By Henry Uche
Former presidential aide and ex-Director General of the Peter Obi 2023 Presidential Campaign Organisation, Dr. Doyin Okupe in this interview, speaks on the alignment by the Northern elite to return power to the region in 2027 and President Bola Tinubu’s administration, among other issues.
What do you make of the positioning for power in 2027 and the North trying to align that movement in their favour?
The truth is that there are stakeholders in this country and there are ways that this country has been managed since 1960. The country may not have made giant strides economically and in terms of provisions of what would suit or make the populace comfortable, but in terms of its politics, we have managed it in a way that has kept the country together. I want to remind you that when Chief Olusegun Obasanjo became president, there was an unwritten national consensus that somebody from the South-West, would be president because if you looked at it, the two candidates for that election were Obasanjo and Chief Olu Falae. So head and tail, South-West wins.
That was the national concession and it was not for nothing. It was because the stakeholders felt then that following Chief MKO Abiola’s death, who was presumed to have won an election, there was a need to assuage the South-West. It was not a question of Northern interest. You see, those who controlled the affairs of this nation in terms of politics before now were more interested in national interest than sectional interest. And our failure to evolve a national elite system is one of the most fundamental problems why Nigeria is stagnating because we all pull in different directions.
Now, coming specifically to your question, I see a lot of young people, young minds and brilliant minds from the North coming together, which is a good thing. The North needs its political elite to come together for whatever reasons, even if only to shoulder the responsibility of the burden of neglect of the masses for so long. But for 2027, we politicians, and I say that authoritatively, without any fear of contradiction or equivocation, I am part of this system, I am in this system, I understand this system, power cannot return to the North.
We rotate between the North and the South. The North does eight years, at the end of which the South does eight years. So, I’m not saying that Bola Tinubu must be president in 2027, but it is not going to be a northerner. We will speak in 2027. You know that this country was brought together by not even coercion, but by cooperation, understanding and concession on all fronts. There were times when the North did not have the requisite people to fill positions in the federal system.
There was a concession that the North must be accommodated. You know that we have things like federal character and because of that, if you look at JAMB, what somebody in Abia scores and he or she cannot enter university with it, if somebody who is in the North scores less than 20 per cent of that, he or she will be admitted because we believe that the North is educationally disadvantaged.
Some northerners are saying that if their region supports another Southern candidate in 2027, the candidate would also want to do eight years, which will breach that eight-year rotation plan. What do you think of that?
It’s a political quagmire. If the North decides to field another southern candidate against Bola Tinubu, then the North will have shot itself on the leg. Don’t forget, this is a third-world country. Let us assume that you bring a new person and he wins. There’s no agreement he will make with you. He will not spend another eight years. So, you just extended the lifespan of the rotation to the South by another four years. What has Tinubu done? Let’s come to terms with this. Tinubu has come with very serious reforms that will take the country away from the situation which it has been undergoing for the past eight to ten years. I will say it here because that is the truth.
This government has not been able to articulate this position but those of us who are watching from the outside can see it. As of the time that the Tinubu administration was coming to power, the country was finished and was socially and economically finished. We were spending 98 per cent of our revenue and 98 cents on every dollar was being used for debt servicing. We were subsidizing fuel. We were subsidizing power. We were subsidizing virtually everything. There was severe arbitrage in the foreign exchange market.
What did the Muhammadu Buhari administration do? They just went ahead and printed and continued to print money until they printed up to N30 trillion. Nigerians did not feel it because money was available although it was not backed by anything. There are a few countries that have done this in the past. So, it’s not a matter of Nigeria being rich. Venezuela is one of the largest reservoirs of crude oil in the world. The poverty in Venezuela is worse than here. If you look at 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollars, it is probably worth about $15 or $16.
This is what Tinubu has saved Nigeria from. If Tinubu wanted to be popular, he would just go back and continue what was being done before, continue to print money until God forbid, we approach this level. I have heard people complain, which is legitimate, that the dollar is N1,700, it could have been worse. It could have been N17,000. There is also the complain that fuel is N1,000. It could have been worse. It could have been N3,000 or N4,000 per litre if these reforms had not been in place.
I have also checked the escalating hyperinflation which we entered into after Tinubu’s administration. It is wholesomely unfair and I’m almost tempted to say that it is wicked for anybody to judge this administration after 18 months.
There is no debate that the cost of living crisis is happening and it’s biting very hard. Manufacturing is collapsing and economic losses are growing and have been growing for the last nine and a half years of an All Progressives Congress (APC) government…
You are on the wrong premise to be saying nine and a half years of APC government, I, Doyin Okupe, when APC was formed, publicly declared it a conglomerate of strange bedfellows. I was laughed at. But today, it is quite clear that APC was made up of various political fragments, Congress of Progressive Change (CPC), Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and others. And these were immiscible liquids.
Yes, it is indeed APC government but in this country, we will have to be able to be more discerning. Tinubu cannot be held responsible for the government before him. Yes, people have argued that he was the principal character that brought Buhari. When Buhari was brought up as a candidate, more than half of the population of Nigeria jubilated. We all assumed that the general was going to do well. The Yoruba people say that if the masquerade has already given birth to his child and the child cannot dance, that’s the problem of the child, not the problem of the masquerade that is birthing it.
On what you also said on the issue of manufacturing, foreign direct investment and all that, recent events have proven that to be wrong. Recently, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) came up with a report to show that there’s a three-point something per cent growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the manufacturing that you mentioned was part and parcel of that growth.
There was more growth in the manufacturing sector in the last quarter of this year than in the previous year. And the foreign direct investment is also increasing. I told you that Buhari printed N30 trillion, which attracted about N7 trillion in interest. That N7 trillion interest has been paid by Tinubu. The airlines were being owed about $7 billion but this administration, in less than one year, has sorted that out.
These reforms that are in place are beginning to show signs of productivity. So, when you go into the generalisation of nine and a half years of the APC government; that is not true. Let us agree. Let us be factual. Let us know that this is where this administration started. This is where they say they’re going to. This is how far they’re going to. And, we should support the administration to achieve its objective not to castigate and bring it down and demonize it.
The numbers you’re quoting mean absolutely nothing for millions of Nigerians who have been pushed into extreme poverty. What do you think can change that and get everyone to rally around the Tinubu government?
The lifespan of an administration in the first instance is four years. If you have had a rottenness that was unabated for more than eight years, do you think it can be fixed in 18 months? It cannot. We have a country that for eight years was socially, economically, and financially unattended to. And yet, in all those eight years, there were no threats. There were no complaints. There was silence everywhere. Everywhere was in a state of acquiescence.
Now, somebody has taken over this rottenness, and before he can even sit down on the seat, you just mentioned now that there’s a lot of youth restiveness in the North. The North has been having an increasing number of out-of-school children for the last nine years or more. Today, there are about 20 million out-of-school children.
The Almajiri schools that President Goodluck Jonathan built were abandoned and discarded. If those Almajiri schools had been allowed to absorb some of the students on the streets, the restlessness and restiveness would not have been at this height. Can anyone, in all honesty, say that Tinubu caused all these?
We’ve got a reformer in the villa, somebody who is not desperate about power and who is not desperate about glamour, somebody who says, I have stepped out and I’m not going to step back. I take responsibility and I’m going to try to reform this country and he’s doing it. Lee Kuan Yew took 31 years to reform Singapore.
