Ondo Guber
I’ll adopt Awo’s innovative ideas – Abraham, ACN aspirant
The Sun Publishing
Wednesday May 02 , 2012
Segun
Chief Michael Olusegun Abraham has played behind the scenes roles in politics since 1999. He now wants to enter the open theartre to gun for the governorship ticket of the Aciton Congress of Nigeria (ACN) for the Ondo governorship election. He speaks on his plans and visons for the state.
CHIDI OBINECHE brings the excerpts.
Involvement in politics
I have been involved in partisan politics for more than 15 years. I have been sponsoring politicians. Once I identify somebody that has the potential to deliver, I’ll try and support him. I did that in 1999, with the late Chief Adebayo Adefarati. I was among the people who contributed to the success of that election, I even campaigned with them during the election.
I left my business and campaigned with them. After the election, the governor offered me commissionership and I refused the appointment because I couldn’t afford to leave my business. However, the governor appealed to me to make my services available to assist the state and he appointed me as chairman of Owena Hotels. Although I was reluctant, I however took it and promised that I’ll not take any salaries or allowance from government, that I would do it free of charge, and for the four years, I was the chairman of that Hotel, I did not take any kobo.
When I took charge, I discovered that Owena Hotel was indebted to the tune of more than 50 million naira and within six months, we were able to make more profit. As a matter of fact when I got there, I brought managers from Sheraton Hotel in Lagos and asked them to come there and manage it. They came there and trained the people. We even doubled the salaries twice before I left. That was why people started rushing to buy the Hotel, because they did not know it could be profitable; it became very profitable, we were making a lot of money. People were rushing to buy the Hotel, and eventually, I think Oodua Investment took it over during Agagu’s regime to manage, because they discovered that they could make good profit. It became an eye opener for people because that led to hotels springing up in Akure. You can see the effect because today you can see about good 10 standard Hotels. That time, you could not get any.
Experience in the public sector
When they say public sector experience, all my businesses were done with government, as a contractor. Secondly, I have been advising politicians over the years. However, public administration experience in Nigeria has been a colossal failure, and even if you have that kind of experience, it is the experience of failure. They do not have what we call relevant and developmental experience. For somebody like me, a technocrat bringing experience from the private sector that is called innovation, I have the kind of experience that Chief Awolowo brought to the Western Region. He was not in public administration before he became the Leader of Government Business in the region in 1952. Fashola was not in public administration before, Tinubu was not in public sector before, I was not also in the public sector before. Those who are arguing about the need for public sector before are people who are content with failure, people who have been part and parcel of the system and that system has been failing. Somebody like me, I will not be able to tolerate failure because I am coming from the private sector, where we can measure performance, where we know our success depends on performance, and this is what I am bringing. I am bringing innovation into governance, not a system where people just wait to collect salary. These people who have public experience we are talking about, are just there to collect salary.
That is why a country like Malaysia overtook us, and Singapore overtook us, because the people in this country with public sector experience are used to the failure of successive administrations; they are tolerant of failure, they are not resistant to failure. As a matter of fact, under normal condition in a civilised society, those people we are referring to as having public sector experience should not raise their heads because they should be asked what success they made with the opportunity they had. If we don’t have electricity, we don’t have roads, our school system has gone bad, everything has gone worse. What experience can somebody now refer to? As an employer of labour, I’ll never employ that kind of a person in my system. If you are coming from an organisation and claim you have worked with their organisation which closed down, and you worked with another which also has closed down and you are telling me that you have 30 years experience, I’ll not employ you.
The people in government are used to taking money every month. So they don’t think of how they can generate money. But, for somebody like me who knows very well that we cannot, and should not solely depend on income from the federal government because it shows that we are all idle, we are going to turn around the state.
First and foremost, we are going to train our people, our youth, our professionals to the relevant need of our environment because the first thing is that you must be able to conquer your environment to be able to survive very well. We shall not allow our environment to dictate to us, we must be able to dictate to our environment. Therefore we have plans to turn the resources we have in the environment to economic activities. When we do so, we generate employment, and then you have development and less dependence on the federal government.
ACN vs LP
At the time that the first election was conducted before INEC postponed it, the ACN was leading, but when INEC postponed the National Assembly election, we heard that they brought money out and called all their elders threatening them. We heard that the election results consequently released were not the true position of the peoples choice because if it is a true reflection of the acceptability and popularity of the Labour Party, why did the chairman, deputy chairman, and other key officials of the Labour Party subsequently defect to ACN? People are trooping in to ACN. So if we are not popular, why are people coming to join us? Don’t forget that our party has been restructured, and members can be found in all the nooks and crannies of the local government areas of the state. Can you imagine that people are decamping from the government in power? Why are they not decamping in Lagos and Ekiti?
Why are they not decamping in Edo and Osun? So, if this government is popular, will it be losing its members to the party that is not in government, especially in a state where there are no industries and people depend on government. Despite that these people have no money, yet they are convinced that Labour has failed. They leave their bread and butter with the hope that they will be on the side of integrity, on the side of the people that will sustain democracy, so it is an indication to everybody that they are not popular. An incumbent government that wants to run for a second term, nobody will come and contest against it if it is popular. If they are popular, why are they losing their senator? It is a party without ideology, philosophy, it is a party for what is called “chop chop, not even chop I chop”. It is a party of hard labour and poverty. So, people want to leave labour and poverty and come to prosperity, peace and justice.
Mimiko General
In his party, may be, but there is no general in politics. When they say he is a General, I want to believe because if you look at his administration, this is the first time in the history of Ondo state that we do not have government at the local level which is the pattern of military administration. I also heard that he served under the military and he copied that experience. So he brought military experience into democratic setting. A man who won an election on a democratic platform now dissolves the local government councils and then introduced administrators to take over the local governments, so I don’t know the General they are talking about?
Chances of ACN in Ondo
I normally use history for what is happening, to guide us. From past experience; we have never had a divided house in the ACN. In Lagos we did election there without divided house, in Osun there was no divided house, in Ekiti there was no divided house, in Edo there was no divided house, in Oyo and Ogun there was no divided house. As democrats, our members believe in the supremacy of the party; if the party leaders say these are the people that we choose to deliver the democracy, we will all support them.
Possible exodus from ACN
You don’t have to leave the party, and when you do that, it means you are not a democrat, that means you are just there as a gold digger, that means you are just there because of office. You don’t join a party because of office, but because you believe in the ideology and the philosophy of that party. So, those who have gone, we thank God we gave everybody a kind of level ground because we want everybody, at the same time, if you now leave because you were not given the position, that means you are not a member of the party Suppose someone is eyeing the post of a commissioner and he does not get appointed a commissioner tomorrow, does that mean that he is going to leave the party? Someone wants a post of chairman of board and he does not get the post, he leaves, that shows that he is more concerned about his pocket. Whoever leaves is not loyal to the party. I have been serving the party, using my resources to serve the party, for many years and I did not leave, even the leaders of the party know me for that.
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Are you saying irrespective of the process that may throw up the candidate, you will stick to the party?
Our process is very democratic, what people refuse to understand in the country is that we have brought innovation to the process of the emergence of candidates in ACN so that we can produce the best candidate. The process that produced Fashola, Aregbesola, Fayemi, Amosun, Oshiomhole, Ajimobi will you say it is bad? Is the process employed in choosing the people who are arraigned for stealing billions a true process? That is not a kind of process we are using in ACN, that they will say someone stole 58 billion Naira in Abuja, is that a process? There are so many criteria that we put forward before we eventually pick a candidate. It is not a process of making mouth around the street. No, there are processes that you must pass through before you can be finally picked as the candidate especially this time that the party is ready to deliver, to work and not ready for any godfatherism.
One of your opponents (not in ACN) said you are an Akoko foreigner, how will you respond to this?
I don’t know what the person means by Akoko foreigner, because I have house there, my parents’ houses are there, my brothers’ houses are there, my family house is there. I give scholarship to the people of Akoko every year and I have done that in the last 10 years. So this person who says I am a foreigner, can he tell me what he or his family has done for Akoko? I set up businesses in Akoko so I don’t know how he is going to define Akoko foreigner, I don’t understand what he is saying, so he should let me understand what it means to be an Akoko foreigner. My grandfather’s house is very close to our other families. Who is Akoko foreigner? The only thing I can say is that the person must be a very local person who has never travelled out. Most of Akoko people are not local most of them have travelled out one way or the other, or maybe I had travelled out that is what makes me a foreigner. I want to know the section of the constitution that makes me a foreigner here in Nigeria especially in my place of birth where I have contributed meaningfully, where they have given me awards.
