Mogadji Buyega Adejumo is a traditional chief of Ibadanland. Until recently, he was the National Publicity Secretary of the pan-Yoruba social cultural group, Afenifere. He is also a member of The Patriots. In this interview with OLAOLU OLADIPO, he talked about sundry national issues. Excerpts:

Let me first of all express my condolences to you on the death of Papa Ayo Adebanjo...
Thank you so much. Papa Ayo Adebanjo was a leader in Afenifere with whom I went through many phases together in life and I’m forever grateful to have met such a man. I met Papa (Obafemi) Awolowo when I was only 19 but I couldn’t get enough of all that I needed, even from having to have read all the books ever written by Papa Awolowo. But in the absolute terms, everything that I have learned and that I have become, the consciousness, the ideology, the principles, the standing firm on the moral ground, I owe everything to Papa Adebanjo. Physically, we travelled to every part of this nation. There is hardly any zone in this country where I did not go with him physically to engage with other people with a view to finding solutions to the problems of Nigeria. And while others were busy frolicking and drinking and enjoying themselves, Papa Adebanjo was, for all the years I got to be so close to him, which I would say about 20 years, was only involved in searching for solutions for problems of Nigeria.

So, having worked closely with him, what impact do you think his demise will have on Afenifere?
Well, on Afenifere, I would say that he was the very last of the titans. He was actually the very last of those who formed Afenifere. He was a pioneer member; so none is alive today who was with him under arrest in 1951, none, not even Fasoranti. He was the one that admitted Fasoranti into Afenifere. Mosquito, that’s what they used to call it, that is the youth wing in 1953. So he’s the very last of the greats. I’m not sure that Afenifere would ever be able to produce anyone close to him in a short while. I have looked, and I’ve looked at all the pretenders wanting to call themselves Afenifere and none actually comes close to his tiny finger in terms of dedication. In fact, to tell you the truth, what I find most frightening, most challenging to do, was his love and loyalty to Papa Awolowo.

With the demise of Papa Adebanjo, what do you think the organisation should do now for it to come together?
Well, the organisation always has its mechanisms for conflict resolution and I will explain. The mechanism of Papa Awolowo, the legacies of Awolowo are the beauty of Afenifere in being able to resolve whatever it is that will in any way go counter to the doctrines of Awolowo who in one of his books, wrote that the Afenifere is not to be reduced to a Yoruba irredentist group. In the book, Papa said Afenifere is not just a Yoruba group. He is said it is a political party that should cater for the needs of all the peoples of Nigeria, and that whoever tries to reduce it to a Yoruba political platform is a traitor. And for everyone who has tried to do that, that curse has always been effective, right from the early days. So, it is never going to be difficult for Afenifere to say to those who will always be renegades, Jesus had his 12 disciples when there was a Judas. So, there’s always going to be a Judas, whether anybody likes it or not. If Jesus will have his own Judas, Afenifere will definitely have his Judas. When Papa Awolowo was putting together the UPN in 1979, some who were part of Afenifere, like Akinloye who had fell apart with the principles of egalitarianism, principles of fairness, they couldn’t get back. So, look at the time of Sani Abacha, the likes of (Alhaji Lateef) Jakande that went (into government), even when they were told not to go, what happened? They couldn’t come back. Those who went again in 2003, when (Bola) Tinubu, who are not fully at Afenifere but using that platform, decided that he was going to fight the same legacy, the same doctrine, the same principles upon which he was thrown up. So if anybody says there’s always going to be two Afeniferes, it has never happened. Those will go, but they will never be able to come back.

A lot is happening in the polity. Recently, the president signed several bills into law. And many of the bills have to do with regional development commissions across the country. What do you see of this move?
It serves only one purpose, and that is the purpose of the government. What is federalism? Federalism is about those components of societies or nationalities, a union, only a union. So, the components are the states or the regions that have decided to join, as it happened. Let me say it started with two, Southern Protectorate and Northern Protectorate in 1914. So, those are the federating units. So you do not now begin to talk about a monolithic federal state that will now be creating, as it were, elements of administrative units that will be subject to the will of the federal centre. If you want to create, if you want us to go back or restore Nigeria back to the initial situation, then let’s go back to the 1963 constitution. Let’s restore. There are several questions begging for an answers. Are these commissions going to be managed by the locals or are the managers coming from outside the regions? Are they (the regions) going to supply the personnel? Everything is still coming from a dubious centre that has even appropriated the administrative units of the states. Nobody should dictate to me how I should name my child. Nobody should dictate to me how I should worship my ancestors. Nobody should dictate to me how I should want to grow. If somebody wants to be cutting limbs in Zamfara and exporting, it’s fine. If I want to grow my own crops, cook one and the rest export and make money, let me do it. Why impose your own will upon our own collective souls? If somebody in town wants to marry 2,000 widows off, that is their problem.

Don’t you think that initiatives like this can fast-track development in the South West?
What we need in the South West is an homegrown system that is indigenous to us and developed by our people for the development of the region. For instance, let’s consider the issue of transportation, what we need to fast track development in the South West is the rail system, a railway network that will allow food and other produce to be moved from farms from one state to the other within the South West zone and everything that we share, maybe solid minerals, maybe even the idea of our culture, maybe the idea of agriculture, or maybe the idea of our security architecture. That is what we need the rail for. We should be allowed to determine our rate of growth and development by ourselves. Nobody should just come and impose on us what they think is the blueprint for development all over the country. We are different. You can’t just come and impose anything on us. Allow the each commission to do its job of developing the region.

You talked about the meddlesomeness of the centre in terms of how it relates with the other component units. One example people have been citing lately is the decision of the Federal Government to impose emergency rule on River State. Do you think President Bola Tinubu is justified in doing that?
I’m happy that some state governments have decided to take the Federal Government to court. Not that I believe that the court will give them justice, but then let that statement be made. I will give you an example. When Alhaji Tafawa-Balewa imposed that state of emergency upon the West, it was wrong. In a way, the constitution at that time allowed the Federal Government to be that meddlesome. But again, since 1979, there has never been any part of the Nigerian Constitution that allows a president to sack an electorally put together institution, elected officials. No president has that power. It is nowhere in that constitution. If anybody says it is in that constitution let them bring it out. I’m ready to face the backlash. Let them show me in Section 305 or whatever to see if ever there is a place that says that the president has a right to sack a governor or sack an elected member of the House of Assembly. It is not there. It is an illegality. That is part of the tragedy that we are facing. Somebody will say, oh, it happened during (President Olusegun) Obasanjo’s. Anyway, Obasanjo imposed a state of emergency when the governors had been impeached, duly impeached. So it wasn’t a case of Obasanjo impeaching. it was after the Houses had impeached the governors. And then because of what happened in Ekiti, which was even after the governor had been impeached and there was this serious issue of who becomes governor, the deputy governor was laying claim to it. The speaker was laying claim to it. And there were fracas all over Ekiti. That was the only thing that made Obasanjo declare a state of emergency. So Goodluck Jonathan imposed a state of emergency based on the article that says that either there is war or something going on. There were wars in those local governments. What he did, did not include the removal of anyone, let alone the local government chairman. He did not remove the governor. He did not remove the local government chairman. So where is this president getting all of these ideas from?

What about the bill suggesting that all elections for all elective positions in Nigeria, right from the presidency down to local government councilorship, be conducted by INEC on the same day?
I wouldn’t say they got it right, but they got it wrong again. All elections will be done in one day, I accept, because I remember that in 2015 in Kano, they did the same election with only the senators and presidency. Votes for all the senators were about 600,000. But for (former President) Buhari alone, that same day, it was 2 million. So how did they do it? So let us face it, what happened in Rivers too, recently we had the same, Tinubu won the presidency with so much, and the governor of PDP won with so much. Of course, we all know these are just lies. But again, where they got it wrong, I can accept that all federal elections and state elections in terms of House of Assemblies and National Assembly can be done in one day but there should be no INEC, and I repeat, no INEC running the affairs of any local government, let alone local government election. No Federal Government running the affairs of any local government, let alone even suggesting that INEC should run any election in the local government. Because we have seen what it is when it is about the Federal Government wanting to do all manner of things. So by the time you start paying the local government chairman directly and giving them allocation and withdrawing allocation, maybe you will not beat the local government to submission and they will give you land or something. I don’t know what exactly is playing out, but it is dangerous to now say that the Federal Government should run anything, let alone elections, let alone payments from the local government. It is an abnormality in federalism.