Chief Reuben Fasoranti (OFR), the leader of the Pan-Yoruba socio-political group, Afenifere, in this interview with YINKA OLADOYINBO spoke on many issues affecting politics of the country, challenges of Jonathan presidency, federalism among others. Excerpts:

As the leader of the Afenifere, it seems that the group has not been active in the politics of the South-West in particular and Nigeria in general, what is responsible for this?
You know Afenifere is a socio-political organization, an offshoot of a political party that is the parent body for the activation of the ideas of Afenifere. In the past, Afenifere was the cynosure and the sum total of the ideology of Action Group, Unity Party of Nigeria(UPN), Alliance for Democracy(AD). There were few problems that beset that organization, starting with the break away, so to say of the former governors. The former governors were defeated in the 2003 election because at that time they wanted to take over the reins of the political organization which Afenifere stood for and that was the beginning of the crack. The crisis led to the setting up of a body which attempted to bridge the gap under the chairmanship of Justice Kayode Esho. We held series of meetings, the former governors made up their mind that they were not going to cooperate with us, I can count about eight meetings which we attempted to hold in Justice Esho’s house which they were all invited but they refused to come. They then decided to form the Action Congress, later they changed the name to Action Congress of Nigeria(ACN) and they made up their minds they were not going to cooperate with us, they said it in clear terms that whoever was going to head Afenifere must not be a political person and we said that was not acceptable to us, so that was the parting of ways and they have been holding their meetings, we have been holding our meetings as well.

But what do you think can be a permanent solution to this sir?
We have made attempts and we are still making attempts but if you stretch the hands of fellowship to someone who does not really want to be your friend, there is nothing you can do.

What is the impression of Afenifere about the last general election held in the country?
I think it was free and fair, I saw what was going on and what went on, I voted and went round some of the polling booths, it was devoid of violence so to say and people were allowed to vote the way they wanted it, if that is so, there is very little we can do, if that is the way they wanted it, we shall continue to project the ideals of Afenifere which of course are free education, which the governments are doing now, free medical services, integrated rural development and full employment, these are the ideals and none of the governors has deviated from these four ideals. So, it is only in name but I think something personal has gone into it because if we think alike, then we should be prepared to work together. What I have listed are the ideals of Afenifere and they are so enunciated in the ideology. Something personal must have gone into it and it makes one to conclude that the days of ideology are almost gone, the days of materialism are here.
Look at the way people are changing political allegiances. Someone is in AD today, tomorrow he is in ACN, the day after he is in Labour Party(LP) and the day after he is in Peoples Democratic Party(PDP). We have examples like that, so, people are trying to push aside ideology, economic factor has now taken the centre stage.The anxiety we have  is that the ideals which Papa Awolowo enunciated, which served us right are being rubbished because people want to have money, get rich quickly as we can see in the members in the House of Representatives, in the Senate, even in the state assemblies. Why people are drifting to the government of the day is because of the fact that they want money, they want quick money and that is very painful because we have really deviated from the path of advancement,  path of honesty, path of accountability.

The results of the last election showed that the South-West states are now back in opposition, do you think is healthy enough for the region
I think it is alright if the people at the helms of affairs can have a focus , if they can play down the economic factor, if they can make it secondary and ensure that the interest of the ordinary person is uppermost in their heart. People are suffering, we want full employment for the people, we want good health care delivery for the people, we want to stop the rural-urban drift, which I experienced myself, because I have an institution in the outskirt of Akure. I know how people have moved out to come to the town and the facilities in the town are overstretched.There are too many people in the city roaming about and that again is a dangerous trend. But in the days of Awolowo, full employment was canvassed, free education was canvassed but I don’t know how free it is now but what is more paramount in the minds of the people at the moment is economic survival, if that is so, then there is nothing we can do to stop the trend.We are not discouraged at all, we want to show it in our life, in our way of life and the way we lead our people. Corruption must be played down; people nowadays are changing political parties because of economic gain.

Sir, with the present trend in the South-West, we have moved away from the mainstream of the Nigerian politics, what do you think will be the implication of this?
I do not agree with the idea of mainstream politics. I do not believe that we must join the mainstream’, Obasanjo was there for eight years even more, what do we have to show for it? Many things eluded us when he was there, that is one, there is this trend to reverse the centre stage which PDP was holding in the South-West. People have now realised that they have not benefited from joining PDP at that time and look at their performance in the last election in the South-West. They lost in Ondo, they lost in Ekiti, Osun, Oyo even in Ogun state, so people are now aware that the concept of mainstream is a deception. So, the best thing is to the return to basics which were the concept of the Awolowo era, that is the way I look at it. Mainstream means nothing, it is a nebulous term that doesn’t really define anything and it is an attempt to bamboozle people, to deceive them that the federal might is there, we have now seen that the federal might is not there unless the leaders are honest to their people and ready to serve them and make life more pleasant for them. So, the mainstream politics as far as we concerned is a misconception.

How does the Afenifere intend to monitor the performance of these South-West governors and put them on their toes to ensure that the people benefit from their government?
We are doing that, although it is like watching them from the sideline, we make our ideas felt by projecting what we believe, we are in talking terms with them, although not officially. We do interact and they themselves know that they are winning because they are projecting the ideology of the progressives as enunciated by Papa Awolowo. We hope at one time there would be a meeting point because there is no difference fundamentally, even ideologically from what they are doing now and what we stand for because they are all products of the Afenifere concept. Most of them were members of our party, they were members of Afenifere before, Tinubu himself, Bisi Akande, even Fayemi and the present governor in Ondo State were past of us. They cannot really completely divest themselves from the movement which they all belonged to. Some of them  occasionally say aloud that they are projecting Awolowo’s ideas, I have heard them say it, I have read their releases, I have seen their posters and I think may be they don’t like the faces of some of us on this side.

Considering the performance of President Goodluck Jonathan in the concluding part of the last administration and his actions so far, do you think he has the solutions to the problems facing Nigeria?
If he has very good advisers, that is, if he has good lieutenants that are articulate, who have focus, he may be able to wade through. But the problems facing Nigeria are so complex, so enourmous that he needs the grace of God and extra hands. He is trying to do that by stretching his hands of fellowship to the people on the other side but I think he has to be a bit faster than what he is doing now. We don’t have the full complement of the team that will work with him four months after  the election. He still has to brace up and show that he is the leader of the team that is the way I look at it.

With the caliber of people that President Jonathan has put together, do you see him going places?
I think he is on the right path, but he has to harness them and make sure that they start working almost immediately. Nigeria’s problems are complex and he needs to push, he needs to make them realize that we cannot rest on our oars. Look at the Boko Haram problem, the problem is not being handled the way it should be. By now, the State Security Services should have been able to clamp down on these people. They know the centres of violence, the centres where they strike, they have confined their activities to the North-East, that is why I think they should beef up the security services and it is unfortunate that the country is facing this type of development  and nothing is being done about it, so he has to buckle up. In the eyes of the world it appears that we are too lax, even the army should be feeling somehow that there is so much instability  within the country. Murder  and destructions  are going on as if we have no security services, so, I want to appeal to him to be up and doing and summon the agents that will help him to make sure that he has a good government. It cannot go on like this and expect people to feel happy, it cannot go on like this and expect the great powers of the world to feel that Nigeria is stable. If sporadic incidence of violence happens everywhere, the great powers of the world will feel somehow that he is not in charge, so with his team and with the security services, he should be able to tackle the situation, the government is about four or five months old now, he has not really taken charge.

As a statesman and leader of Afenifere, if you are to set agenda for Jonathan as far as Nigeria’s problem is concern, what will be your priorities?
My priority is one, provision of employment opportunities for Nigerians, the thousands of graduates leaving the university, he should make provisions for them, he has to start doing something drastic to make provision for full employment. That of course is our ideology, that is our dream in Afenifere that people who have left university should be provided for. Then he has to look at the roads, if one travels on our roads, he will be discouraged, the state of the roads is appalling, there is so much congestion even on the highway. Also health should be given priority, our people still go abroad for medical services, he should tackle that and make them stay at home, it is a vote of no confidence in our medical sector, he should look inward and get his people to tackle that one. Then, the expenditure being incurred by the National Assembly is  very very scandalous, it can be done for half of the cost. In the past, people were legislating on a part-time basis, I remember Papa Ajasin was principal of Imade College, he was then member of the House of Representatives, he will leave his school and go to Lagos to attend legislative meetings on part-time  basis. People like late Papa B. A. Ajayi from Ekiti, people like Ade Komolafe, people like Oshuntokun were doing this on a part time basis, so it can be done. I was  the chairman of Akure Divisional Council on a part-time basis, I was the principal of Olivet Baptist High School, I would come to Akure, do my meetings on Friday and go back and earn the pittance we were being paid as at that time. I did not earn anything, this can be done, we should try and reduce the expenditure being incurred by members of the National Assembly. He should also instill the spirit of hard work, our people are not working hard enough, if you have been abroad before, you will see the attitude of people to public work. Here people go to the office, check in, mark the register and go away. I remember one or two governors raising the alarm within the last two weeks that people were not working hard enough that they were going to clamp down on some of them, it only shows that attitude, you cannot go abroad and get  employment and be looking around, you get your money for work done, so he should inculcate the spirit of hard work, these are some of the things I want him to do.

Sir, how best do you think the federal government can tackle the issue of security threat posed by the Boko Haram, is it through dialogue or otherwise?
I don’t support dialogue because they have not given any reason why they are killing people right, left and centre, they destroy properties, they have not said anything that is responsible for the actions. The militants in the Niger Delta gave their reasons, they said their area was neglected, all the money comes from there, nothing substantial was going back there, that is understandable; they have spoken their minds, we were able to identify their leaders, but in this case they are faceless and I know that they are being mischievous, even callous, killing people for no reason, they have not given their reason, they may have their grouse but they have not given any reason. If they give reasons then we will be able to know how To meet them halfway, but how do we identify them. So, they put the whole thing in doubt, planting bomb in churches, planting bomb in public places, planting bomb in where people are holding meetings. I think it is beyond dialoguing, they are holding us to ransome and I think the government should not succumb, government should clamp down on them and be very drastic, that is my feeling.

Don’t you think many of these problems have to do with the our structure and system of government in Nigeria, particularly the manner we practise our federalism?
Afenifere has a stand, we have a position in this matter, when there was this national conference during Obasanjo’s time, we presented the Yoruba stand, the Afenifere’s stand and the stand was that we should have a true federalism, true federation of equal partners and we suggested six geo-political zones like we were practicing in the first republic. There were three regions and each of them autonomous, although Nigeria was still at the top, each region had an embassy or high commission all over the place. Then the money should not be concentrated in the hands of the federal government, there are certain subjects which we agreed that the federal government should handle like external affairs, internal security, the army, airways, but when you talk of agriculture and other things like that, the region should be left to handle them rather than giving the federal government so much power, so much money which they cannot handle properly, there should be semi-autonomy in the regions and that is why we said six geo-political zones and we are still clamouring for that now. We sent in a memorandum, we are making suggestions to the president  that he should look at it again so that we can have true federation and not this lopsided system that the federal government is holding on to so much money and that is why we are in trouble.

Sir, you seem to be optimistic that the Afenifere and the present crop of leaders in the South West might have a meeting point, what are the sacrifices required from both ends to achieve this?
We should play less self, what I mean by that is that we should have the interest of the public at heart, if we want to serve the people, we should not make ourselves the centerpiece of our political activities, we must be prepared to concede, we must be prepared to serve, we must be prepared to have a vision of what we think Nigeria should be in the next few years, not only that if we look at happenings in other countries, we will agree that we have not even started, what I mean by that is we are running after money, we want to acquire this, we want to acquire that, we want to build houses in Dubai, another in America, if we can shed this, which is difficult to do then we are on the proper track of making this country great, if not we will be in this vicious circle for a long time to come.