INTERVIEW:PDP dead in South West, will suffer more blows in 2015 – Kaka. Senator Adegbenga Kaka is a former deputy governor of Ogun State, under former governor, Segun Osoba, long before he became a member of the upper legislative chamber at the National Assembly, representing Ogun East senatorial district. In this interview with WALE AKINOLA, he harps on why the opposition should wrest power from PDP at the centre and other topical issues. PDP recently vowed to dislodge ACN in the South-West during the next general election. How feasible is this and what is your comment on Amaechi’s travail? I laugh and I still ‘dey’ laugh like Obasanjo used to say. First and foremost, I have made a subtle reference to Ameachi and Jonathan that they created the insecurity we are witnessing in the north today and they want to further create insecurity through the attempt to control the Governors’ Forum. The Governors Forum has no provision in the constitution and it is like any other NGO. And under freedom of association, there is no reason that should be a concern notwithstanding the denial by the presidency that he had no interest in the Governors’ Forum election. But I still believe that Nigerians are no fools because everybody knows that PDP has heated the polity just because governors are meeting for almost three months now. The crisis snowballed into the issue that Amaechi fly a jet without proper documents while we still have over 250 planes and nothing is happening to that. But Nigerians are aware of all the excuses they are giving. If the plane did not have valid documents, why did the Aviation ministry wait till the relationship between Amaechi and the President went frosty before they started crying foul? Why is Ameachi not being apprehended? Why did the presidency allow NGF’s election? And the governors that were supposed to be the hope of tomorrow conducted elections among themselves and one of them could not even understand the difference between the intention to vote and the actual voting, dangling a paper claiming that these were the signatures that pledged to vote, is it not a slap on our democracy? Then, it was done and the spirit of sportsmanship was not there, congratulations to the man that won, they are now saying I am the authentic winner, who made you the authentic winner? Is it the signature you made in your bedroom that made you the authentic winner or the one that was done publicly? So there are more questions than answers. Therefore, the PDP are the one heating the polity, they are the one who want free association they to be converted into a PDP plus other issues but Nigerians are watching, God is also watching but the ultimate is sweeping all those rot away. You don’t sweep dirt under the carpet that it will not resurface. Well, the issue of South-West, naturally PDP will be swept off, they are even not existing in the South-West so why do we have to bother ourselves if they are dreaming they want to take over, they have tried it before and people were so resilient, they did it in 2003, we went back to the trenches we plotted, we are going to use our brain, we are not going to use guns with these people, nobody is going to pursue them, nobody is going to fight them physically, we will use our brain to fight them and that is where the merger is going to surprise them, they are already jittery, they already have self destruction, they are inflicted with auto-immune disease which is worse than HIV/AIDS and there is no escape route for them. How feasible is the Yoruba integration in the South-West? I want to believe that with the commitment from all of us the integration of South-west is the easiest and the most reasonable thing to do. We have seen in the past how we moved from the various regions to state creation and now we have thirty-six states with recourse increasing but in real value it is dwindling. But you discover that there are certain things some of these small states could not do and it is unfortunate that the federal government that is supposed to be the apex of our federal system is also operating like a unitary system to the extent that you find a lot of ministries and agencies remaining in Abuja and their impacts are not felt anywhere. What they could have been able to do collectively suffer due to negligence, ineptitude and due to over centralization of power at the centre and if at the state level again we have certain things that cannot be handled alone by a state it is only normal that we consider some states with affinity to one another to come together under what we call regional integration and that is where the justification of those people calling for regionalization again comes in. When they come together and we are practicing true federalism, two, three or four states can partner to pursue a social service that one state alone cannot do, such as the railway system, even the road network can be jointly done by the states in partnership as well as processing facilities and where they have common raw material they can jointly put something in place. It won’t be out of place if the Yoruba states come together to put up a refinery that the federal government had been unable to do over the years. So, instead of importing fuel and deceiving the people that they are subsidizing fuel for over 20yrs, claiming to have removed the subsidy which has not made any impact on the masses till today. But with some states coming together they can run refinery effectively. We have cassava in abundance in the South-West, we have cocoa, we have a lot of farm produce that if we cannot do it individually we can come together to run it and at the end of the day, we can say that this is what this region is noted for. We can also collaborate, co-operate and ensure we have a standard airport in the South-West zone for the good of our people so that our effort can be felt by the generality of people. After the death of Awolowo, it has become so difficult to find a distinct Yoruba leader, why is this so? The type of Awolowo comes once in a life time. It was not by accident that we have not been able to have a replacement for Awo because some people believe he came ahead of his time while those of us that are beneficiaries of his free education programme maintain that he came at the right time. Now that Awolowo is gone, it will be naive to continue to lament his exit because what we need to do is to make the atmosphere conducive for other potential Awolowos to emerge. We do have many potential Awolowos within us in this country but the environment and circumstances for the emergence of Awolowo then were not the circumstances we have here now. When you look at what is happening in this country today, the environment is very fertile for the promotion of mediocrity whereby merit has got no place and patriotism has been thrown into the wind. The ruling party if at all they have quality people among them are also not willing to allow those good ones among them to emerge. This is because you can see the recycling of dead woods from the party structure to the government administration as they have been in government for some years now and they are still recycling dead woods and where they are not recycling them directly, they are recycling their children, that means we are not ready, we are not a fertile ground for a new generation of Awolowo to emerge and until we got the lost values that had totally eroded us during the time of Awolowo and co are restored, we will continue to deceive ourselves. So, it is not that we don’t have potential like Awolowo among us but the environment is not just conducive. The merger of opposition parties is not given a chance in some quarters based on the past precedents when mergers failed to work, will APC tow the same line? That comparison is not good because there has never been a merger. What we have been having over the years right from the fifties till today are just alliances. This time round, there is going to be a genuine merger, out right dropping the various names of the parties and taking a new different and acceptable name, a common name and all the parties coming together bringing their best out, the synergy I refer to, whereby by the time you have four, five six parties coming together, the resultant effect will be like you have added ten or twelve that is what we are having right now and that is what is giving the ruling party the headache of their lives to the extent that we now have what I will call an auto-immune disease plaguing the PDP because they forgot that they are the party in power, they inflicted the pain that we have in the country today which we now call insecurity because of their love for power wanting to grab power at all cost in the North East. Wanting to break the jinx of their perpetual loss, we won’t have the problem we have in our hands as if that was not enough, they could not think that they have about 5 trillion budget for this year out of which 65 to 70 per cent are going for recurrent expenditure, about 1 trillion is going for security. Now with the state of emergency with the insecurity we have in the country, I learnt that within the first quarter we have expended over 700 billion that is close to 1trillion and we have not reached one year now with the state of emergency probably all our budget this year will be expended on security. If they don’t know how to administer, they should please leave Nigeria alone and allow Nigerians determine how they will go about their development rather than hold everybody down in this country. I think this is the time to say no to them and embrace this merger for once and allow a credible alternative to take over for once from the charade that has been going on for the past eighteen to nineteen years. Do you think APC stand the chance of wrestling power from PDP at the centre come 2015 general election? Nothing is impossible under the sun. David defeated Goliath and when you go to the Bible and the Quran, you will see where the prophet of God were afraid of thousands of enemies forces with their own hundreds and God instructed them that even the hundreds they are having is even too much and asked them that they should be reduced into half and they decimated their enemies. So, with all the money acquired by PDP, with all the dead woods they are parading and all the never do wells that populate them who wants to bring this country down, while some few genuine ones are building they are destroying. It is not beyond God to decree their exit even before 2015 let Nigerians watch out. What is your position on the state of emergency declared in Yobe, Borno and Adamawa states? My position is immaterial now because it has been decided. I see it as Goodluck Jonathan setting an examination for himself so he is the one to answer the questions that he had set for himself at the end of the day Nigerians will now have to mark the scripts. It is after that that we can do post mortem whether he is a failure or a success because in the first instance, Mr. President have every power, every provision under the constitution to deploy the military as he wishes without necessarily declaring a state of emergency, it shows that he has explored every available opportunities and the next thing is state of emergency I am sure he must have weighed the options. The option that will be sending bad signal to the entire world that our administration here has failed and that our Nigerian nation is not secured. He must have weighed the consequence of the money to be expended, he must also have weighed whether the amount to be thrown at the problem under security is the real thing to do rather than tackling the cause of the problem we are facing, which is of course the hunger in the land, the unemployment in the land. I have not seen the blue print on how we are going to tackle it. we have had NAPEP, several billions was expended and it has been the political jobbers that are cornering it not the poor people, if the poor people that could not raise a finger and cannot feed themselves and we could not protect them then something is wrong with us. So with the state of emergency it is left for the President to protect lives and property. Thank God I think he started well because the innocent ones that were detained especially women and children; he had ordered their release kudos to him for that because those who perpetuated the heinous crime will not wait to be apprehended. So invariably in Nigeria those apprehended are the innocent ones, I gave him the kudos for taking that initiative. What I think he should do is to empower the innocent ones on how they can have food on their table so that they will not be readymade tools to the devil. The devil is known to the system because they have been tested several times we should go after them , we should try them and met justice to them, once justice is denied then there can be no peace. If you want to do a general overview of the state of the nation will you say there is a ray of hope or doom? There is always hope and when you look at Nigeria now, I don’t think it can be gloomier than what we have now, so all we can do is to start looking for a ray of hope which was where we started, we should start looking for potential Awolowos within us but the environment is not conducive for them to emerge. We have recourses, natural resources, human resources we are specially endowed by God but some devil incarnate keep on keeping us down. It is not by accident that God gave us crude oil, it is not that Ajaokuta is there by accident a lot of things that God has blessed us with so much that we refused grow and where it is growing some bad elements out of their greed truncated the growth. So the problem we have is that the hope is perpetually there and it has always been there. The younger generations are there and when you look at our environment in terms of human resources we are getting close to about 170million people. Is it not a paradox when you talk of productivity and factors of production, labour, capital and management? The oil has been flowing from 1999 at 10 to 12 dollars per barrel it rose to 147dollars per barrel during Obasajo tenure and since the advent of Jonathan’s administration crude oil has never came down to 100 per barrel and perpetually we have been under budgeting so our sun is shining in Nigeria and when sun is shining most, all we need to do is just to make our hay. I must confess to you that there are rays of hope. I was with the minister of agriculture in Kebbi, Sokoto, and in Zamfara and we drove close to thirty kilometres all we could see from right left and centre are dry season rice plantation and when we got to where harvest had already been done we drove for about three kilometres with cultivated rice stacked everywhere. This was achievable because with the injection of 750million by the federal government, Kebbi state for example complemented with 3billion thus making live bearable to the farmers they were able to cultivate during dry season using irrigation. Then come to the south here you will discover that many people will plant cassava and instead of harvesting between 8 and 10months because the market is bad they will leave it for two years some will get rotten while rodents will finish some and nobody is protecting them. There is ray of hope it just that government should look inward and assist the genuine people that needed assistance because we have got the land, the money from oil is there and of course you have the management that are willing to work and we have an unemployment, our soil is very fertile so it is very sad that an average Nigerian is living under 2dollars per day it is unfortunate. We have our doctors trained here in Nigeria but you see them dominating in America and in Europe while locally here our people are dying due to avoidable diseases and those of us that are supposed to know better are not doing anything about it. What is your view on the nation’s judicial system? And do you think the anti-graft agencies are doing enough in the fight against corruption? The judiciary is also a reflection of the situation we have found ourselves in this country; they are being influenced by the government and pseudo entrepreneur. It will be very difficult for the judiciary to remain the last hope for the common man. It is rather unfortunate but we will get there with time. Talking of EFCC, ICPC and others, again to give you my candid opinion, it is an unnecessary duplication of effort because the police is not well structured because they are not doing what is expected of them. They are totally incapable of doing what is expected of them that is what brought about EFCC and other graft agencies we have now. Also right now they all have been infected by the same cankerworm that is plaguing the nation but I believe they can rediscover themselves, but they can rediscover themselves if only they can recruit good and competent men and give them necessary training that will build them, and with good value system that their sensibility against corruption will be total, such that necessary equipment are provided for them to function that will make them not vulnerable to those vampires in our system. You could see the sad incident of our police being slaughtered in Nasarrawa and the SSS being slaughtered for trying to protect you and me, it is very unfortunate, what we are having is not the failure of EFCC, ICPC, SSS and the police it is the failure of the state and the leadership. With good leader everybody is going to seat right.
Posted on: Mon, 12 Aug 2013 16:28:16 +0000
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