National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, is reputed for prematurely retiring from the Federal Civil Service where he rose to the position of permanent secretary because he could not continue to tolerate the ills that were gradually creeping into public service. He went into private business and later became a politician elected as first executive governor of Edo State in the short-lived Third Republic. He later became an active member of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), the pro-democracy group that mounted pressure on the Gen. Sani Abacha-led junta to hand over power to an elected government. With the return to democracy, Oyegun decided to pitch his tent with the All Peoples Party (APP) which later transformed into All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), one of the parties that coalesced to form the APC. He chose to remain in opposition for 16 years even though most of his friends and former political associates were in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). TONY AKOWE had an interesting encounter with the APC National Chairman, in which he told the grass-to-grace story of his life.
Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, born to a man who was an only child, told The Nation that his father apparently wanted to compensate for being an only child, so he wanted his family name to be everywhere. Recollecting his growing up years in Benin, he said: “Growing up was lovely. It was a beautiful large family with a well educated father who worked with white judicial officers at the early stages, went on tours with magistrates at the time and all that. He was a court registrar, and whenever he was coming back, we were always happy because there would be lots of chicken and those little, little things. So it was fun because there were many children. We were 26 at the peak and that went relatively well.
“Of course, in a situation like that, you tended to depend on your mother. They became the focus, the rallying point, and he (father) coped in spite of the large family. He was a one-child product of his family and I suppose he wanted to ensure that the family name lives forever. And I think he has succeeded because there are so many Oyeguns now all over the place.”
Looking back into his early history, Chief Oyegun said even though his father was a well educated man who had a job, meeting all the family needs was not an easy task. So, most of the time, he had to rely on his mother for some petty needs.
He said: “It was good even though there was not always enough to meet all our needs. He (father) paid our fees religiously and our mothers took care of the slack. You know, when you are going to school, the garri, sugar and all those things, you take along.
“Of course, at that time, there was this tendency after secondary school to ask the female children to go into one of the professions whilst the male children struggled along. But what was good was that for many of us that went to the university then, we were basically on scholarship. So, it helped a lot.”
At a tender age, Oyegun, who graduated from the University of Ibadan in 1963 with a degree in Economics, wanted to be a lawyer. But destiny had something else in store for him.
He said: “I was preparing to go to the University of Hull in the United Kingdom to do a Law degree when my federal scholarship arrived and that immediately changed that possibility and my career path.
“It was a beautiful time, and since there was not enough to meet all our needs, most of us the older ones took to supplementary occupations now and then just to earn some pocket money. Sometimes, we worked at building sites.
“In those days, the scarcest commodity in Benin was water. With just a few taps in the city, you had to queue for a long time to get water. What we did was to work at building sites, more often than not filling drums with the water they used to mix concretes.
“Occasionally, we hired trucks to carry things for market women. The third thing a lot of us did was selling. I sold soap. We put them in trays and went round town hawking. But it was quite a wonderful experience.”
Oyegun had a distinguished career as a civil servant, rising to the position of Permanent Secretary at the age of 46, becoming one of the youngest Permanent Secretaries of his time. Quitting after about 22 years in service, Oyegun is not happy with the changes that have occurred in the service today.
He summed up his civil service experience in just one wordfantastic. “Truly, there is nothing like it,” he said.
“When you look back to those years and you look at what is happening today, you see a totally different world. At that time, you did not even dare go to your permanent secretary not to talk of discussing loot or lobbying for anything. That was an anathema.
“I remember the very first position, I was left out. I wrote a petition in that regard and at the end of the day, I was called and told to take it easy, that I would be promoted when it was time, and that was the end of the matter.
“During our time in service, you do not lobby for promotion. You do not lobby for posting or anything, and merit was very critical because it was highly recognised.”
After his protest, luck smiled on him and he had the opportunity of working with some of the best leaders in the service.
He said: “I had the singular fortune of being deployed, after my protest, to the Ministry of Economic Development where I had very enlightened leaders like Alison Ayida, I.D Ebong, one of the most forgotten now but one of the most intelligent civil servants of those days. And in many instances, I collaborated with Chief Phillip Asiodu and other very brilliant persons who were not in the ministry but collaborated a lot with us. These were people who encouraged you to reason; encouraged you to argue, encouraged you to speak your mind.
“So, one grew up in that fearless mould but always reminded you that once a decision was taken, the issue was closed. Before the decision was taken, you could argue your point and they would listen to you, no matter how junior you were. So, it brought us up in a mould where we could speak fearlessly. There was no fear of witch hunt. In fact, it was a problem if you could not reason and you could not speak and you could not defend your point of view.
“So, some of us, because of that kind of background, had problems much later in our career. But it was a fantastic civil service.
“For instance, I got whispers about the possibility of me becoming a permanent secretary when I was attending a board meeting of the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA), because you never knew things like that would happen. Somehow, somebody heard of it and called me out of the meeting to inform me. Just to give you the idea that at that time, the golden days of the civil service, merit was everything. Lobbying and corruption were absent. You dared not buy a car that was out of sync with your economic possibilities. It was not done. They would ask you.”
Having had a flourishing career in the public service, Oyegun did not wait until he had attained the mandatory retirement age or number of years in service. He chose to disengage voluntarily.
But why take such a decision when he had the opportunity of staying longer at the apex of his career?
He said: “I retired voluntarily because the kind of upbringing we had in the civil service became a disadvantage when the military came in. For a long time, we had no problems, but I think there was a stress factor involved. When the Buhari administration with which I empathised a lot came in, discipline was becoming a problem. Corruption, drugs were becoming a problem. I was on all fours with that administration and when the coup happened and they were removed, I was truly upset. So in the usual forthright manner in which I grew up in the service, I said a few things and resisted a few things that created issues for me. So, I just knew it was time to go.
When the new (Ibrahim Babangida-led) government came in, my problem started immediately, and I knew that by the time they would appoint permanent secretaries, it was almost certain I would not be on the list. So, I just said to myself, instead of facing that humiliation, I better just go whilst I was still on my feet.”
So, while not waiting to be shown the way out, Oyegun took a decision he considered good for his future and left the service.
After his retirement from the civil service, he was practically in the cooler for most parts of the Babangida regime until the doors of politics opened and he pitched his tent with the Social Democratic Party (SDP) on whose platform he was elected the governor of Edo State, defeating the more popular candidate of the National Republican Convention (NRC), Lucky Igbinedion, in an election that did not take money politics into consideration.
Many who followed the election believed that if money had been allowed to play a major role, Oyegun would not have come near the Government House.
What was the experience like for the former Edo State chief executive? He said: “It was lovely and beautiful. It taught me one thing and I think it is a universal truism, that when people trust you, when they believe you are acting in their own interest, they tend to take to you, and that was clear during most of my period in Edo State.
“Then, almost like now, there was no money. I think we got less than N100 million most times in any month, because the last budget I presented was about N1 billion; the first time everybody was declaring billions. And that was for the entire year, and salaries almost took everything.
“At the end of the day, you are left with almost nothing. At the best of times, I do not think we were left with more than N15 million or N20 million to manage the state in any month. But that is where resource management comes in.”
In terms of liability, what did his government leave behind at the time they were eased out of office by the military?
He said: “At the time I left, I owed nobody no salary. I owed nobody no pension; no lack of payment for work done. My habit from the time I became permanent secretary was that unless the money was there, I would not give out a job, because the effect is simple: people would go and borrow money to execute the job, then they come back after one, two, three months or even a year and you are unable to pay them. You have only ruined them, and for me, that was totally unacceptable.
“So, unless the flow of resources was reasonably sure to me, I would not allow a job to be awarded. I had the challenge finally with the salary issue and I called the unions for a debate. I told them I did not want to lay off staff. They had just gotten one or two increments, that was during the Babangida regime when they would just virtually decree things. Two, three times, they reduced our percentage of the Consolidated Revenue funds while workers’ salaries went up.
“So I called the workers and persuaded them to give up some of the increments they got, but repayable to them at retirement. We called it compulsory savings. I told them that would save their colleagues from being fired. The union leaders agreed. But, of course, it turned out that they had difficulty persuading the workers. That was the issue we had. Otherwise, it was a most pleasurable experience.”
How would he defend the argument that while in office as governor, he did not initiate new projects? He said: “When I came in, there were so many abandoned projects and I decided that instead of starting new projects, let me complete the ones that were there and bring them into use by the public because they had invested a lot of money in them and we could not just write them off.
“The very day I was sworn in, I declared education free. So, when people today talk about free education being unaffordable, I do not understand it. I called the vice chancellor, rector, provost and heads of other tertiary institutions and asked them to tell me what each student paid into the system. They gave me the student population as well as how much they generate from them and I told them ‘fine, subject to increases everywhere, I will give you what the students are supposed to pay. So they are free to attend classes.’ And that was it. We managed that very well.
“I introduced the public bus service and registered it as a limited liability company and we had an arrangement with those that were managing it. I would buy the buses, you would manage and maintain them properly and meet your recurrent costs, but I would always provide the capital. That worked very well.
“When we needed to build a students’ hostel in what was then Edo State University, I called the students of Auchi Polytechnic and asked them to design it, do the architectural drawing. I called the students of the then Edo State University to supply the labour while we would supply the materials. We had to do these innovative things to succeed. It was a very lovely experience, such that till today, from the very first day I left office, I could walk the streets of Benin freely.”
While working to put the new state on the path of development, his four-year tenure was cut short by the intervention of the Abacha junta thereby truncating the Third Republic after the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election by the Babangida regime.
To Oyegun, it was a very bitter experience. He told The Nation that he considered it a bitter experience not because his tenure was cut short, but “annoying as that was, it was a period of promise. You could see the future. The governors were mostly of high quality and we interacted very well and had a mission of where the country was going. Then, the military struck again and it became clear to me all of a sudden that the military was the source of the nation’s problems and that they had to be voluntarily or with a little push, be taken out of the political scene on a permanent basis. That was why NADECO came about. That was the mission of NADECO: an end to military rule.”
But how did MKO Abiola come into the NADECO struggle?
“June 12 was grafted when Abiola came to join us. We were meeting then somewhere in Ikeja GRA when Abiola applied to join and I remember I got up that day and said he had to accept that the core of the struggle was a permanent end to military rule; that we were ready to accommodate. Once we got the military out, we could cope with democracy with all its imperfections, but it was still a better option than military rule.
“We fought till the end, won 50 per cent. We would have won 100 per cent but for the strange death of the dramatis personae. But we got the military out of politics with God assisting us in the process.”
When it became clear that many of the leaders of NADECO which had become like an opposition to the military junta were either in detention or had fled the country, Oyegun knew that it was time to go into exile in order to survive to tell the story. It became worse when his name appeared among those that were wanted by the government.
He said: “The minute I was declared wanted, the choices before me became very stark. We were bitter political enemies in Edo State. The late Aikhomu, for example, believed that I organised those who burnt his house and other attacks in Edo State, including the attacks on some leaders of the then NRC and those even within the SDP who became collaborators, not to talk of the political people that I defeated in Edo State. I was even in Lagos when all that happened.
“So, it was clear that if I found myself in Benin Prisons, I might never come out alive. So, the choice became stark. The truth of the matter was that I went into hiding for quite a while and it became uncomfortable for those who were hosting me. Even for me, it became a bitter assault. And I contacted friends in the security services to say, ‘Look, I am tired of hiding. I’ll come out, stay in my house and I won’t say a word.’ And I was told, ‘Well, that may not be enough. You have to say you support us.’ And I told them, ‘Sorry, I will not do that. I am ready to keep quiet, but I am not ready to say I support you’.
And it was a friend. So, he said, ‘Well, my advice is if there is any way you can get out for a while, please do so.’ That was how I went on exile.”
Even though he has presided over a state which many believe to be stressful, Oyegun believes that the task of running a governing party is only tough, rough and stressful, but totally a rewarding experience.
Asked to speak on his experience running the APC as its National Chairman, he said: “I did not know I still had so much to learn and I am still learning everyday. We were dealing with groups that had never held power at the centre. So, there was a little bit of inexperience. Before we got into government, the vision was a lot clearer. The mission was definitepush out these people who are running the country. So, we all rallied around that single bannerget rid of the destroyers of our nationand we succeeded.
“But once we succeeded, the issue of putting everyone in positions became problem number two. How do we fill the positions? Who is more important than who? Who occupies what position? Who are the most important groups in the party? What level of hold would they have on the structures? All those became divisive issues which, to be honest, we have not totally resolved up to this point in time, and which also gave rise to some of the problems that exhibited themselves in the National Assembly and places like that. But we are working on it. Distresses have come, but in the long run, people would start accepting the relative positions within the party, settling for what they have or what they can get, and the party would get into a more even state. But until people start accepting the realities that we need everybody on board, that influences within the party are to be shared relatively equitably, that all those who contributed majorly to the victory must feel an equal sense of belonging, an equal sense of ownership; once the individuals start accepting that it is not an all-or-nothing situation, this unfortunate problem that we have would recede to the background.”
Retiring from service at an early age, having his tenure as governor cut short, being in the opposition for 16 years and watching the country drifting and now becoming the National Chairman of the ruling party, is he a fulfilled man? He said: “As a human being, God has been generous to me. So, I am totally fulfilled. Many years ago, I looked at the lives of Awolowo, Zik, Papa Ajasin, Ahmadu Bello, Tafawa Balewa and the rest of them who contributed to the development of this country, but who on their death-beds felt a lot of frustration that the vision they had for the nation, we were not even yet on the road to realising them, and I said to myself, ‘God, I want to be on my death-bed knowing not that all the problems of this nation have been solved, but knowing that we are finally on the right path to greatness.
