Lasun Yusuf is the governorship candidate of the Labour Party in the July 16 governorship election in Osun State. He is the immediate past Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives. In this interview with TIMOTHY AGBOR, Yusuf argues that Nigeria is running a unitary and not a federal government. While highlighting his agenda for Osun State, he expresses surprise that none of the supporters of the presidential candidate of the party, Peter Obi, has identified with him in Osun. Excerpts:
During the last APC governorship primary, you appealed to your teeming supporters to go home and leave you with nine others including your lawyer. Why?
That was for two reasons. I wanted to participate, and it won’t be good for me to get to the venue of the election and not participate. I felt I must participate and that’s because having collected N22, 500,000 forms, I won’t just get to the venue of the election and go home. Secondly, I asked people to go home because I knew that votes were not going to count. So, why will I waste their time?
Do you think their votes will count this time now?
Of course, this is a general election. In primary elections, votes don’t count. But now, it has crept into the general elections by politicians buying the votes and using thugs to scare people away from the ballot boxes. So, votes are no longer counting again in general elections. That’s why I said that if what happened in Ekiti happens elsewhere, Nigeria is going to be finished. Voters’ apathy is already huge but in the next four years, it will be very huge.
In 2011, you won with many votes in your constituency but this is a governorship election, what’s your strength in other Federal constituencies?
I think I am the most popular individual in this election. Others have to say certain things about them before you know they are contesting. But everywhere in Osun, people know Lasun Yussuf. In 2011, as a candidate of AC then, I garnered 72,000 votes in four local governments of Irepodun, Olorunda, Orolu and Osogbo which is a federal constituency. In 2015, in the same election, I garnered 73,000 votes. The people who are in government now are struggling to get 250,000 votes in 30 local governments, whereas I did 72,000 as far back as 2011 and the same in 2015. You should be assured that the Lasun Yusuf you are talking about is worth about 400,000 votes and by the special grace of God. I am going to get that.
How have you been campaigning because people have not been seeing you like other parties are doing? It appears your name is popular but your party is not?
As I speak, my campaign teams are in two local governments, Ifedayo and Boluwaduro doing serious house-to-house campaigns. There is no major party anywhere. What makes a party major is the contribution of committed members which those parties you are calling major are no longer having. One of the major parties is probably divided into four, another one into five. So, where is the popularity of the major parties you are talking about? Each party is in court and practically those two parties you are thinking about don’t have candidates for election. That’s a surprise, let them come and tell me they have a candidate. Just like one of them that doesn’t have primary, secondary and tertiary institution certificates. Where are their classmates? We are following people whose lives are so anonymous, and vague, that we don’t know them. I am not talking about their successes; I am talking about who they are. We don’t know them and we don’t know where they are coming from and they don’t win the elections that they claimed to win. Didn’t you see at the presidential primary where the returning officer was counting votes from 79 to 100 and no one has addressed that to date? This country is sick.
The popularity of Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party is growing daily. How will this boost your chances?
Yes, his name is growing but I have some advice for him. I don’t want all these Twitter, and Facebook voters. If you know you are following Peter Obi, first of all, go and get your PVC, come out every day and do a rally. Not this Facebook and Twitter thing. Peter Obi’s growing popularity on social media will add up if his supporters come and work for the Labour Party in Osun. But some of them say it’s Peter Obi that they are doing, they are not doing the Labour Party. I don’t have a grouse with them. It’s the people working for Peter Obi that should be in touch with us because to be a president of a country, your votes don’t exist in the air. It has to be from units, wards, and local governments to states. So, if Labour wins July 16, by the contribution of those people, it means you have marked one state for Peter Obi. But if you say you are working for Peter Obi but you are not working for the Labour Party that is rubbish.
APC and PDP have put up what many have described as intimidating National Campaign Councils, we are yet to hear anything from the Labour Party.
As for me, Lasun Yusuf, I am using my character, my intellect, my visibility and my popularity to garner votes. Once I win my governorship, I will go and sit down in my house till the day they will call me for swearing-in.
“The people who are in government now are struggling to get 250,000 votes in 30 local governments, whereas I did 72,000 as far back as 2011 and the same in 2015. You should be assured that the Lasun Yusuf you are talking about is worth about 400,000 votes and by the special grace of God. I am going to get that”
So, are you not in touch with the National Labour Party leadership?
Which in touch? Can’t you see? It’s bottom-up. I am not angry, I am only saying how can somebody go to Facebook and say I am doing Peter Obi and I am here as the candidate of the Labour Party in Osun State, working day and night. I have done three levels of campaigns every day in the last two months. I will still talk to about a minimum of 500 to 1000 people. Those who are doing our door-to-door campaign will give our flier to a minimum of 3,000 to 4,000 every day and somebody thinks he has a more modernised campaign on Facebook and Twitter than that? So, my advice to Twitter/Facebook Obi’s supporters is that politics is not Twitter and Facebook, it’s not Big Brother. My father can’t reach Facebook or Twitter but at least, he has a minimum of 50 people that on the day of the election, if I am not contesting, he will say go and vote there. So, how does your Twitter and Facebook campaign affect the 50 votes? These modern-day educated young people think they know but they don’t know it. They should go and understudy even American politics. They do handbills, they do gatherings, and everything is not on Twitter or Facebook. I won’t mention anybody’s name. That’s why they allow one Vice President to go and mess himself up because everybody on Facebook says he is the most popular. Obi is my presidential candidate but the way they are going about it in Osun, if anybody says it’s Obi, he should come and work for the Labour Party so that we win the July 16 election.
Do you trust INEC to conduct a very fair and credible governorship election in Osun?
I do not trust anybody. I am trusting God.
What exactly motivated you to move to the Labour Party from your previous party, the All Progressives Congress?
We founded the party together and in 2018, I ran for the governorship primary election on the platform of that party, and as at that time, the party was heavily skewed against me. And, in fact, people have forgotten in a hurry that the issue of either Direct or Indirect Primaries started from Osun and solidly because of me. Because, during that time, it was obvious that if we had to do a delegate election, I was going to win that primary election and so, they concocted a lot of methods to make sure that the thing didn’t go my way. And people didn’t want to agree to the fact that because the primary was rigged against me, the party didn’t win that election on the first ballot. They want to pretend as if I was nobody.
They want to pretend as if I was just a paperweight politician and the fact still remains that two factors in Nigerian politics today, the issue of direct and indirect primaries as a method to choose a candidate at primary started from Osun in APC and it started because of me, Lasun Yusuf.
Because the power that was within the party didn’t want me to be governor. And I wanted to be Speaker of the House of Representatives, they said it was not for people like me; what they meant, I didn’t know. They said I was a bushman. Some even thought I was not educated when in actual fact; I am better educated than all of them put together. And that’s why I have always been itching to have a public debate with these people who think they are educated. Let’s tell Nigerians what we know about politics and what we think we can do if we are in government. They wanted to frustrate me, but lo and behold, I eventually emerged as the Deputy Speaker of Nigeria. And the Deputy Speakership of Nigeria is not about the Speaker choosing the Deputy Speaker, no, we both went through the same election. In legislative parlance, a Deputy Speaker is an alternate Speaker. It’s not that when the Speaker is not going to be around, he has to write a letter to you, no.
So, I fought for governorship and they denied me. I told them that they were not going to win that election without my hand there, and they didn’t win the first ballot. People didn’t know that on the Monday that followed that Saturday’s election, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu talked to me twice using Obanikoro’s phone, begging me to work for Oyetola. And he was the one who told me directly that ‘if you do not know, Oyetola is my brother and I have been installing governors all over the country can’t even install my brother?’ Those were the words of Bola Tinubu. Now, if the man says he is too big and can’t talk to some people like us, I wonder. Lt. Gen. Alani Akinrinade called me to go and work for the party that he doesn’t want another party to win in Osun. Odigie Oyegun called me and said they pushed me out of the party but I shouldn’t worry, I should work for the party. A lot of notable Nigerians called on the Monday that followed Saturday, 2018 governorship election. But people are just grandstanding now. I don’t know why they are grandstanding. They want to pretend as if we are not the backbone of the party that we founded. So, when they didn’t want to allow us to remain at the party, I had to move. So, no motivation other than strangers came with violence, mischief and political intrigues of the highest order. Very few people who are occupying the party now are true co-owners of the party; we have a lot of strangers there.
The top hierarchy of the Labour Party has been in constant talks with me for the past five or six years. And so, this time around, they came calling again. They actually came to offer me the governorship ticket. It was not that I left APC and was looking for where to contest. The Labour Party came to offer me the ticket after I left APC to be the candidate for the July 16 governorship election and I know by the special grace of God, I am going to emerge victorious.
What is your agenda for the state?
My agenda is very straightforward. One is qualitative education, two, affordable healthcare, three, agricultural revolution, four, massive industrialisation, and five, infrastructure attached to all the four items that I have mentioned because people don’t know that infrastructure does not stand on its own. Infrastructure has to be attached to something.
How will you address the problem of funding?
I am going to address the issue of funding by deliberately creating wealth. And when you create wealth, you create an economy or you create an economy to create wealth. So, that’s why I said if I take agriculture, I will make sure that my agricultural revolution in Osun can write a budget of N500 billion within the first four years and I will make sure that Osun economy, in the next four years, can hit a trillion naira mark. One thing about the economy is that you have to know it but the people who are there now don’t know it. If they know, they shouldn’t be waiting for Federal Government allocation.
Vote-buying seems to have become part of politics in Nigeria. This is evident in the just concluded Ekiti governorship election. What’s your feeling against this backdrop?
That’s a disaster. If what happened in Ekiti happens anywhere again in Nigeria, I am sorry to say it, I am not a doomsayer. Nigeria is probably running the last race. Where it has come to the level that before you will elect your leaders, you have to be paid some certain amount of money, and the people collecting the money do not know the implications on society. The people who pay the money know the implications. They know that they are paying the money and that they are not going to do anything and they are not accountable to anybody.
Vote-buying is horrible, obnoxious and insane. In an election where a winner is expected to have something like 200,000 votes and you are buying a vote for N10, 000, that’s N2 billion, not talking about what they will give the police, the area boys and others? And we think we are running a normal society? My conclusion for Ekiti election is that it should not happen in other places because if it does, then it’s obvious that Nigeria is running its last lap and that is what is going to destroy Nigeria.
So, what are your expectations for the July election?
My expectation is that the people of Osun State should come out on July 16 and vote for their choice. And they should not be cowed or exercise fear because the only thing that kills before death is fear. A lot of us don’t reach our potential in life because of unnecessary fear. Don’t let anyone intimidate you either by money or thugs. They are mundane things and they are never solutions to life problems.
Nigeria practices federalism. What’s your view about restructuring?
“Lt. Gen. Alani Akinrinade called me to go and work for the party that he doesn’t want another party to win in Osun. Odigie Oyegun called me and said they pushed me out of the party but I shouldn’t worry, I should work for the party”
Nigeria is not a federal system as at today. We all know because one of the major characteristics of a federal system is you have your own security agents at the state level. That’s one of the major characteristics of a federation. A state will have its own police, local government will have its own because as a federal system, we are broken into several components. That one is absent. The second thing that is present and absent at the same time is that there is no federation where you will go to the centre to distribute money at the end of every month. The federating units make their money and make certain taxes or royalties to the federal government. But, in Nigeria, we go to the federal level for money distribution. So, we are not a federal system at all. It’s still a unitary system of government that we collectively have refused to change since 1979 for example.
When oil is being drilled in Uyo for example and the money is taken to Abuja for distribution, that’s not a federal system of government.
As a legislator and former presiding officer, I want to tell you that the most important thing that we have not addressed is our constitution and people pay less attention. Each time the National Assembly says they want to do a constitutional amendment, instead of the people to rally around, pay attention, show all the agitations in the world by making sure that what they want to happen to the constitution happens, they will be criticizing the National Assembly.
It’s the wrong thing to do because as we speak, we have almost 40 items on the exclusive list of the Federal Government. Those items there are supposed to be done by the state and local governments. So, the power of governance in Nigeria is in the hands of the Federal Government. Most developed countries have just five items at the centre, and they are foreign matters, military against external aggression, currency matter, issuance of passport and immigration system, and central bank or the Federal Reserve System.
About 15 parties are contesting the July 16 election, what is the prospect of Labour Party emerging the winner?
I, Rt Hon Lasun Yusuf, as the governorship candidate of the Labour Party, is going to win the July 16 election. People in other parties know. This thing is about what you have in your head and what you have done in the past. I have fulfilled all righteousness. People have seen me as a Deputy Speaker, they have seen my activities and they also see me once in a while when I talk and they know that I have the mental capacity to run a system that is going to be beneficial to everybody. I don’t know tomorrow, but today, I still remain the only person in the last four years that has been consistent and telling the people that there is no economy in Osun and that I am going to create one as a governor.
What were your achievements when you were in the House of Representatives?
If you are moving towards Ilobu, there is what we call Ojutu Bridge, that’s one project that is nearing completion that I facilitated to my environment. In the constitution of Nigeria, it was my bill that says that whoever has taken the oath of office twice, can’t take it again in that office. In my constituency, I rebuilt 17 schools that are viable. I also facilitated maternity centres. I think I represented my people well by attaining the post of Deputy Speaker.
