Your 25 chieftaincy titles bear testimony to the love people have for you after you left power.  But that does not seem to be Obasanjo’s lot after he left power. What do you think is responsible for this?

As I said the problems in Nigeria as at when he took over have more than doubled now.  He seemed to have added to Nigeria’s problems by not getting his priorities right. He did a lot of good things. One of the things he did very well was the EFCC and the ICPC. Nobody can dispute that, and I know that that record will be there for a lifetime. But  on the social side, some areas got more than others did. The Yoruba said he didn’t do much for them while he was doing a lot for other areas. Naturally, they would complain. Even the road from Otta to Abeokuta has not been finished.  The road from Lagos to Ibadan is considered the worst in the world. Lagos as the economic headquarters of Nigeria should have the best of roads, electricity, and there should be water at all times. Obviously, all of these have not been done. Maybe he was annoyed at them for not voting for him in his first term. But they tried to reconcile with him by going into an agreement with him that they would vote for him on the condition that he was not to touch ‘touch’ their governors. As we all witnessed, he didn’t abide by the terms of that agreement, unfortunately.   We in the Yoruba Council of Elders, YCE, took that decision because we felt that if we did not vote for him for a second term, the next time the Yoruba would get close to power would be the next 48 years because of the zoning formula in the country. 

Some people have said that the voiding of the elections of governors in the present time is an indictment that the 2007 elections were flawed.

Some people in this country are not being honest. Indeed, some of the elections were not properly conducted, and if we don’t amend the laws, and keep its priorities and the security of this country, we would continue to have problems. What we now is to get a proper INEC, possibly including al the Representatives of the states in the Federation. Secondly, the parties should vet their candidates before putting them forward as candidates. Third, Nigerians should be more united and supportive of their leaders as we had when our first leaders took over. Our leaders fought together to attain independence. All, the INEC laws must be put right for normalcy, unity and trust back to the country. We must reconstitute our constitution, re write from scratch. We must not patch it. Let us realize that there are three types of ruling: the military, parliamentary and the presidential. Because of the need to have some kind of opposition in the apparatus of governance, we went for the presidential but I can assure you that it is very expensive.  Seventy percent of the nation’s earnings go into the payment of salaries and allowances; even the remaining thirty percent that should go into developmental projects still find their way into private pockets.   So we have to have a rethink. Would it not be better if we  go back to the  parliamentary  system of government where we can all be involved in the development of our states? We cant go back to the regions now because no one will agree. Then, the local governments after the states: responsibilities must be given to the traditional rulers who own the areas. Traditional leaders own the local government areas – they know about the bad roads, lack of water and hospitals and as such can easily approach government and articulate their problems. I think that some of these local things should be left with traditional rulers. There’s nothing wrong with traditional rulers having some kind of rapport with their counterparts from other areas.

Would that not in some ways drag them into politics?

Not likely. That is not politics and that’s why I’m proposing a re-writing of the constitution. If you think about politics all the time, the country will not make much progress. You don’t force yourself on the people, they put him there. Now, the state, they play politics. This is because you work the federal government who owns the money, they are between the federal government and the local government. They supervise the local government, they work with the federal too because they get money for development from the federal government. Just like in those days, when they had this parliamentary system in this country, there was no permanent parliament in region, but now, people in the parliament go for about four or five holidays in a year.  So can’t we go back to the old system? And there was more efficiency that we have then now, what we have now is that people just go to the parliament to talk, and if there is a project to handle for the people, they go on holidays.

What efforts are you making to introduce some of these ideas into the bus

There was one conference we went to in 1995 that Obasanjo called us to. He said it was a constitutional conference. That could have been a good place to resolve a lot of the problems in this country. The problems in this country could have been discussed there, sent to parliament and  resolved amicably.  Everybody must come together, like what PRONACO did in bringing everybody together.

But PRONACO had met and submitted their finding to the National Assembly. After that do we still need the National Assembly?

Of course, yes. PRONACO did not represent the interest of all Nigerians.

They said they represented ethnic nationalities

They can call it anything. That in fact does not mean that they alone can send memoranda to the National Assembly. If we ‘sectionise’ reasons for the progress of the country, we will find that we will still be making the same mistakes. If you find a group of people sending government a memo and they receive attention, you must find ways to send yours too.

Do you think the war against corruption in Nigeria is winnable?

I’ve always told people that this generation is the only generation that can solve the problems of this generation. The next generation, that is, our children’s will not have the time to do that. So this generation should work hard and work tirelessly without thinking of themselves, and for the interest of the country, at least to solve most of them.  If we wait for the next generation to attend to some of these problems, I think we’ll be making a mistake.

When you view the management of the economy of this nation, do you think we are on course to join the big nations in the global economy?

People keep saying Vision 2020. I think we should start Vision 2020 now. I wonder how we can join those big economies when there are no roads, no water, and no electricity. Certain things must be put right before we get to that Vision 2020. Nigeria must learn to stick to certain countries like the United States and Britain in our overall way of doing international business. I remember when we  were close to the British, we had durability of goods. But now that we are  going the way of China, you would discover that we may get things fast enough but they may not last as when we did business with the British.

In the need to have foreign alliances, most Western nations have always put themselves first at the expense of Nigeria.

All nations of the world do that, even the relatively young ones. Yar’Adua has been in China having a lot of conferences and signing a lot of papers. What we should do is that we should form alliances and try to do businesses with all of them. But in the end, we should be able to evaluate the ones that are good, and send the ones we don’t think are good for us away.  

There were many stories about the owambe parties you used to throw when you were the governor of the Western region. You seem to have loved to enjoy yourself.

First of all I want to say that everything depends on what you want in life. I think I have lived a good life. Look at my grey hairs, I’ve had them for years like my father before me had grey hairs. People tell me I’m 80. I don’t even know that I’m 80, that is, I don’t feel 80. I have had a good home; I live well and I think it would be very difficult for anyone to say they lived better than I have lived. Every Sunday, I bring friends here to eat pounded yam here with me, and that’s because I cannot eat alone on Sundays.

Now let me tell you about the Owambes. When I went to the West as governor, it was very ‘dark’ and in turmoil Awolowo was in jail, Akintola had been killed, most of the leaders had been killed or in hiding. There was darkness in the West.  I didn’t know the people well, together with the kind of politics that they played. I had to open up the politics of the West, and bring the people closer to me one way or the other so that I could study them. When I brought them to me, whether I knew them or not, they were able to confide in me and tell me the problems that they faced from different angles. Then I did some comparison. If I found them to be cogent, I swung into action immediately. That was the number one secret of the owambe. Secondly, the plan was to use the galas to bring them nearer the government and give them a sense of belonging.  I visited them sometimes and if it was impossible to discuss with them there, I sent vehicles to bring them to government house and had lunch with them. Before long, word had gone around that I was doing a good job. That was why some people began to call me owambe, and I loved it. Some of them who used the term derogatively, were sometimes more owambe than myself at the owambe parties. Owambe was just a method to bring people to me and I think I succeeded politically, administratively and  socially in that era.