The problem with Obasanjo, by Falae

Olu Falae

*‘If you think I am a spent  force in politics, wait till the 2015 polls’
By Bilesanmi Olalekan
Chief Olu Falae, an economist, was Secretary to the  General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida-led Federal Military Government.
In 1999, he ran against PDP’s Olusegun Obasanjo as the joint candidate of the AD-APP in that year’s presidential election. He is the National Chairman of the newly registered Social Democratic Party, SDP. The party’s Lagos State Chapter was presented to the public recently. Falae, after the presentation, spoke to Sunday Vanguard.


You were formally of the SDMP, now it is SDP. What happened?
Yes, I am now for SDP. Let me give you a little history about it. When we formed the SDMP, the name we wanted to use was SDP which I used to belong to. But then, we were reminded that the military government then  had banned the SDP before they left. So, if I had put forward the SDP, INEC would not have registered us. So, we added M, to make it different from SDP.
After registration, some of us went to court and the Supreme Court ruled that the only laws on parties recognized in this dispensation are the Constitution of Nigeria as amended and the Electoral Act as amended. All decrees and enactments are null and void. And so, our party was free to operate. So, we wrote to INEC to change our name from SDMP to SDP.
Can this new party make any appreciable impact before and during the 2015 elections?
We are  making appreciable impact already. All the three senators and seven of the nine House of Representatives, from Ogun State, are members of the SDP. A former governor of Ogun State, Chief Olusegun Osoba, is with us. And in Ondo State right now, the brand is moving. On daily basis, we receive people in droves, both from PDP and APC, they are decamping to us on daily basis. We welcome everybody into our party, there is no exception. However, it is now left for the leadership of the party to manage them.
It is said that majority of you promoters of the party are spent forces?
If you think I am a spent force, wait till the next elections in Ondo State; wait for the next elections in Ogun and Lagos States. Who is a spent force to start with? Did they define who a spent force is? No, they didn’t. If spent force means age, then wait till January. You are spent when you no longer have idea that can contribute meaningfully to the society. You are spent when you can no longer connect with the people, when you are no longer connecting with the concerns of the people. That is what they call spent force.
How about those saying that  majority of the members are people aggrieved from other parties?
I am not an aggrieved member of any party. Chief Adebanjo is not an aggrieved member of any party. I think one should challenge some of these comments they are making. Who is an aggrieved member? In any case, all the people they were referring to were in SDP. Osoba became governor as an SDP man. He merely returned to his political home. Please don’t listen to such idle talk.
You said the party is fielding candidates for all the elective offices. How about that of the presidency?
We will have our presidential convention in December, why not wait till that day. It is only when we are through with our convention and we don’t have a presidential candidate that we can begin to talk about supporting some other presidential candidate from another party.
What is on your take on the Federal Government handling of the insurgency in the North-East?
If I were the president, I would have finished them long ago. Two years ago, I said we should declare war on these people, some said they are our citizens. Is there any sense in citizens killing other citizens in the same country? The whole blame should be on the table of the president. Look at the invasion of the National Assembly by the police recently, that action was not up to what happened in the West in 1968 before the entire place was put under state of emergency. What does that mean? It means that if there are anti-democratic forces around, that action was sufficient enough to truncate the democratic process.
Former President Obasanjo alleged that members of the National Assembly are corrupt
I have said it and still saying again, corruption must die so that Nigeria may live. The two cannot live together. It is true they set up anti-corruption agencies. Yes, they enacted anti-corruption laws but the Obasanjo regime sowed the greatest seed of corruption since independence. It was during his time that Ghana Must Go bag full of money was brought to the National Assembly during the third term agenda debacle. It was during regime that ministers were arrested and charged to court for promoting corruption activities. It was during the regime that public officers were accused of stealing billions of naira. We never had all these before. It was the regime that encouraged corruption on large scale.