Alhaji Ganiyu Olayiwola Oyeduntan is a chieftain of Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG) and former Commissioner for Heath under Chief Adebisi Akande between 1999 to 2003.In this chat with LEADERSHIP’s SEFIU AYANBIMPE, Oyeduntan talks on the lingering crisis among some Yoruba elders and leaders, the consequences of their disagreement.
As one of the leaders of Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG), are you not worried about the crisis rocking the Yoruba elders??
No I am not worried at all. Personally, the idea of Yoruba leaders is a fallacy. It has no basis in history. There was never a time and it will never happen that the Yorubas would be in only one political party. And as long as you have these differences in political tendencies, people are now bound to play politics. What we have has no place for in our tradition, each town, each settlement and sub -group has its own Oba and each Oba is responsible for all that happened in his enclave. Yes, we are lucky as a people to have had a political icon like Papa Obafemi Awolowo who because of his own personality, charisma became so popular and was accorded the Asiwaju Yoruba title.
You will recalled that there was never a time in the history of Yoruba land and as united as we were that Papa Awolowo scored 100% of Yoruba votes. It was almost taken for granted that he would win all Yoruba votes but it was not always so really until 1962. There were places where NCNC ruled politically. So because now Papa Died, and you had spokesperson and leaders for this political tendencies, Yes because their political tendencies have been accepted within Yorubaland, in terms of who the Yoruba leaders is, we would only have Yoruba elders and leaders among them. We can say this is our chairman, this is our spokespersons, look an Osogbo man is an Osogbo man and that is normal. If I am here and you make me your leader in this group because of the preponderance of our followers and supporters, yes and acquired clout, in the real sense of it, his just being a leader means he is just one of the leaders. What we have is college of leaders and elders and instead of looking for a Yoruba leader; we just encourage the development of credible leadership among our people.
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You will notice that before now, most of these Yoruba elders are together under one umbrella speaking with one voice and championing the course and the development of the race, but now they are no longer together, what is responsible?
Every politician that is worthy of that title of that institution should be fighting for a political course. Afenifere of 60s is different from the Afenifere of the 90s and different from the Afenifere of the 2012 because the political challenges of that time are different. In the 80s we had an IBB, an Abacha, Abiola factors all coming together and threw up a different scenario. And the Yorubas because of who we are as a people, the ethics, our sense of justice, our sense of fairness, our sense of reasoning as a people motivated these people to resist what they saw as injustice.
The same people would have resisted it if it happens to somebody else. It was a blatant injustice and they resisted it. Because it was a popular resistance and because it was a popular thing in the Yoruba, they take clout of Papa Ajasin, Adesanya and co and then in 1999 there was active politics. These people moved in and they are following Alliance for Democracy (AD). They did not ask the political point men; the Governors who have constitutional responsibility apart from primordial responsibility and there was conflict.? And these conflicts were not neatly resolved, it became intractable and for some of us, who believed that we must not sacrifice our political heritage on the altar of hatro-centric considerations among these people, decided to strike out. That we must preserve those things that stood Yoruba apart. It runs through us, that sense of fairness and truly the iconoclastic political practices of Awolowo that plated Awoism must not be allowed to die.
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What is Awoism anyway?
It is nothing rather than having people at the centre of the political government actions and considerations. A season awoism today can become a bigger Awoist in future than what we have if we allow awoism to die on the altar of egoistic differences between certain people, then we would have lost as a people. Thank God that was why we got Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG) into being. Somebody has a time and place to play his own role. They have not disagreed on how to run a Yoruba land; they have disagreed on other things, so it is purely political. We recognized their contributions, invaluable, you cannot rubbish them, we cannot rubbish them, they must not be rubbished, and they must be recognized. They must be given their dues and respects but in Nigeria of today, we got to re-invent and re-launch that tendencies and movements.
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Is there any effort particularly by the Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG) to bring and reconcile these people under one umbrella again because there is adage which says there is power in unity?
Unity of what? Yorubas are united; we are the best organized tribal group in Nigeria. We are the most respected, we speak with one voice but when it comes to politics, please Nigeria of today, some people are motivated more by what they would gain for themselves than the totality of what is good for the society and that is not new. It is a contention of political ideas by an ideal and you will always have it. If you are looking for a utopia, then please we have not get there, we have to move on. Even within us here that we called ourselves a group, a club, a society, if we put an issue on the table we would have different ideas. Even in defining where we are going, even after we have agreed on where we are going, how we are going to get there, the modules can be an issue and where you now have people playing a larger role than the purpose of achieving a goal, you cannot underrate ego. If I drawn my sword in anger and there is nobody else there, I may not use it but if there are crowd, I will say Ha! ha! I have drawn it and because of that I must use it. It is the consideration of being considered that he uses it. The ego aspect has been an issue and you cannot underrate that.
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Nigeria is 52years since independence; can we say as a nation we are on the right path?
No Nigeria came out of certain circumstances. People complain about Nigeria and I said to them why must you always complain; that we didn’t have a nation. We never had one. We never did. At what point did we have Nigeria? Was it in 1914? Was it in 1951? Was it in 1960? Or was it in 1963?
We have self governance since 1951, the approach of the western region government to governance was different from that of the Northern region, it was different from that of the Eastern region either. We could not even agree when to grab the political independence. Now, in all these fractious
environment, they granted you independence, I think they must have been fed up with the kind of people they got themselves involves with and they wanted to get out of here in hurry. And really, we never come together. In 1960 we became independence and by 1962 we had crisis. We really didn’t
formed and come together. What we have is a badly formed entity. Nobody today is satisfied with the product. Let us stop pretending that we have a product. Nobody in his conscience would say that Nigeria is working as it is and as it should be as a nation. Over time Awolowo said Nigeria was just a geographical expression, Gowon said there was no basis for unity as far back as early 1966, Sardauna does not believe there could be a basis of unifying factor to say that we have a common approach to our destiny and Azikwe has a different approach, at what point did we really have a Nigeria? Let us recognize that we are just an aggregation of nations and if we are true to our conscience and true to our destiny, we have adopted the name federation, let us have a federation. We don’t have a Nigeria.
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Do you believe this is the solution to the problems on ground?
You see because we have pretended and we have lied to ourselves and we have been in denial, we have tried all kinds of approaches to forging as a nation, we decreed it, we made law for it, we will make one law here that is talking about unity, another one that recognizing the fact that we are not united, our constitution recognizes federal character that is a recognition of the fact that we are different from each other that is what it means, it does not matter my competence, my qualification and my suitability for a position I might not be considered simply because I come from the wrong part of the country. And where you have been circumscribing people hopes, you cannot talk of loyalty. And the sub culture grew to a point now where there is merit no more in anything. Expediency now became the order of the day. Nepotism, tribalism, name it. Even within our own microscopic political entity people seek favour that should not have belonged to them in the first instance. For positions, merit is out of the window.
We are not going anywhere with the way we are today no matter how much we deny it, we are like a broken pot we kept on patching it here and there and mould it, patch it, spotting it into different directions and try to grabble with it, so let us break it up and mend it totally before we feel it. What I am saying in essence is that I am not agitating for separation or breaking up of the present entity. You may say we are Federal Republic of Nigeria, let us be federal in our arrangements. When you talk of federal that mean each entity is allowed to develop and go at its own pace and I used the example of Osun State when I was the Commissioner for Health under the Chief Adebisi Akande led government where we have 52 hospitals to look after 4.2million people and there is no Osun State citizen that is more than twenty minutes away from an hospital and a doctor. It is not comparable to any other state. Therefore our health care policy and focus will be different from state say like Niger State that is about three times the size of Osun in terms of land mass.?
And when people talk of primary healthcare, now federal government said it wanted to build five primary health care centres in Osun State and went and pick the locations themselves, we rejected them because assuming you picked Iree community now and in that place we already have a 15- bed hospital in Iree that is totally underutilized, you now want to build a five bed hospital there. In Iwo I have a 60-bed hospital that is generally underutilized and you want to put a five bed hospital there. I used that as an example. Somebody in Abuja now sit down, he does not know anywhere in Osun and he is in charge of rural water or rural electricity, how can anybody sit down in Abuja and be talking of rural water supply and rural electricity supply to my people in Osun.? At the end there would not result. So it is devolution of power that we need by defining the totality of how we do business. There is too much money at the centre. I am not saying they are wasting it away.
The Governor is an immediate contact with the public, the federal government has no public, there is no jurisdiction that citizen can demand from it, yet it takes so much money of the total revenue coming in. Then we lost along the way because our development model will not do us good results and cannot be better than what we are because of the inconsistency in it. Immediately after the war, we had Nigerialization, we had indigenization and people were struggling, everybody was going to his village to do some cottage industry then somebody came and introduced import licence, another one came and introduced foreign exchange restriction and before you knew it people were in debt and everybody became emergency contractors, so we have corruption and whatever come with it.
There is a whole lot if I am an advocate of regional integration, it is because of this. Regional Integration is the under pinning motive to regional economies, it does not matter your politics. Whatever your politics I assume that you are there to serve your people, if we have a rail line liking Lagos to Asaba, does it matter who is the Governor along the line. I can leave Osogbo by 7am and resumed work at Lagos by 9am. I can take the 5 ‘O clock rail back here and I am home. I don’t have to leave in Lagos. Development will spread, demand will also spread. What is responsible for our backwardness, it is us as a people, it is that central planning, central management that failed and has failed all over the world. Over centralization is the problem.? So Nigeria as it is, the solution is not separation, it is not about breaking up, it is about re-inventing the way we do business so that we get a more better and satisfactory results.
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Activities of the dreaded Islamic Sect; Boko Haram may have defiled solution and there was these believe that President Goodluck Jonathan has never taking a firm decision to nip the matter in the bud, what is your reaction to that?
You know I want to blame the press for misleading us for this Boko Haram thing. It is not the cause of Boko Haram but for misleading us. We have this implicit rationalization what was Boko Haram?
We started with the fact that it was Muslims fundamentalists against the Christians. How can one just wake up one morning and everywhere went into flame and you say it was a political. But you know in recent time it appear it has international linkages. It is a pity that we have some Islamic zealot in this neighbourhood but because our engineering fails we have this hurdle of young adults with little or nothing to do. There is hopelessness all over the place. Now we use to think that suicide bombing was not possible among our people simply because we love life now I think we have had a re-think now. But what is happening now is happening in Pakistan, it is happening in Yemen, it is happening in all these places where Al Queda and lot of hot headed Islamic fundamentalists have taken hold. Perhaps we need a rethinking that this matter may well beyond our capacity because of the sophistication involved and their access to funding, arms, ammunition, their capacity to IED Improved Explosive Devices. It is beyond local rivalry of one religious sect against another. I think we need a more sophisticated security system that has more capacity to gather intelligence, analyze intelligence and design an approach that will use that analysis effectively. We must check the linkage of these people to international support and resources. It is bad experience when you read in the papers that the Customs have seized a container load of arms and ammunitions, a truck load of this and that. Even here down south, for every container that must have been seized, how many escaped, where are they?
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Everybody involved in the management of our affairs and our political matters must be worried about the future of this country. The future of the immediate political egg heads. What are we doing about the young ones?
There is hopelessness, there are no jobs for the youths and that is what that led to radicalism and excesses. We must bring back our youth hope in their future, believe in the system and commitment to one another as a people, as a society. To me Boko Haram is just a manifestation of failed state.
The issue of people of Bakassi Peninsular has continued to degenerated and the federal government has been accused for not acting in good faith over the matter, do you share the view?
It is a pity I want to comment on what that is not particularly too clear to me. The fact of the matter is that through act of omission or commission Bakassi has been ceded to Cameroun. To me, it is just the irony in this that makes me to think about this life that one man’s meat is another man’s poison so to say.? Some people are trying to get out of this country Nigeria, some are complaining of sending them out. I beg if you give an opportunity to go somewhere and if these people are going to continue like as Nigerians, I will thank my star for moving out.
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