Prof. David Bamgbose is a governorship aspirant in the Accord Party (AP) in Ogun State. He speaks in this interview with SEYI ODEWALE on partisan issues.
Who is Prof David Bamgbose?
I’m Prof. David Olusegun Bamgbose, a professor of Educational Administration and Management and the Provost of Yewa Central College of Education. Incidentally, I’m the Chairman of the Association of Private Colleges of Education in Nigeria. I’m also a pastor. I’m an agriculturist and a farmer. You will agree with me that what will revolutionise this country is agriculture. We must go back to the basics.
We support our educational activities with agriculture. Also, I’m involved in giving back to the society. We have a foundation, Peaceway Care Foundation, where we reach out to the less privileged in the society. We give scholarships to indigent, but brilliant students and orphans.
But for those we cannot give scholarships to, we make sure that our college charges the lowest tuition in the entire southwest. We have an outreach, Prison outreach, which we are doing in Abeokuta. I am from Ifo Local Government, Constituency II, Ward 7, in Ogun State.
You seem to have your hands full with all you have mentioned. Why venturing into Politics?
All the platforms that I have mentioned can only reach out to a negligible size of the population. We believe that, if you leave politics to a certain people, they will see it as their birth right to govern. In fact, there is a culture now where some people see themselves as the political class. They see themselves as the only ones who must aspire to political office. They move from one party to another, recycling themselves. This, to me, is not proper. Our country is fast deteriorating. Do you know that we are near a major war in the north as I speak with you now?
The level of unemployment in the country is gradually making this country to implode. Why then should we leave governance to these set of people who have caused us so much hardships and pains? There must be a new drive, new idea and new dynamism.
Yes, they have tried their ideas for 15 years, let us allow people with new ideas, people with proven antecedents; people, who have worked in various levels before come and replicate the good things they have been doing in their private enterprises, which have made them successful. Let them come and replicate those things on a larger scale.
Let me give you an example, today, almost all the nations of West Africa depend on agriculture. Countries like Ivory Coast depend on agriculture 100 per cent. So is Ghana, which has 90 per cent dependency on agriculture. In Nigeria, we have one of the best climates in the world for agric. In my state, Ogun, ask anybody how much of the state internally generated revenue (IGR), which is about N4billion, comes from agric?
We just have to do things in a different way and to do that, you need new blood, new personalities. You cannot continue to do things the same way you have been doing them and expect a different result. Even in football, you get good results when you inject new and fresh legs into the field of play. We should allow this to happen on the political turf.
I want to tell you that 80 per cent to 90 per cent of those in the political terrain are still the same set of people. They have taken it to the level of making it a family business. The father will be a governor and the son wanting to succeed his father.
But, that is not strange. We have seen it happen in advanced democracies like the United States (US)…
No problem, but, if such people have been able to give us tangible, progressive and dynamic results, somebody like me would not have bothered coming into politics. I would have concentrated on my business. I will not sit in my office using 50 per cent of my time attending to people applying for jobs because I will know that someone in government is attending to that.
These people in government are however, not giving us the result that we desire. They are not the results that develop our potentials because we have not tapped one per cent of this country’s potentials. Therefore, we need new people with new idea, not age. People with proven results and antecedents, I repeat, we need people who have done that at their private level. I give you an example, we have a college of education that is 12 years old and we have produced over 7,000 graduates, 30 to 40 per cent of them are self employed. It is a teacher-education with entrepreneurial skills and they are proving it in their various fields.
We can replicate that at a larger level across the state. So, we need good people, for instance, in agriculture, Malaysia came to Nigeria in 1956 to pick the palm tree seedlings, today, that country generates four times what we realise from oil. People think we have money, no. Is it not the royalty that we collect from those oil companies?
The entire country’s budget is not up to that of New York City in the United States. I am not talking of the state of New York, but the city. The entire budget of all federal universities in Nigeria is not up to that of the Harvard University. And the little that we have, we waste. That little is not our potential; we must create wealth in Nigeria. We must open up the political space and the only way to do that is to bring in people, who have done it at the private level. Not people seeking rent from the government. I mean people who can develop our real sector and move this country forward.
But those you see as major players on the political scene come from that kind of background. Why have they not replicated their successes on the political terrain?
I’m zeroing in on primary industry. You cannot develop the tertiary system of education without a sound primary system foundation. In fact, that is the problem with our educational system. Let’s go back to the real sector. The Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina is a man with good intentions, very brilliant, but he is not getting results he’s supposed to get. Has he done it before? Can he point out what he had done in agriculture? If you want to give me clothes, I must see what you are wearing.
We need people with proven experience in that particular area. Let me also tell you that the mere fact that you a businessman does not qualify you for a political office or appointment. How did you develop? What are your antecedents? Your evolution-who are you? All those things and your character come into play. Do you have character of integrity? Can one or two persons talk about your character where you live? All these are critical to the sustenance of development and achievement from the primary level to tertiary level.
Some politicians see you as a political neophyte, who does not have political antecedents. How are you going to cope with this?
Fortunately for me it is not those politicians that will determine my fortune. It is the electorate. And by the grace of God, we have done a lot to reach out to the people. The political class you are talking about is less than 10 per cent.
But, it determines the tone of elections…
No, I don’t thinks so. If you look at the trend today, the people are speaking. They have taken their destinies in their hands. Look at the 2011 elections because of the perception that Governor Fashola performed in Lagos, his party swept all states of the southwest. If the ACN then presented a rat for election, it would have won.
There were people nobody knew then and they won elections because of their party. But it is not the same scenario now. Look at what happened in Ekiti and Osun states recently. Look at Osun, all Ijeshas voted Aregbesola, about 90 per cent of the votes from Ijesha were for Aregbesola. So it was for Omisore, about 90 per cent of his votes came from Ile-Ife and its environs. Are you telling me that the politicians determined that? Are there no PDP followers in Ilesha? People voted for personalities. So, I am telling you that the politicians will not determine our fate. We are going to bring our agenda to the people through various media and leave the choice to them to make.
You are contesting for what office and on which platform?
By the grace of God, I’m vying for the post of governor of Ogun State on the platform of Accord Party in 2015
Don’t you see this as a tall dream?
Interestingly, since the declaration of my intention to run there has been a tremendous movement across the state.
How do you mean?
People have been trooping out, reaching out to us. The first thing we noticed was that the membership of our party rose by 3,000 per cent in the state within two months. This happened the moment I declared my intention.
One would have expected you to join the ruling party in the state.
What do you mean? The APC came in and won from nowhere. Nobody knew ACN before and the people gave them their votes to remove the incumbent. The same incident can be replicated.
Perhaps it was what happened within the PDP that brought about that?
I want to tell you that the reason was the perceived performance of Gov. Fashola in Lagos.
