Doyin Okupe is a former presidential special assistant on media and publicity and former Director General of the Peter Obi Presidential Campaign Organisation in 2023 general election.
In this interview, he spoke on the alignment by Northern elites for power to return to the region in 2027, achievements of President Bola Tinubu’s administration, how the pains experienced by Nigerians as a result of the reforms are temporary. INIOBONG IWOK brings excerpts:
What do you make of the positioning for power in 2027 and the North trying to align that movement in their favour?
The question you’ve asked is not that straightforward. The truth is that there are stakeholders in this country and there are ways that this country has been managed since 1960. The country may not have made giant strides economically and in terms of provisions of what would suit or make the populace comfortable, but in terms of its politics, we have managed it in a way that has kept the country together. I want to remind you that when Olusegun Obasanjo became president, there was an unwritten national consensus that a southwestern person, somebody from the southwest, would-be president because if you look at it, the two candidates for that election were Obasanjo and Olu Falae. So, head and tail, southwest wins. That was the national concession, and it was not for nothing. It was because the stakeholders felt that then, immediately following Abiola’s death who was presumed to have won an election, there was a need to assuage the southwest. It was not a question of northern interest. You see, those who controlled the affairs of this nation in terms of politics before now were more interested in national interest than sectional interest. And our failure to evolve a national elite system is one of the most fundamental problems because Nigeria is stagnating because we all pull in different directions. Now, coming specifically to your question, I see a lot of young people, young minds and brilliant minds from the north coming together, which is a good thing. The North needs its political elites to come together for whatever reason, even if only to shoulder the responsibility of the burden of neglect of the masses for so long. But for 2027, we politicians, and I say that authoritatively, without any fear of contradiction or equivocation, I am part of this system. I am in this system. I understand this system. In 2027, power cannot return to the north yet. That’s not how we do it. We rotate between the north and the south. The North does eight years, at the end of which the south does eight years. So, I’m not saying that Bola Tinubu must be president in 2027, but he’s not going to be a northerner. That is not it, you know. And the fact from what we see in recent times is that the simplest thing that some of our young people in the north consider to be irritable, then the question is, OK, we will show our hand in 2027. We will speak in 2027. You know, this country was brought together by not even coercion, by cooperation, understanding and concession on all fronts. There were times when the North did not have the requisite people to fill positions in the federal system. If there was a concession that the North must be accommodated, you know, we have things like federal character because of that. We’ve had things like, even if you look at JAMB, what somebody in Abia scores and he or she cannot enter university with it, somebody else who is in the north scores less than 20 per cent of that and is admitted because we believe that the north is educationally disadvantaged. This is how we have run this country. We have run this country with a lot of collaboration, with a lot of brotherhood, with a lot of patriotism. It’s not this threatening, like, okay, we’ll do this. If you look at President Babangida, President Obasanjo, Abdusalam Abubakar, General Ibrahim and TY Danjuma, these are some of the people who have managed the affairs of this country in terms of political balancing for the last 25 years. They’re growing lesser in influence, they’re dwindling in consideration, and they’re advancing in age. But unfortunately, and I regret to say this, they have not been able to raise an elite class, a younger group that can effectively take over from them along the same platforms on which we have grounded this polity that it is the way it is today.
The North has said that if they were to field a southern candidate in 2027, that candidate would also want to do eight years, which would breach that eight-year rotation plan for the North to fulfil its presidential allocation. What do you think of that?
It’s a political quagmire. If the North decides to field another southern candidate against Bola Tinubu, then the North will have shot itself in the leg. Don’t forget, this is a third-world country. Let us assume that you bring a new person, and he wins. There’s no agreement he will make with you. He will not spend another eight years. So, you just extended the lifespan of the rotation to the south by another four years. What has Bola Tinubu done? Let’s come to terms with this. What has Bola Tinubu done? Bola Tinubu has come with very serious reforms that will take the country away from the situation which it has been undergoing for the past eight to ten years. I will say it here because this is the truth. This government has not been able to articulate this position. But those of us who are watching from the outside can see it. As of the time that the Bola Tinubu administration was coming into power, the country was finished and was socially and economically finished. We were spending 98 per cent of our revenue and 98 cents on every dollar was being used for debt servicing. We were subsidising fuel. We were subsidising power. We were subsidising virtually everything. There was severe arbitrage in the foreign exchange market. Now, so what did the Buhari administration do? They just went ahead and printed and continued to print money, continued to print money until they printed up to 30 trillion naira. So, Nigerians did not feel it because the money was still being available, although it was not backed by anything. There are a few countries that have done this in the past. So, it’s not a matter of Nigeria being rich. Venezuela is one of the largest reservoirs of crude oil in the world. The poverty in Venezuela is worse than here. And I will show you something. If you look at 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollars, it is probably worth about $15, $16, or $17. Now, this is what Bola Tinubu has saved Nigeria from. If Bola Tinubu wanted to be popular and wanted to sing and all that, he would just go back and continue what was being done before, continue to print money until God forbid, we approach this level. I have had people complain, which is legitimate, that the dollar is N1,700, it could have been worse. It could have been N17,000 and that fuel is N1,000. It could have been worse. It could have been N3,000 or N4,000 per litre if these reforms had not been in place and had checked the escalating hyperinflation which we entered into after Bola Tinubu’s administration. It is wholesomely unfair, and I’m almost tempted to say wicked for anybody to judge this administration after 18 months.
There is no debate that the cost-of-living crisis is happening and it’s biting very hard. Manufacturing is collapsing and economic losses are growing and have been growing for the last nine and a half years of an All Progressives Congress (APC) government. What is your take?
You are on the wrong premise to be saying nine and a half years of APC government, I, Doyin Okupe, when APC was formed, publicly declared it a conglomerate of strange bedfellows. I was laughed at. I was coined by many people. But today it is quite clear that APC was made up of various political fragments, Congress of Progressive Change (CPC), Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and others. And these were immiscible liquids. Yes, it is indeed APC government. But in this country, we will have to be able to be more discerning. Bola Tinubu cannot be held responsible for the government before him. Yes, people have argued that he was the principal character that brought Buhari. When Buhari was brought up as a candidate, more than half of the population of Nigeria jubilated. So, we all assumed that the general was going to do well. The Yoruba people say that; if the masquerade has already given birth to his child and the child cannot dance, that’s the problem of the child, not the problem of the masquerade that is birthing it.
So, what you also said on the issue of manufacturing, on the issue of foreign direct investment and all that, recent events have proven that to be wrong. Today, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) came up with their report to show that there’s a three-point something per cent growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). And the manufacturing that you mentioned was part and parcel of that growth.
There was more growth in the manufacturing sector in the last quarter of this year than in the previous year. And the foreign direct investment is also increasing. And let me tell you, I told you that Buhari printed N30 trillion, which attracted about N7 trillion in interest. That N7 trillion interest has been paid by Bola Tinubu. The airlines were being owed about $7 billion. And it was travelling by Nigerians would have been crippled or Lagos to London would have come to something like N12 million for the economy. But this administration in less than one year has sorted that out. These reforms that are in place are beginning to show signs of productivity. So, when you go into the generalization of nine and a half years of APC government that is not true. Let us agree. Let us be factual. Let us know that this is where this administration started. This is where they say they’re going. This is how far they’re going. And then we support the administration to achieve its objective not to castigate and bring it down and demonize it.
The numbers you’re quoting mean absolutely nothing for the tens of millions of Nigerians who have been pushed into extreme poverty and for a lot of the people who are living on the street, what do you think can change that and get everyone to rally around the Tinubu government?
The lifespan of an administration in the first instance is four years, only four years. If you have had a rottenness that was unabated for more than eight years, do you think it can be fixed in eight months? It cannot. I mean, I feel that whoever wanted to run for president after a Buhari administration, I mean, must have lost his mind because why are we developing selective amnesia, especially we elites? We had a country that for eight years was socially, economically, and financially unattended to. And yet, in all those eight years, there were no threats. There were no complaints. There was silence from everywhere. Everywhere was in a state of acquiescence. Now somebody has taken over this rottenness, and before he can even sit down on the seat, you just mentioned now that there’s a lot of youth restlessness in the North. The North has been having an increasing number of out-of-school children for the last nine years or more. Today, there are about 20 million out-of-school children. The almajiri schools that President Goodluck Jonathan built were abandoned and discarded. Now, if those almajiri schools had been allowed to absorb some of the students on the street, the restlessness and restiveness would not have been at this height. Now, can you, in all honesty, be true to yourself and to your conscience and say Bola Tinubu caused all this? That is not true. That is not correct. I was telling you that we’ve got a reformer in the villa, somebody who is not desperate about power and who is not desperate about glamour, somebody who says, I have stepped out and I’m not going to step back. I take responsibility and I’m going to try to reform this country and he’s doing it. Lee Kuan Yew took 31 years to reform Singapore.
Wearing your hat as a former special adviser to two previous presidents, Obasanjo and Jonathan, do you think that in the wider context, opportunities and prospects for Nigerians have increased or decreased since that time?
I am a Christian, I’m an evangelist, and I am a witness for Christ. I am not going to stand here for any reason, I do not desire to be a minister or commissioner or anything. So, I have little to gain. My point is just that I want the country to move forward and succeed. And I’m not rapidly opposed to the gentleman that is there right now. The truth of the matter is that opportunities have long gone, flown out of perspective. It is now with the pillars that have been laid down that new opportunities are now being created. Do you want to talk about the children who could not go to school because their parents did not have money? It will have been worse now.
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