A former governor of Oyo State and Otun Olubadan of Ibadanland, Senator Rashidi Adewolu Ladoja, was 80 years old on Wednesday, September 25, 2024. In this interview with some selected journalists, he reflects on his lifetime. Excerpts:
How does it feel to be 80 years old?
It doesn’t feel anything other than the fact that the energy I had when I was 70, I don’t have it again. Then, I remember what I was doing when I was 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, and now 80. One may be getting wiser, but certain things one was fighting for in those days, one might allow them to go by. But by and large, it’s just that you are counting your days. Some of us believe that we are already at the departure lounge. We have collected our boarding passes and we are waiting at the departure call. But the gate is not ready. We don’t even know the gate. When you think like that, you’ll know that your life is not your own.
Do you have any regrets in the past?
There are certain things that I think I would have done differently.
But by and large, I don’t see myself having much regret. There is nobody who would not have the mind of ‘Oh, if I knew, I would have done it differently.’ But the only thing is that I have got to learn that my life is planned by somebody. You can call him God, call him Allah, and call him Olodumare.
The fact remains that your life is planned by somebody, and it is being planned by Him. At least, I know that for myself that God plans my life.
Before I even got to where I am, He had the ground prepared for me. So, that is one of the things we have learnt as we grow older. At times, you will be thinking you are smart. No, it is a lie. It is God.
What was your growing up like?
I grew up like a normal child. My mother told me that I was born in Gambari, near Ogbomoso on the way to Ilorin. I did not have a choice. I was comfortable in her tummy. When it was time for me to come out, they were in Gambari village.
She had gone to the village with her mother-in-law, who was my father’s mother. In those days, the young girls were normally chaperoned by their husbands’ mothers. She had taken her on her trading expedition to Gambari.
My mother told me that she enjoyed the place and that being the first child, after the late one because we Yoruba believe that there is stillbirth. One Rashidi was born on 23rd of September 1943 and died the day after his naming ceremony. Maybe that was why she wanted me to be born outside Ibadan, I don’t know. But when I was born, my mother told me that my grandmother was very popular in that area. My grandmother was known in the area as ‘Iya Ibadan.’ So, the people in Gambari were saying ‘omo Iya Ibadan bi’mo’ because she was ‘omo Iya Ibadan.’ She told me that the house they were living in was not big enough to contain the tubers of yam that people brought.
She said for my naming ceremony, the Fulani gave her a fat cow with short horns. My mother remembered that one, at least. She said everybody from villages around came for the naming ceremony with their own mortals and pestles to make the pounded yam they would eat. My mother told me it was about a three-day ceremony. They brought a musician from Ilorin.
Where was your father then?
My father was in Ibadan.
Was he at the naming ceremony too?
No.
What happened?
I was born in Gambari. The ceremony was held at Gambari and it was also held in Ibadan, though I was not in Ibadan. The ceremony in Ibadan was not a virtual one because Islamic clerics sat down and also decided that the child would be called Rashidi. My christening was done in two locations at the same time.
My mother told me that in Gambari, the Islamic clerics there then were mostly of northern origin. My mother didn’t know much difference between Fulani and Hausa. And that I was taken as the child of the village. She said everybody contributed what they had for me. There was only one mosque in the village then. And part of what the mosque would do then was to take the child and put him in herbs. They recited some Quranic verses, and gave me back to my mother, and that continued for 41 days.
“We should go back to where we were. As long as it is the NNPC that is going to be having a hold on the petroleum industry, we are going to be having a lot of interference”
How did you come about the name Adewolu?
As a little child, I had so many names. Adewolu was one. Aderemi was one. Ademola was also one. Okunlola was another one. But I decided to choose Adewolu.
Why?
As I was growing up, it was during the reign of Oba Adesoji Aderemi, the Ooni of Ife. It was also during the reign of Oba Ademola, the Alake of Egbaland. I said why should I be bearing the same name with these big people? I said I should be bearing Adewolu. If I had chosen Aderemi, people would think I am bearing the name Ooni and Ademola because of Alake. So, I stuck to my Adewolu. So, it was just the fact that I wanted to be Adewolu because it was not a common name at that time.
Why did you decide to celebrate your 80th birthday in low key?
I know that God has been very kind to me. I had scholarships. My parents gave me secondary school education. At that time, I went for entrance exams of Ibadan Boys High School. When I got home, I went to my father and told him that I would not be admitted because many of the parents that brought their children to school in cars went to visit the principal. My father said I should not worry myself because there would always be room for excellence. I still hold it till date that there would always be room for excellence, however competitive it is. So, I was admitted. To prove to me that there is always room for excellence, when I got admitted to Olivet Heights in Oyo for HSC, one of my seniors that was there, Tunde Falohun, wrote to us that I was the best candidate in the entrance exams, and that I would be admitted. He was my senior at Olivet Heights, though he was my classmate at Ibadan Boys High School. I dropped out in Form Four.
Why?
I dropped out because my parents could not pay my school fees. It was because all students must be boarders when you were in Forms Four and Five. The first term, I managed to go because most of the time, my mother was responsible for it. My father was good enough, but I don’t think he was very serious with our education. My mother would use her clothes for barter and money exchange with the ‘alarobos.’ So, she was not in a position to take care of my school fees because the fees were in the range of 19 pounds and 10 shillings for boarders. It was nine pounds and five shillings for day students. So, I dropped out. The following year, my father was able to secure employment as a clerk. He made an agreement with the school that he would be sending five Pounds postal order every month. In those days, there were poster orders. So, that was how he was able to pay the school fees for Forms Four and Five. So, when I got admission to Olivet Heights, I was late in paying the deposit. Finally, when I got the deposit, I went to the school. May God bless the principal. I saw him and he said I was late. Still, he asked me why I was late. I told him that I did not get the money in time. Again, I said I wanted to wait till I finished my secondary school education. I knew that I passed; otherwise, I would not come with this deposit. He asked if I had got the results of the school certificate, I said no; but I knew that I passed. He asked if I was sure. I said yes. Then, he asked ‘By the way, what is your name?’ I said Rashidi Ladoja. He then said just go and sit down and wait for the vice principal to come. The vice principal came and went to see the principal. They spoke. Then, they said Rashidi Ladoja come in. The principal said he would be pained if he denied the student that came first in the entrance exams a space in the school.
How did we find ourselves here?
That is the question I am also asking. How did we find ourselves here? Could it be the military intervention? Now, it seems there is no excellence again. It is a question of what you can buy. You buy nearly everything. I feel also a part of the failure.
How?
If we could not create what we enjoyed, then we are failures. When I was campaigning in 2003 for the office of governor of Oyo State, I did what would make us go back to where we were; which was 30 pupils per class; that was for education. We said we would create opportunities for everybody to be educated. We would strive to create jobs. I am not sure that is what we are still seeing today. When we got there, we did it. But there is no excellence again. It is how much you can pay.
I believe in democracy. I believe in bringing back what I knew, whereby there was orderliness, and there was room for excellence.
What was your NADECO experience like?
I went into exile because I did not believe that Sani Abacha was sincere with his transition programme. I was nominated into the Constituent Assembly, which for us in Ibadan, was not a question of going to the Constituent Assembly. I was a good member of NADECO. We already said we were not going to the Abacha’s Confab so; I did my part to support worthy causes.
As a chemical engineer, how would you react to the unending energy crisis in Nigeria?
It is not only that I am a chemical engineer, I have a bias for petroleum. I joined the oil industry at a very critical period of the oil industry in Nigeria. I joined in 1992. I was in Total. At that time, there was only one refinery and it was owned by Shell BP. And it was a processing refinery; they don’t sell. You would take your crude to the refinery, process it there and refine it. You would evacuate your products and pay them. It was doing well. It was only one refinery and it was virtually meeting all our requests.
But later on, it was not meeting our demand again. Then, Warri Refinery was planned. The oil companies said they wanted the refinery in Lagos, not in Warri. They said they wanted it in Lagos because the consumption of the South West was more than 70 percent of the refined products. But it was the Federal Government that wanted to build the refinery and they chose Warri. We could not convince them otherwise. They built Warri Refinery. At that time, there was a meeting of all the operations managers of all marketing companies. The Warri Refinery, instead of being a processing refinery, as in Port Harcourt, was supposed to be a selling refinery.
NNPC owned the product. NNPC owned the refinery and they would sell it. So, they now nationalise Shell BP. I can tell you that what we have today is definitely not what we had at the time. There should have been no problem with Dangote Refinery because between the time the Warri Refinery was coming up, there were shortages and marketers were importing products.
At that time, there was no government hand in it at all. The only thing the government was doing was to collect their excise duties and also to collect the import duties.
We were there when they said they were going to have uniform pricing. So, I knew that part of the story very well as far as supply of products in Nigeria was concerned.
A lot of people wanted to build refineries before. But when you look at it, NNPC was controlling the price of the products. Later on, they said they were going to forgo the import duties. I don’t know why the military should want to be popular because all these issues started under the military. Why did they want to be popular? They should have allowed the market to evolve the way it was going. But instead, the military said no; it has to be uniform pricing all over Nigeria. Therefore, they created what they called Price Equalisation Fund, which they later turned to something else. They turned it to chop-chop something. It was being managed by marketers. But NNPC took it over and felt that it was their bread and butter. That is what led us to where we are today.
What is the way out?
We should go back to where we were. As long as it is the NNPC that is going to be having a hold on the petroleum industry, we are going to be having a lot of interference.
“Was the constitution wrong when Ladoja was impeached wrongly as governor of Oyo State? Was it not clearly written that you need two-thirds of the House of Assembly members to be able to impeach a governor? Was it respected?”
Do you believe there was a fuel subsidy at any time in this country?
When you talk of subsidies, the government was playing on words. I told you that before now, the only thing the government was doing was to take their excise duties.
In fact, we used to have customs officers, which used to be customs and excise, inside our depots to see what was coming in and what was going out, so that they would be able to calculate the excise duty or import duties we were going to pay. It was being done every 10 days. Gradually, the government said because they did not want to give room to hardship to people, it removed the excise duties and import duties.
So, as the prices were going up, the people were getting worse.
But the major problem that we have is the unreasonable devaluation of naira from the time of Ibrahim Babangida.
Babangida started by saying people should be debating if we should take an IMF loan or not. Asking somebody like my mother to comment, what does my mother know about the IMF? Nigerians do you want this and that? That was where it started.
As long as the naira is not stable, there will always be that crisis.
The currency of petroleum is the dollar. Even in Europe, it is dollars. As long as your currency is not stable with the dollar, you would continue having the problem. But it should not have been an issue of Nigeria. When people talk about fuel subsidy, I will say that in most cases in Nigeria, we have to talk of opportunity lost. When the NNPC took over, they didn’t take over with a view of buying or importing the product from Europe or anywhere. They took it that they were going to begin offshore processing. You will take my crude out, you will bring my product back, and I will like you to sell whatever I cannot take. So, does that cost us as much as spending dollars today to bring out our product? No. I think it is an opportunity lost that we are trying to turn into a subsidy.
If our refineries are working, it would not cost us what it is costing us. I saw today that they said Dangote Refinery would sell petrol at N766, which means that maybe NNPC had already worked their margin and everything into it. We will see that we are going back to where we were. In those days, it’s uniform price; buy in Lagos, Maiduguri or Kaduna. But now, when I buy in Lagos and Ibadan, it is not the same price. But we are going back to where we were; but painfully.
Nigeria is also a place where things don’t turn out the way you wanted it. Other places have been using pipelines for ages, and they are still using them. We started using a pipeline in Nigeria; we have destroyed it, either by vandals, or by neglect.
When you look at it, I think it is a problem of policy. If they sold it at the time the naira was bigger than the dollar, $70 today would have been N50. So, we would not be selling at N770, if it is dollar-dominated. How many dollars is N770 when they say N70, 000 is $42? So, you can work it out if naira has not been bastardised.
I started my work at Total at 125 pounds per month, which was N250 then. And I was more comfortable than when I started earning N2, 500 before I left Total. So, something must have been wrong with us.
Do you support calls for the national refineries to be sold?
Of course, I do. I do because if it turns impossible for you to manage them, why do you want to hold them? Do you think anybody would want to put his money there and make it work? So, there are so many theories that could have been responsible for the inability to make the refineries work. Maybe the NNPC management themselves don’t want them to work. How many billions of naira have they spent on turnaround maintenance? NNPC is not sacking the workers there. Workers are still working there and earning their salaries for doing nothing. If it is impossible for the refineries to work under the government, then let the government sell them. If they sell them and they get one kobo, it is still better than holding them and still spending money on them.
I think the money they are wasting on them now can be used to do something else. And whoever that puts his one kobo there would want it to work. Then, there will be competition. You can understand the fear of NNPC; they cannot supply 650 barrels of crude to Dangote because that is apparently part of the production that comes to Nigeria. Do you want to put all your eggs in one person’s hand?
What is your take on the call for the review of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria?
It is not the constitution that is wrong; it is our mental state.
Is it because we don’t have strong institutions?
Will the change in the constitution bring in strong institutions? I don’t think the constitution is the problem. I think it is the mindset of the people. I think we are so undisciplined that we don’t believe in any law again. We believe we can always buy our way. Was the constitution wrong when Ladoja was impeached wrongly as governor of Oyo State? Was it not clearly written that you need two-thirds of the House of Assembly members to be able to impeach a governor? Was it respected? When you have people who don’t believe that there is any law they have to obey, then you cannot get anything done. It is a case of one law for one person; another law for another person.
As long as politics is a question of ‘I must have it at all cost’, then put any constitution there, who is going to apply it? Are the law enforcement agencies who want to keep their job going to do that?
After the presidency, it is the National Assembly that should be strong. But are they?
