Basorun Akin Osuntokun served as the Director General of the Peter Obi Presidential Campaign Committee. A former presidential adviser and one-time managing director of the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, Osuntokun is not known to hold hostages when discussing socio-economic and political issues in Nigeria. A Yoruba leader in the intelligentsia sphere, Osuntokun insists that Nigeria may continue to grope in the dark considering what is already on display by the Bola Tinubu administration. Whereas he admits that President Tinubu is a mentor to many and a warrior, he opines that "personal accomplishment in terms of the acquisition of wealth and political power does not equate to a positive impact on society". In this interview, Osuntokun was blunt.
Excerpts:
President Bola Tinubu has spent one year in office. What does this mean to you?
Before the arrival of one year in office, there has been a constant appraisal of the Bola Tinubu Presidency. In essence, there is nothing that can be said now, in terms of the assessment of his stewardship, which has not been said before. The first crisis the president encountered was the crisis of legitimacy. Although he legally triumphed, he could not live down the moral and ethical baggage that had dogged his political career dating back to his governorship of Lagos State. The collateral damage of this legitimacy also involved the Nigerian judiciary and the criminalization of the so-called Independent Nigeria Electoral Commission, INEC.
Sorry to cut you short. When you say criminalisation of INEC, that appears a bit too harsh. Yes, I've been following events at the election management body since September 1987, during the time of Professor Eme Onuoha Awa. Yes, this, perhaps, represents the worst of them all. Yes, the court also upbraided INEC's leadership. Why use the word criminalisation?
I'm happy you said the court upbraided INEC. How would you describe the way INEC went about promising Nigerians one thing and delivering another thing? On a lighter note, what does Section 419 of the 1999 Constitution as amended say? Go back and check all that the INEC Chairman promised Nigeria and the world and what eventually happened.
Back to Tinubu's assessment?
Now, the position I took at the time was that he could mitigate this crisis by hitting the ground running in grappling with the governance of Nigeria. In this regard, he needed to communicate and telegraph the style and substance of his presidency to the Nigerian people. He needed to reflect empathy with the sacrifices and suffering of the vast majority of Nigerians in the conduct of his government. Predicated on the signals he communicated through the instrumentality of his first budget statement, he made a mess of it. How do you prioritise spending the equivalent of fifteen million dollars to build a new mansion for the vice president in the prevailing circumstances of Nigeria, for instance? Not to talk of the extortion of the Nigerian public to buy N160 million sparkling luxury SUVS for each of the 460 National Assembly members.
But LP members in NASS did not turn down the SUVs. Why didn't they turn it down first, even if members of the public would later prevail on them not to allow it to go to waste since it had already been bought?
I can not speak for the elected Labour Party members. I'm not an official of the party and was not involved in their campaigns. I think many of them were just being practical in choosing the platform of the Labour party to contest. They cashed in on the popularity of Peter Obi, so I don't think they hold themselves to any idealistic constraints.
Did Muhammadu Buhari truly destroy the economy before leaving - as many critics have said?
Yes, of course! There is the mitigation that Tinubu was handed a basket case by Buhari. But Buhari elevated misgovernance to the highest level imaginable during his eight years in office.
Granted, Buhari messed up. Is Tinubu showing flickers of hope?
I do agree completely that Buhari set Nigeria back for many decades. But with Tinubu, if morning shows the day, the inadequacies of his presidency have little to do with the baggage he inherited. What has the Buhari baggage got to do with the prioritisation of the ostentatious luxury of the government leadership? Was it Buhari that prompted him to allocate five billion naira for the renovation of the state house annex in Lagos?
The door we are knocking on today is the entry to the phase of contemplating that Nigeria has defied all status quo solutions. The reason for this is that what Nigeria is, essentially suffering from, is a systemic crisis. If this is the case, then the only meaningful response has to be holistic, a cumulative shock therapy. So we are talking of constitutional overhaul, devolution, and decentralisation of powers. The most consequential ailment of Nigeria today is the overconcentration of powers at the centre. Nigeria is a literal illustration of the dictum that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Pursuit and retention of the presidential power is the greatest source of political instability and crisis in Nigeria today.
Let's disaggregate and unbundle your last response. You talked about constitutional overhaul and decentralisation. We are in a country where one man's thief is always better than the other man's thief. Let's take the constitution. You were in this country when state governors across different party lines influenced their state houses of assembly to reject autonomy for local governments. And state legislators have a role to play in the amendment process?
I don't know about their motives, but they did the right thing by opposing local government autonomy. Was there local government autonomy in the independence and 1963 constitutions? Because those constitutions are the most legitimate wishes of the Nigerian people. There is a reason there was no local government autonomy. And the reason is that it makes a mockery of federalism. Local government disempowers the coordinate and subnational government and commensurately further empowers the federal government. We have lived with the consequences of overconcentration of powers at the centre. It has not made Nigeria more united. To the contrary it has been instrumental to the disunity of Nigeria. It has made Nigeria more corrupt and alienated from the people. You saw what Buhari did with the monstrous powers, how he more or less employed the powers to foster an emergent apartheid. It is an open secret that the Northern beneficiaries of Buhari's crass nepotism and parochialism are up in arms against the Tinubu government.
Local government autonomy is not a virtue within the context of Nigerian federalism. Any policy that, by default, results in the unintended consequence of further empowerment of the federal government does not serve the interest of Nigeria . The major problem Nigeria has is the prioritisation of the politics of consumption over that of productivity driven development ethic. If the motivation of seeking public office is to go and serve, there would have been no quarrel at all.
But Tinubu continues to insist that if he had not removed the subsidy and floated the naira, the economy would have collapsed. So, what or how could he have approached the economy?
There is nothing unique about societies getting into crisis. It is routine stuff. What matters is the ability of the leadership to mobilize the citizenry behind your efforts. The only way to achieve this is your identification, in deeds and style, with the trauma people are going through, not a convoy of 150 cars. Again, between the declaration of Tinubu as President by INEC and the day of his inauguration was a period spanning three months. The rational expectation is that he would have spent this period to master his short-term response to the crisis that has defined and threatened the Nigerian economy for years. Yet, by his own admission, the only response he had did not go beyond the revelation knowledge outburst of 'subsidy is gone'.
This lapse is equally reflected in the floatation of the naira. Look, I know of a pensioner who used to buy his medical prescription for five thousand naira prior to the floatation crisis. The next time he went to the pharmacy, he anticipated that the price of the medication might have gone up by 400%, i.e., N20000. He missed the bar by N30000. The price had skyrocketed to N50000. You can imagine his shock. It is no exaggeration to speculate that many Nigerians in this category are practically sentenced to death. From my personal experience, you will have to be a multi millionaire to live with the basic comfort of life in contemporary Nigeria.
Before the President appointed his ministers, expectations were high that he was going to assemble a star-studded team. Would you say his ministers have disappointed Nigerians?
The implication of the relative failure of his administration is that the team has also failed. I'm not concerned about the individual performance of his ministers. The meaning of the presidential system of government is that the buck stops at his table. I don't believe he has given sufficient good leadership for his team. The team has nothing to do with the prioritisation of the provision of ninety billion naira for Muslim pilgrimage. Was it his ministers that reappointed some people? Look, if for whatever reason you want to cede the position to the Muslim North, there are countless numbers of individuals you can tap for the position. Of all available options, is the choice of Lagos- Calabar coastal highway the most optimal? The failed or failing policy choices he has made have nothing to do with the capacity or incapacity of his team. So, these are his choices, and we are living with the consequences. I don't believe in apportioning blame to members of his team.
Peter Obi has been moving around, and there are talks out there that a possible merger is in the offing, preparatory to the 2027 election. If there is going to be any hope of dislodging APC, the other parties may need to mobilise and do exactly what the APC did in 2013/2014: Dump their differences and come together as one?
There would always be talks of mergers as long as there is the need to preclude a one party dictatorship. What you can not accurately predict is the ultimate shape of the counterparty. The three people you are going to look out for are Peter Obi, Vice President Atiku Abubakar, and Rabiu Kwakwanso.
In specific, step by step terms, how would Peter Obi have gone about solving Nigeria's problem had LP won? I'm talking about the economy, insecurity, and reintegration in terms of the North/South divide as well as the pockets of agitation in the land?
What would Obi have done differently? The grand strategy for the salvation of Nigeria has the short term, mid term and the long term perspectives. In the short term, you have to lead by example and I'm not saying it as rhetoric. Economic crisis is not the challenge of Nigeria or any other society for that matter. The challenge is how to mobilize the citizenry behind your efforts. If they see their leader consistently displaying discipline and sense of sacrifice, the followership would be prepared to do whatever it takes to achieve success. By the same token, if the leadership does not lead by the power of example, it would be demobilizing its potential followers
In the mid to the long term, there is no way Nigeria can avoid the response that is required for the formulation of the Nigerian crisis as a systemic crisis. What this means in practical terms is the restoration of Nigerian Federalism through the medium of constitutional overhaul.
Nigeria has no option but to go back to the basics. In theoretical and practical terms, we have seen the manifestation of the folly of supplanting Nigerian Federalism with a pseudo unitarist constitution we presently operate. When you are in a hole, you stop digging, not doubling down.
As of today, it has been confirmed that the government is still subsidising PMS and that we are probably paying more than what was being paid before. Some of the things he did that I still can not understand is the retention of some public office holders who were part of the last mess.
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What message are you communicating to the public? Does this not imply a measure of collusion? So, if Tinubu wanted to make a difference and respond positively to the crisis he inherited, then the reappointment of some people makes a mockery of that.
The same thing is true with the currency situation. President Olusegun Obasanjo said something to the effect that if the IMF and the World Bank are asking you to deregulate and do other things, don't say no to them but don't do what they are asking you to do. Nigeria is suffering from a systemic crisis, and you have to think of a comprehensive approach to them and not take them in isolation.
I do not know what your take is on this silly reversion to the old anthem. But the people involved in this psychological masturbatory act seem to assume that the words of the old anthem would rekindle a new thinking. The present anthem, despite all the lofty ideals professed therein, is being observed in the breach by the same set of people who have championed this reversion in all materials, particularly in the areas of corruption, nepotism, abuse of office and the like. What's your take?
I'm glad you used the word 'silly'. It is to me totally incomprehensible. If I would stretch my imagination to the most ridiculous extent, I would say maybe it is directed at Obasanjo. If that is the case then we have reduced governance in Nigeria to what Obasanjo does or does not do. If the government were to learn that the former President had pounded yam for lunch, then we should expect the government to ban the consumption of this popular dietary menu. Or maybe it is the result of ifa divination because the policy is not only whimsical, the alacrity with which it was pursued is totally mystifying. In the words of a friend, "It was well debated during the OBJ military era before the Colonial anthem was changed. Nigerians wrote the Anthem. A few lines were written by a schoolmate at GCI. It was competitive and nationwide"
You've known Tinubu for some time as a former member of the Alliance for Democracy, AD. If you were to sincerely deconstruct the activist Tinubu of AD and today's President Tinubu, how would you do that?
To deconstruct Tinubu? That you don't bet against him.
Why do you say that? He's a mere mortal?
Of course, I know. Well, we are entitled to some light-hearted banter, aren't we? If you take the totality of his experience within the last three decades into account, I dont know of any Nigerian politician who has been this over compensated - especially given the hurdles he has had to overcome. Now, personal accomplishment in terms of the acquisition of wealth and political power does not equate to a positive impact on society. You also have to give it to him that he is a super mentor and warrior. At the personal level, I have had a good relationship with him.
