National Publicity Secretary of Afenifere, Prince Justice Faloye, in this interview with ADEYEMI LAHANMI speaks on the state of the nation, especially the challenges facing opposition parties ahead of the 2027 elections
Do you see the African Democratic Congress (ADC) as a viable opposition to the All Progressives Congress, (APC)?
I am not sure anybody is viable against President Bola Tinubu because anything viable, let me put it in a context, is fair and just. You see, the back and forth on the electronic transmission of results, I still suspect they will try every trick in the book.
Oppositions are not viable across Africa, except they are backed by foreign powers. So, the question is which of them is a foreign power backing? These are still the early days in the ADC because this time in 2023, the Labour Party was still okay, but by August they started having issues in the courts and this is a recurrence even during the era of the PDP. But, the truth about this election will start revealing itself by September because we might not even have a party.
Later, somebody can come up to say I am the one that owns ADC and goes to court. Our judiciary is not independent because the Executive will play the game. Yes, for those who have faith, maybe the ADC but, we don’t have a system because the government we have operates by hook or by force.
Are you not wary that Nigeria might be tilting towards a one-party state?
It is and that is what we all know. President Tinubu pushed Lagos State into a one-party state and every move of his points towards that for a long time now.
This is especially so now with the backing of France and you know they don’t back rotational presidencies but back dynasties. Any President that France backs, expects it to die in office.
Are you saying he may not want to leave after his term in office?
If you have a one-party system.
Won’t that move cause internal strife within the party that another person should come into power?
We have been having that in Lagos State for the past 26 years and until we see him out, you can never bet against him, will never support him simply because of his economic policies.
Speaking about his economic policies, some have argued the cost of food is on the decline…
The cost of food shot up and when it came down, it did not go back to its original price. Also, due to lack of demand and what we have now is increase in poverty and according to the World bank and PWC, we are at a 62 per cent poverty and it was at 38 per cent when he came into office.
Our GDP has dropped and the question is where is the improvement? We have the finance minister agree that it didn’t get all the revenue they projected. They would rather show naira figures against global figures.
The issue is not him but the ideology he has because if he employs those liberal economic policies, devaluation, removal of subsidies and higher taxes, we will keep going into poverty. Transportation cost is still high; there is still home deficit.
Just like When IBB introduced the structural Adjustment Programme (S.A.P) what did we gain? With his policies, we are just going to be like this till he leaves power. The subsidies that were removed, who was using it? The railways were long done before he came into power and the Abuja – Kaduna railway made more money than the other railways in the country.
If you look at the counters that are developing, they build a minimum of 20,000 houses every day and about 15km of railway every day. Now, do the Math, with the size of our population in this country the government only budgets to build 20,000 houses in one year. The key things to look at if you want to life people from poverty are housing and transportation. The government has to do deficit budgeting to build houses.
You said in one of your write-ups that President Tinubu is the Jagaban of Borgu which is a traditional title for the Fulanis. What are your thoughts about our insecurities?
This is all civilisational illiteracy because if you make your political leader a Chief of Defence, whether symbolic or operational, being a chief or Balogun (Jagaban means Balogun), it is a conflict of interest. You can’t be given chieftaincy titles by those who attacked our Yoruba land and other lands in general.
It is not just President Tinubu but, we have a crop of leaders not chosen by us and that’s re reason they have continued their economic and political arrest. It is not that the government can’t fight these insurgents if they set up state police but they would rather keep us under one military indoctrinated and armed by the West.
APC came into power in 2015 and imported Islamic terrorists and 170 persons can’t be killed without knowing who did it but, there are some dastardly geo-political games. Maybe not him but might to embarrass him out of power like when Goodluck Jonathan was there because during Buhari’s regime, there was not much insecurity in the North-West.
So should we now get ready for attacks in the South West? We have been de-civilised and that I why you have the Balogun of another tribe being our leader. To me, it is just the law of Karma and the psychological use of media and religion to our detriment.
Has Afenifere lost its relevance in the scheme of things?
Afenifere can never lose its relevance because it is an ideology of economic and political ideas to help the common man. We just came to do late Baba Adebanjo’s one year anniversary and have been quiet because Tinubu is a customer that we have known for 26 years and we brought him to power in Lagos State in 1999.
There was an account that late Funsho Williams was to be in power?
Just like Peter Obi too was to be in power. Just as you can’t blame us for Peter Obi’s loss so you can’t lame is for Funsho Williams at that time. Let’s just say that we were the first person to be fooled and he is fooling the whole Nigeria now. If you tell him this policy has killed 100 people, he wakes up the following morning to bring out a policy that kills 500 afterwards.
At this point, we just have to look because we are seeing uncommon things. We have seen how Labour Party was snatched and broken up. We even witnessed a few of our members leave for his policies. Even Late Baba Adebanjo was shouting and it was not too clear to these people but can we now see how things are in terms of poverty, exchange rate going over N1,000, opposition is comatose and there is a shutdown because he has bought them but now every Nigerian now is feeling Tinubu.
Is it a long road to recovery for the Afenifere?
It is not an error persé because we were in a place where the military had initially banned us and had to put some candidates who were friendly with the military to continue.
We knew Tinubu was close to the military establishment and adopted them, hoping they will see the light but, as soon as they got into power, they switched. That does not kill Afenifere because we will keep marching on with our ideological position.
Will the Afenifere adopt the presidential candidate of the ADC?
Our own is this. We believe in rotational presidency. When Buhari had one more term which meant that the North had one more term, we supported Atiku Abubakar in the 2019 elections.
Now, it is the turn of the South and it is one more term. If you have a southerner especially from the South-East whose turn it is and on the same page ideologically which is important, then we will support but we will not support a Northerner.
