By Kemi Kasumu, General Editor

Patriarch of the Fawehinmi Dynasty, who is also the Arogbo of Ondo Kingdom, Chief Olusola Ademiko Fawehinmi, 85, engaged in a 22-minute interview at his GRA home in Ondo on Monday June 11, says with what President Buhari has done for June 12 fighters like MKO Abiola, Baba Gana Kingibe and, his own brother, Gani Fawehinmi, he has made Nigerians more civilized to the outside world as, now, more Nigerians would want to sacrifice for Nigeria as they now know that their sacrifices will not be in vain. The senior Ondo chief said, “I cannot thank Buhari enough.  He made us proud.  The Fawehinmi has been a great name but Gani added 40 percent more to the name,” He says and then steps further to talk about some other national issues particularly as regards the ongoing Saraki travails, Obasanjo, restructuring and the attitude of Yoruba towards it. Excerpts:

As for what President Buhari has done, he has done it right and he made us more civilized as Nigerian people because that election on June 12, 1993 was first and only of its kind in Nigerian electoral history.  It was like no election (compared to how politicians take elections today) because it was so free and fair and that man, Babangida, dashed that Hope ’93 and deprived Nigerians the opportunity to be ruled by the President they voted for.

Barrister Mohammed Fawehinmi, son of late Chief Gani Fawehinmi, has since written President Muhammadu Buhari accepting and thanking him for the eventual honour done to his father.  As the Head of the larger Fawehinmi Dynasty at root in Ondo town here, what is your reaction to the presidential honour?

The presidential honour has raised the entire Fawehinmi in Nigeria and in the Diaspora taller and we are proud!  We are happy! We are immensely grateful to Buhari.

Do not forget that Olusegun Obasanjo was there for eight years and PDP was solidly there for 16 years.  Nobody thought about it.  Those who must open their mouths to talk anything just to show they do not appreciate good intention, they call it a political game but I call it a political masterstroke!

You can see the acceptance in the eyes of everybody so much that even some PDP politicians had unconsciously jubilated over it before they came back to their politicking senses and now they say it is a game gift. Haba! Just listen to this analogy: I was almost being amputated but somebody treated me.  And now they are saying he treated me just because he may tomorrow take garri from me.  And I say no, no, no.

You see, there they are thugs and touts.  PDP!?  Unless they go and get another name for themselves and choose different characters completely, they are gone and have gone for good!  So, they are just like somebody, who is not a swimmer and, who falls into the river and he is trying hard to get out by holding on to anything thinking that it will help him, yet to no avail.  That is what they are.

As for what President Buhari has done, he has done it right and he made us more civilized as Nigerian people because that election on June 12, 1993 was first and only of its kind in Nigerian electoral history.  It was like no election (compared to how politicians take elections today) because it was so free and fair and that man, Babangida, dashed that Hope ’93 and deprived Nigerians the opportunity to be ruled by the President they voted for.

And this man now (Obasanjo) put there by a group of the same Babangida, who was there for eight years doing nothing, has been going up and down talking any how.  Is he the only person in that group?  Why is he not keeping quiet and allowing the man that God has put there now (Buhari) to do his own job?  Abdulsalaam is also there, up till now, have you heard him say a word?  Instead, he goes about appealing for peace everywhere.  That is an elder.  That is a good citizen of Nigeria!  Not Obasanjo, who is just only playing for himself because he wants to continue to be recognized as the only President of Nigeria while thinking that everybody else is a fool whereas, he is not fit to be a student of Obafemi Awolowo.  Not just that, Obasanjo made sure that he would never do anything in favour of Awolowo.  The same way he made sure that he worked against MKO Abiola’s presidency just because he wanted to protect himself.

Still on Gani Fewehinmi

Coming back to my own Gani Fawehinmi, to Buhari, I say we are grateful.  I am speaking as the Head of Fawehinmi dynasty today home and abroad and I cannot thank Buhari enough.  He made us proud.  The Fawehinmi has been a great name but Gani added 40 percent more to the name.  We cherished him.  We missed him in no small way.  Somebody says the President is doing it for votes.  Why didn’t you do it 25 years ago or 19 years ago so that you could also win votes?

We are thankful to Buhari because by this, he has made Nigeria much more stabilized.  He has made Nigerians more civilized to the outside world.  Now they will look at us and say, “Oh, at least, working for these people will not be in vain”.  As for those who are criticising the honour of Kingibe, well, don’t forget that during Abacha he went to take position as minister.  But, like my people would say, when you work with good people, you eat with good people.  But he was never against the struggle.

As for Gani Fawehinmi, a dogged fighter, we will continue to miss him.  There was a time he stood in front of a tanker and say, “Go on and start shooting!”  And he was always ready to go to prison as he always packed his baggage and put it by his side saying because they would soon knock the door.  And I respect and doff my hat for the wife, Ganiyat, who stood by him wholeheartedly.  I respect her so much and she is holding the house tightly and carrying the flag flying.  To Buhari once again I say the whole Fawehinmi, home and abroad, are entirely grateful to him and we are forever grateful for what he has done.

That Saraki is still remaining in that office is a stain to Nigeria as a country, a stain to the Kwara constituency where he comes from and a stain to the legislative chamber where he presides.  Somebody was accused of serious criminal offence and corruption, he is yet to give explanation the way he was asked to give it by the police, and he is still so proud to be called number three citizen of a country as great as Nigeria?  It is uncalled for!  It is sad!  All he can do there is to wage war against the President using the same Dino Melaye who, not only also carrying an equal size of criminal cases on his own neck but also, for three years has achieved nothing for his Kogi constituency.

There is this thing about your being a potential Osemawe in the Fawehinmi family.  How true?

Well, first and foremost, I am a senior chief here, the Chief Arogbo of Ondo Kingdom.  It is not a high chief but it is the next to high chief and hereditary in nature because you must be royal, you have to be borne by either a female or male child of an ex-Oba to get that title.  It is different here in the sense that only in Ondo that daughter of Osemawe who marries somebody else, her children cannot be Osemawe.  Only the male line can be.  That is the problem there.

Okay, automatically, asides that fact, you would have qualified for the Ondo highest seat of Ondo royalty?

Of course, more than qualified! In fact on my both sides I am royal; mother and father.

So we can say it is a pity you by fate are a royal blood that cannot make it to royalty?

No.  I am not going to say it is pity because, indeed, it narrows down on who can be Osemawe.  If you have it from female and male sides, then you have choice to pick but now that it is narrowed down, you have limited people who can be an Oba in Ondo here.  That is the problem.  There are so many eminent people borne by female children of ex-Osemawe who can be made the Oba but because their links to the throne are female, they cannot be.

Let’s quickly touch on your person having lived all your years as a Lagosian….?

(Cuts in) I am a confirmed Lagosian.  And our slogan, “Eko Onibaje, Obaje ti!” stands (Laughs).  But some 13, 14 years ago I decided to move back home in Ondo here and I have continued to find peace with myself, my people and my environment.  You can see the serenity of my compound; breezy, cool and trees all around, no noise.  How I wish it is like that for everybody that at your old age you move to somewhere peaceful.

I am asking this question because people like you who are from other states are now political godfathers in Lagos.  Does your moving back home in Ondo mean your disinterest in struggling the control of Lagos with those who are actually Lagos indigenes?

No.  When I was there as a young man, for all the National Assembly, State Assembly members, councilors and other political players in our part of Lagos we were leaders because they would come to us for advice and they respected and still respect us.

This is why forever I will always respect Bola Tinubu.  He is dutiful, intelligent and he is a tactician.  He is a statesman per excellence not a politician.  What a lot of people don’t know about Bola Tinubu is that he wants the best for the Yoruba people.

Awolowo did wonderfully well and he would therefore win an election anytime, any day in the South West but he had one problem connecting to the North.  Even in the days of yore when he was doing his free education, he had a percentage for the North.  That was the South West money.  So, he meant very well for Nigeria but he just couldn’t link up with the North whereas he loved them. Tinubu has improved on the legacy of Awolowo by his ability to link the politics of the South West with that of the North.

So, all these people making noise here and there about restructuring saying if we don’t have restructuring now we will die are just making empty threat.

Would the South West actually die if there is no restructuring?

We won’t die.  You see, no Yoruba man would say he does not want a change or improvement on existing structure, but it is not by war.  We want change but there is residual power given to each state, if you release some of the things we can do for ourselves and we share the money equally.  But it is not by war.

If you say ensuring restructuring should not be by war, during the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) government of Goodluck Jonathan, the 2014 confab that he organised was said to have planned a peaceful way of restructuring without war.  Why would you say that also failed?

Jonathan’s way of restructuring is not what we want.  He picked his political friends, whom he gave money and even despite the fact that they gave him the report one year before he left office, he could not authenticate it.  He couldn’t sign it!  Now this man, President Muhammadu Buhari got there and the same people are agitating saying, “If you don’t restructure now, we will die.”  Tell me how we are going to die now without doing their bid by Buhari if they failed to die under the same man who gave them huge amount of money and who should have been able to do their bidding.

I have always said it that to say what one region has the other region must have it, what the Igbo want, Yoruba must also have it.  It has never worked that way.  If the Igbo had got 60, 70 percent of this present administration, you wouldn’t hear a word from them.  From Jonathan administration they got all that they wanted and so they kept quiet.  But this present government does not believe in that.  Of course Buhari needs to do little, little things in his own way, but he has allowed the things to go round even giving them their own dues but Igbo don’t want it that way and that is why you hear all of the noise that they make.

Some Afenifere leaders are working with the Igbo now to achieve either a break up of Nigeria or get the restructuring done in their own way it looks.  What if they achieve it?

Look, Yoruba had worked with Igbo before now even with their fathers.  We had done it with Zik during the Awolowo time but at the tail end, they disappointed us.  That is what they always do.  It is not new.  That was where Ogunde came in to say “Yoruba Ronu”, that is think deeply.

Those Yoruba leaders talking are complaining that the Buhari Administration has not been fair to them and that is why they are going to team up with the Igbo and are therefore even following Olusegun Obasanjo to unseat the President come 2019.  What about that?

But there is no reason for that.  I mean this is the best time for Yoruba in any government of Nigeria so far.  What else do we want?  We have got the Vice President, we got, power, works and housing, we got communications, we got health, we got finance.  And if the Yoruba don’t mess up, come 2023 if a Yoruba man comes out and wants to become President, the whole North will rise up and back him.  Of course, it pays them and this is what Bola Tinubu is working for.  But those who are agitating don’t know what is good for the Yoruba.  Ayo Adebanjo, Falae and others in Afenifere.  They don’t know.

Afenifere was not a political party but a regional elders’ forum.  But now they have turned it to political party and they are the ones who choose who they want and lord him on the entire Yoruba race and then they will say, “This is not the way Obafemi Awolowo used to do it.”  But Awolowo had done his bit and he left his foot on the sand of time, gold!  We can never forget him and his policies will keep coming to us always.  What did you do to improve on the existing legacies of Awolowo?  Go and ask them.  This is what Bola Tinubu saw and they will never see it.  They didn’t see because they didn’t want it.

Those in the Afenifere, don’t you think they go political bent on removing President Muhammadu Buhari because of the claim that they have seen no change since he came to power three years ago?

If you say things have not changed or are not changing, it means you are either a joker or blind.  To take bribe now you have to think more than twice.  President Buhari is fighting corruption and they say, “Oh! his anti-corruption war is one-sided!”  Come to think of it, they say you are a thief and you say, “The man sitting by me is also a thief.”  But you are the thief we have got now.  Answer for it!  Leave this man.  We will get him also if he is truly a thief.

And they come again to say, “Ha! It is only PDP you are prosecuting, so this is not prosecution but persecution.”  Look, bring your facts about members of other party who were not part of your looting during the time your party was in power.  But in the meantime, you come and answer your own first of all.  They can’t bring their facts because, people who were not in government with you during the time of your lootings, and you were not even that friendly with opposition anyway to say “come and shot”, how can you now go to them and say, “You are a thief”, whose money did they steal?  And who is that Judge that will judge that kind of matter?

Haven’t we now seen in Buhari Administration how a court judge has been convicted? Haven’t we seen how former governor has been sentenced to years of imprisonment?  Serving and retired Generals have been arrested and tried for corruption.  Even the number three citizen in the country is being questioned.  Yes! Nobody ever thought Nigeria would ever grow to doing anything like that.  And you say things are not changing?  I don’t really understand how some people think sometimes.

Finally, as a senior citizen, how do you view the claim by some lawmakers of Bukola Saraki group saying the main misdoing of the government of Buhari is that it is fight only those holding contrary opinions to its?

I almost forgot to talk about it.  You see, that Saraki is still remaining in that office is a stain to Nigeria as a country, a stain to the Kwara constituency where he comes from and a stain to the legislative chamber where he presides.  Somebody was accused of serious criminal offence and corruption, he is yet to give explanation the way he was asked to give it by the police, and he is still so proud to be called number three citizen of a country as great as Nigeria?  It is uncalled for!  It is sad!  All he can do there is to wage war against the President using the same Dino Melaye who, not only also carrying an equal size of criminal cases on his own neck but also, for three years has achieved nothing for his Kogi constituency.  Well, the house is full of people who are facing trials for one criminal case or corruption case and another.  Anytime Saraki was to appear in court, the whole Senate is shutdown.  All they want to do is to shut Nigeria down so that they can return to doing things the old way because they think Nigeria is their father’s cocoa farm.

Too much of impunity and they are the ones who are accusing others of same.  They even steal the money they don’t need.  When you budget N1 trillion and you steal 60 percent of it, how can a system grow under that situation?  This anti-corruption method is not enough.  We want to see more of those corrupt former governors in prison and we want more of them who are in the National Assembly in prison, as recompense for their atrocities then and now.  If this government is given another term, Nigeria will be much improved and people like Obasanjo will be shut up.  Let him go about preaching peace, away from what he is doing now.  He has a Ph.D in theology.  Let him start impacting the lessons of the Bible because all his barking now is not useful.  Thank you.