Senator Babafemi Ojudu is the Special Adviser to the President on Political Affairs and also a gubernatorial aspirant in Ekiti State on the platform of the All Progressives Congress. In this interview with our Deputy Editor, Nation’s Capital, YOMI ODUNUGA, the journalist, activist and philanthropist speaks on his mission in running for the governorship of the state, noting that President Muhammadu Buhari’s battle against corruption is yielding results even if the agents of the monster are giving him a tough time. Excerpts:
There were claims in some quarters that you are in this for some form of political bargain because your party may end up with a consensus candidate. Are you in the race for governorship for bargain or is this for real?
How is that possible when we have put all our plans in place? I’m planning to work and we have set up mobilisation for our group. We mean business. We are convinced that we are capable of building the new Ekiti and make Ekiti a place of example for the rest of the country. This is no joke and I keep telling people that it is not an ambition for me but a mission to rescue Ekiti, rebuild and show the world the possibilities in that state.
In spite of Governor Ayo Fayose’s order that your posters and bill boards should be removed for allegedly failing to pay required fees, you were still able to pull an impressive crowd. Was that a rented crowd as being peddled by some persons?
I couldn’t have rented the crowd. I did not rent any crowd. If you look at the video and how enthusiastic they were, you will know they were largely members of our group, Ero Rebirth Organisation. We have a group present in all the wards, all the towns in Ekiti State. We have 177 coordinators in the wards and 60 coordinators in the local governments. We have headquarters in Ado-Ekiti. We have been working on it. We also have branches in the major cities in US, Britain, South Africa, Australia and Ghana. We have a branch in Abuja here, Lagos, Port Harcourt. So we have people, who came from all over these places.
You have highly educated people but in spite of that, the state is still backward, how do you change that narrative?
Let’s diagnose the problem. People say Ekiti people are learned. Yes. When you go to school and become an accountant, engineer, medical doctor, there is nothing to do other than to move out of Ekiti to look out for greener pastures in Lagos, Maryland, Washington, Atlanta, Germany and everywhere. Those left at home are people struggling to eke out a living—you have the civil servants, the teachers. So, yes, we are educated but a lot of people who are doing well are not in Ekiti State. The few who are living in Ekiti are civil servants and teachers, whose salaries have not been paid in 12 months. They are perpetually poor; they can’t pay their rent or medical bills. They can’t do anything for themselves. Someone who has not got salary for 10 months, what will he make of his life? Won’t the children go to school? The graduates can’t find employment, they don’t have a hope, the infrastructure are dilapidated while schools are run down. So there is no life. I have been in this government for more than two years now, whether it’s Peoples Democratic Party or All Progressives Congress, I have seen what the governments have done. Some of them are very creative and intelligent. Look at Kebbi, for instance, all the lands have been turned to rice and wheat farms. But, in Ekiti, nothing has happened. Fayose waits for the end of the month, take his share from the state’s share of the Federation Account and everybody can go to hell. If you pay Paris fund, he is just gallivanting around. He has turned himself to one project governor which is to criticise Buhari, abuse Buhari. That has been his only agenda. So when you get to Ekiti state, you see suffering, grief and hunger. You see hopelessness and that’s the problem we are facing now and trying to find solutions to.
How do you change that?
First, you have to ensure there is productivity. Wherever there is no productivity, there can’t be wealth creation. We have a basic formula to resolve the problem in Ekiti. Yes we are educated but knowledge without enterprise can lead to poverty. We want to add enterprise plus knowledge to create wealth and development. You cannot wake up and go into heavy industries. Land area in Ekiti is very fertile. Less than 10 per cent of land in Ekiti has been cultivated. I have done a research on that. We have done research on that and calculated what is available as land space. So we want to move people back to agriculture so that they can farm and produce heavily.
When they produce, you can then find private investors to come and do processing as it’s happening in Kebbi. In Ekiti, we have five dams and they are not used to provide water for the people and not used for agriculture. They are just lying there fallow. With those bodies of water, we can grow maize all year round, vegetables and tomato; with market in Lagos, Ibadan even Abuja, we will make good money. We are not talking of cutlass and hoe agriculture but mechanised farming. This will, firstly, move large number of our young people to the farm using tractors and other farm machineries to do agriculture. If you look at history, you realise that 40 per cent of revenue generated in the western region that Chief Obafemi Awolowo used to build free education and develop the region came from Ekiti. I am talking of cocoa and the cocoa producers are still there now but they are old. Initially, we were producing 80 pods per tree but currently producing 4 pods per tree. We want to review that and focus on agricultural development. The entire south of Ekiti State is a cocoa belt. If we have that now, we will be swimming in wealth. So we are going to really encourage the renewal of those farms and see how we can renew cocoa farms estate.
Unlike Awolowo, we won’t export the raw cocoa but we will dry and bag it. We will keep the pod here and ask the private sector to establish processing plants that will process them and ship them out. It will add more money than shipping them out raw.
So basically, within two years of being in government, we will have established the estate in every local government where you can rest, provide electricity and modern technologies such that young people can stay in the villages and live a very good life. If they want to watch football competition, they can do that after farming and then they can be productive. You don’t see youths who just walk across the streets. Every young man today in Ekiti State is a politician. Many of them are already on drugs, many have become thugs.
The incumbent governor has both political and financial power, how will you wrestle power from such a person?
Over the last two years, people have seen that it’s a deceit; he doesn’t mean what he says but just deceiving them. You say you a friend to the common man, yet you are not paying their salaries. The stomach infrastructure you used to campaign, you no longer give the rice anymore. This last Christmas, we were waiting for him to give them rice and chicken but because he knows he would no longer contest the election, he didn’t give them. People now see that it’s a deceit. When you look at his lifestyle, it betrays what he preaches. You went to Benue State and donated money yet you didn’t pay the salaries of your people. You built a two kilometers bridge in a town where there is no traffic or water. He has cut the salaries and allowances of Obas in the state. Everything is just going wrong; so they are just waiting for that day to vote in APC.
Outside politics and journalism, you are also known as a philanthropist. Were all these tailored towards the realization of your gubernatorial ambition?
As you said, they know me and I don’t hide anything from them. What is paramount to me is the development of that state. I even told them, I have a 3-bedroom bungalow in Ado-Ekiti. If I’m elected, I’m staying in that bungalow to make a statement that we have to cut all of these wastes attached to governance in Nigeria.
How will you rate your chance within the APC?
My chance is very bright. I will tell you this: there is a set of people in Ekiti who says because of what we have seen in Fayose, who came back, we are not going to accept that again. You can’t seek re-election so you can decide not to do anything. You can just decide to come and get your retirement benefit. So, there are elements who said no. There are also those who, because of their antecedents, have offended Obas, students, party men or the opposition. So people are waiting. These people are carrying a lot of baggage. There is nobody in that state who did not know my role since 1999. If a government is not doing well, if one becomes so troublesome to the extent of beating up Obas, I will go there and organise his impeachment. I organized the impeachment of Fayose in 2006. In 2011, he contested against me and I defeated him. I had 68, 000 votes, he had 21, 000 votes.
So they know my antecedents, they know that I’m forthright and I have never stolen money. My name has not shown up in any theft or embezzlement. I have never been investigated as a public official in my life. I live within my means; I don’t promise what I can’t do, I have an antecedent. They know my role in bringing about democracy in Nigeria. So, my credentials stand out.
How do you mix these three- journalism, activism and being philanthropist?
It has to do with having a genuine heart. Whatever I do, I add passion to it. I have never been investigated. Whatever I don’t have passion for, I stay away. Then I want to say that I’m not motivated by money. If you say Femi Ojudu, there is money two kilometres away from here to be taken; I’m not going to take it. If you call me and say a young man or woman is being oppressed 10 kilometres away and you are the one who can save the person, I will run with all the energy I can summon to save the person. That’s the kind of person I am.
So when you talk about activism, yes. I am passionate about human rights, good governance and democracy as well as freedom of the press. It is passion. The same thing with governance, I believe that this country can be better if we all decide to say no way to corruption.
You are the Special Adviser to the President on Political Affairs, would you say this administration has done enough to tame the corruption monster with the kind of stories we read daily about what is happening in the system?
Let me tell you, we have all benefitted from corruption. All of us in this country and that’s what this administration is taking away from us. If I were SA, Political Affairs to a former President, you won’t come and see me here. For this interview, you won’t come and see me here. I will take a suite and have all of the champagne and foods for you to drink from. And when you are going, I’ll say Yomi, take $10,000. I won’t know I’m giving you anything and when you get home, assuming you are doing a construction project in your house, you may send $5, 000 for it. If you have a girlfriend, you give her $1, 000. So, it tickles down. That is how people benefit. You are a jeans maker, you are not producing anything but by just knowing Mr. President, the Minister, 100s of millions of dollars come to you and you buy private jet, hire crew, two pilots and gallivanting all over. You come to Abuja, you buy a mansion and yet you are not producing but taking from the state.
Then, if somebody comes and says I’m taking away all these, you can no longer pay your pilot. You can’t service that jet, you can’t pay the insurance, and your girlfriends can no longer travel first class abroad, so she abandoned you. Things are just collapsing. You can’t just maintain the house you bought, you can’t pay the school fees of your child you registered in a very expensive school in America, there is no way you won’t hate the man but the man didn’t hate you. The man is saying let us use the resources of this country for the benefit of our people. You are in this town. When I was in the Senate, I observed how pastors, bishops, emirs, alfas visited the villa. When they were going, they put a bag of $200, 000 in trunk of their cars. If you now have a president that says all I can give you when you come is bitter kola and tom-tom, and a handshake when you are leaving, there is no way you won’t be angry.
Some years ago, you see a girl who just completed youth corps using an Iphone worth N500,000. The hair is from Brazil, which cost N50,000 and rented an apartment in Asokoro for N20 million per annum, riding a Range Rover. You then ask where she got all that kind of money. It is from corruption. All of that has stopped. I am not saying that corruption has been totally eradicated but largely, it has been blocked. And that is why many are angry. That is why they want Buhari dead, and out of government. They want the country to collapse and corruption to thrive. But the man said, whatever you do, I must get this country going in such a manner that majority of Nigerians benefit from the resources. So when you are looking for why people hate Buhari, that is the reason.
People will like to know your philosophy of life? With your activism under the late General Sani Abacha to your interventions in the fiery politics of your state, is it right to describe you as a fatalist?
(Laughs) Fatalism, for me I will say whatever will be will be. Just believe in yourself. I lost my sense of fear perhaps at the age of 25. I wrote my first Will at the age of 28 and I have been updating it since. So I don’t sense danger. I can trek the streets without policeman. I can eat anywhere without any fear of food poisoning. If you poison me, I die and so what? What’s the big deal about dying? If you say fatalism in that sense, fine. See it is when you panic or be apprehensive that you cannot achieve your dreams. When as young men, we confronted Abacha, people said they would kill you. And so what? We were in danger, arrested, detained but we were not killed. We survived. We did what giants could not do. In this same way, I will go into this, confront all of the giants and survive. If in the process anything happens to me, so be it. Somebody else will carry on from there.