a house that is barricaded.
So, similarly, once we localise this thing, the criminals themselves, we know. By the way, they have informants among us. Some of them live among us.
We don’t know them, but people give them information. So, they also tell them that these people have now mobilised to protect themselves. That should be a disincentive for them to come here.
So, if that happens everywhere, we would be safer than we are now.
While a section of Nigerians have called for State Police, others are opposed to it because it may be hijacked by politicians. Do you agree with this?
What about the Nigerian police? Is the Federal Government not run by politicians?
I feel very passionate about this state police matter. Now, any organisation that is called a government, whether it’s local government, state government, or Federal Government, has the power to make laws and regulations. That’s why it’s called a government, governed by law.
They also have the intrinsic power to enforce their own enactments with their own authority through a police force. A government, local, or state, should not make laws that will be enforced by the police created by another level of government.
And so it has been that even in colonial times, the British who colonized Nigeria, they knew what I was talking about. They also had native authority police. Every town, not state, every town had its own native authority police.
Every major town in Nigeria had its police. Why? There are politicians there. Why did they not hijack the police?
And it’s now clear that, we’ll say where the federation is. A federation is not a unitary state. Power is decentralised. Why should the enforcement of law not be decentralised? What’s the logic? In any case, law and order are broken down in many places. That should tell us that state police are an absolute necessity.
Before the civil war broke out in 1967, before then, you had native authority police in the major towns. For some time, Western Nigerian police were headed by Omitowoju.
But when the civil war came, the army was anxious to beef up the size of the Nigerian Army to meet the challenge. And so they took all these various levels of police and integrated them into the army, gave them additional training, because it is easier to convert a policeman to a soldier than to take a raw bushman and make him a soldier. So they trained them and absorbed them into the Nigerian army.
Now, when the war ended, they forgot to desegregate the army and let the policemen go back as policemen. That’s how we lost the advantage of local authority.
In the north, they were called Dandoka.
Every local government had its police force. If Adeleke was in charge of the constabulary for many years, and if somebody stole a goat in Oke Aro, they went and arrested him. But if somebody was counterfeiting money somewhere, Nigerian police were going to arrest him, or if he committed murder.
The boundaries were well defined. There was no clash. We said, if they had two players, there’d be a clash.
There was no clash. What clash? Are we idiots? So, if what is happening now has not convinced people that state police are necessary, then I don’t know what can convince them.
Look, in other countries, take India not only do we have state police in India, the Indian Railway Corporation, a Parastatals, has its own police force that is bigger than the size of the Nigerian police force. Parastatals police were behaving as if they were living in another world.
When I was in America, I was in Yale University. There was Yale police. My university had its police force that could arrest and detain. And in colonial times, provincial governments, regional governments exercised police powers.
There are three elements in police power. The power to arrest, to detain, and prosecute. Those three powers were given to forest guards in the forestry law in colonial times.
So, when the Ondo State Government wanted to introduce Amotekun, you know, there was a lot of hullabaloo, some Attorney Generals in Abuja were saying they had no power to do something. I said, tell him he’s an idiot. He should shut up.
Where was he when the 19 states in the north created Hizba? They passed state law to create Hizba. What is Hizba?
Sharia police exercising the power to arrest, detain, and prosecute. What was Ondo State going to do that was different from that? None.
I said, don’t listen to him. And in any case, you can just take your forestry law, Ondo State, and amend the mandate.
The mandate is that forest guards should protect trees.
And anybody who breaches any of the provisions regarding the trees should be arrested and detained. Expand the mandate to say forest guards will now protect not only trees, but also crops planted by people and the people themselves.
They’ve always had the power to arrest, detain, and prosecute.
It’s not a new thing. So, states, local governments, have always had the power of the police.
So, therefore, if I were a governor, I would start my state police and wait to be arrested.
Yes, I would win in the court because I would demonstrate that I already have police powers in my forestry law. That other states in the north have a police force.
The purpose is to manage a particular area of their lives.
I want the police to manage an area that is important to us. But the police are the police.
I don’t know why people are still talking about the need for police force.
It is clear that state police are necessary. It is clear that the states already have the power to create police forces at the state level, to exercise the police power inherent in every government, which they have used in the case of forest guards.
The same powers forest guards are exercising, I will give the same powers to state police. Power to arrest, detain and prosecute.
There are insinuations that the president has been lopsided in appointing a section of the country in his cabinet. Do you agree?
I will not talk about it. I’m no longer a politician. I’m an elder statesman and a traditional ruler. So, if I have views that will help the president or any governor in Nigeria. I’ll phone him and say, I have some views; I would like to see you.
The wave of defections seems to be rising by the day, some people are concerned that Nigeria may be heading towards a one party state. What is your take on this?
It will never happen. It will never happen. Because even in your family, you and your siblings, and your wife and children, well, you have the same grandfather can you agree on everything all the time.
So, if it cannot happen in your family that cannot happen in Nigeria. It cannot happen.
You remember when PDP was in charge, they tried to have a one-party state. And I remember Colonel Ahmadu Ali, who was sometime chairman of the party, said, you are going to rule for 60 years.
And my party at the time, they destabilized our party, they brought somebody who was not a member to become a chairman of the party.
All in an attempt to create a one-party state, has it worked? No.
You know, during the crisis of 1967, Papa Obafemi Awolowo was invited to lead the Yoruba delegation, and Papa said, well, he knew that Yoruba should never be monolithic. He said, once the crisis was over, he said he knew everybody would go back to his base.
During the Yoruba Civil War, some call it the Kiriji war, some call it the Ekiti parapo War, it’s the same war, it occurred because the Oyo Empire had crumbled, and Ibadan was trying to step into the shoes of Oyo by appointing ageles to start collecting ishakole from different parts of the Yoruba land.
Now, in the course of that war, virtually every part of Yoruba contributed fighting men to Yoruba land, and at some point, somebody muttered the idea that, okay, after this war, it was a war against Ibadan, that’s what the rest of Yoruba land, the Yoruba sent troops, Akure, everybody sent troops.
So, at some point, somebody said, after this war, to avoid similar problems in the past, let all Yoruba people congregate in one big city, it will be easier to defend that city. Somebody said, very good, which Oba will be the Oba of the big city? Is it the Oba of my town or the Oba of your town?
That was where the whole thing ended. Yoruba are like the old Greek city-states. We are not monolithic.
Akure has been here from time immemorial. Ijebu Ode has been there. Owo has been there.
Ikere has been there. We know we are of the same descent. Our languages and dialects are of the same central language and cultural ancestry. But everybody maintained its identity. Like the Greek city-states, you have Athens and Attica. Attica was the surrounding area.
So, you had Akure and all the other surrounding areas. It is the same thing. You can’t come and have a monolithic arrangement in such a situation.
I’m just trying to show you why I said it can never happen. Efforts will be made to have one party state but once the purpose for which it has been arranged is achieved, everybody goes back to his base as Awolowo once said.
What is your take on the growing coalition against the president?
Don’t drag me into partisan matters.
The 2023 elections led to a division within Afenifere, now that you have been appointed the NEC chairman of Afenifere, what is your agenda and how do you intend using your new position to unite the various factions of Afenifere?
Well, what I can tell you is that I will do my very best to demonstrate to all our colleagues that we owe it to our race to give them one single Afenifere.
The present division came when Baba Reuben Fasoranti, we felt that he was too old to run Afenifere on a day-to-day basis and then, announced Chief Ayo Adebanjo, the acting leader and Oba Olaitan as deputy, with the understanding that they will be briefing him. And that, of course, all meetings according to our tradition will be taking place in his premises.
Unfortunately, Adebanjo misunderstood and said he was the leader and didn’t consult Fasoranti, when he was asked, he said he doesn’t have to consult Fasoranti. That was strange because when Papa Adesanya appointed Papa Fasoranti as an acting leader and Papa Adesanya was sick at the time, he could not participate in our meetings anymore. But we continued to hold all meetings at his residence until he died.
And after his death, we held two or three meetings there until we confirmed Papa Fasoranti as our leader. That is tradition.
So, the person, who says he’s now Afenifere leader was appointed by Papa Fasoranti as deputy to Adebanjo.
So, it is not that we have policy disagreement at all. Once a leader is appointed, he remains leader until he dies. So, we can’t have two leaders when Papa Fasoranti is alive. Anyway, don’t let me speak too much.
I will do my best to bring everybody together. Because what used to give Afenifere a lot of influence and respect was that we were cohesive. We spoke with one voice.
But if we speak with two or three voices, nobody is going to listen to us. So, I intend to speak to all those concerned. Let’s forget about leadership.
Papa Fasoranti remains the leader, I can’t be the leader when Papa Fasoranti is still alive, l am chairman of NEC, doing the work, deciding the meetings. Whatever I am doing, I am representing Papa Fasoranti. I cannot say I don’t have to consult with him. Of course, I must consult with him. That’s tradition.
I’m optimistic that it may take some time, but we’ll come back together. We’ll come together.
Let’s go to June 12. Do you still think that the ideals of the June 12 struggle are still relevant?
The June 12 struggle was about bringing democracy back to Nigeria.
Is it relevant? Elections were held, someone won the election, and somebody annulled it. We said no, you can’t do that and for the first time, a civilian group gave the military government an ultimatum that we must restore Abiola’s mandate within 30 days.
That has never happened before. And they were shocked. Who are these people? So they descended on us. They killed some; they exiled some, detained some.
We didn’t give up. At some point, we externalised the struggle by sending some of our leaders to go abroad and we reported the junta to the different countries in the world.
Do you remember at one point, Abacha’s Foreign Minister was walked out of the Commonwealth meeting and Nigeria was declared a pariah state?
That was the measure of her success. So, June 12 was a fight for democracy. So it was relevant then. It will forever be relevant.
On two occasions, when I was in detention, the military government sent emissaries to me. And they said that if I would renounce my membership of NADECO they would release me. So, after all, Abacha said we are colleagues and that he is my friend, and how could I gang up with the rebels against him? And I said, tell him, I was not fighting Abacha, we are fighting his wrong decision. If he can purge himself of that decision and restore the mandate of Abiola, we will be friends again.
But Abacha could not distinguish between himself and his actions. So, yes, of course, June 12 is eternal. Yes.
I believe because of the struggle of June 12 we’ve now had an elected government since 1999 for 26 years. We have never had that since independence. So, that is the significance of June 12.
And also, because of the June 12 struggle, you remember in 1999, there were only two presidential candidates. General Olusegun Obasanjo and my humble self. We did not ask Nigerians to zone it to the South West. No. But they just saw that because of the role the South West played, the fact that Abiola died, sacrificed his life, and we stood firm on the military left office, that it was only fair and proper to allow the South West to be president. It was volunteered, it was not negotiated.
And for the first time in Nigerian history, two Yoruba people with candidates contested the presidency of Nigeria. It has never happened before, and I’m sure it can never happen again. That’s one of the achievements of June 12.
And finally, the democratic election was held. It was annulled. But in 1999, after a struggle of six years, democratic elections were held and upheld. And somebody from the South West emerged as president. NADECO achieved this goal.
“The economic situation favours all producers. Whether you’re producing food, or garage, or whatever you sell, you make a lot of money. It’s only those on fixed income, salaries and pensions that are suffering because they cannot increase their income in the short term. But in all other categories, they are making a lot of money”
What’s your advice for Nigerians?
Well, I will tell Nigerians that we are all governments. Every one of us has a contribution to make. Wherever you are, you can make a contribution to the welfare of your community. You cannot change the world, but you can change your immediate environment.
If you change your environment and change it, the world will change. So everybody is relevant in your profession. There are things you can do to make a contribution as a journalist.
That’s a news item. There are ways of presenting the news to achieve objectives. You can dramatise negatives to cause uproar. You can play down without sticking to the truth to have peace. So I would say to all Nigerians that, well, let’s have hope. In any case, we have no choice but to hope.
And as I’ve always said, God created Nigeria to be great. Why do I so? If you look at all the countries of Africa, West Africa in particular, Nigeria is a small country compared with Burkina Faso, Mali. Those countries are several times bigger than Nigeria.
But the population of Nigeria is as large as the population of all the other countries put together in the same zone. Why? Why did God put all those people in Nigeria? Why did he share the number equally among all these countries? So Burkina Faso has a bigger population than Nigeria. Why? He put all the people here, not just that. He put all the resources here as well.
Most countries have just one item. Oil. Saudi Arabia. Indonesia. That’s all they have. Nigeria, we have oil, we have gas. We have bitumen. We have iron. We have gold. There’s no mineral that we do not have.
Do you know of another country that has all those things? All right? The various climatic zones in Nigeria, from the swamps of the Delta, to the thick forest, to the rainforest, to the savannah. Meaning that there’s no crop that we are not producing, it’s not so in many countries. It’s not so. So God gave us a large population.
All the resources imaginable, and I believe that the intention of Almighty God, that these many people, to convert these many resources into wealth and be the richest country on the globe. That’s my belief.
But unfortunately, our problem has been leadership, a manager to lead us to convert these resources into wealth, into employment, into income, prosperity.
We cannot lose hope with all that. We cannot. We shouldn’t. You know, people, in the last year or two, people have been complaining that things are very hard and very difficult.
Really? For everybody? No. Where I live here, if you look around, you see so many new houses being built. If you go down this way to Agbeleri, there are housing estates, parks.
Those who are building houses there are not borrowing money to build houses.
The economic situation favours all producers. Whether you’re producing food, or garage, or whatever you sell, you make a lot of money. It’s only those on fixed income, salaries and pensions that are suffering because they cannot increase their income in the short term. But in all other categories, they are making a lot of money.
So the majority who are rural and farmers are doing better than the minority who are on fixed incomes. That’s the truth of the matter. So, Nigeria is a blessed country.
And I believe some of the changes made recently will have a consequential and positive impact on the economy. There’s no doubt at all. No doubt.