Former National Vice-chairman (South-west) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Yinka Omilani has described Chief Olusegun Obasanjo as the greatest leader Nigeria has ever produced.

He scored the administration of the immediate past president high saying posterity would judge Nigeria on Obasanjo’s eight year leadership.
Omilani also expressed hope that Obsanjo’s successor, President Umaru Yar’Adua, would deliver democracy dividends to the people. He made these observations and more in this interview with Sunday Sun in Lagos.

On Yar’Adua’s government
It is not one year that Yar’Adua’s government came on board. But you must understand that in life, no two persons are exactly the same. It is the man who makes the office and not the office that makes anybody. President Yar’Adua’s style is different. In his seven point agenda, one of it is rule of law, transparency and all these things are being put in place. We live in a world of changes but the people don’t want to change. That is why you find hitches sometimes in this government because people are not ready to match along with Yar’Adua the way he perceives his own programme for Nigeria, which I think is very excellent. But he will get there. Things are working in the right perspective. A lot of people believe that he should move like internet or satellite but people should know that whatever have gone rapidly up, would also come down. My belief is that slow and steady always wins the race. Am very happy with the way Yar’Adua approaches things and am optimistic that he will succeed. I believe that at the end of the day, he will put things on ground that would satisfy everybody.

In Yar’Aduar’s government, there is no sacred cow. His own style is that the finger that sins is supposed to be cut. He maintains the rule of law and he doesn’t want to know whose ox is gored. You can see that if the law catches up with you, he does not intervene. It does not matter your relationship with him. If it were other people who were not very consistent in their ways of administering the nation, you would have seen him meddling in the affairs of every sector. Since he came up, you have seen his style. What happened to the former speaker? She had to leave what happened recently to one of his ministers? There is no cover up. A full minister and minister of state were involved and they had to face the law. That has shown that Yar’Adua is very consistent with that aspect of his seven point agenda, which is rule of law. His style is to allow the law to take its course.

Look at it again from the angle of the budget, when it was done by the National assembly, the areas of disagreement, he pointed out to the legislators to go and make amends. He sent it back to them and they made amends and at the end of it all, he signed. Is that not being transparent enough? I think it is an achievement even though it is a bit delayed. He presented that budget in October last year. We thought the budget would have been approved by the first week of this year but because of circumstances in Nigeria, where two plus two doesn’t make four, the budget was delayed till April. So, I would say that he has achieved a lot. But somebody else might say something different.

PDP consensus congress
I do not know why people should cry over people having consensus arrangement to elect candidates. Do they want people of the same party, family to be at logger heads. Election by consensus is reached when it is proved that somebody is acceptable to all because of his antecedents. What is people’s argument about a party electing candidates by consensus. Even if the election has taken place, those people who emerged by consensus would have won. The man Ogbulafor who became the national chairman would have won. But why wasting the resources, time and everything. The others who were in the race were not stopped from contesting but there, they mounted the podium and announced that they were stepping down. I was in the state box and nobody forced them to step down.

I saw them one after the other announcing to the world that they were stepping down. All the diplomats were there, the ambassadors and other foreign missions who were invited were also there. They watched the proceedings and I don’t think that anybody would say that the last congress of the PDP was done undemocratically for me, I believe that consensus arrangement is democratic. But imposition of candidates and zoning arrangement are not part of the democratic system. This is because if something is zoned to your family, whosever you like, you put him forward even if he is not the proper person to occupy such a position.

On election nullifications
The truth is that we are still learning the democratic processes. And a child that is born will start crawling before it starts walking. How old is our democracy. We have adopted the American style of presidential system and that has only lasted about nine years. So, you cannot say you will get perfection in running a system within eight years. You do not build a house on a faulty foundation. If something is done wrongly, it is better you correct it on time. It is like putting a bad orange in a bag containing good ones. It will gradually spoil the rest. So, if we are maintaining the rule of law in Nigeria, if those eminent judges discover that there is something done wrongly here, it is their responsibility to correct the wrong things that have been done. That is exactly what is happening all over the country.

You know more tribunal cases are still coming up. They did it in Kogi and the PDP man had a re-run and still won. Since then, have you heard anybody opposing the outcome of the election? In Sokoto, Adamawa, they would also have a re-run. Also in Bayelsa, it is going to be the same thing. Am not saying that at the end of the day, the PDP will still win but in Bayelsa State for instance, they do not have any other party that can seriously challenge the ruling party. If a mistake has been made in electing someone, that mistake must be corrected. That is what the tribunals have been doing across the federation.

Improving elections in Nigeria
I do not need to advise the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). I need to advise the government to make the electoral body completely independent, to make it first charge on the federation account for their funding. If they have the two conditions fulfilled to them, and INEC fails to perform, people can complain but as it is now, it is not proper to blame the INEC. They will hardly be efficient if they continue to be funded by the government.

You can see what the judges are doing because they are not dependent on anybody. Even if Yar’Adua fails tomorrow, they will tell him that he has failed. This is because they are not under his control. If INEC can be like that, it will only remain human errors, which the officials can perfect. The INEC cannot send their managers or officials to all the nooks and crannies of Nigeria. All the state commissioners still have to employ people across the federation.

What INEC should be preparing for 2011 general elections is to train those who are going to handle the exercise. They should not wait till the elections are around the corner and they will start running around to train the officials. When they are trained and they are committed, they know what to do at every point. It is then you will start thinking of having a perfect election .

But mind you, it is not only INEC that is at fault. I was privileged to be on the Electoral Reform Committee which the chairman is the vice president, Goodluck Jonathan. You will see that we have to see a way of checking godfatherism in our electoral process. We also need to play down on money politics. A person who doesn’t even live in Nigeria can come form America, Britain or any part of the world can buy his way to represent the people provided he has the money. If we must move forward, the role of money in our politics should be considerably reduced. We equally need to ensure that the law enforcement agencies distance themselves from the electoral processes.

It is not the function of the security agencies to organize our elections. Part of the electoral reform is that they should serve as only watch dogs. Let us do it the way it is done in other parts of the world without any interference from the security agencies. Then again, we should remove the idea of having 100 political parties. A lot of people form political parties for their own selfish ends. Any political party that does not have a seat in the National assembly should be scrapped. Every party must have a minimum of one or two percent of the seats in the National assembly.

You are not a political party if you don’t have anybody representing you in the National assembly. Those are the reforms going on that we are packaging together for the country to start looking at before the next general elections in 2011. There are many others that I cannot quickly remember now. But it is important not only for INEC but all Nigerians that money, security agencies, godfatherism and putting self before others should be discouraged. If you say you want to serve the interest of the people, why spending the money. The tendency is that when you are elected, you will first of all struggle to recoup your investment. You take the money from the coffers of the government and that is the beginning of corruption and subsequent failure of leaders to deliver dividends of democracy to the people.

Nine years of democracy in Nigeria
Well am a Nigerian myself. But you should know that our democracy did not start nine years ago. Immediately we got our independence from the British, that was when our democracy begun. Despite the military interregnum, our democracy started right after the declaration of Nigeria as an independent state. But talking about average Nigerians, even the scripture made it clear that we cannot do away with the poor people in our society.

There would always be poor people around us and poverty is something that everybody wants to eradicate and it forms part of the manifesto of every political party the world over. But these days, I would say that majority of Nigerians deserve the government they have. Ask me why, when people prepare to sell their votes, they don’t know that they are selling their rights. When the electorate fail to ask for the manifestoes of various political parties, they are already compromising their future. Every politician and party must be able to give to the electorate a manifesto spelling out what he should expect after being elected. That is where the Nigerian electorate have failed. But the politicians also in their own way have failed because they do not keep their promises to the people.

That is why we are where we are today. The system should cater for all and every average Nigerian. We have the national government, state and local governments’ and all these are there to meet the aspirations of the average Nigerians you are talking about. You always refer to the center as the government but it is not supposed to be so. But there is a government in every community.

There is hardly any local government in Nigeria today that does not receive up to N100 million every month. Nigerians don’t ask them what they do with it. My house is in a local government but we clear our dustbin, supply ourselves with water and all such services that should naturally be provided by the councils.
I’m also an average Nigerian. What is my expectation from the government? Am I not supposed to enjoy such amenities like water, electricity, good roads and all that? What am asking is what are the local governments doing to justify the allocation they get every month. They should be over lapping functions among the federal, state and local governments. Do you want to tell me that the system is not good. It is only our people that determined not to make the system work. Our people who are in various positions of power do not want to make the three tiers of government to work.
I don’t believe that the average Nigerian should suffer. Every person in Nigeria should benefit from the resources of the nation.

Assessment of Obasanjo’s administration
Without any bias in mind, the man tried his best for Nigeria. In his performance record, he has surpassed all the previous Heads of State in the nation. As you are sitting here, you can talk to a relation staying in any part of the world. That is in the area of communication which is the bedrock of development and business. Unlike before, Nigeria is no more a debtor nation. Because of our debt status, foreigners are coming to Nigeria to invest. You can see that our capital market is bubbling every day. Anybody investing on shares now makes money because of the confidence that such a company will not go down. So, paying our debts was one of the greatest achievements of Obasanjo. He also liberalized the nation’s aviation sector. You can imagine if the Nigerian airways alone is the only one operating in Nigeria. What would have happened to us?. You can count about 10 airlines now in Nigeria.

So, as the economy develops, the aviation industry is also developing. Without development in the aviation sector and the transportation sector as a whole, we will be no where as a nation. You can see what liberalization has done to the nation’s banking sector. They are rated highly. For instance, Zenith is about the best bank now in Africa. It is part of the liberalization that Dangote is rated as the richest man in Africa too. He was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Was it not Obasanjo who initiated all those policies. The truth is that when you look back the last eight years, you will only be fair on Obasanjo to say that his plus is more than the minus. What people should know is that there is no one that is perfect in this world.

Obasanjo’s weaknesses
The area which was not to my knowledge is the power sector because things were not this bad even last year. This year, the power supply has been very bad but it is not Obasanjo’s fault. The power sector has been neglected for almost 20 years and you cannot turn it around within few years. If you want a turbine, the minimum years to get it out is three years and that depends on the country. The neglect of the power ministry to adequately fund the independent power project is a major problem. They have spent a lot of money in Omotosho plant and just only a small amount to make it functional and bring gas there.

The Omotosho plant would produce 453 megawatts of electricity and it is abandoned there. We have about six others like that without gas, the plants would become obsolete because they have to be functional. They have expiry period. There should be constant maintenance whether they use them or not. I hope that Yar’Adua would be able to do that effectively well and Nigerians are patiently waiting.
When Bola Ige, may his soul rest in peace, was made the minister of power, he thought he could fix the sector in six months. That was what he promised the nation but it was not possible. Let us hope that in few years time, the whole thing will become normal again.

Challenge as South west National chairman of PDP
We all live in a world of challenges and I can’t see anything that is the greatest challenge to me. But I would say that the PDP won five states before my time. So, it was a challenge that I should maintain that record if I cannot increase it. That to me was the greatest challenge. And with God helping me, until today that we are talking, the five states are still intact excluding Lagos State. But may be in 2011, whoever is there now will add Lagos to the record. If you cannot improve on something, you must maintain it.

On future of Nigeria
That is about 12 years from now. Well, it is my aspiration that Nigeria will be a better country if we continue to go steadily like this without leaving any stone unturned. The nation will be better in all areas of endeavour because our areas of lapses are visible. So, if government concentrates on them, they will be easy to address. I believe that government will perfect the system of addressing the people’s needs and Nigeria will be another Garden of Eden.