A chieftain of the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) in Oyo State and a gubernatorial aspirant in the party, Barrister Akeem Agbaje was our guest on our Radio Show anchored by OLAYINKA AGBOOLA on Splash 105.5fm, Ibadan recently… He spoke about need for Nigerians to commend INEC… Excerpts:
Barrister, your party, All Progressives Congress has held its primary elections and the general elections too have come and gone, are you still bitter?
Well, I was never bitter and at no point was I bitter. Politics has its processes, somebody must win and somebody must lose.
Not when somebody engaged in jagbaism?
My own position about jagba is that to single out one person as being involved in the so called jagba is unfair, a lot of the other aspirants also tried to jagba too. To single one person and label him as jagba person is not right, there were other people with similar intent.
As a very successful lawyer, what is the attraction in politics for you?
My initial attraction was from the angle of infrastructural development in terms of what is the most critical thing we need in Oyo State to trigger our development and that was electricity and it still remains electricity. It was in the process of trying to achieve that that I realized that it was better for one try to get in there and actualize that dream. That was the initial attraction.
As I enunciated earlier, elections have come and gone, can you as briefly as possible tell us what you know about how Oyo APC’s gubernatorial primary election was won and lost?
Well, in a standard political practice, we expressed our desire to get party ticket, some of us purchased the forms, some dropped out before the time for taking the form came and subsequent to obtaining the form, quite a number of people defied the defense strategy to get the ticket, for some of us, there were lines we did not cross. Fundamentally, you must try and get the people’s consent, gain their support and there were some that felt that Abuja was the only important thing for them to work on and for them, success was achieved and that was how the ticket was won.
But will you want to tell our listeners what your own strategy was at that time?
For me you start from the ward level, try and get members, you engage them to let them know what you have to offer, two you must relate with them; you can’t lead people you don’t know, you don’t have any connection with. So, it was important for me that I get to meet them.
You were following the books?
Not really, that is not a standard book, the political book or the practical side of it does not lend credence to that strategy because at the critical point all those factors are usually not taken into consideration.
Maybe there was a lot of money throwing around?
Sincerely speaking, if you do bottom of that expenses, the people that went to Abuja know much they spent. So, that was my own approach.
You went to the people thinking that things would just follow natural sequence?
Ideally, that is when you are talking about an ideal situation, barely do you find that. In fact, I went to one of the leaders at the national level, he asked what I wanted and I said can we have a level playing field, he said but you know that is not possible and I said yes. I only asked him for a fair process not completely transparent but let it be fair, don’t give excessive, undue advantage to anybody.
You just spoke about level playing field now, generally, with the way we are practicing our democracy that the winner takes all, are we promoting democracy or putting spanners in the wheels of its progress?
Well, the way we look at politics and the way we are practicing it in this part of the world does not allow us to trust one another, even with a person you sit side by side with – there is no trust.
For how long are we going to do this?
You know the reason parties are involved in politics is to gain political power and if we follow a step first time and fail, second time, we also fail, I believe we have reached a point where we need to call ourselves for serious resolution because if we continue like this, we can not achieve anything.
Unlike what you said earlier that you were not bitter, there was speculation at some point that you too were contemplating decamping to New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) as a result of bitterness, how true is this?
Yes, I was not bitter. If I said I was not bitter, it is true I wasn’t bitter. To the point where we had the party primary we knew what was going to happen. We knew that it is between two people that wanted to hijack it and one of them is going to scale through but the relationship of the person that eventually hijacked it to the general people is what I wasn’t comfortable with. He successfully grabbed the ticket but he should not toe the line that will affect the reputation of the party. Because of the work we did in APC, some parties came to me and truly I checked and did my comparison but for some reason or the other I discovered that it would pay to remain in APC.
For the sake of this academic exercise, what will you say caused the defeat of APC during the last gubernatorial election apart from the jagba issue?
What I understand is that for any party to be successful, there must be unity. Now, if there is no unity among members of the party because it is not what a person can do. Naturally, there is a need for cooperation to defeat all the other parties. But once there is no unity and cooperation unless that person is deceiving himself, he will not stand any chance of winning.
But what if one believes that jagba is the best approach to adopt?
As far as I am concerned, jagba does not make sense, it is just a simple thing because if you successfully jagba in your party, we are going for general election, so are you going to jagba there too? It would not have been possible to jagba in the general election. I mean there is a level of credibility in the electoral process though it is not perfect yet; the level of credibility is high. So, you need people to work with you and when you do jagba, you can’t force people to work for you.
With the results recorded by APC in Oyo State in March during the gubernatorial election, what lesson do you think your party stands to learn from the epochal landslide defeat?
See, for me the party tried even better than 2019. In 2019 we lost the presidential election, this time we won. In 2019 we had 2 senators, this time we have 3 senators, so it is not as if it is a disastrous outing for us. But now, in terms of state honourables we have the same results, geographical location is the main difference. So, it is not that we regressed as a party; we have a measure of advancement. That is the perception I want people to hold on to.
But what lesson have you learned as a party?
The lesson we have all learned is that there must be unity in the party to start with. There must be equity in the party in terms of allocation of positions; one person cannot take everything. There is a difference between jagba and taking over all positions.
Can you explain that point, jagba and taking over all positions?
He grabbed his own and took over all other positions. Intention is very important, if you hijack something now what do you want to do with it, how do you want to use it? It is almost giving that whoever that can hijack it in one way or the other will win the ticket of the party but after that how do you relate with other party members, how do you share other positions but if you do jagba down the line, you took over all the three senators, all the 14 Reps and the 32 state house of assembly candidates are all your people, it will be difficult for us as a party if we fail to address that kind of behavior.
But you once said that there are other people that wanted to jagba, how do you address that in the political setting?
If we really want to address that, it is the work of the party at the national level. Whoever wants to hijack the party at the state level will find it difficult without support from the National Headquarters of the party.
If one is not popular, can you actually rig an election?
That is why jagba does not make sense. If you look at our democracy maybe between 1979 and 1983 we had proper democracy, there was no jagba even up to 1991 and 1999. Those who played godfatherism then will ensure that they have 40-50 percent control of the party, but those who are doing jagba now do not have a substantial number of followers in the party. Jagba cannot fetch those who believe in it electoral success.
Contrary to what you said that APC won the presidential election in Oyo State, people are saying that it was due to the support of the present governor, Engr. Seyi Makinde, what do you have to say?
We can not look at it in that direction because we must not deceive ourselves. The President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu has done a lot of ground work as regards his presidential ambition for the past 10 year and he is a marketable candidate and those of us that marketed him enjoyed it because we got that assurance from the people. Also, in this part of the region, people see the presidential election as a Yoruba agenda, so it is not because somebody relaxed. The electoral victory of Asiwaju is beyond someone’s body language.
You were once the chairman of your alma mater, Lagelu Grammar School Ibadan’s electoral body at micro level, look at your position that time and compare it to what INEC as electoral umpire in Nigeria has been doing, is INEC really living up to expectations?
Well, for me INEC is not the problem, it is we politicians that are the problem. Averagely, politicians will try to subvert the process because there is no limit in the mind of a politician in terms of what can be done. But, by and large on the side of INEC I will publicly give them an 80% success rate in terms of performance, because for the first time in this country we have each major presidential candidate having 12 states, it has never happened. I am talking about the presidential election. APC lost Lagos State at the presidential election, it is unprecedented. It is because there is a significant level of credibility to the process and most of the allegations against the process are external. They talked about voter suppression, they talked about ballot snatching, they are external to INEC’s process. It is different when you have INEC actively manipulating the process in favour of a party. Then there are allegations of technical hitches on the part of INEC in terms of the failure of BVAS but with all that APC lost Lagos State in the presidential election. So, it is the people that are trying to crucify the INEC, I think they should be commended. The security agencies have a greater role to play to support INEC because INEC does not function in isolation, it is a collective responsibility situation in which case security agencies have a role to play and how actively and how compromised they were is what we need to focus on. INEC needs to be commended for their performance, and they need to be encouraged, no electoral system is perfect.
But along the line, the social media was awash with some of the results of the presidential election that they got from the East where we saw obviously tampered result sheets that were sent and passed by INEC?
Yes, I saw them on social media and that is why there is a tribunal, we are not saying that the process is perfect, no, there are imperfections in the process, it is a reflection of the expression of the will of the people. If you look at the APC performance, it is not the basis of number of states won but it is on the high number of votes. Most places APC came second and that is why we had the advantage at the end of the day.
Before we leave the issue of Oyo State, we have a governor who has been returned after winning overwhelmingly, what major three issues will you wish him to attend to immediately after he is sworn-in?
The most critical one is power because we need power to stimulate the economy that is the most critical one. Two, there is a need to prioritize projects, projects that will impact the lives of the people that is the second one. Then the third one is from the critical social sector like our educational system, infrastructure for those schools and healthcare system, those are things I think he should prioritize because they will have greater impact on the lives of the people.
Let us come down to the emergence of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the President-elect of Nigeria, you played a very major role in Oyo State to ensure this victory, have you studied the results and do you think those claiming that the election was rigged have real points?
You see, most of the petitions, some are on technical ground, some are on electoral malpractice ground. The greater burden of electoral petition is on petitioners and in the history of presidential election petition in Nigeria, I don’t think anybody has succeeded because the requirements of law is substantial compliance and in my humble view, there is substantial compliance by INEC, by APC in the presidential election.
So, that election should have been allowed to…?
No, their decision to challenge election’s results is a fundamental right that they have, so one can say they should not challenge it, but if you see like a Labour Party winning Lagos and you are saying the election is not free and fair, then you will only be amused by such allegation because they won handsomely in Lagos, so if it was not free and fair and if you look at some analysis before the election the results mirrored most of it.
But in the East, we saw the Labour Party just cornering almost everything, what message is this one sending out?
The way I see it is different, in Yorubaland we supported Asiwaju significantly, because it is only in Yoruba that you will find that we flow with every party not particularly following ethnic lines, that is Yoruba way of voting but in most other parts of the country if they have a choice between their fellow tribe men and other part of the country and particularly the situation of the Igbo, you need to understand it, they have not had this kind of opportunity in a long time, naturally I think one should expect them to do that, it was a rare opportunity for them since Zik (Nnamdi Azikwe) – they had a candidate of Igbo extraction that seemed to have a realistic chance of succeeding, so naturally they would flow to him.
Do you wish to add your own legal and personal view to this much talked about status of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) on the issue of presidential election, what is the status of FCT?
The status of FCT is no other than that of a state, technically, electoral law says 37 states and there is nothing more than that.
So, for anybody that is claiming that you must get certain percentage of votes from Abuja…?
It is illogical, what is the population of FCT if you put on the other 36 states into consideration, it might become critical if you are trying to meet the threshold and I think the threshold is 25 of 24, so if you are in that kind of situation may be you have 24, 25 percent in 24 states and somebody is contending that FCT is not a state, then it becomes an issue…
What is your message to those people bandying this kind of argument about?
No, they have a right to make any postulation they want, I mean the law is clear and the court is there to test it.
Tinubu’s traducers are saying all sorts of things that he will rule by proxy and so many other funny allegations against him, what kind of presidency are we expecting under Asiwaju Bola Tinubu?
You see, in the first instance before the election you can say anything about the candidate of the party, but after election first thing for all is that we all need to come together as a nation because we are in a precarious time, things are very hard for everybody, so it is important that we all come together and work together. The incumbent in Oyo State, we are starting to say Seyi is this, Seyi is that, let us give him time to work, let us see what he can do differently from what he did in the last four years.
For Tinubu, his background, his experience gives us every reason to believe that he can perform, the allegation against him that he doesn’t have physical and mental capacity to govern, but nobody campaigned more than him, nobody, and his campaign scheduled was really punishing, he goes to Yola today, comes to Ibadan later, he wasn’t doing state to state of following the geographical proximity and it requires high physical capacity and high mental capacity, that alone should give everybody the comfort that at his age, at 70, he did all of that and I know that even a younger person like me will find it challenging and he went through all of that. Then his antecedents in terms of what he did in Lagos. What he did in Lagos apart from the physical manifestation, you will see that he built institutions; he set up structures and people.
As a politician of note, what is the difference between leadership by example and qualitative leadership?
For me we personalize leadership, it is not your personal business, it is people’s business. In evaluating what you do you must identify what are the priorities for the people but you must have the courage to follow up. It is just that courage to do what is right. It is not that they don’t know what is right, they know.
I will like you to whisper one or two words of advice to fellow politicians now that elections have come and gone?
Well, we need to do soul searching, we need to ask ourselves what we are doing, is it right? Even for members of the party, let’s forget about elections. What we are doing as politicians, is it beneficial to our members that put in a lot of work, sacrifices for the party to succeed? And if we keep mismanaging the process, we need to search our conscience concerning these people that are following us, those people that sacrificed for us, are we working in their interest at all?
