Chief Dele Momodu, publisher of Ovation International Magazine and former presidential candidate on the platform of the National Conscience Party, NCP, recently declared his intention to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023 on the platform of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP.

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 In an interview with Vanguard, he spoke on the state of the nation, his aspiration and why Nigerians must retrieve the country from the control of the All Progressives Congress, APC among others.

By Olayinka Ajayi

You are one of those who were forced into exile during the June 12 struggle; you also contested the presidential election before, what is prompting you this time?

When I did it the first time, I was hoping that Nigerians were truly tired of the two mainstream political parties at that time. But to my utter consternation, I realised that it is a fallacy. Then, I went back to study my political science and I realised that it’s almost virtually impossible for any candidate to win a national election from a fringe, local political party.

What do you mean?

With a party that does not have nationwide structure, there is no way you can win. Your platform must be as big as your ambition. It is possible for local parties to win councillorships, House of Representatives seats or even Senate like the case of Dr. Olusegun Mimiko in Ondo State who won governorship on the platform of the Labour Party, LP.

If you remember, I started on the platform of the Labour Party. Even the LP chickened out; they said they were not interested, then. I moved to what I like to call the late Gani Fawehinmi’s party,  the National Conscience Party, NCP. I thought Nigerians would rise up against their so-called oppressors but that didn’t happen.

I also went back to an old book I read in school by a Brazilian author called Paulo Freire, titled: Pedagogy of the oppressed.  He theorised that the oppressed man, loves only one man, his oppressor, the oppressed man respects only one man, his oppressor, the oppressed man has only one dream in his life, to become an oppressor.

So, when you look at the situation in Nigeria, you will realise that a lot of Nigerians believe Nigeria will never change. In fact, if there is anything I ever encountered is self doubt. Many told me not to waste my time and resources that the cabal will not allow me, the owners of Nigeria will not allow me.

You know sometimes, it dampens my spirit but I am also an incurable optimist. Once in a while, I could be pessimistic but by and large, I am an optimist. And history has taught me that no nation has ever lived perpetually in stupidity, and Nigeria will not be an exemption. One day, our stupidity would come to an end; our fear of the oppressor would come to an end.

When I lost the 2011 election, I had about 26,400 voters; most of it was from the North surprisingly. It also taught me a lesson that when a northerner believes in you, he doesn’t care if he will be the only voter. They vote on principle. Of course we have seen rigging in Nigeria when we saw underage people vote but by and large, I respect northerners.

During my primaries, they made it happen because the night before our primaries in NCP, I heard some of my co-contestants were going from room to room but the rumour was that maybe they were trying to infiltrate and compromise the delegates but I gave the delegates two copies of Ovation magazines each in their rooms. Everybody thought I had no chance, but the North voted en bloc for me.

If you had lost an election on that scale, you can easily be discouraged. But I realised that the Buhari we supported and thought he was going to be the change agent turned out to be worse than the PDP government that we managed to sack.

It’s very difficult to sack an incumbent government. But we did it. I regret it and I am full of apologies. I apologised publicly to Nigerians that I made a mistake supporting this regime.

Unfortunately, Buhari’s regime is not only about non-performance but also the near disintegration of Nigeria.

If there’s anything I have against Buhari, I don’t care if he doesn’t know about economy, he’s not an economist. I don’t care if he had not worked on electricity, he won’t be the first. I don’t care if he has not been able to tar roads, we have seen it before!

However, since the civil war, we have never been in this state of near-disintegration. In fact, I think it’s only God that is tying us together. We could easily have exploded in the last two years and would have caused monumental disaster to the world because of our population. Nigerians would have spilled in different directions like locusts and the world would have suffered heavily for it. Maybe God is a Nigerian so we have managed to keep going.

In the last election in 2019, I supported Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. Unfortunately, that is the downside of democracy. There are no guarantees that elections would produce the best candidate. In fact, more often than not, elections always produce a candidate who is worse than the previous.

So,  I sat down and tried to look at the way forward, now that Buhari got a second term and Atiku would be about 77 approaching 80 if he decides to contest again, many of the governors except a few, have not performed up to expectations. Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State has been phenomenal.

A lot of people underrated him when he first came, they thought he would be unserious and unable to perform but he performed spectacularly. If the Federal Government had done half of what Wike did in Rivers, across Nigeria, by now, we will be begging Buhari not to go! Wike is the best governor we have in Nigeria today.

I realised that if care was not taken, we are going to have another election and the same people who have put us in crises are going to come back. Nigeria is the only country where you find a student who has failed an exam, insisting he must be promoted to the next class. That is the best analogy for what is going on in Nigeria. And I liken myself to a parent who is complaining while watching Miss Nigeria, that Miss Nigeria is too ugly while having his beautiful daughters at home.

So if Miss Nigeria is too ugly, how come you didn’t bring your daughter to compete? That is what brought me back to politics. I tried Buhari, no joy, I tried Atiku, and he didn’t win. Another problem is that we choose people based on primordial sentiments like religious and ethnic permutations instead of their performance, and accomplishments.

But some are still of the view that the system is faulty and not the election itself….

Election is a means not an end. When people say the system is faulty, it is like saying your computer is faulty, your computer is not going to computerise itself. It’s what you fill into your computer that the computer would bring out.

If you study the history of the world, it takes only one visionary leader at the top to change a country. In Singapore, we read about Lee Kuan Yew; in China we read about Zedong Mao; in South Africa, we read about Nelson Mandela, who was in prison for about 27 years; in Tanzania, we read about the Nwanimu, Dr. Julius Nyerere; in Ghana, we read about Samuel Nkrumah; in Zambia, we read about Dr. Kenneth Kaunda; and in Kenya, we read about Jomo Kenyatta. If you come to Nigeria, we remember Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Owelle of Onitsha, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe; and the Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello.

Who would you spot as such a leader in this generation?

We had one in MKO Abiola, we wasted it. We have suffered 29 years and it is going to be 30 years in 2023.

 But some watchers of our political landscape see such traits in Asiwaju Bola Tinubu…

No! Not at all! Asiwaju Bola Tinubu is a career politician. Abiola wasn’t a career politician. Asiwaju practises politics as a vocation full-time. He has not done anything since 1993 other than politics.

You recently commented on the owners of Nigeria, did you consult with them before taking this decision again?

I didn’t have to consult with them. They are people who know me very well as a principled man. There was a time that one of the owners, former Military President Ibrahim Babangida called me and jokingly said, ‘Dele, I have been reading you religiously, one of these days I am afraid that Buhari may decide to arrest you,’ and I laughed. I am very tolerant. Under Babangida, I was in detention.

I was the first person to be arrested after June 12. Between July and August, I was in detention at Alagbon. When General Sani  Abacha came, I was one of those forced into exile and I never took it out on any of his children. I cannot claim to be a Christian if I cannot forgive those who have wronged me 70×70 times.

So, to address the issues bedeviling Nigeria today, we need a leader who has such a good heart. There’s a need to integrate ourselves into our country.

With your work and worth, do you see PDP giving you its presidential ticket in 2023?

I always tell people that there’s no party that would give you a ticket on a platter, you have to work for it. And I am working very hard for it.

Today, I have attracted more positive news to PDP than anybody else in PDP in the last seven years. Since I joined, I have been encouraging the young ones to register, I have been encouraging them to go take their PVC, to make sure that the true change they’ve been asking for, I am the one to bring it. You won’t believe that some Nigerians are already contributing money on their own. They said they don’t want any billionaire to hijack the movement.

What would be your charge to Nigerians ahead of the 2023 elections?

Nigerians should keep hope alive for the first time in a long time that hope is coming again. It has taken us about 30 years to get it back, and we must get it back. We are living miserably at the moment, we need that joy and we must get it back. That joy giver is Dele Momodu.

Do you believe in a restructured Nigeria?

When people talk about restructuring, I don’t like semantics, there’s no time in Nigeria where we don’t have project hopes. People just come up with some big terminologies. But if you ask 10 people here to talk about restructuring, you will see 10 different interpretations and misinterpretations. What I believe is causing it is the fact that lots of people are frustrated with the system.

Some of my friends that are saying if it’s not Yoruba nation or Biafra, it’s nothing, are now singing a new song since I joined the race. Today, if you asked Igbo to choose between lots of their leaders and Dele Momodu, they would choose me because when their own leaders could not defend them or talk to Nnamdi Kanu, I was doing that. Everything will restructure itself the moment you have a fair-minded leader. For me, the biggest restructuring is how we waste money on our politicians.

Still on Tinubu, he has trained other political leaders….

That’s politics. MKO was not a politician; Donald Trump is not a politician. So you can’t compare them. Even if you compare Asiwaju and Vice- President Yemi Osinbajo, Osinbajo is not a politician. That is the perfect example.

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But Osinbajo got into office through the platform of Asiwaju. Asiwaju may have investments but I have never heard of him as chairman of any known organisation. Abiola was Chairman, Concord Newspaper, Abiola Farms, Abiola Babes, ACM Nigeria, ITT and many more. So there’s a difference. Abiola invested heavily across Nigeria while Asiwaju has only dominated the politics of Lagos.

With Tinubu’s dominance of Lagos, does PDP have a chance in the state even with the defection of Abdulaziz Olajide Adediran, Jandor from APC to PDP?

 There are people who believe the stranglehold of Asiwaju in Lagos must end. Some Lagosians feel that for a very long time, they have been short-changed by outsiders. Everybody says Lagos is no man’s land.

The people of Lagos feel disadvantaged; they believe the time has come to end the Asiwaju empire in Lagos. If they succeed, someone has to try and that’s what Jide is doing and I am very impressed with him. It’s not easy to take on the behemoth of Bola Tinubu in Lagos. But again if you read history, you will discover that every empire has an end.

Do you see Jandor and the Lagos PDP ending Tinubu’s political empire?

I don’t think anybody is infallible. Anything can happen in politics. Mood is a factor in politics. If the mood that I see in Lagos persists, anything can happen.

Did you and Asiwaju have a fall-out?

No. I didn’t fall out with anybody but I have always been a very principled leader. I remember when the Asiwaju and Saraki group had their fight, after the coming of Buhari in 2015, I stood solidly with Saraki and lots of people asked if I am fighting Asiwaju, I said no. It was published in Vanguard.

I said I am Asiwaju’s boy but in Saraki, he’s wrong. They had a partnership in APC, CPC got number one, Buhari, that was their compensation, is like three people forming a company and when the dividend comes, shareholders are sharing what belongs to them; the Asiwaju got Vice-President Osinbajo, as their dividend. And the third person that joined the union, you said they had no right. Where do they do things like that? They said Asiwaju wanted his person.

There should be equity and fair play. Many said Saraki gave me money and I laughed because Saraki doesn’t have the kind of money Asiwaju has. If I wanted an office in Lagos, I would have had an office. Asiwaju and I were in exile, we lived practically together for three years. We did lots together for three years. I am closer to him than any of the other people. I am sure if Asiwaju had listened to people like us, some of the problems they are faced with would not have happened.

Some people are still of the view that you are one of Tinubu’s loyalists, your being in the major opposition notwithstanding…

It will be very stupid or illiterate of people to think in that manner. If I wanted anything, it wouldn’t be from Asiwaju, I worked for Buhari. I have actually met Buhari more times than some of his aides. Look, no leader will respect you if you are coming to harass him for money or favour. I am a principled man, the money I could have used in buying properties, I am reinvesting it in Ovation. I know that once my business survives, I will survive. Asiwaju knows if you are looking for someone stubborn and straight forward, it’s Dele. God preserved me for this moment and purpose. It will take you almost two lifetimes to find someone like me in Nigeria to replicate the things that have been done globally.

What is your perspective on the 1999 Constitution that some argue is the bane of Nigeria’s democracy?

I am not a lover of distraction. The problems we are facing in Nigeria today are so humongous that we must learn to get our priorities right. There’s nothing we want to review that has not been reviewed already. We’ve different constitutional conferences; we had different panels like the Oputa panel.

Where are we going to find all the resources to start all over? I always tell people, even in the imperfection of the constitution, the day you have a reasonable leader, I can guarantee you that that constitution in its imperfection would smell like rose. Because what makes a good government is not the constitution, it is the operator of the constitution and that’s what I seek to be. If we enforce the constitution that we have and stay true to the letter, I can assure you that we can still have a very good equitable society.


https://www.vanguardngr.com/2022/01/state-of-the-nation-buhari-has-taken-nigeria-to-brink-of-disintegration-dele-momodu/

Buhari was a mistake in 2015. Only God and the genuine efforts of some Nigerians that can save this country from total collapse. It still baffles my imagination that some Nigerians are talking about one old creature as president. What a country!

Nigeria must disintegrate , am not happy been a Nigerian

Terorislam:
Nigeria must disintegrate , am not happy been a Nigerian

Only a fool will be happy when called a Nigerian.

Buhari has done more damage.....

Dele said he was only posting his pictures.....

This Davido boy again

Omooba77:
Buhari has done more damage.....

Yesso. But we don't need Dele to know that. He was part and parcel of the crew who whitewashed the old sepulchre in Aso rock.

Why can't dele even start this his dream his LG councillorship ward?

True talk. In as much as you are part of those that packaged and foisted the disaster of a president on hapless Nigerians.

Instead of Davido Boy to take responsibility for his part in scamming Nigerians to vote for Bubu, he is here yarning dust

Dele Momodu cannot rescue himself from the current precipice the country is tilting

Buhari Is the worst person that ever ruled Nigeria both as a military Head Of State and as a civilian president!!

It is too late, only a trial for treason will assuage Nigerians over the Buhari crimes, APC as a party shud be banned and it’s leaders arrested

amuwo1980:
It is too late, only a trial for treason will assuage Nigerians over the Buhari crimes, APC as a party shud be banned and it’s leaders arrested

Dele Dele na my boy....
We warned them about Buhari, but he claimed now he was only posting pictures after apologising.