Dr. (Barr) Olumuyiwa Adu is a Chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC. In this interview with The Images, he speaks on the need to modify and amend the laws for better governance. He also advised government on improvement initiatives to better the lives of Nigerians among other sundry issues.
Excerpts:
Theimages- Kindly let me know more about you Sir?
Adu- I am Dr. Barr. Oluwamuyiwa Adu a.k.a Cubana from Akure, a politician in APC and one time candidate of the PDP for House of Representatives election.
Theimages- Sir, everyone knows you to be a Chieftain of the PDP, can you tell me what attracted and informed your defection to the ruling APC?
Adu -APC, PDP are names of political parties and players in the parties determine a lot of things. There must be certain determining factors that will also encourage an individual as a Nigerian to decide which of the political parties he should join. At a point in time when I was coming into politics, I was more or less like not having knowledge of the intrigues of politics in my own constituency and I saw myself going to PDP as a way of learning about politics in the real sense of practical aspect of it, particularly about the way my own people see politics and the way they play it, and along the line, I was able to write my own feasibility studies of what is required for me to be in politics and I was able to define why I was in politics, what I have seen about the political parties and where I think I can participate to add value to the systems.
I am talking about the country at large, state and my direct constituency. Over time, I was able to make up my mind on the best political party to stay so that those things can be achieved. That is why I left the PDP for APC.
The images -Are you saying that APC is the best party, and what are those things that you see?
Adu- APC, PDP are all names of parties. It is those sets of people that constitutes the leadership of that party as at that very particular time and that can be one of the major factors that one decides to be able to make up his mind about weather a political party is better or not.
As at that time, like I said, I do not see PDP as a party for me to stay, I prefer to stay in APC, base on my assessment as a major party where I can add my own value. It does not mean that PDP is not good, my own basis of assessment and again what actually informed my decision of moving to APC may be different from other person’s own initiatives as at that time.
For me to have preferred APC, it is the quality of the leadership and co-operation that I saw in the leadership of the party and at the same time, a political party that seems to have the highest number of government practitioners i.e there are lots of people in the political party that has a lot of things or the other to do with the government of this country at my own level, I should not be in a political party where I will just remain there and my voice will never be heard with all that I have in my brain and most of the qualities I have to be able to contribute to the development of this nation I would not have been able to achieve it in a political party that seems not to have any part to play in the government of the day.
Theimages- As a member of APC for now, what should people of the state expect from you in any position you are appointed to serve?
So many, I have not seen Nigeria to be well positioned structurally. I would want to advocate for a proper structuring of the country. The moment we are able to do that, ethnic bias, religious sentiments e.t.c will gradually fade off.
Secondly, I want to see a country where we spend less on governance and use bulk of our resources to develop our country, develop our people, develop our environment and at the same time, ensure that we have high standard of living in the country. Until such a time, we may not have a headway. This is one of our major problems in this country.
Where we have a lot of people providing public service to those elected into elective positions, some people have been in the civil service for 35 years, you claim they are in level 17 and they never earn up to N500,000, and an elected politician is paid as much as N10 million e.t.c.
What level are they? and again before you get into those positions you spent millions of naira, wasting them away. The money that you are supposed to spend to establish one industry or the other, you also get to that position again, all the money that you are given becomes wasted because once you get these money you still come back to your constituency and start giving groups, N100,0000, N300,000 and by the time they share that money , each of them may not go home with more than N500 , so the whole money will become wasted.
You want to become a governor in a state, you are spending money that you are supposed to use to establish an industry, but because you know that you will have an opportunity to get more than what you spent at the position you are elected for which supposed to be used to develop the human capacity, environment and everything, even our infrastructure.
Untill a time, we are able to make governance less interesting in terms of the peculiar interest of the people for elective positions, we cannot get it right but continue to swim in that ocean without any help that will get us out of the problem.
Theimages- But is this achievable?
Adu- It is achievable. it is a question of leadership quality, if I am in a position to do that, I will encourage the law makers to develop a long term plan of policies to restructure the system which will commence implementation at a stipulated year when they would have got back whatever they had spent during the election . Let us determine how we allocate and spend our resources. I am sure, a lot of Nigerians will embrace it.
The indication on the Nigeria Map shows location of states which indicated those above Abuja as the northern part and those below Abuja as the southern part, but this is not what is obtainable because you cannot tell me that Kogi is in the northern part of the country . You cannot tell me that Taraba, Benue is in the northern part because they are before Abuja on our map.
In order words, we are not well structured. People that are not even northerners will tell you that they are from the north where you have north central geographical zone the south of Abuja and you call Abuja the center. If Abuja is truly the center, any state above Abuja is north and anything below it should be south.
They divide the north into two, north east, north west, why not the south, south east , south west so that all these nonsense will stop and we can have three out of the four quadrants supporting good moves at any point in time that when such a bill is raised at the national Assembly.
I can tell you today anybody that think alike will have the support of majority of Nigerians.
The images- How would you describe the Akeredolu-led administration so far in terms of democracy dividends to citizens of the State?
Adu- It is difficult to pass any assessment on the Akeredolu-led administration and I will not want to judge him based on the number of years he was in active governance because those years may not really be enough for me to say this is what he should have done right.
I blame Nigeria for what is happening. Nigeria system right from time immemorial is such that we do not have a standard, take for instance, Gen. Buhari, is only an individual who only think about himself and will not think about the country or I see no reason why President Buhari should not have resigned long ago because of his mental and physical health, but because there is no enabling law that guides that, that the moment you you are sick you are subjected to medical checkup and they feel that you do not have that capacity of mental and physical fitness, then you should resign and be paid heavily for that and the government will from there be taking care of you because you fell sick while you were serving the nation, that is what I had expected.
Look at what is happening in Ondo state, what do you expect irrespective of whatever we are talking about, there will definitely be division. Whosoever is given the delegated power will not have the full capacity to operate and one, two years or more per existence as human being been held to ransome with our own resources does not speak good of the nation.
As much as I do not blame him for remaining there in the system, we do not have that law that will be able to regulate, who should be in that particular office, what will not make him to continue, especially when it had to do with medical aspect. It does not start with our governor because it had been like that.
It got to a stage when somebody said our president is being cloned. He was never cloned anybody could read meanings to that. I am still saying it. The last two , three years of his staying there, he was not the one ruling this country. There was a particular time I spoke and challenged his government even though I was in that same political party but for the interest of Nigerians first. I said let them give him a brief to read on television, let the pressmen sits in front of him and asked questions on that and let us see how he responds on that and let us know weather he had the mental capacity to be able to run this country.
The country is bigger than an individual but I can tell you that the governor we have is a very straight forward man, open and does not know how to do ‘Mago Mago’, but will tell you the way it should be. But his health disappointed him. I am sure that if you go to his own heart, he may not even be willing to continue as the governor but the system will not allow that.
People brought him to that place and for him to leave there immediately would be a real shortage of their effort in getting to the position, so for that singular reason they have to package him to ensure that his name remains there but between me and him, he is my father, my brother, senior professionally, if he is not in that position today, what I say is excitedly what he will say if I am sick let the government continue to take care of me, continue to pay my allowances until such a time I hear myself. Let them now appoint a permanent person to take over from me. It does not make any difference. We are talking about the people, the environment, the infrastructure, the money that is coming into the state, let us use it well.
As I speak now, we deceive ourselves, I always say the truth, the people he left behind, if anybody says that they have that high level of cooperation to be able to perform maximally, we would be deceiving ourselves because it can not be possible. A lot of suspicions among themselves and that is why we are not seeing what we expected to be seeing in his absence. That remains the truth. In other words, we do not have that law that will have to tell us what we need do under that circumstances, that is an area our laws require some level of amendments.
How would somebody who has been a governor in a state for eight years tirelessly and is coming out again to go as a minister? Even if we are just a million in this country, I don’t expect that, that person would have been a little bit weak, this are where we need to revisit our laws.
I am not saying that they are bad and I can tell you if our president is not the type that understands Nigeria and its politics, if he really wants to do things the way it should, I can tell you, they will turn his government upside down. Had it been we have some laws in place that would have given him the opportunity to do things the way he wants to do it, there is no reason why somebody in the Senate will be brought back to be a minister and you go back again to spent another money for another election. I do not see that person performing the role of president and governor for 8 years, evenly, having sleepless nights and you cannot say go and rest for 10years but you can even be considering to go for any public position. Our laws require suspension, amendment and even some modifications that can guide us to do that.
Had it been we have these laws in place before now , this government would have been more easier for our president. I am certain, that he must have thought of how to balance some interest for Nigeria to have peace.
Theimages- The petrol subsidy removal by President Tinubu has generated reactions, some kudos and knocks. What’s your take on the President’s decision in the face of the current hardship?
We all understand what fuel subsidy removal is. The cost of bringing fuel to the filling station is N300 per litre for example, government says No, I want my people to buy the fuel for N150 and the remaining 150 be given to independent marketers , if for any reason or whatsoever the government is doing that, it is expected that people will spends less to get fuel in the interest of the entire Nigerians because this issue of fuel affects everybody including the shoe maker on the street.
These people that are being paid this money under the supervision of the NNPC will bring in five vessels and they will claim 10 vessels and next, we have fuel scarcity and this fuel scarcity is not only as a result of that , remember, having got this subsidy and everything here, they will still take some of these fuel outside the country like cameroon and Niger and sell it even higher than how much is being sold in Nigeria making more than twice of what they are supposed to have, depriving Nigerians of having enough fuel and when the demand is already higher than the supply, we will not stop importing this fuel and the fuel pump price will never fall.
The rich have direct enjoyment of the situation and they have gone to the extent of frustrating us, and our refineries from working so that they can continue to import this fuel to Nigeria and making huge money.
Government said, we are sorry, that there have been a lot of fraud that accompany this , for that singular reason and we should think about how we will suspend it and money realised from that can be used directly to succour the poor and to think of palliative after stopping the payment of subsidy.
Why must we even begin to talk about subsidy or palliatives, because our refineries are not working. When they said subsidy stopped, life becomes difficult. For me, the palliative is a temporary measure to allow government work within a very short period of time to put the refineries in place and allow the principles of demand and supply to work along the line of stoppage of subsidy and free importation of fuel into this country by relaxing the conditions of the importation, meaning that we may eventually begin to see supply more than demand that will begin to force the fuel pump price down over time.
Again, without the palliative, no labour and everybody will now see Nigeria like a place where they can live. So for me, if the palliative is just for a temporary measure, while the government is struggling to ensure that the refineries will surely come to be, continue to give Dangote whatever they require to ensure that they begin production, it is the decision that is in the right direction but not to continue giving palliative .
Theimages- What’s your advice for the aggrieved Nigerians who are going through tough moments?
Adu- The masses should be patient and I said within three months, if I have the power to do one or two things in this state, I can employ more than 10,000 people and none of them will earn less than N100,000. No advise you can given to people that do not have work they are doing.
Government should begin to think about improvement initiatives, you could zone all the roads in the state to five and get the drainages constructed within six months because we have the stones and sands. It is a question of what can we do, not how do we spend.
It is only when you think of what you can do that the money will come and you have enough to spend. The only thing they know in Nigeria now is waiting for politicians money to canvass them to vote for them and when you get to the position, then you bring the money to come and share for them.
President Tinubu has just written a letter to the Senate, seeking approval to use military force in Niger. Some Nigerians have kicked against such decision as it may escalate to war. What’s your take on that Sir?
To answer your question about use of arms or diplomacy, sometimes if you are not part of decision makers, you would not know how they arrived at that . In security, there is what we call Risk assessment which must be carried out. Until you carry out those risk assessment, no matter how experienced you are, you may get war.
I want to believe that some people have carried out those risk assessment and come to conclusion that the best approach to it is exacitly what Tinubu is doing.
When you consider the risk assessment, you put them on what is called the risk Matrix. You now begin to think about the current control that can take care of those things and if they are not there, you add more before you decide on what to do. They are in the right direction if that risk assessment was taken before the decision.
Theimages- Do you see Tinubu performing better than his predecessors?
Adu- Without being told, he is in the right direction, Nigeria is a very difficult country to rule. The first thing he succeeded in doing was to remove subsidy and do you know the amount government is getting back from that subsidy? A lot of money.
He has appointed his ministers irrespective of whatever anybody thinks about including myself like I earlier said, that I saw him like somebody who would make the worse minister deliver. I know he will not disappoint us.
Theimages- Creation of LCDAS has receive knocks and kudos from the people. Is this necessary now considering that local government administration is more of paper work than action? Are you in support of these creation when our local governments are dying gradually?
We have so many options and creation of local government is one, but which one is more better is the question ? We should be asking and before this question, we should be able to suggest the alternative to LCDA like placing a quadrant, dividing into four north east, north west and south east , south west and having four vice President and one president at the center, is that not another wat of democracy, and now regionally, we begin to develop our rail lines e.t.c. more may not be the best but when we have all these options, we sit down and agree on the one that will be less expensive that will enable us have our resources to develop our country and the people should be our priority.
Theimages- Thank you for the time created to attend to us sir.
Adu- It is a pleasure and God bless you.
