Otunba Gbenga Daniel is the Senator Representing Ogun East in the National Assembly. In this interview, the former governor of Ogun State speaks on various issues including his alleged strained relationship with President Bola Tinubu, why he worked for former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s presidential ambition in 2019 and his experience as a senator. Excerpts:
In a few weeks, the present administration will be marking its first year in office and you will be one year in the Senate soon too. What is your impression as someone who once wielded executive power and now a legislator? What is the experience like in the few months that you have spent?
First, let me congratulate all of us as Nigerians because, one year ago, hope was nearly lost in the outgoing administration. Security was at its lowest ebb. The economy was virtually comatose. There was a high degree of uncertainty in the air and then, of course, the election went fortuitously I will say.
Luckily for our country, Bola Tinubu won that election. We were also quite concerned as to how he could turn around what one can consider the battered economy. We are told that a lot of our resources have been traded in advance.
A large amount of the quota of the main source of revenue, that is oil, had been traded. A large amount of loans, unprecedented in the country’s history, have been incurred. At a stage it looked like whatever accruing revenue had to be used to service the existing loan. So it was a period of despair.
But thank God, Bola Tinubu became president and pronto, he went into action. Of course, to make an omelet we have to break eggs as our people usually say.
Some of his immediate actions, which we all considered necessary, have created some difficulties and challenges, especially to the economy. But we thank God that things have started easing off and confidence is being built back into the economy by the investing world and we have a very strong belief that it can only get better.
The security situation has started abating; matters of kidnapping for ransom appear to have been reduced. I think to a large extent, security challenges like the Boko Haram phenomenon appear to be under control. And so, I have no doubt in my mind that as we celebrate one year of this civilian administration, we look forward to a much better country. We have a good team in place.
A large number of the ministers are quite knowledgeable and efficient and the economy appears to be in capable hands. We have, in my own opinion, a good economic team. We also have a dynamic minister, for instance, who is running the Works Ministry, a hands-on person and capable engineer. Quite a number of the cabinet members have given a good account of themselves. So clearly, I think we are in good stead. That’s my evaluation of where we are.
That is not to say however that we do not have challenges. Of course, it’s part of life. Then coming up to the senate, for me, it’s a different kind of experience, coming from executive to the legislature. What we have found is that increasingly the people at home, I don’t know how to describe it, seem to believe that whatever the executive are doing, the legislature should be doing. So, it is indeed a challenge that whatever is referred to as constituency projects can definitely not resolve the expectation of our people. So as far as they are concerned, if the executive is constructing 10 roads, you should be constructing two to complement. So it’s something that we need to revisit and re-educate our people.
I know it has to do with the level of poverty in the land. But definitely there is a lot of tremendous pressure at the National Assembly in terms of getting projects. Of course the reason for that is not too far-fetched because I think that the masses seem to have better access to members of the National Assembly than they have to the executive team. So usually, all the woes are heaped on members of the National Assembly. So I think we just must appreciate that it’s a different phase in the evolution of our democracy that will continue to improve. Those are my immediate comments.
“I have no doubt in my mind that as we celebrate one year of this civilian administration, we look forward to a much better country. We have a good team in place”
How about the electricity tariff? Besides, is it not strange that, after all these years, Nigeria is yet to solve its power problem?
It is the same problem. For me, it is the same problem of management. Just like the problem we have with so many other sectors. It is management and lack of patriotism. For instance, at the beginning of this civil administration, electricity generation was removed from the exclusive preserve of the government and I remember that one of the administrations that made the first attempt was this same Bola Tinubu’s administration in Lagos with the ENRON power project.
We did not get the support we should have gotten at that time. I’m just being mild in the way I am describing what happened. So it is management. It is a lack of patriotism. All over the world, nobody centralizes electricity generation and distribution because it doesn’t work. Let everybody generate their own electricity in their own way and that is the way to go.
Once the private sector is allowed to do whatever they want to do, the government can now subsidize the low income earners. When we were building the Olorunsogo and Omotosho power stations, part of what we insisted on was that 10% of the power that is generated, both from Olorunsogo and Omotoso, must be given to the local environment within a 20 kilometers radius of that plant.
By the time we commissioned the Olorunsogo power plant, a large number of estates, both residential and commercial, started developing around that power station. Because they were sure that they were going to get power. But again, that was not sustained. So it is this inconsistency in policy and poor management and the opaque way of doing things without transparency. Those are the challenges that have crippled the sector
Now, when the privatisation was going on and the DisCos were being privatized I’m not so sure that people with capacity won the bids. There is financial capacity and there is also technical ability. In some instances, it does appear that the only thing they were looking at was the financial capability but then the shock that has enveloped the country is that many of those people did not invest as expected and the ones who invested more or less took money from banks with the cut throat interest rates.
The business of power is not a business that is like direct importation where you get immediate returns. It is a long-term investment. To build an average generating plant can be anything between a minimum of five years. After you have all your money to put all the equipment in place, it’s a minimum of five years. So if you want to take some cut throat interest rates by way of a loan to do a business like that, within five years you’re already bankrupt. So those are the challenges. So most of them therefore did not do what was expected of them. They were waiting for the government to still support them. So that was a misstep.
During the election of the leadership of the Senate in June last year, there were insinuations in some quarters that you did not support Godswill Akpabio. Tell us what happened. Are the allegations true?
No, there is nothing like that. You know this politics that we play. Some people believe that the only way they can make progress is to begin to fabricate lies against innocent people. It’s an unfortunate part of our politics. Senator Godswill Akpabio, the Senate President, is somebody that I have known and have a first class relationship with dating decades. In fact, he was here in my house and we had discussed and of course he had 100% of my support. But I think the mistake people are making is that my own politics are a bit different and I don’t grandstand maybe because I’ve seen it all.
People think that, oh, because you are supporting somebody, you cannot talk to somebody else. I don’t think that’s the way it should be. All the people who wanted to be Senate president were my colleagues in a way. Some of them were governors. Orji Kalu was governor and an ally. I think between 2007 and 2011, we sat at the cabinet together. The other main contestant Senator Abdulaziz Yari from Zamfara was at some point a Governor. I happened to be the Deputy Chairman of the former Governor’s Forum. So, when people like that come looking for me, people may say, ah, we saw this man going there, therefore… They don’t even know whether what I was telling them was to let us support Akpabio (laughs). So it is part of the bad politics that our people play. There was absolutely nothing like that.
But you were in the opposition party at a time which could trigger suspicions about your loyalty or support for the President. Isn’t that possible?
Yes, the fact of the matter is that at some point in time when I was in the People’s Democratic Party, I ran Atiku Abubakar’s presidential campaign. But I’ve also told people who cared to listen that when I was running an Atiku campaign, Bola Tinubu was not contesting. Two Fulani men were in the race as leading candidates and I happened to be in PDP and so I took control of the Atiku campaign, not against Bola Tinubu.
But I’ve told people that once Bola Tinubu is on the ballot, it’s a completely different ball game. And the funny thing is that the people in the PDP also know that I can’t do any other thing. So they know. So the funny thing is that people in the PDP know that, ah, OGD, that’s a Jagaban’s person, whatever you do. So once Jagaban was coming in, in fact, people do not know that a few of us came together and we were going round the entire South West and beyond trying to dissuade all the people who wanted to run to forget it.
We formed a committee and Bola Tinubu did not send us. We felt that of all of them, he was the most experienced, he was the most qualified, and he was the most senior. It’s not as if some people didn’t also come to me and say, look OGD it is you we want to use. And I said, ah, no, no, no. Tinubu is running o! (Laughs) No, forget it! But some of us fell into that kind of temptation. There’s none of them I didn’t go to see.
We went to Ekiti and saw Kayode Fayemi. I went and saw Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola. I said ‘Ogbeni what’s wrong with you? Ah! Kilo nsele? Look at me; we both know how…What’s going on? Don’t allow yourself to be used’ and all of that. So we did what we had to do without any prompting or grandstanding from any quarters. We went to Aketi (late former Governor of Ondo State, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu), may God bless his soul. We said, look, you are the chairman of the South West Governor’s Forum. What has to be done has to be done. We went round. We went to Baba Akande in Ila and I said Baba, you can’t be passive. You are probably the oldest former governor in the South West and you are very close to Asiwaju. So you cannot but be active. We went round. Even though we were not putting loudspeakers in what we were doing. We went round quietly. We went round and we spoke to all the self-determination groups. I said, no, it’s a different ball game. I am usually amused when I see people who told us Asiwaju had no chance and we should stop wasting time now gallivanting around the President. I guess that is Politics Nigeriana. So we thank God that all is well that ended well. But having said that, it is part of the politics that we people talk about. They insinuate and we live with it.
At a point in your political career, and that was even when you were governor in Ogun State, there was this seeming cold war between you and Asiwaju Tinubu at that time. There were rumblings here and there but nobody spoke about it and it was everywhere…
(Cuts in) Accentuated by you, the media people…(laughs)
“I have had this personal experience in my political life and like people say, when you want to dig a pit for a political enemy, don’t dig it too deep because you may be the one who will finally fall into it”
Was there a rift between you and Tinubu?
There was none…
But there was a serious political disagreement…
No, there was no disagreement. Now let me tell you what happened. I can say this to you today. You know, I have had a first-hand relationship with President Tinubu. But when I wanted to run, don’t forget that I was the Chairman of the Infrastructure Committee when Tinubu became the governor in Lagos.
Part of my responsibility was to look after water challenges in Lagos, power challenges in Lagos, and the road challenges. All of those three items were under the Infrastructure Committee, which I chaired as part of the Transition Committee. And everybody felt very excited and Lagos started kicking but along the line when I decided to run for governor in Ogun State, I was a private sector person and we approached the leaders, and the leaders felt that no, Otunba, it is not your turn. We will not support you.
That’s at the level of AD then?
Yes, at the level of AD (Alliance for Democracy). They said we will not support you. You are doing well. We like you. You supported NADECO, you have done well, you have done a lot for the structure, but we cannot support you. Go and wait. But on the other hand, a large number of the masses of our people were craving for a change in the state and one thing led to the other, we went into ‘Whispering Palms’, we had a session, a retreat of some sort and we came to a conclusion that to respond to the yearnings of these people, we might need to change party. And of course, the problem was how could I do that with the kind of relationship I had with Asiwaju?
Let me say, to the glory of God, I went to him and I said, this is the situation and I am considering changing my party. He sat with me and did the analysis and said, well, Gbenga, if you really must run, I can’t stop you. And that was how I then went into the PDP. As God would have it, I won the election despite the opposition by Knucklehead (laughs) and his friends. Because he felt it was a taboo. I mean, why should one unknown Otunba try to rock the boat against established tradition? So we won the election. Of course, my first official visit was to go and pay my respect to Governor Tinubu and everybody knew that while I was governor in Ogun State, the programmes that I was running, even though under the PDP banner, were not different from the programmes that Tinubu was running in Lagos.
Let me give you a few examples. For starters, the Attorney General that I picked (Akin Osinbajo) was a younger brother to Prof Yemi Osinbajo, (immediate past Vice President) who was his Attorney General in Lagos at that time. He was my Attorney General for all of eight years. I couldn’t do that without some kind of consultation and you know how these things come about.
So all the programmes I implemented – law reforms, judicial reform and establishment of the Public Defender Office, were what we replicated. Now, I remember that while in Lagos, in terms of security, RRS (Rapid Response Squad) was started. In Ogun State, I also did GRS, Gateway Response Squad. If you remember well, you will remember that Bola Tinubu tried to return schools to missionaries. It was Dr. Idowu Sobowale who chaired that reform in Lagos. When I got to Ogun State, it was the same Dr. Idowu Sobowale that I invited and said look, I don’t want to begin to reinvent the wheel, since you did this successfully in Lagos, we also want to return schools to the missionaries both Christian and Muslim schools.
It was the same Dr. Idowu Sobowale that we invited to come and chair the Committee. So that was what happened. I don’t know where it came from, from the angle that, what’s going on? Is this person trying to compete, or what is he trying to do? I think that’s where the insinuation started. But I can tell you, up until now, up until this minute, I and the President have not sat down to discuss it. I heard that all sorts of rumours were going on.
Let’s go back to Ogun State politics. So, ordinarily, you being in APC and the present governor is in APC, nobody would have imagined that there would come a time when there would be a situation where the governor would say, no, Otunba Gbenga Daniel worked against me when I wanted to run for second tenure and then somehow, maybe through court processes, they went to Ijebu-Ode to demolish the property that you spent millions of naira on. Can you tell us what really happened? Where did the rift start from?
Well, you know, after I left as governor, Ibikunle Amosun became Governor. For eight years, he was there and finally Dapo Abiodun is governor. So that means that I had been Governor eight clear years before Dapo became governor. So I think I can describe myself as an elder statesman and that is why I have not passed any comment and I am still not going to pass any comment.
All I know is that part of what has destroyed our polity is when people personalize issues. If you look at my trajectory, I have never spoken about personal issues because I think that there are bigger problems that need to be resolved and the expectations of the society, when they put us there, are more than talking about personal issues.
It is unfortunate that the plaza that was destroyed belongs to my wife and a number of us felt that even if there are disagreements, we should not extend it to our children or our family, because at the end of the day, it’s a tenured position and people who find themselves in different angles may reunite tomorrow.
I have had this personal experience in my political life and like people say, when you want to dig a pit for a political enemy, don’t dig it too deep because you may be the one who will finally fall into it. (Laughs). I think the way I normally describe when all these shenanigans go on is what we read in the Bible: Father forgive them for they know not what they do. That really is my summary.
