From my archive; If I used a killer squad, let victims’ parents sue me —Gbenga Daniel Immediate past governor of Ogun State, Otunba Gbenga Daniel, chose last week to break his silence over political developments in the state and the nation. He spoke with the trio of Associate Editor, WOLE EFUNNUGA; STEPHEN GBADAMOSI and KEHINDE OYETIMI on the political situation in Ogun State and Nigeria. IT is observed that you now appear more relaxed and robust, unlike when you were in government. What actually has changed to give you this new aura? Well, I don’t know. That is your own observation. But while in office, to a large extent, I did try to be relaxed, though, unconsciously one had to bother about so many things in office; the day-to-day administration and what have you. Besides, I ran a more or less handsome organisation upon which people thought I was a perfectionist and I wanted to make sure that everything worked well. Probably, that might be responsible, if I looked a little bit challenged while in office. Before I became governor, what people told me was that ‘you can’t do everything. Just make up your mind where you want to make an impact; if it is road, just concentrate on roads. If it is hospitals, concentrate on hospitals. If it is rural education, concentrate on that. Don’t try to say you want to do everything.’ And when I looked at the situation, I found out that this was why quite a number of chief executives concentrated on one thing or the other. That, professionally, was not satisfactory to me. And I said everybody in Ogun State, in one department or the other, deserved attention. And because some locations had been left neglected for a long time, I took it upon myself to take on all of them simultaneously. We wanted to awake the sleeping giants in them all. That was our theme. So, what I had to do was to say look, be it housing, sports, education, tourism, rural electrification, roads, water provision; everything would have to be tackled. And we confronted everything without any exception. Maybe if you had to take on all of that simultaneously, it might take a toll on you. That might have accounted for what you said; but if you think that now, I am more relaxed, then, thank God for His mercies. You must have been engaging in some kind of sporting activities. How do you unwind? I woke up this morning and I set up the table (tennis), but I hardly started playing when I noticed that the lawn was not well kept. Then, I asked for the lawn mowers and everybody, including me, began mowing the lawn. If you peep there, you will see it; we did all that this morning. It is part of my make; everything around me, I want it to be right. And if it is not right, I just set myself to work to make it right. So, you would be shocked that I take part in a lot of works with my staff. When it is time to carry stuffs, we carry; I believe that it is all exercise. It is work, but these are some of the things I usually do when I’m not, otherwise, at work at all. Governors are believed to be inaccessible while in office. How accessible are you now? As far as I am concerned, I don’t think anything has changed. If you really want to work, there are two perspectives to governance. For some people, it is time for fun. And I remember that many years ago, when we used to have military administrators, the Governor’s Guest House was always a hive of activities every weekend. If I want to shock you, I would tell you that when I became governor in 2003, I was given what was supposed to be the governor’s guest house at the government reservation area (GRA) at Ibara, where, as it were, we could go to unwind with friends and have parties and so on. But in my entire eight years, I probably did not enter the place more than three times. That is a matter of fact; it was just there for decoration. That is why people tend to call me a workaholic; I just can’t find the time. That is why a lot of my friends in Lagos usually complained, saying why was it that they could not come around at weekend to relax and stay with me. As I said, we had a state where a lot of sectors had not been attended to continuously over many years, and we decided to launch ourselves into it; and having done that, there was hardly any room for extra-curricular activities. That was what happened. After you left office, you established a political academy. Why was that? You know that before I became governor, I had had the Gateway Front Foundation (GFF) which was largely an instrument of support for the underprivileged. Some of our medical intervention vehicles are still around here. We went to the nooks and crannies of this state, delivering free medicare; because we were confronted with so many people from locations to locations asking for support to treat little ailments. I remember that while we were going to palaces and one of the oloris came for medical checkup. Her blood pressure was about 90/160 and the kabiyesi said she was about going to fight those owing her money. She waited when she heard that I was coming with the medical team. And so, we took her blood sample. While doing that, I was discussing with the kabiyesi and the leader of the medical team came to me to say they didn’t know how to raise the alarm; the woman was a living corpse. I didn’t want to alert the kabiyesi too. So, I said could you please go and check again? It was the same thing; and so, the doctor said we had to march her straight to the hospital immediately. She had to be sedated and calmed down and so on, otherwise, she would have died just like that. The olori is still alive. And so, we are used to these kinds of interventions. We did micro-credit scheme; we loaned people money. We gave trade tools, all sorts of machines, barbing equipment etc. some got motorcycles and other vehicles to start transportation. We did all that. And we continued when I got into office. My experience in government showed that we had just solved the first part of the problem. By far the biggest problem we have as a country and as a state is lack of correct information. We confronted so many problems and some of them were even from educated people. And we just could not understand how educated people would believe certain stories without crosschecking. And we thought it is a challenge in politics. It is not in Ogun State alone, but across the nation. You hear all sorts of stories that are unimaginable; bus stop and bukataria talks. Surprisingly, you hear such in big clubs, boat clubs and other locations where you have the elite. So, it was clear to me that, indeed, something was amiss. There was need for political education. That was why I said after running my course for eight years that part of what I should give back would be an academy where people will have opportunity to talk about politics, to ask questions and do deductive and logical reasoning and so on. That training is what I thought should be the next level. This means that having tried to combat what you call stomach infrastructure, the next level is to begin to engage our people at a higher level; things that have to do with our brain; our capacity to think. A country where people are not thinking cannot make progress. We cannot continue to be pedestrian. That is basically the reason for the academy. Is the academy open to other political parties? Yes. But quite expectedly, because it is located in Ogun, the first catchment area is Ogun State, naturally, quite a number of people have come from Ogun State. People have come from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party (LP), a few people have come from the All Progressives Congress (APC). They all come to the academy. You got elected as governor on the ticket of the PDP. Later you moved to the Peoples Party of Nigeria (PPN). Now, you are in LP and it is believed you are romancing the PDP again. What is the reason for this metamorphosis? I am as constant in this particular matter as the Northern star. Part of the challenges in our polity is that people do not sit down to evaluate issues and come to the right conclusion. First, people said I was in the Alliance for Democracy (AD); from the AD to the PDP and then, I went to PPN; and from there to Labour. Fact of the case is that I was never in AD. I was never a card-carrying member of the AD. But I was a serial supporter of the then AD administration. I did that on the platform of Afenifere that I belonged to. At that time, I was not playing partisan politics. I was a businessman, and engineer and a philanthropist. My first camp in any political party was the PDP which I joined in 2001. And, of course, I carried the flag of the PDP for all the eight years I was in office. However, towards the end of my administration, you are aware that there was this celebrated primaries at the MKO Abiola Stadium where, not me alone, my humble self, wanting to go to the Senate at that time, two other senators, nine House of Representatives and 26 House of Assembly candidates, the governorship candidate and the running mate; 40 people emerged in that primaries conducted not by me, but by the national leadership of the PDP. They sent Colonel Abdulmumini Aminu (retd) who conducted the primaries under the full view of media people, the police, State Security Service (SSS) and the Independent national Electoral Commission (INEC); every stakeholder was there. The election, according to the guidelines, was conducted and people emerged PDP candidates. And one person went to court. We all thought it was a joke. Before we knew what was happening, another set of people who had never joined the party, had their names released as those who would fly the flag of the party. That, for me, is unacceptable. That was not what I stand for. We tried to plead with our people, but they said, ‘OGD you have been governor for eight years; you are an accomplished man. We have our own lives to live; if this is what PDP wants to do to us. This is a party we have built for years. Please, allow us to go and look for our own fortune elsewhere.’ That was how we came about PPN. I said gentlemen, morally, I cannot stop you. As a matter of fact, my heart is with you. But you will excuse me; I can’t go with you. Whatever support I can, as your leader, I will oblige you. Forget about me, because the president gave me that assignment to coordinate South-West. How can I abandon that just because I want to go to the Senate. That was why I said they should forget about my ambition so that I would face the assignment of the president. I stood in PDP. And, of course, some people said OGD is still in the PDP; so, we won’t leave the PDP. Others said they had to go and contest in another party, after all, OGD had given them some sorts of tacit support. That was what happened that our supporters became divided. Some stayed in the PDP; I didn’t ask them not to stay. And others went to PPN; I didn’t ask them not to go. But I then said I was no longer going to run. And that was how we went into the presidential election. I remain in the PDP. Are you still there? Wait. After the election was lost and won, people were aggrieved; people were unhappy; they were trading blames. Ok, we said let us now begin to reunite and re-arrange the PDP. So, I was on top of the process to rearrange the PDP. As a matter of fact, last year, there was a big meeting of all PDP stakeholders in the house of Senator Jubril Martins Kuye, where it was unanimously agreed that I should provide leadership for Ogun State as far as the party was concerned. As we were doing that, a large number of people were burying their differences, when all of a sudden, we woke up one day and one party said OGD had been expelled from the PDP. And this was a man that entered politics a few years ago, who has been using the courts to create some kind of legitimacy for himself in the party. Actually, a number of my supporters felt very unhappy about this. Of course, we expected that the people at the national level would call him, to order; they didn’t. Quite expectedly, a number of our people said, Your Excellency, in the present circumstances, what do we do? They don’t want you in the party and the national leadership of the party is doing nothing about it. Meanwhile the Labour people are knocking at your door every day. The national chairman came. Their leaders were tracking me down to my houses in Lagos, here and Abuja, saying OGD, come and help us. And, of course, I have a large number of my people too who felt if the PDP does not want to see your face for whatever reason, we have no business being there because you brought us there ab initio. So, wherever you go, we go. Then, I told them to go and take their decision; that whatever they chose, I would provide the leadership. I am in Labour Party, but as I have said consistently, as an experienced politician, part of the fact is that a large chunk of people in the PDP are my people. I don’t want to say a majority of them; a large chunk of them, I brought them into Ogun State politics. I can’t throw them away; they talk to me. So, I can’t, in all sincerity, say they don’t exist. I have a dilemma now. I have been a leader in Labour Party. The people who want to contest under it are looking up to me. Those who want to run in the PDP are also my people. All of them now say since the government of the day is not doing well, you are the one who know Labour and you know the PDP; come and unite us to have one strong force to effect change. And there is nothing wrong with that; there is no time that people don’t cooperate in politics. It’s a matter of principle. If the people of Ogun State say ‘we made a change in 2011; sorry, we are regretting the change. We want to change the change. We have had the opportunity to compare OGD to the one we have now. And we think we have made a hell of a mistake. We want to correct it for the sake of our people. OGD, please come and help us.’ And they keep telling me since Labour is strong; if you bring PDP or any other party into an alliance, then, you can begin to form your government. That, in a nutshell, is what I see. I carried the flag of the PDP for eight years; the longest serving governor in Osun State. So, if there is anybody that wants to talk about PDP’s achievement in eight years in Ogun State, that person is me. I think that it is an exercise in futility for people not to appreciate this fact. When the chips are down, you don’t have what to say. What are they going to say? If they campaign, what are they campaigning with? The man who headed all the things that were done in those years is not with you; you better go and find a way of telling him to come and talk to us. That is the dilemma, but some people still think they can ride roughshod and we are watching. As a former governor, you have some entitlements. Considering that your successor is from a rival party, have you been given your entitlements and if yes, did it involve any effort to get? I have not bothered to check. I don’t even know what my entitlements are. Let me say that God has been merciful to me. The entitlement is my entitlement and I believe that they know what they are doing. I think the salary of a governor is about N500, 000 and I reckon they must be paying that into my account. I assume they must be paying that. It is not like Lagos State where your governor has houses, cars etc. Here, we don’t have that culture. I think whatever happens is at the discretion of the governor. And I am not going to ask him for anything by the grace of God. What happened to your earlier mentioned senatorial ambition? I just didn’t contest. I wouldn’t contest because PDP wanted to give me. But I said it was not about me. I needed a structure. Forty people emerged and you wanted to single me out. That would be selfishness; rather than do that, I would drop that ambition. When you were in government, how did you maintain your chain of businesses; did they suffer in any way? Well, definitely, they would have suffered and they did suffer. Yoruba would say oju oloju o dabi oju eni. But I was lucky; I did have some people who gave a good account of themselves while in charge of my businesses. I am not complaining, but I know that if I had been there physically, I am sure the company must have gone much farther than it did. One of the issues that generated controversy during your administration was the allegation of operation of a killer squad. What really went wrong? There was nothing like killer squad; it was an imagination of politicians who decided to engage in smear campaign. There are two things that I will say. That is part of the reasons I set up the academy. One very good friend of my came and asked me. OGD, what’s going on; killer squad or whatever? He is a very highly educated person. I told him sit down. Do you have a killer squad without dead bodies? I asked. I said upon all of these that you have been hearing, did you hear of any political or any assassination in Ogun State under my care? And there was no one he could cite. I said the whole thing is stupid. After that, they said all the people that were killed were thrown into a pit. I said ok, if they were thrown into the pit, was there no family to write petition or ask questions about their dead or missing loved ones? They were just thrown into the pit and everybody went on with business as usual? That was when the story of the killer squad started dying. Unfortunately, when Dipo Dina died, they said ‘hahaaa, we said it.’ So, when somebody just drops dead now, it must be me. I said Dipo Dina was our friend; we might have disagreed along the line politically, but at the risk of sounding immodest, Dipo Dina, for God’s sake was not an issue for me politically. In politics, if you talk about defeat in your ward, I did it to him. If you say you want to be governor, you would, at least win in your ward. We went to his Ward 6, in Ijebu-Ode, where he is supposed to be loved most and we defeated him. Quite honestly, beyond what he wrote against us in the papers, he didn’t exist politically. Most of the things he wrote were not true. We didn’t have any sleepless night over him. And when we wanted to explain to the public, we set up a team. And it was the same Tunde Oladunjoye that is telling lies to the public all over the place that we said ‘Tunde, go and sit down; these are facts. You can present these facts to members of the public,’ which he did to the best of his ability before he later changed camp. I usually say that this Tunde that people are talking about; if he was, indeed, a member of the team, he should go out there and tell the world a lie he told on our behalf. Now that he is fighting us, he should be able to say while I was there, OGD asked me to say so and so that was not true. He has still not said that after over four years that he has left. In the meantime, when the new governor came in with vengeance and was looking for any way, whatsoever, to nail OGD, he set up a truth commission, publicly funded it and brought many people in. I think a retired judge was there. They said anybody that has anyone that had been killed should approach the commission. We patiently waited for the report of the commission. When it came out, I was told that the judge said he could not find anything to indict me. I think that ordinarily, that governor should apologise to me. If it were in other clime, he should be able to say to me; ‘Your Excellency, I am sorry. It is possibly I was misled, misinformed or overzealous. But I have set up a truth commission, and having read its report, I cannot find anything against you. I have sinned against God and sinned against ma. I am sorry, please, accept my apology.’ There is nothing wrong about that; that, for me, makes you a honourable man. I have been here, long after I lost my immunity, nobody has been able to say they want to press charges against me for killing A, B, or C. what is protecting me now? I am here. What about the issue of the controversial bond? There was nothing controversial about the bond. That is another reason this government has to apologise not only to me, but also the good people of Ogun State. When we started, we were trying to squeeze water out of rock. Ordinarily, people were used to folding their hands, doing nothing, under the excuse of lack of funds. What did I do? Out of nothing, we did something. We went round looking for the cheapest way to do any project we wanted to. When we established the free trade zone, Olokola, a lot of factories were showing interest. That was a virgin land. They said they were going to bring factories, but how would they transport the goods and services. If they manufactured fertiliser, for example, how would they bring the fertiliser out? The government has the duty of providing road. Since we approached the Federal Government and it did not do it, we didn’t have enough resources to do it. We felt we could access some cheap funds to do it. That was what led to the issue of the bond. If we had been able to access that bond and do the road, the refinery that was relocated to Lekki in Lagos might not have been relocated. It was simply a question of road. Here, we are talking about a $9.5 billion. It had been secured within the free trade zone. It has potential of generating 20,000 jobs. We were looking at possibility of 100,000 to 200,000 jobs within its first 10 years. So, for us, it was enough reason to seek for help. And we know that bond, with single digit interest rate, was the best. We could have sought for bank loan with 20 plus per cent interest rate; who is going to pay? Our children and grandchildren. We didn’t want to do a road for the sake of a road. And that is the issue I have against the kind of money and interest they are paying on these projects they say they are doing now. These are good roads leading to nowhere; good bridges leading to nowhere. How do you construct a bridge where there is no traffic? Is it a means of decoy or a means of siphoning funds? Those are fundamental questions that must be answered. I said we wanted to take some money from the bond market to do the road in Olokola to link the Ore – Benin express. We believed that the goods that would be coming from there, once they get to the express, they can get distributed towards Benin to the East and towards Ijebu-Ode to Lagos. If you take a loan to do such a road, it will have multiplier effect on the economy. That was what we were saying. And the current governor actually came out and said ‘no, Ogun State does not need any loan.’ He called the bond we were trying to get a bond of bondage. He did it as an advertorial. I have it in my archive. And because there was no political education, the people of Ogun State fell for that gimmick. As a matter of fact, most people did not know that the House of Assembly, under Honourable Shoyemi Cocker, when it finally convened, granted us approval, which the Egbetokun-led House of Assembly refused to pass for us to go ahead and get the bond. But I was the one who said, just to prove a point, that we were no longer going for the bond. They had concluded that the bond was going to be used for election. I said thank you House of Assembly for granting us approval, but we will no longer take the bond. Whatever happened, as a result of the blackmail, the people already had the mindset that the bond would be used for something else. That was why we left the bond which that man called bond of bondage. And now, when he became governor, all he said was that he was not going to borrow money, but our challenged now is that we heard that this man has borrowed, probably, over N200 billion within two and a half to three years of the administration. I think we have to look at that critically. And we have asked them to give us information; they have refused to. What we are hearing from people in the House of Assembly is that they have taken over N200 to N300 billion. The government is saying it is not up to that; then, they should tell us how much it is. We are talking of what is borrowed, not what is paid back, because if you embark on a hostile tax regime and you have been able to pay back some of the loans, that does not mean you have not borrowed. What the House of Assembly members are saying is that they have borrowed between N200 and N300 billion. That is what they need to tell us; under the Freedom of Information Bill, they have no right to conceal information from us. The issue is that if you tell an outgoing government that it wanted to get a bond of bondage and that you will never take any loan; and not quite two to three months that you get three, you have started taking mega loans from banks at high interest rates, that does not portray credibility. So, he should be man enough to apologise to the good people of Ogun State. He should say ‘the good people of Ogun State, I am sorry. I didn’t have information. I have no means to sustain the claims I made. Having got there, I found I could not survive without taking loans. So, I have gone to the bank.’ All these bold face mentality is questionable credibility. And if the governor of Ogun State is not credible, who then is credible in the state? That really is my point.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 21:30:47 +0000