• ‘To rescue Nigeria is a mission we must undertake’

Chief John Oyegun is the chairman of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) Manifesto Drafting Committee. In this interview, he speaks on his involvement in the formation ADC coalition and what the party intends to do differently from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), among other issues, ANAYO EZUGWU reports

At this stage of your life and your political career, one would assume that you don’t really have to prove anything to anyone electorally. What do you feel you owe Nigeria most?

I think I owe Nigeria explanation, contribution and atonement. I might as well start with atonement. Clearly, I was one of those at every campaign meeting. I was one of the very first to speak after we had been welcomed and I saw visually the frenzy that the All Progressives Congress (APC) elicited from the public, from the population and the expectations.

As a matter of fact, I was riding with the President during the campaign period one day and the crowd we saw as drove along were so ecstatic that he said: How are we going to satisfy all these people? I said: Mr President, you can’t solve every problem. Just let them see that you gave of your very best and restore hope to them. So, I’m very sad that it all went wrong from the word go, and the situation, has continued to deepen the disappointment of the Nigerian population. So, that brings in first an apology, explanation, now the atonement.

I had really withdrawn from active politics but I looked at myself and said if God has continued to bless me with relative good health I should intervene in any way. My disaffection with what is going on continued to multiply. I continue to get these famous text messages.

Please, anything you can send me, not like before. Before it was, I can’t finish paying my children’s school fees. I have N50,000, it remains about N30,000 or N40,000. That’s what they say. Today, you get a text that says, I can’t put food on the table for my children, totally a different type of message, whatever you can send.

They don’t tell you a hundred naira or a thousand naira. No, they don’t go to that level anymore. It is just send me anything you can afford. And that pains me to the core. I look at our nation, I ask: Where did we get it wrong; this is a blessed country, both in terms of human resources and in terms of the actual physical provisions?

You were responsible for helping to bring the APC from the margins of politics all the way to Aso Rock. How much do you think about what this country used to be and what it potentially could be in the future as you play your role as a leading member now of the ADC, especially as chairman of the committee that is drafting the party’s manifesto, that you hope will convince Nigerians to look favourably at the party in 2027 as you managed to do with the APC in 2015?

This time, we have a big message, a total different message. We have to start with the apology, saying sorry, we have disappointed you repeatedly. It’s not as if it is the last government. And of course, a lot of people in the ADC come from the APC as well as the PDP and all of those who were participants in the drama that has landed us where we are today.

Nigerians are basically decent people and they are looking for decent personalities to entrust the affairs of state to

But we tell them, this time it cannot be business as usual. Even in the way the party is being run and the way it is being organised, up to this point in time. You know, there are no governors, there are no major office holders. So, there’s a major sacrifice being made by virtually every strata of the society. When I say every strata, I mean those who are managing down below.

They are carrying out everyone’s responsibilities, for which we don’t ask them: How do you manage?

But people say that what you’re hoping for in the ADC is that the APC will be thrown into confusion because there are so many people coming in with so few positions. And when that starts to fall apart and people start to look elsewhere for tickets, they are going to come to the ADC…

Well, there’s no other party, of course. The point I want to make is that as of now, the only attraction in the APC for people who are joining in droves is that they believe that they are going to make the difference and they are ready to make sacrifices.

That is the first indicator that these people know that things are bad. These people have looked at the leaders of this new party, and believe in them. And they are ready, as a result, to make the sacrifice that is required. The other issues of the drove of people in the APC, who are all lining up, I want to confess to you, we are very pleased that virtually all the governors have transited into the APC.

You know how it started? I think Delta or somewhere, one of these states, there was this thing from the red flag from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) They waved the red flag on fraud of N1 trillion, a month later, the whole of Delta PDP walked into the APC. And since then, it has been an unending queue. I wonder how they are able to cope.

So we are praying, as a matter of fact, we will bring out brass bands if the rest also join the APC. So, the struggle for the future becomes very clear. In fact, designing the kind of campaign that is going to come in the future, it is the people versus the oppressors made up of so many governors and so many political actors all under one umbrella with all their sins forgiven. It’s going to be a most interesting campaign period.

You are a former national chairman of the APC, which made you a prominent member of the ruling party at one stage. But now you’re in the main opposition party and Nigerian politics is such a divisive issue mixed with ethnicity, religion and region. Against these backdrops, where do you sense that the ADC is when it comes to the empathy and feeling and hearts of Nigerians?

I’ll try to cut a long story short. Yes, I was national chairman of the APC, six months or less into our assuming office. Fairly alarmed, I went to Mr. President on a oneon-one talk. I said, Mr. President, this is not what the people were expecting. This is not what, from the way we campaign and the rest of it, they were expecting from you. They wanted a bit of the old President Muhammadu Buhari, the sparks, the fire and everything. And he explained to me, Mr. Chairman, no, no, no.

I have learned my lesson. I said: I beg your pardon; what kind of lesson? Don’t forget at that time, a lot of prominent Nigerians took their holidays abroad just to be sure and see what this new sheriff in town would be like. He said, no, he has learned his lesson.

He wants to now show the people that he’s a true civilian president in Agbada and that he learned his lesson from a few drug guys, young guys that were dealt with during his military regime. So, apparently, he was still in a traumatic state after those experiences.

By the time we finished the conversation, I said, oh God, we’re finished because if he’s not ready to be strict, if he’s not ready to ask people to face consequences, what did we do all this for? Weeks later, months later, years later, I was proved right. And of course, it became business as usual, only that there are a new set of tenants in Aso Rock. That was a shocker. No problem. The next man was streetwise. And I said, well, he’s more of a politician and will know what to do. But with the very first speech he made, he landed on this issue of fuel subsidy.

My initial shock was, good Lord, this thing is going to have a traumatic impact on the population and should have been prepared for. Not only prepare countermeasures, but prepare the minds of the people that we cannot continue. This is what the implications are. This is what it is costing the nation and the rest of it. Before he finished his speech, the first indicator was fuel prices, from N182 to N600, N700. That was the first shock. And we still up to today have not recovered. We progressed from hunger to starvation as a nation.

There’s no meal at all and you have to virtually scavenge. That is the situation we are in today and it has not improved. The security situation, if you notice, it is creeping. At that time, we were talking of Boko Haram in Borno State, and it was contained. Everybody thought it was unique to Borno State but it is creeping down South gradually.

The latest, of course, was the Kwara State incident. And you don’t see anything coming out of the box. As usual, the security chiefs are ordered to take immediate action. The Kwara one, the credible local sources, said the security forces arrived 10 hours after the attack started. So, you cannot but help thinking, look, where did we get all this wrong?

You’re charged with drafting the ideas that you’re going to sell to the Nigerian people. As you draft that manifesto for the ADC, and you keep in mind all the things you’ve just told us that are the problems that you see from the party that you once chaired, what idea do you believe Nigeria genuinely needs that must go into that manifesto?

If I knew, I wouldn’t say it here publicly. But the truth of the matter is I don’t have all the answers. Senator David Mark has put together a team and the only charge we have is that we have to think out of the box. We have to have answers. The one thing that cannot be tolerated is business as usual.

You entered politics from public service many years ago. What did you think politics was when you first stepped in and how wrong were you?

Wrong; I don’t think I was. Different; I am, no question about that. But the reality is I’ve never wanted anything in politics that I have not achieved. So, the immediate lesson from that is that good people or different people let me not call myself good, different people can survive and succeed in politics. Yes, there are all the types of characters in politics. And when neophytes come to me today and say, I want you to be my mentor, I usually ask: What job do you do? That’s my first question to them.

Nobody who does not have something that can put bread and butter on the table can be a serious factor in politics because you will just become a tool of anybody who can give you the wherewithal. I am glad by the way because we have been noticed. The APC is a dire straight; they have accepted that this is the alternative party.

There’s no other person to abuse, no other party to abuse apart from the ADC. I am pleased because if we were ignored until the election, then something is wrong. We haven’t made any impact but what my sojourn in politics has made me strongly believe is that Nigerians are basically decent people and they are looking for decent personalities to entrust the affairs of state to. If there is ever a credible mass of that kind of people, we will have a different nature of politics and a different style.

That is what we are hoping for and we are putting together in the ADC. Yes, we’ve been in all sorts of parties that have done all sorts of things. But as they say, you wake up, that is your morning. So, for all of us, whatever we have contributed, we ask that people should now look at us as new.

One thing people are going to be looking at very closely is how you manage the process that throws up who is going to be your presidential flag bearer. And you’ve got big wigs in your party, people who command considerable public attention and followership. That’s going to be a challenge, isn’t it?

As a matter of fact, when the leadership of, at that time we had not gone into this detail of selecting the ADC as our platform, the one lesson we drove home to everybody was that, look, during the period of building this new platform, there must be no real campaigning.

There must be no cross insults to any other hopeful within the party. And they must not divide the growing new platform by trying to influence politics in different zones or different states. Largely, they have been faithful to that, so we too have been faithful to not bring in that issue to the front.

But they themselves have brought it up. Peter Obi has repeatedly said that he’s not going to settle for second choice and that he’s going to run. Atiku Abubakar himself has said he’s not going to step down for anybody; that he’s going to run as well…

You don’t start a negotiation by saying this is your fallback position and the other one. You go for the very peak that you want and reality will have to dawn. There can only be one candidate. There can only be one president. So, the basic thing is that we are all going to do the arithmetic. If you run, what is the arithmetic like? If there’s a combination, what does the arithmetic look like?

So, you are going to do a very pragmatic. To all of us, this is Nigeria’s last card. Nigeria has an existential problem and that’s why we say we are a rescue movement for the nation. We have an existential problem and we cannot afford to mock up this process. We see the suffering in the face of the people. You’ll be very surprised at what the people think; what they are going through.

But that’s what you said in 2015 and Nigerians voted for APC…

We meant it. And there’s been no change. We meant it. We meant what we said. But apparently they are commercial politicians. That’s why innocent people like us, different people like us, who believe, got mocked up but we have learnt our lessons.

You are now 86 years old. When history writes your chapter,, do you hope to be remembered as a builder of power or a builder of principles or something else?

I want to be remembered as both builder of power and builder of principles. We’ve got the power, but we mocked it up. There is no question about that. But my message to everybody is that you cannot avoid principle. You must stand for something. This nation must stand for something. This nation must look after its 230 million population. God did not make a mistake in putting us together.

The largest black coloured African nation; that was for a purpose. Today, where are we? Laughed at, mocked, derided, and resounded. We deserve a lot better than that. So, to rescue this country is a mission that we must undertake. What history says, what it does not say, all I pray to achieve even on my deathbed, I want to have a smile on my face that finally Nigeria is out of the woods. We are there yet, but we’ll be out of the woods.