Kwara history has an indelible memory of Alhaji Lasisi Ayinla Kolawole Jimoh, the septuagenarian word-artist who originated the political mantra, O to ge. L.A.K Jimoh, as he is fondly called had for years squared up to the political dynasty of the Sarakis and its entrenched power, seeking to revolutionize a movement that would set the state free of a family hold.
The trained political scientist and alumnus of University of Lagos sowed the seed of a revolution in 2000. It germinated and grew to become an oak with watering from several like-minded politicians. In 2018, the oak bore the long-sought acorn when the Saraki dynasty was shoved aside by four political tendencies riding on the back of mass support and on the platform of All Progressives Party. But it has become a stark reality that the so-called winning team are far from being of like-mind. If anything, they are politicians of different shades and hues with also different definitions of success. The Kwara state APC today is in disarray as the groups fight for its soul. Midlandpost’s duo of Gbolahan Balogun and Rasaq Laaro went on the trail of Alh. L.A.K Jimoh to pry his mind on the turn of events of O to ge and other issues.
You have been silent of recent in spite of the crisis ravaging your party in Kwara State. As the originator of “Otoge” mantra with which your party fought the so-called war of liberation, are you not bothered with the turn of event as we are seeing now in Kwara APC?
Yes, you may be correct that I have not been too publicity vocal in political matters, that does not mean that I have not been talking. Well, at a certain point in time in the development of a person, he has to take a back seat. Now, l am over 80 years old. I should not be fighting for space with the under 30s, 40s, may be 60s, we should be at the background, offer suggestions, advice and prayers. So that is why I have not been too publicity vocal. But I am playing my role; my elderly role behind the scene, as much as possible.
I have been playing my role; an advisory role as an elder of the party, as much as possible, behind the scene. I may not have been publicly vocal, but I have been active as an elder behind the scene.
And thank you for the complement for saying that I am the originator of “Otoge” mantra. God is the originator of all things, but may be in Kwara politics, as you said, I was the first to formally adopt it as campaign slogan. That is the way I want it to be put-that I was the first to adopt Otoge as a campaign slogan in the politics of Kwara State. And I have been using that terminology in different forms. As far back as 2003, my political campaign slogan then, was “It is time for change” so, if I said it is time for change, I meant it was enough of what we had at that time. And subsequently, I have been using that terminology in English. In year 2000 or so, when I issued a leaflet, I concluded that leaflet with “Enough is Enough” That was in the year 2000. Before 2011, when I started using the Yoruba version of ‘Enough is Enough I adopted Otoge.
Now, you are talking of intra-party crisis in the APC where I belong. Nearly all parties have intra-party crises. But maybe I can comment on that of the APC. Well, the intra-party crisis is most unfortunate and absolutely unnecessary. It should not have arisen in the first instance because God in His infinite mercy gave us landslide victory on a platter of gold.
We flushed out the incumbent administration in the state in the general elections; what was generally thought to be impossible. And when we embarked on that crusade; that there must be change, we too thought that it was going to be herculean task. But it turned out to be a very simple battle. Never in history, with modesty, let me say in the history of Kwara, otherwise I would have said in the history of Nigeria, did any opposition arise and succeeded in complete 100% uprooting of the powers that be. I think with my little knowledge of Nigerian politics that was the first time it would happen. It happened here in Kwara.
Unfortunately, soon after achieving that victory, and getting our government and party installed as the state government in Kwara, that was in May,2019, crisis began very unnecessarily. Some people decided to form what they call AA support group, and used that platform, not only to factionalise APC in the state, but also to destabilise it. There is nothing wrong in having forms, groups, associations within a party but they must work in tandem to implore the fortunes of the party, not to destablise the party. AA group started by circulating letters, calling for signatures to remove key officers of the party, less than two months after we formed the state government.
That was very destabilitising and that is the crisis that has continued since then. When this started, the group of elders of the party thought that the crisis should be nipped in the bud. And we assembled, under the chairmanship of Alhaji Attairu Manko, from Patigi, of Kwara North, and we decided to take steps to appeal to governor AA in particular, to please help to nip this crisis in the bud.
That was in August, 2019, that is to show you that although some of the elders of the party have not been publicity vocal we have not been silent, we have not been oblivious of the danger which the intraparty crisis could constitute.
Is it that the elders in the party did not do enough because the crisis persists till today?
Yes, we did our best, we met the governor, and had a very elaborate and extensive discussion with him. As a result of that meeting, it became necessary for us to see some other leaders of the party whose names came up during the dialogue with the governor, particularly, the Honourable Minister, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, State Chairman of the Party, Alhaji Bashir Omolaja Bolarinwa. Again we met the two of them separately, each of them also had a long story to tell. We told the three of them, the governor, the minister and the state chairman that we were not outsider to the party. We were part and parcel of the ‘Otoge struggle. We were deeply involved in the electioneering campaign process. We told them we knew everything that happened. The stories they told us- we said yes we know. You know whoever is going to tell you stories about his or her involvement would want to say something that would favour him or her. We said yes, we know what the truth is and what is lie; what each and every one of them told us. But that was immaterial. Those things were pre-election matters.
Despite those pre-election problems. We achieved a landslide victory, so let us put that behind us and join hands together to have a government we would be proud of. That was what was important. If you dislodge an administration, people will have very high expectations of you, so they will be watching, expecting to have a much better life than they had during the previous administrations and, if we are not united, there will be no concentration on governance. There will be unnecessary distractions and crisis. This was the position of the party elders. That is not to say that where it was necessary to apportion blames, we did not do so.
Why is the problem intractable, is it about second term agenda of the governor as some are saying?
That is not quite true. The crisis predated the election in 2019. We made efforts to kill the crisis, we had audience with the governor, who then was the candidate of the party. We had audience with the Minister of Information, and the chairman, Bolarinwa, pleading that we must work together. We must eschew pettiness and may be selfishness. We pleaded with ourselves. Do you know that we made several efforts to reach the national secretariat of the party, about the crisis, to appeal to them? Then, Adam Oshiomole was the national chairman.
We did not succeed to get audience with him. When we could not get audience, we went to Lagos to meet the Asiwaju, Bola Tinubu. That was in November, 2018 to plead that they should intervene in this crisis. Asiwaju Tinubu was a critical factor in the emergence of all these three personalities. That is the truth of the matter- whether the state chairman, Minister or the gubernatorial candidate. So we had to go to Lagos to meet him, a five or six man delegation, I was there, Late Dr. Amuda Aluko was there, Senator Mohammed Ahmed was there and, I think, Alhaji Ndakene was there. Just about five or six of us. We went and pleaded with Asiwaju, to please help us to nip the crisis in the bud because a lot of discontents from the primary had its own dimension. Then, friction in the relationship between the minister and the gubernatorial candidate, between the minister and the state chairman started; even before the election.
Asiwaju promised to do something. When the crisis did not quench, we went to Abuja and had audience with the Vice President, Prof. Osinbajo. We met him on Dec. 24th 2018, on eve of Christmas, and we were with him till about 10pm that night.
He left the venue of the meeting straight to the airport, because he had a church programme in Lagos.
Our mission was for him to please help us to reconcile these personalities- the aggrieved aspirants who lost during the primary. We made some suggestions to appease the aggrieved aspirants and in fairness to them, they promised to do something and they did. It was as a result of that our discussion that the application fees paid by the aspirants, particularly the gubernatorial aspirants and some others were returned to them. This is to show how long the crisis had started and what efforts we have been making.
But unfortunately, the Vice President promised us that he would see the National Secretariat of the Party; he would brief the presidency and they would take action to try to reconcile these personalities. But unfortunately, that was not done till the election. But we succeeded in pacifying ourselves. We said, look, whatever has happened put it aside. These people must go. We cannot say ‘Otoge’ and fail, for how long will we be saying ‘Otoge’ and it does not “otoge” So we put behind us, all the wrangling and worked together to win and we won.
What is your reaction to the allegations and counter allegations over campaign funds between the Governor and information minister?
Let me ask you, do you think that there is propriety in discussing campaign funds on the pages of newspapers or radio? You know in our system, in some other climes, it may be different but in our own system here, a lot of people do donate money to political parties behind the scene, unannounced and who would not even want to be known to have done so. That is the truth of the matter; that is the reality on the ground.
Secondly, all political parties in Nigeria, do spend money. I don’t want to say that it is illegal, you know, to promote the electioneering campaigns and ensure they have the upper hand. Do you expect such would be announced and discussed on the radio and pages of newspapers? Whatever they said they have between themselves should not have gone to the pages of newspapers. They should not have gone to the radio. There should be internal mechanism to deal with that, because the party’s constitution has internal mechanism provisions for internal disagreements. Has anyone of them gone to the national secretariat to make such complaints? If they did, has the national secretariat ever made such complaints public? So I don’t want to talk about that. It is a disservice to the party in the state what they have done in respect of the campaign fund’s issue. Although I know a lot about the campaign funds, but it is not something I will tell you.
Is your party so comfortable that it thinks it cannot loose Kwara again with the crisis on ground?
Nobody knows tomorrow. Nobody can say for sure what will happen tomorrow, so you cannot say are we so certain we cannot loose election no nobody can be certain on that. But what is certain is the idiom, united we stand, divided we fall. That is my answer to you on that.
Are You satisfied with the present development of Kwara vis avis your aspiration for the State?
Well, I don’t know whether satisfaction is the appropriate word to use. But I think if is on whether the government is performing, forget about satisfaction because it will differ from one person to the other; one interest group to the other. On whether the Governor is performing, yes of course. The state government is performing. It is trying. It now depends on how well government is performing. It is trying. But are we performing optimally, are we performing maximally based on available resources. All I can say is that the government would have performed much better, much more than it is doing if there were no crises. Of course I have said earlier, united we stand, divided we fall.
Earlier on, I said the crisis is an unnecessary distraction. Wherever there is distraction, you cannot perform optimally not to talk of maximally. The crisis is a hindrance to performance. In fact, when there is crisis and disunity there will be either under-utilization, or mal-utilization of available resources. Sometimes, you divert the funds or resources which would have been used for development to promote or pursue crisis.
So you cannot have maximal performance, not even optimal. So, the administration is being made to perform below capacity. I am not saying satisfactorily or not satisfactorily, but the administration is being made inevitably to perform below capacity because of the crisis.
And any way out?
Of course, there will always be a way out, and the way out is to end the crisis. If you end the crisis, all other things will flow. May you ask how do we end the crisis?
Then how do you think the party can end the crisis?
It is very easy to end the crisis. Eschew selfishness. Once you remove selfishness, and you have the overall interest of the state at heart. You will make sacrifice. There must be give and take in any human society; in any human group, there must be give and take. People who worked would expect to reap the fruit of their labour. Exclusion would cause crisis. So we should have an all-inclusive situation. But you see, there are three sets of people who would never allow the crisis to end, or who would not let crisis end easily. The people who deliberately caused the crisis; they have a motive. So, as long as that motive is there, they won’t want the crisis to end. People who gained eminence because of the crisis; may be somebody who was an unknown quantity, but because of the crisis, has become known. As the Yorubas would say: Taani mo Okolo l’Oyo. Sugbon won mo Okolo lOyo nigba to t’ina bo aafin Alaafin. So, Okolo became known. Those who are feeding fat also on the crisis would not want it to end. And I can assure you that we have these sets of people in this our internal crisis. That is why the things is protracted. 
Why can’t the party elders identify the three sets of people in the crisis and do something about them
I am an elder and I have told you they exist. We have been making moves since 2018, not only internally, here in the state, but also going to Lagos, Abuja and talking to ourselves. Some of the brains behind the crisis can also qualify to be elders and that is why I said united we stand, divided we fall. The fact is we are divided. It is that division we need to remove and the thing is getting worse and worse. As far as I am concerned, our failure to reconcile before going for the last ward congresses is a terrible mistake.
Any Implication?
I say it is a terrible mistake, because if you go to the congress to form the executive of the party- like you may have seen while monitoring the process- that there were parallel congresses. Parallel lines mean parallels that can never meet. Should we get to that point? We should not. It will now become even more difficult to make parallel lines become curves, than when the lines were together. So that is why I said the thing is even becoming worse. But I still believe the national secretariat of the party should have done much more about this crisis than they have done so far. May be they should have taken a different approach. I told them this at the National secretariat. It was when we could not succeed to see them, that we had to go to Lagos to see Asiwaju Tinubu it was because the national Secretariat was not forthcoming that we want to see the Vice President.
Don’t you think the tendencies, at the national level are manifesting in Kwara Crisis
The crisis in Kwara is not as a result of tendencies. It started as personality clashes, not tendencies at all, you know. But we have now been factionalised. You know Kwara APC was also formed by four tendencies. But you may now find two or three tendencies in one group and you may find members of those tendencies in the other group. It is not compartmentalised on the basis of previous tendencies, not to the best of my knowledge.
But I think we can still get out of it if the national secretariat does the right thing. I think the national secretariat needs to do more to ensure mutual confidence and love. The state chapter of the party has been incapacitated so it is the national. What national should do is not to take one side, align with one side, no, they are all your children. I think it is the national now that needs to change its attitude to the Kwara crisis.
Your take on the cancellation of Durbar over security concerns by Kwara Government, more so when some individuals insinuated Saraki’s factor in the botched event
Let me say straightaway that the governor by the 1999 constitution as amended, is the chief security officer, of the state and his jurisdiction covers every inch of the state. To that extent, if he feels that will threaten the security of the state, whether sectionally, or globally, he has the right to take action to stop such a situation from developing.
He has the right to do that. Equally, the Durbar is an Ilorin affair, to the extent that Ilorin is part of the state and more importantly, to the extent, that Ilorin is the state capital. The governor has a duty to ensure that there is security. What those insinuators are telling us by their statement is that Saraki would have caused trouble if that event took place. Why are they saying it is Saraki factor that caused the cancellation of the Durbar event?
I don’t think Saraki factor has anything to do with the cancellation of the Durbar ceremony. Supposing people came to kidnap at such a gathering. The situation can get out of hand at any time. Hoodlums can seize the opportunity of such gathering to cause trouble and before you know it, it could get out of hand. So the government must have its reason.
But I say procedurally, they were wrong to have allowed the state government to announce the cancellation instead of the Emir. That is my own on that.
You must have followed the Ondo State election judgment by the Supreme Court. What do think could be the implication for APC?
As you know l am not a lawyer. I cannot talk too much on the legal implication of the judgment. But I am a Nigerian, I am a member of APC. The judgment in Ondo was between the Governor and the contestant from the other side. The Supreme court in its wisdom ruled to say that there was no merit in the appeal that came to it by the PDP candidate.
However, the minority group talked about the implication of having somebody who is a sitting governor occupying the seat of the National chairman of the party. The 1999 constitution of Nigeria as amended clearly states that the governor cannot hold any executive or paid employment in any capacity whatsoever during tenure of his governorship. The APC constitution also clearly says that any officer of the party who takes up appointment in the government automatically loses his or her position as an officer of the party.
So the Supreme Court’s minority judgment is drawing the attention of the party to those provisions, asking them to note that it could be injurious to them in the future if nothing is done about it. That is how I as a layman will interpret the judgment. It is a warming and to be fore-warned is to be fore-armed. They are forewarning the APC, the controversy is therefore unnecessary. What they should have done is to summon a meeting of its think tank to look at the judgment to know if the warning and the impending danger is real and what to do next. No need to argue. They are only telling you to watch if and you need is to go and look it and forestall the danger ahead.
If you have to sacrifice some interests now to protect the overall interest of the party, why quarrel over that. So, that is my own position on it.
What are your words to the party elders to stop the APC crisis in the state?
I have already said it is the national that needs to do the needful. The needful is not to threaten that whosoever did parallel congress will be expelled, or punished. How many people do you want to punish? What will be left? Let us look at the result of the last general election which we had in the state.
Look at the official result published by INEC and see how many votes APC had in the gubernatorial and how many votes PDP had. I can assure you mathematically that if APC loses 30 percent of the votes it had then to PDP, then PDP will become the winner. Go and look at it mathematically. This is what we are telling people. We won all the seats, that is true, but go and look at the margins. How many votes did APC have overall? How many votes did the PDP gubernatorial candidate have during that election? Remove 30 percent from what APC had and add it to what PDP had and you will see that PDP will become the majority. l am talking authoritatively. That is what we should look at and, that is what we are telling them.
Or we are telling ourselves that this things is much more than what they are looking at the surface. We cannot afford to lose 30 percent of our votes. And that takes us to the recent revalidation and re-registration of members. I have heard people day they registered about 500,000 APC members in the Gubernatorial election, the total vote of APC plus the total votes of PDP was not up to 500,000 so how can you now say APC alone has registered 500,000 members, I mean we are deceiving people and everybody in buying it. PDP Votes plus APC votes in the last gubernatorial election which brought Governor Abudlrahaman Abdulrazaq to power was up to 500,000. I am talking authoritatively. APC had about 300 thousand plus and PDP had over 100,000 plus making the total to be less than 500,000. So how can anyone of the two parties say they have registered 500,000 members. Did we register the PDP members plus our own members?
Any Regret for being part of Otoge struggle?
I have no regret for being part of Otoge struggle. In spite of whatever that is happening now, the victory of Otoge is a lesson to all sides. And it’s a blessing to all sides. One, to those of us who championed the cause, it is a lesson to us that nothing is impossible if the will is there and the wherewithal is also there; that you can achieve anything.
They thought it was impossible to uproot Saraki dynasty in Kwara, which we did. It is a lesson to Saraki people, that nothing is impossible. Besides that, no condition is permanent Don’t think because you have money, you have this and that so nothing can happen to you. We have all learnt that lesson. We have also learnt the lesson that people are watching whatever we are doing, and that the ultimate power is with the people, not in us, not in the money we are spending. It is in the people; how the people perceive us. The essence of governance is to provide welfare and security; what the political scientists call the social contract with the people. We will give you our loyalty, support and everything, provided you will guarantee our welfare and security. If you don’t in a democracy, the peoples’ power is in the ballot box. It is a blessing to all of us because those who are there today, if they are wise, must be conscious of that day- that just as they flushed out Saraki dynasty, they can also flush us out if we don’t do what we' re supposed to do in the interest of the people who put us there.
Because of that lesson, I feel fulfilled because all of us now know that you cannot take Kwara for a ride anymore. We have so sensitized Kwarans that if you take them for granted, you will regret it. That is enough, even if that is the only thing we have achieved. You can no longer put a rope round the neck of Kwarans and begin to drug them and they will follow you, no. We have passed that stage. We have redeemed our people. The redemption which late Aminu Kano wanted to do, we have done it in Kwara. We have liberated our people both intellectually and physically. They now know how to fight for their rights without injuring anybody physically; the Ghandi philosophy. That is enough. Then you cannot expect that the moment a new administration gets there, it will clear all the mess of yesterday and begin to do what government is expected to do 100 percent at a go. No, it is a process, and gradual process. It could be slow, it could be fast, but we pray that is should be fast, not slow and steady but fast and steady because the body and mouth is dry.
Comments powered by CComment