•Adeyeye
Professor Sola Adeyeye is a former member of the House of Representatives and the Senate from Osun State. In this interview, he speaks on a variety of issues: governance, politics, religion, and family matters, reports Saturday Tribune.
We are a praying nation, very well blessed with very strong Christian and Muslim leaders and followers, yet the country is very poor, suffering insecurity and a lot of other existential problems. Could it be because of our sins, or because we are not praying enough, or should we just blame our stars?
I do believe that our national problems are the outcomes of our national sins. By this, I am not defining sins in terms of the transgressions of the code of formalised religion. Nigerians may not be worse than the citizens of other countries in terms of fornication, adultery and the like, but we are terrible at faking piety. We endlessly congregate at retreats, vigils and prayer sessions but go from there to receive or offer bribes, commit various injustices and be found wanting in our workplaces.
I know you are a great reader of books. Which of those books would you say has had the greatest impact on your life? And which one would you recommend to our leaders and why?
I wish I could name just one book but I honestly cannot. Two books that have had the greatest impact on my private life are ‘The Making of a Man of God’ by Alan Redpath and ‘In His Steps’ by Charles Sheldon. The book with the greatest impact on my public life is ‘Profiles in Courage’ by John F. Kennedy. There are four books that I wish all Nigerian leaders would diligently read. One is the bestseller by Lee Kuan Yew, ‘From Third World to First: Singapore and the Asian Economic Boom’. The other books are by Obafemi Awolowo. These are one, ‘Thoughts on Nigerian Constitution’, two, ‘The People’s Republic’, and three, ‘Strategies and Tactics of the People’s Republic’.
In my opinion, Obafemi Awolowo provided a most persuasive argument for the necessity for federalism in a pluralistic country. He thoroughly understood that there is no greater role in politics than the judicious husbandry of the economic resources of a country for the wellbeing of its citizens.
You are a professor. Your wife is also a professor. Did you set out to achieve that? How did it happen?
By the time I was 14, I had purposed to become a Professor of Physics. That did not happen because life took some detours for me. But I am back in school now, studying Mathematics and Physics.
My wife did not set out to become a professor. In fact, my initial plan was to go to the United States of America to read Political Science and Law. Professor Junaid got to know about this and he persuaded me to get a PhD in the sciences. As examples, he referred to Sanya Onabamiro, Stephen Awokoya and Jimmy Carter who had read science but thereafter went into politics. So, when we left for the USA, we planned that my wife would get an MSc and then work as a pharmacist during my studying for a PhD. We were both award-winning students and we both ended with PhD. My wife had opportunities to go into the pharmaceutical industry where she could have earned far more than she earned in a university. She remained in academia so as to have time for her family. Having time for our children has contributed greatly to their successes. We are grateful to God.
How did you two meet, and what was/were the attraction(s)?
Our paths first crossed in 1965 when her brother-in-law, the late Chief Tunji Fagbemi, taught me at Ilesa Grammar School. I paid no attention to her at that time. Years later, we met in Ibadan when she was an undergraduate at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. She did a long vacation job at the University of Ibadan. We often met in church at the Oritamefa Baptist Church where I was a youth leader. The funny thing was that I was always forgetting her name. After her graduation from UNN, she took a job as a pharmacist at the UCH where I was already working as a medical lab scientist. We grew into each other.
You played a frontline role in the fight for this democracy. Looking at what we have had since 1999, are you satisfied? If you were to mark the script of this fourth Republic, what mark would you give it?
Our Fourth Republic has been a disastrous tale of wasted opportunities. The best grade I can give its performance is a ‘D’. If a C grade is accepted as average performance, the Fourth Republic has performed so dismally below average that I am tempted to give it an ‘F’ grade.
What areas of our governing process would you say need improvement?
Enthronement of the Rule of Law and the auditing of government finances are crying for desperate attention. We learn of graft and looting usually after the looters have left office. It is as if Nigerians constantly cry after spilt milk.
Some people would say that as we blame our leaders for the failures we have recorded, we should blame the followers, too. Would you agree with that point of view?
Oh yes, we should blame the followers, too. For one thing, elected office holders reflect the choice of the electorate, whether good, bad or outright ugly choices. However, the greater blame, by far, must be heaped on leaders. In secular history, both ancient and modern, the rise and fall of nations are inseparable from the wise versus foolish choices of their leaders. Consider Alexander the Great, Cyrus the Great, Attila, Julius Caesar, Ramses and Hammurabi. Then think of Disraeli, William Pitt, George Washington, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Winston Churchill, Pandit Nehru, David Ben-Gurion, John Kennedy, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Golda Meier, Lee Kuan Yew, Nelson Mandela and numerous others who steered paradigm shifts, for better or worse, in their respective countries. Imagine if Obafemi Awolowo had a chance to do for our Republic what he did for its Western Region.
Nigerian leaders are the ones who create the templates of grinding poverty that engenders a survivalist society in which moral and ethical choices are jettisoned. Two weeks before the 2003 election, I was in my house at Ora Igbomina when shouts of “PDP!” “POWER!” rent the air. It turned out that truckloads of National Emergency Management Agency’s (NEMA) relief materials had arrived from Abuja to Ifedayo Local Government in Osun State. People trooped to prearranged centers to collect corrugated roof sheets, bags of rice, beans, sugar, rain coats, shoes, umbrellas, sweaters, torch, etc. A national agency was being used to aid the campaign of the PDP. My father told me that I would lose the election unless I matched what the PDP had distributed to the community. Fortunately, I had strong supporters who came to my rescue. Matter of fact, my biggest donor was Chief Sony Odogwu, who was a member of the PDP Board of Trustees. Substantial financial support also came from Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Chief Awomolo, Sola Adeeyo, Julius Ihonvbere and Kayode Fayemi. I won that election and was grateful for those who enabled my capacity to offset the use of NEMA for partisan politicking. That was an example of when we must castigate the elite for exploiting the poverty in a rural community for partisan electoral benefits.
The state of the economy is so bad now that a vast number of people are begging to eat. If you were to advise the leadership on what to do to reduce the pain in the land, what would that advice be, sir?
My first advice would be that we must first raise the revenues on a geometrical scale. Doing this requires doing three things immediately. First, government must block the endless leakages in most government agencies. Second, Nigeria must return to Operation Low Profile which we had in the late 1970s. The costs of running our government at all tiers are prolifically prodigal. The citizenry at large cannot be summoned to sacrifice and tighten their belt when political office holders and those close to the corridors of power indulge in conspicuous financial indiscipline and wanton opulence. Government must diligently prosecute all those who are looting the republic. Third, the various governments must move from budgetary shenanigans to budgetary discipline. When a state government announces a budget that is far in excess of its resources, it is advertising its own lack of seriousness. It is far better to set wise priorities and to implement them with unflagging commitment. Unless we also curb the lack of focus of our state governments, we cannot fulfill the needs and aspirations of our people.
You were in the National Assembly – the two chambers. Would you say Nigeria has benefitted as much as it has invested in that arm of government?
Whatever benefits Nigeria has enjoyed from all arms of government fall below what has been expended in running them. I am as disappointed by the performance of the National Assembly as I am by the performance of the executive arm and the performance of the judiciary. The state of our republic loudly proclaims the failure of all three arms.
The past and recent scandals involving some female operatives of the federal government have led some people to conclude that, probably, women are more corrupt than men and should be shut out of sensitive agencies of government. Can we know your position here?
Nigeria is a corruptocracy. What we have in Nigeria is a government of the corrupt by the corrupt and for the corrupt. Corruption in Nigeria cuts across gender just as it cuts across ethnicity, religion, educational attainment, age or generational status.
Your party, the APC, campaigned that it would restructure Nigeria if it came to power. It is in its ninth year in power now. Why do you think it has not fulfilled that promise?
After nine years, all that I or anyone can say is that neither our party officials nor those elected on the platform of our party have been faithful to the promises we made to the electorate. I am particularly disappointed that serious attempts have not been made to revisit the issues of national objectives, fiscal federalism and policing. To be honest, we tout so many silly falsehoods about each other that we have scared ourselves and each other into rejecting the paradigms we must embrace to make Nigeria work.
The average southerners talk as if northern states are parasitic on the southern states. So, many northern legislators in the National Assembly almost compulsively reject attempts to return fiscal federalism. They and many southerners usually forget that Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Ekiti and Osun states are as dependent on so-called ‘federal allocations’ as are Gombe, Yobe, Zamfara and Niger states.
Your party is in crisis in your home state – Osun. Will it ever be united once more?
This is an extremely sad situation that I worked extremely hard to avert. My prayer is that our party will soon be united again in my state.
Finally, sir, as we speak, what is your relationship with President Bola Tinubu?
President Bola Tinubu is a person that I consider as my friend. I gave my support to another aspirant during the APC primary last year. I did so in totally good conscience and out of conviction for what I believed to be best for my country. While enthusiastically supporting another aspirant, I also repeatedly stated that a party primary is a rivalry among siblings and that whoever emerged as the candidate of my party would receive my support. Matter of fact, I did highlight the impressive attributes of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu during my interview with Seun Okinbaloye. My preferred aspirant lost the APC primary to Tinubu. End of sibling rivalry.
I pray, almost daily, for the success of Tinubu. He is our only president.
Unfortunately, elite coalitions in Nigerian politics are rarely designed for fostering national unity or progress. They are principally about raw power and its misuse for building private empires. Look at the cast of characters that are left standing like Goliaths, with shoulders higher than the heads of their subdued/subaltern compatriots. My prayer is that God will enable President Tinubu to steer our ship of state out of perennial stormy waters into harbours of peace and progress.
