A governorship aspirant of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) ahead of the 2027 general elections, Dr Abdul-Azeez Olajide Adediran, popularly known as Jandor, has commended President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for the removal of fuel subsidy and what he described as painful but progressive policies. Jandor made the remarks during an interview with journalists while participating in the party’s e-registration exercise. According to him, the policy reforms have increased federal allocations, giving state governors and local government chairmen more funds to execute projects and improve governance. He also spoke on his resolve to govern Lagos State, expressing confidence in his capacity to provide purposeful leadership if elected. OLADIPUPO AWOJOBI was there. Excerpts:

What has been your journey so far in the APC?

Recently, I revalidated my membership of the All Progressives Congress (APC). I had registered as a member of the progressives in Lagos State in my community in Irewe in Ojo Local Government in the year 2000.

But towards the 2023 election, we needed a platform where we could further exhibit our accountability, something that has given us what we represent today, we had to look for another vehicle and we joined the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). We joined them genuinely because of the journey. We gave everything God deposited in us as a people to ensure that we saw light at the end of that tunnel.

But as God would have it, the rest is history. A lot of people who are seeing me today will look at me and say, ‘hmm, look at the man, see how he left the PDP.’ I actually saw tomorrow because in March last year, I had a press conference to say that I have left the PDP for the APC.

After everything that happened in the PDP, both pre, during and post-election, I said to my team that ‘look there is no future here any longer.’ Today, you can see that we are already vindicated.

So, in choosing this party, we know what we wanted because you can’t take away the fact that there is something we call party supremacy in the APC. If the party presents you and says this is our candidate, everybody will fall in line.

Unlike where we’re coming from. When the party says this, some people will still go ahead and do otherwise. If you have a house that lacks what you call leadership structure, it’s dangerous for you to live in such a house. I’ve said it over and over again that the ticket given to me in the PDP, I did justice to it by campaigning like never before.

That’s my person. If you look at President Bola Tinubu very well, you will see that he’s taking some actions that, again, your typical politician who is just all about winning the next election will not even take in his first term in office.

Some politicians look at it and say ‘oh, why is this appearing like a suicide mission?’ So it shows that this man is not just about next election. If he’s actually thinking just about the next election, I don’t think he will remove fuel subsidy in his first term.

Today, the subsidy that he removed at that time, we can see the benefits. Whether you like it or not, governments will not bring money and put it in everybody’s pocket. There is a structure. If state governments, I mean component states, and local governments get enough funding, it trickles down to the grassroots, and the economy will be good for it.

Today, they’re having much revenue, triple of what they used to have. Gone are those days when state governments would go to the Federal Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeting in Abuja, and they would come back with zero allocation, and then look back to the federal government for what we used to know as bailouts.

Today, we don’t hear about bailouts anymore because somebody’s courageous policy has actually erased that.

I also want to commend our state governments because they’re doing their bit in ensuring that they support the federal government on this. If you look at some other policies of this government, especially the local government autonomy, you will see that they are reasonable.

Also don’t forget that security issues are issues that we’ve had in this country for a very long time, and every successive government had its own way of tackling the issue.

On the economy, I remember when President Tinubu presented the 2025 Budget, he said that before December 2025, or before the next budget, he would ensure that the inflation rate drops to about 15%. By 2025 December, there was a forecast that inflation will be about 14.5%. It takes discipline, it takes somebody who understands economics to do this.

Do you consider the coalition of opposition figures in the country under the ADC, as a threat; also, Nigerians are still not happy with the fuel subsidy removal, what is your view on this?

I am a politician, but I’m not your regular politician. I took my time to put up a structure to become what it is today. I understand what it means to go into elections.

So, what you call coalition today, which is the ADC, you can’t liken it to what we had in 2014 that metamorphosed into the APC.

What you have in ADC today is a coalition of individuals whom, of course, I respect, as successful politicians in their own right.

However, in 2014, we had a coalition of political parties that came together to form the APC, so, it’s not the same thing. If you look at what we call ADC today, ADC is not a threat to a political party that currently controls almost 30 out of 36 states.

I can tell you that some of the states in the opposing camp are also saying that they will support the President in 2027. So, I don’t understand why anybody would sit at his comfort zone and say that such a group of individuals would be a threat to an established political party that controls almost 34 states.

I’ve heard people saying that, ‘oh, 2027 is going to be about Nigerians,’ but they’ve forgotten that what you call a stronghold of a political party is the fact that the political party is controlling a particular state.

You need the people who believe in you as a leader, as a government, to galvanise support for you everywhere, that is what we call political structure. In pre-2023, the PDP or any opposition party had never won anywhere in this community. It was when I joined the PDP that the party won for the first time and the reason is not far-fetched.

It was because one of them was now on the ballot just like you have a state that is being controlled by a party, except the leaders of that state are not ready to win for their party, it will be difficult to defeat them. Of course, I’m not saying they won’t have one or two disgruntled politicians, who really need the platform to run, but there are no threats to APC in 2027.

You spoke about the removal of fuel subsidy and that there is still hardship in Nigeria. Trust me, nobody will sit here and tell you that there is no hardship in Nigeria. But if you ask us, we will say, ‘ah, Nigeria used to be better than what we have today.’

Yes, but I remember this song; ‘Ilu le o kosowo lode (country is hard there is money), what year was that song released, I can’t even remember. The late Fela Anikulapo Kuti came with his own too; ‘suffering and smiling.’ But it doesn’t change the fact that things haven’t shifted. You’re asking, where did the money go to.

I’ll just give you an example. Pre-2023, during the era of the late president Muhammadu Buhari, some governors would go to FAAC, where they received allocation every month and they would come back with zero allocation, because there was no money to share.

If you ask yourself, the money they were sharing then, where did it go to? That’s the money that went into fuel subsidy, that was cornered by a few people. That’s the money that went into forex policy of that time.

It was cornered by a few people. But today, the same states are getting triple of what they used to get from the same federation account. Why? Because somebody came out with a very courageous policy to say, ‘I’ll put a stop to this.’ Now, the states have more money, and the local governments have more money.

Can you tell us why you always want to be governor because people are saying you just came into the APC after you left the PDP and then you want to be Governor?

I don’t know what you mean by always wants to be Governor. I said something here earlier, I said I’m not your regular politician. Some people, when they look at my journey, they’ll be like ‘he just came from nowhere.’ You know what that means? In life, when you have an audacious aspiration, just like my own, a lot of people will look at you and wonder.

But your consistency, your focus, your continually expressing that belief in yourself, will have majority of them shifting to say, ‘wait a minute, he’s been on this matter for long, let’s listen to him.’ And before you know it, you have some of them giving you that support.

I’ve been qualified a long time ago to run for any office at all. My very first public intervention, in terms of somebody trying to come to the public, doing something, was in 2010 and that is 16 years ago. And a lot of people thought, ‘oh, this guy was preparing for 2011 election.

That was why he did this.’ But I didn’t join the process in 2011. I continued doing everything I was doing. They thought it was for 2015, but I didn’t join the process.

When we started the whole thing was around 2016, 2017, they thought, ‘okay it’s 2019.’ I didn’t join the process in 2019, not because they did not offer me. You know, when you start doing something like that, they’ll call you, ‘ah, come on, take this. Oh you can do this or that.’

But when it was time for me, in 2023, for the very first time in my life to say I would like to be something politically, I went for my conviction.

I remember one occasion that my late leader, my mother, Princess Denrele Ogunsanya, took me to Baba Olusegun Obasanjo’s home years back. She told Baba, ‘I brought him today to come and see you.’ A moment later, I said I wanted to run for the office of governor of Lagos State and Baba just looked at me, stood up and walked away, and he left us there. But one year later, he looked for me.

What I’m trying to say is that if you have your conviction, just focus on whatever it is. Asiwaju Bola Tinubu wouldn’t have been President of Nigeria today if he had listened to all sorts of naysayers. He had his conviction, he went for it and today he is President.

This is the same man that said to us over and over again, that power is not something that is served a la carte and some of us are still waiting for him, no, let him hear our noise.

We’re not just joining the process because we just want to be called X, Y, Z. I’ve never held a political office in my life, I’ve never been appointed before, I’ve never been elected before, I’ve been a private citizen just like you. I’ve been a businessman just like every other person.