OLUWOLE IGE on his defection from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC), among other contemporary political issues. Excerpts:
Betrayal or denial by friends and associates is one of the things that have been known to come with politics. How do you handle such?
That I have experienced over the years since I have been in politics. Many a time, people have betrayed me, but I have always taken it with equanimity and I am not worried or perturbed about it. If it is someone’s habitual characteristics to so do, there is little one can do about it. But I know that one day, whatever you sow, you will reap.
There have been allegations that you collected money from Governor Rauf Aregbesola, who is the APC governorship candidate, to prosecute your governorship aspiration and cause destabilisation before you left the PDP, ahead of the August 9 election. What is your take on this?
There is no iota of truth in that statement. That statement was credited to Adejare Bello and the PDP. I can swear by the Holy Qur’an that I did not collect any money from the APC for my governorship campaign or to destabilise the PDP. I don’t need to collect money
from anybody.
What efforts are you making to ensure the integration of those who defected with you to your new party by way of registration?
After the closure of the registration of members of the APC in Osun State, the register was sent Abuja, but someone has been asked to go to Abuja to retrieve the register following a request by the party leadership. We have been given about a week or so that we can be registered as members.
Do you see any possibility of reconciling with your political son, former Speaker of the state House of Assembly and the director general of your campaign organisation when you were aspiring under the PDP, Honourable Adejare Bello?
I will put it this way. I have had people who God used me to develop politically who did the same thing but later came back to say sorry. But there are some with whom this thing is innate. There is nothing you can do about it. I know one or two of them who would come and prostrate and say ‘please, forgive me, it is Satan’s work.’ But they would go back to their old acts. You don’t take them seriously because they don’t succeed anyway. Each time they do it, they regret and they want to come back. What Adejare Bello is doing now, I will leave him to God to judge because I knew when he came in and didn’t have a dime with him, even to collect form for chairmanship election. He came second and I think Kamoru Olagoke came first and Adisa, Adeniyi Adewolu in that order and I asked that the person who came first should be chairman. Adejare came second and he is a lawyer and he didn’t want to be deputy and I said, ‘fine, then, go to the House of Assembly.’ He went to the assembly (that was in 1999) and became the minority leader. After that (in 2003), I insisted that nobody should contest against him by imposing him on other people because I knew full well that if he went back to the House, he would probably be the speaker, which was what we wanted in our area, Ede. True to God, he went back there and he became the Speaker, but not without a struggle because the present House of Representatives member, Hon. Ajagbe, had to contest with him (Bello) at that time in another party. Each time I imposed him (Bello), Ajagbe would leave our party for another party. In that 2003 election, around 1:00 p.m., they came and woke me up that things had changed and Bello had lost. I asked he lost without them counting the votes? They said whatever they were seeing then indicated that he had lost because we used transparent ballot boxes. Within one hour, we went to town and those remaining, who had not voted, I had to convince them to come out and vote and that was how the whole thing changed and he won and he became the speaker. The third time, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola told me that he liked the way Bello worked with him and he would like him to come back as speaker. I said fine, ‘if you are going to give him the speakership, the people of Ede would love such arrangement’, and so he became speaker again. I don’t know what more I should have done. Whatever he says about me today, God knows and everybody knows that that is not the true picture or reflection of what has transpired since I met the guy.
In 2011, it was alleged that you directed your supporters to vote for the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in the House of Assembly and House of Representatives elections but the PDP in the Senatorial and presidential elections. What informed this decision?
I did not give such directive. I’m a party man to the core. I would never engage in any anti-party activity. If they did it on their own, that’s their problem. I never did it.
But then, you delivered Ede North and Ede South local government areas to the PDP during the presidential election…
You know, we had problems within the PDP fold and there were a lot of people who believed that there were a lot of anti-party activities on the part of some individuals or they didn’t like the faces of certain individuals that emerged in the primaries. So, they decided to vote against such individuals. That might have accounted for that development. Otherwise, we could have won Ede North and South in the last House of Assembly election. Today, we could have had minority leader in the House. But I think people decided to vote against individuals.
What is your relationship with Prince Oyinlola and other top chieftains of PDP?
I don’t have any problem with Oyinlola and some of the guys that are still in the PDP. I still have respect and regard for them. But there are a bunch of others that are not human beings. They are devil incarnates, monsters, people who don’t have values for human lives.
Since 1998, there appeared to be no love lost between you and Senator Iyiola Omisore. What is the reason for the animosity between you two?
He has not offended me. I just feel such a character should not be allowed to govern Osun State. I know what he can do. I don’t think I should support him to become governor.
So, nothing personal?
Sincerely, I don’t have anything personal against him.
Will you support President Goodluck Jonathan if he eventually declares to seek re-election in 2015?
We are no more in the same party. It will be difficult for me to say that I will support President Jonathan; you know, that would amount to anti-party activity.
While defecting to APC, you maintained that PDP as a political party was good and there were still some patriotic Nigerians in there. But why didn’t you choose to have the misunderstanding between you and Omisore resolved, instead of leaving the party?
I didn’t say PDP was good. I said I didn’t have any problem with PDP. I said I rode on the platform of the party to achieve some feats in politics. But if individuals like Omisore, Gani Olaoluwa and others are in PDP, I cannot support them. I would be forced to support them and they might win the governorship election if I remained in that party but we don’t want those characters in the government house.
Before you finally left PDP, it was gathered that the national leadership of the party set up a reconciliation committee to mediate between some aggrieved members and the party in the aftermath of the April 5 primaries. Some elders, led by Alhaji Shuaib Oyedokun, were said to have visited your residence in Ede, but you locked them out…
That is not true. The only person that approached me was Alhaji Oyedokun and that was a month and five days after I was beaten up in Osogbo. The next time he came, he came in company with Chief Abiola Ogundokun and they said I should set up a meeting with them and I said I would be travelling to Lagos because I had a meeting there. I said after my Lagos meeting, perhaps I would arrange the meeting. After I returned from Lagos, I was in the kitchen when I heard that some elders, including Omisore, Ganiyu Olaoluwa and others, were at the gate, but there were a lot of people there. The boys there chased them away. They said they didn’t want to see them and they were shouting ‘APC, APC!’ So, they had to leave. I didn’t even know they were there. It was after they left that some people ran inside the house and informed me about what had happened. That is all I can say about it.
What is your advice to your supporters ahead of the August 9 governorship election in the state?
Right now, about four political parties have given their deputy governorship slots to Ede indigenes. You know, there is nothing wrong if we have the deputy governor from Ede. It is only that we don’t want to waste our votes. They cannot win. The major party there is PDP and the person they are going to vote for is Omisore, not somebody from Ede and not Adejare Bello. Deputy governors don’t have any constitutional roles but those assigned to them by governors. I know that Omisore cannot win election. He is not liked by the people, including his kinsmen in Ife. Where will he get his votes from? I will advise them not to waste their votes. I am now with the APC and Aregbesola. Whatever we need from the government, we will be able to iron it out with him, especially in the area of land matters, which was not even created by him. Adejare Bello was the speaker when our land was taken over by Osogbo. What did he do?
What is your greatest accomplishment since you ventured into politics?
There were a lot of people that I gave scholarships to. Today, they are lawyers, doctors, administrators, bankers and so on. And some of them would even call to tell me they benefitted from my scholarship scheme. I don’t even recognise them. I have been used by God to at least assist some people in developing themselves in life. So, my greatest achievements are in terms of human and capacity development.
We learned that your mother was Igbo and she was a Christian, while your late father, a senator like you, was a Muslim. What was it like to be raised by parents of different faiths?
I was born in Enugu. My father was a superintendent of nurse and then, we had probably one doctor supervising about three hospitals. So, the nursing superintendent had to be the head of a general hospital. My mother was a nurse and they both met at Abakaliki and got married and both of them were transferred to Enugu and they started raising us. And for your information, I speak Igbo language better than Yoruba. My mum had worked in the North and she could speak about five different languages.
How do you feel about the rising profile of your nephew, Davido, in the music industry?
I am very happy for him and I thank God for his life. Actually, he is like a son to me because I was the one that took care of him and my children in the United States and they went to school and I gave them their pocket money. I went to a bookshop to buy some souvenirs for them and by the time I came back, he had already used his pocket money to buy a keyboard. Then, I said David, ‘how are you going to cope for the rest of the month now that you have used your money to buy a keyboard?’ He said, ‘uncle, don’t worry. I will cope.’ I think it is ordained. I don’t know how he even writes his lyrics in Yoruba – somebody who cannot even speak Yoruba very well. But then, he goes deep into these Yoruba songs and arranges them. He has his own studio. I am very happy for him.
How often do you see him?
We do see during social functions like weddings, end of the year party or anytime we have family things to do together.