A member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Lagos State, Mr. Adeniyi Jafojo, in this interview with OLAOLU OLADIPO appraised the outcome of the recently conducted general election in the country as well as the controversies that came out of the poll. He spoke about the fortunes of the party in Lagos, the victory and the plans of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as well as the litigations of the various opposition political parties. Excerpts:
You are a stakeholder in the Lagos State chapter of the All Progressive Congress (APC), if not that the party had to reorganize itself (APC) was on the verge of losing the governorship, would you say that what happened should be a source of worry for members?
Let me answer you this way, we all get into politics from our respective families. In any typical family you are bound to have one issue or the other confronting it (the family). When we now have to talk about a political party, there is bound to be one issue or the other. You are talking about individuals who have their own issues that they’ve taken to the party. So, the larger political platform is bound to have one issue or the other. I believe that at the end of the day, we are bound to come together as members of the same family working towards the same goal. We will eventually settle the rifts within the party.
If you have the opportunity of meeting the leaders of the party, what kind of advice are you going to give to them to ensure that what happened at the last election does not repeat itself in future?
If I meet the leadership of the party, particularly the chairman of the party, I will tell him that we need to embark on serious reconciliation within. We need to gather all the stakeholders together to know those who have one misgiving or the other with the party with a view to pacifying them. This is what we need to do so that we don’t have the same situation that we had the other time when another relatively unknown party won the state at the presidential election.
This had never happened to us before in Lagos State, not even when we were in opposition to the government at the national level. Like I said, the way forward is through reconciliation with all members of the party.
Your party eventually won the state and the Federal, if you were to do an appraisal of the five months old government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, what would be your verdict?
Baba Asiwaju who is our great leader is doing his best to reposition the country to greatness. What is happening in terms of the economic downturn is not peculiar to Nigeria, it is a global phenomenon affecting all countries of the world. For us, what amuses me really is that if you look at some of the other countries that surround us, you will appreciate the fact that the prices of fuel per litre are way higher than what we have in the country today.
In many of these places, the price of the commodity is way over N1,000. That the country is still buying the product for N600 is a magic that we are doing that I can’t really explain. We were told that the price of fuel is tied to the price of crude oil in the international market which is well over $98 per barrel and yet we are still selling it for N600 after refining it and bringing it back. This means that the government is doing some kind of magic that no one knows.
What I am saying is that we can only appreciate President Bola Tinubu for this. I appreciate that it is not an easy task to govern Nigeria composed of different people, different ethnic nationalities with different agenda. I can only applaud him for doing that.
President Tinubu is known as someone who likes confronting issues frontally and headlong and this has reflected largely in his administrative style. You can see that with regards to his approach to the removal of the fuel subsidy, which previous governments before him had shied away from; do you think he has acted wisely by that action?
A lot of people might say that he should not have done it the time he did it but if you go by what the NNPC is telling us that if the country didn’t do it, only God knows what would happen to us as a people by June this year. The NNPC said that by that time, we might not be able to afford the things that we are using now. Like I said before, we cannot but applaud him for taking the decision at the time he took it.
I commend his tenacity and his boldness for taking the action in the overall interest of the country. I say this because governments before him had dodged the issue because of the likely backlash of the people.
Do you see Nigeria coming out of this as a country under him?
I am a Christian and I believe that God will help us navigate through this problem.
Do you see him as capable of taking us out of the problem?
Definitely, I do.
What would be the basis for your optimism?
I believe he would because a lot of things that previous governments had been unable to do are being done by his government. At least we are trying to do them. He has begged Nigerians to at least give him till January next year for things to improve. And we are hearing that some of the dead refineries are coming back on board. At least, some things are working and all we need to do at this critical time is to give him the benefit of doubt to be able to carry his reforms through.
Do you also hinge your sense of optimism on the caliber of people he has appointed into office?
Yes! Some of his appointees are people that we know and identify with a proven record of performance over- time. Many of them are accomplished professionals in their respective fields of endeavours. As Nigerians and for the government too, we all have to give everyone of them the opportunity to prove themselves. You will appreciate that this is a government that has not been in office for up to a year. I don’t want Nigerians to say negative things against this government. For me, I think we should give this gov- ernment a chance.
What do you have to say to critics who have continued to accuse this government of gross nepotism in most of its appointments?
I don’t agree with such a position. There are a lot of people who are not from Yorubaland who are well placed in terms of appointments. Is the FCT minister a Yorubaman? Is the National Security Adviser, Mr. Nuhu Ribadu, a Yorubaman? These are top positions in government. The little that I know of President Tinubu is that he doesn’t look at where you are from before considering you for an appointment.
He looks at what you can do to add value to what he is doing, not minding where you are coming from and who you are. This is what I have seen of him. If you can recall even in Lagos he appointed other people from other geographical zones into government. A person that had that mindset when he was in Lagos would now suddenly change at the Federal level?
Are you saying that those making those assertions are not being truthful?
Yes! They are not if you look at all of them, the question you ask is are they all Yorubas? We have different Nigerians who are from all the corners of the country that have been appointed as ministers and to other positions. The president has to spread appointments and that is what the president has done so far.
The president was distracted by petitions that were filed by his opponents at the Election Petitions Tribunals. Some of the opposition figures have gone as far as going abroad to get his academic records and credentials, how do you see this?
All these things were nothing but distractions. They (opposition leaders) were just trying to distract the president from doing what he was elected to do. I’m sure that when we dig into their past too, it’s going to be crazy be- cause we are going to come up with a lot of revelations about them too. To me, that is not an issue to dissipate time and energy on.
Do you think the opposition has done enough to distract the president?
I don’t see what they have done really to distract the president. After they’ve gone to America to search for whatever they were searching for, they’ve come back home to file a case against the president. I’m not a lawyer but I always call myself a litigant but what I know is that if you have taken a case to the court, you should allow the courts to do whatever it seeks to do with the case that you have taken to them.
The court must hear all the sides to the case and come up with its position. These are the same people that had gone to court who at the same time are coming out to do a press conference to lampoon the same judiciary.
