Born in Ado Ekiti on the 27th of March, 1961, Babafemi Ojudu showed great scholarly promise from his youth winning a scholarship jointly sponsored by activist lawyer, Gani Fawehinmi and Jùjú musician, King Sunny Adé for indigent students of Ekiti state.
He studied English at the University of Ife, Ile-Ife and after graduating in 1984, he went on to the University of Lagos where in 1986, he obtained his master’s degree in political science.
His love for Journalism; a profession that would eventually bring him international recognition was kindled while at the university where he joined the Association of Campus Journalists, reporting for COBRA, a campus journal. He and two friends later founded a journal called The Parrot, which he edited until his graduation in 1984.
On the completion of his National Youth Service, Ojudu worked as a reporter with The Guardian.
In 1987 he started writing for African Concord magazine, initially as a Staff Writer, moving up to become an Assistant Editor. In 1992 he resigned in protest at a request by M.K.O. Abiola, the publisher, to apologise to President Ibrahim Babangida over an article critical of the military regime. In 1993, Ojudu and other former workers from African Concord established The News magazine, with Ojudu as its first Managing Editor.
Ojudu was arrested, tortured and detained several times during the Sani Abacha regime. On one occasion, he was arrested and detained for three days at the notorious Shagisha Prison in the outskirts of Lagos on 11 August 1996 because of an article in The News about Oil Minister Dan Etete which alleged that Etete was giving government contracts on behalf of the Nigerian State Oil Company to his family and friends.
Later in 1996, Ojudu went to the USA for six months as a fellow at the School of Communications, Howard University, Washington, D.C. On his return in June 1997, he was appointed Group Managing Editor of Independent Communications Network Ltd, publishers of The News, P.M. News and Tempo.
Having conquered the media space, he ventured into politics when he ran for the Senate in August 2010. He later went on to represent Ekiti Central Senatorial under the platform of The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) at the 7th National Assembly.
Now the Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on Political Matters, Babafemi Ojudu spoke passionately to the duo of OMA DJEBAH and LEKAN OKEOWO on various burning issues in the country.
How has the transition from the newsroom to politics been?
For me, there is a very thin line between being a journalist to being a politician. As a journalist, you are concerned about everything happening around you, you want to point out how things should be done and condemn when things are not been done rightly. And as a politician, if you are true to the rudiments of politics which is providing service to the people, it is almost the same thing, you are operating within an environment and should be interested in knowing what to do to improve the environment. What to do to make life better for the people if you are in power. Journalists are involved in all of that and politicians must be interested in everything . So, for me there is just a thin line.
As a senator in the last dispensation and with the recent expose on the high level corruption that took place in that administration, isn’t it sad that with someone like you being part of that administration you didn’t speak out
I did speak out, when I was there. I shouted that a lot of budget padding was going on, that it was not fair to devote almost 80% of your budget to recurrent expenditure and have little left for capital. We made all those noise, but Nigerians were not attentive to it. That is what President Muhammadu Buhari is trying to correct now that ‘look, all of the inexcusable project that you put into the budget will not find its way in’. A project that is not planned and designed and you just slam it inside the budget. It is sad that this has been ongoing for years, but the president has said enough is enough.
A year into the administration of President Buhari, what can we point to as the tangible achievements of his administration?
Earlier, I spoke about the straightening out of the budget, blocking the leakages and freeing up money for development, which, for me, is a big achievement. All of the thefts going on, all of the paddings that had been going on for years have stopped, all of those things that you put on recurrent have also stopped. Why do you have to buy computers every year? Why do you have to buy generators every year? All the monies you put into training abroad, local travel, foreign travel are just a waste. And the president has said he is not going to allow all those things again. So when you free up these resources, then you can begin to talk about the renewal of infrastructure, health system, education. So, for me, that is an achievement.
There is no more extravagance in governance, you don’t come into governance now and somebody will go and buy land cruiser for you. The president has suspended his security vote. When he travels, he takes allowances as recommended by the civil service rule.
Then, he is also taking time to study and plan in the area of power supply, in the areas of refineries, in the areas of building rail lines across the country. Look at the rail line that will take us from Lagos to Calabar, the one from Lagos to Kano, Abuja to Kaduna. All of these are plans that will be executed, but unfortunately, it is not something that will start today and end tomorrow, it takes a long time.
You don’t go to a store to buy a power plant or refinery, it has to be planned. It takes time six to nine months and sometimes two years before these things materialise. That is why Nigerians felt like this man is not working. And again he does not want to deceive people by just throwing things around.
Another thing that may have delayed the execution of some of these projects is the passage of the budget, now that he has assented to it, a lot of palliatives for the poor are being factored into that budget.
About N500b has been budgeted to take care of the poor, the unemployed, and the unskilled. Many unskilled graduates will be trained this year so that they can venture out and make money for themselves.
500,000 teachers will be employed, graduates who don’t have anything to do will be taken off the street and trained, about a 100,000 will be trained in ICT while ICT hubs will be built across the country.
In the face of the dwindling oil price, how does government hope to finance this budget?
Thank God, there is a marginal improvement in the price of crude in the last two weeks, that in itself is a blessing. The other one is that, as I said earlier, a lot of leakages are been blocked the money you dash out to traditional leaders, religious leaders and pressure groups are no longer there. The money is being conserved to provide services to the people. Then, there are the money that is been recovered from those who have stolen money over the years. There is a committee that manages all of the seized assets to fund the budget. Nobody is panicking now, there may just be enough to fund the budget.
What do you think can be done to pressure government at both state and local government levels to do more than they are currently doing?
You see, it is a moral situation when you begin to give direction and focus and people are seeing the way he is carrying himself, his utterances and the way he is doing things, people will begin to protest in those states and urge their governor to emulate the president.
The president is saying ‘we don’t want the workers to suffer, we are going to assist you,, if the assistant then gets to the state and it is not being used judiciously, the people will rise up and begin to ask for what is rightfully theirs. It will take time, but gradually things will begin to change.
If you have a president that is austere and not given to wasting the resources of the country and we now have a governor who begins to waste the people’s money, there will be something or someone to compare him to.
You cannot legislate it, we are practising federalism, so they are independent to an extent, but it now depends on the citizens of the state to say ‘in this state we want somebody like Buhari, we want someone like Osinbajo not all these profligate governors.’
On Ekitigate, what is being done to ensure the revelations are not just swept under the carpet?
Consultations are ongoing between the attorney general in Ekiti State and the federal attorney general to see exactly what the position of the law on this is. The army has done its bit by punishing the culprits. How do you punish the civilians who participated in it to ensure that justice is not denied? All of that is being debated
Do we go back to the Supreme Court and ask that the case be revisited? Does the constitution allows for that? All that is being debated and within the next two weeks a decision will be taken on how to deal with the issue once and for all.
What is your take on the high level fraud perpetrated by Fidelity Bank in the build-up to the last election?
Again, it is one of the achievements of the Buhari Government, anybody who has been around politicians know that they have been doing this over the years. Now, President Buhari has come out to say ‘no, you cannot use state money to finance politicians in an election’. INEC personnel are supposed to be government officials, why on earth should anyone use state money to bribe them to do their work?
That means they are partial in the conduct of the affairs of government. That is why the president is hammering on the need for people to be decent in their conducts.
If you are contesting an election under the platform of the APC, the man will tell you point blank that government does not have any money to give to you. Go and raise whatever you can raise and sell yourself to the people while also warning the security operatives not to interfere.
But, doesn’t the action of the bank MD border on sheer criminality?
Yes, it does and that is why he is facing the music. He has been removed while another person has been named in his place. What this means is that gradually all sectors of our lives will be touched. INEC will be probed and if the allegations are found to be true, heads will roll.
The sad thing however is that, you don’t fight corruption without corruption fighting back. But again, the government is ready.
All State Trust Bank was fingered in a similar issue in the past and the hammers of CBN descended on the bank heavily, should Nigerians be expecting a similar sanction against Fidelity Bank?
You don’t do that by fiat, you allow investigators to conclude their work and when you now have all your facts, then we can start talking about prosecution and sanctions of the individuals within the bank that are involved
Again, when the public begins to see this kind of ugliness within the bank and begins to pull out their money out of the bank, naturally the bank will die, that for me is the way it works.
As a former member of the Senate, how do you feel about the ongoing trial of the Senate President?
It is unfortunate that there will be such allegations, but, I also want to caution myself for as long as he has not being found guilty, you can’t begin to condemn him. But, what I can say is that all this allegations do not augur well for the image of the Senate and the National Assembly as a whole.
It is an institution, that must be dignified, that must be respected. You must do everything to ensure that the dignity is not taken from the National Assembly. It is such an important institution to the country.
So, everyone involved, those who are members, those who are presiding who are undergoing one trial or the other should reflect that this is an important institution of this country, we must not allow our personal interest and personal situation to destroy this institution.
Our democracy is an expensive one, what do you have to say about the acquisition of luxury cars for the leadership of the Senate amidst the cry to cut down the cost of governance
Again, you must have read or seen how Nigerians have reacted to this, which is what is required. We cannot fold our arms and allow this to pass. We voted them into power, the general public and the civil society organisations must raise their voice in unison and condemn this profligacy in its totality.
Nigeria cannot afford that now, not at this time that people are suffering, when people cannot afford to eat a decent meal, when people cannot afford to pay their children’s school fees. It is uncalled for and all of us must come together. This does not augur well for our democracy and people are already shouting.
All of last week, Occupy The National Assembly is going on as young men and women gathered there to protest, all of these are going on. It is a process of cleaning up our space. It is going to take time, but it is a good thing that people are not keeping quiet.
Are you worried about how the Senate is trying to amend the CCB Act in the face of Saraki’s ongoing trial at the CCT?
Of course I am, that was uncalled for and unnecessary. The timing was very bad that the presiding officer of the Senate is appearing before the CCT and you choose that time as the best time to amend the law that set up the tribunal. That means you want to incapacitate that tribunal, it is not right and I think Nigerians spoke loudly against that and they quickly had to stop that rubbish. This is very immoral, it is not good in anyway.
What line of action is your party, the All Progressives Congress, going to take in dealing with this issue?
The thing is that the APC is evolving. You remember that the party is made up of people from different parties to form APC, those who came in from the PDP are still carrying that excess baggage of what the PDP stands for, there are those who are coming from the ANPP and they have their own ideas and understanding on how the society should work. Those who came in from ACN, have their own idea; gradually we are trying to build one single united party. So, in the course of doing that some people will go of course, but we will use the moral order to bring them into line that it cannot be business as usual.
Do you think the party has the will power to wield the big stick against any errant member?
Of course, if they begin to do things that will hamper the progress of the party or that will not make it possible for the president to deliver the promises the party made to the electorate, then I think the party will not hesitate to wield the big stick.
Don’t you think that this administration is reneging on its campaign promises made to Nigerians?
No, I don’t think so. Though I am sympathetic to the plight of the people over the hardship everyone is facing now, I will also say that a lot of people are talking out of ignorance. The reason is this; things are bad, things have been destroyed beyond recognition and you need to rebuild and the process of rebuilding takes a long time. For example, you have a beautiful house and a vandal comes in and sets it on fire and another person comes and promises to rebuild the house and make it more beautiful than what it was before. The process is going to be long. You will first start by demolishing the burnt edifice, clear the rubbles, do another drawing and start the rebuilding process, this takes a long time, that is what we are going through now. But Nigerians being who they are, are impatient but then you can’t blame them. All we can do is plead with them to exercise a little bit of understanding and patience. By the time we start rolling out all that we have in plan for them in the next few months, they will see the benefit.
There are reports that it is difficult to do business in Nigeria, what do you think is responsible for this?
First of all, take away corruption. Why are our infrastructure down? It is because of corruption. Why is it difficult to register businesses fast in Nigeria? Corruption. The moment we are able to do away with corruption drastically, things will move faster. And the government is very conscious, there is a department under the vice president’s office that is looking at all the bottlenecks in the way of doing business in Nigeria, they are looking critically at it item by item and they are looking for solutions to these problems.
What do you have to say on the plans of this government to subsidise the price of petrol despite earlier stance against it?
I am not too familiar with that yet, I will go and study it and see where that is coming from. From all of the meetings that I have attended and all the policy formulations engagement, this never came up. Maybe this is the handiwork of the PPPRA, it is not yet a government policy, if it were, I would have known
What do you have to say on the menace of the Fulani herdsmen and the slow response of the president?
What do they want the president to do again? When the matter came up after the tragedy, he ordered all the security agencies to go after the perpetrators. In addressing the leadership of the Catholic Church today, he said everything would be done to bring the culprits to book and that any Fulani cattle rearer seen with arms should be seized and brought to book. What else will he do?
The only solution is that rather than have them roving around and destroying farm lands and killing innocent people, create ranches for them where they are coming from. As we all know that most of the cattle are coming from the North, create ranches for them there, let them butcher the cows there, put them in refrigerating vans and train then bring them down here to be consumed.
The president is working round the clock on that, the agriculture minister is working seriously on that too looking for the best species of grass all over the world to create ranches in the northern part of the country so that all of this problem will be solved once and for all.
But, the consensus is that he started making these moves a little too late after so much public outcry
No, again before the president can make a comment on such matters, he needs information, he needs to summon all the heads of security agencies to ask for their assessments of what the problem is. He needs to have all these information, he cannot just go out there based on what people are saying and just make declarations. These are some of the things people don’t know. Except in the situation where there is something very clear like a building collapse, in such situations he already knows that the building has collapsed, even at that he will want to find out why the building has collapsed. Is it that some people planted bombs in the building or something before he will begin to make statements.
The sad thing is that Nigerians want fire brigade approach to things and it doesn’t work that way in a democracy.
Now you have heard that the Commissioner of Police from the state has been redeployed, that means some facts have emerged that the man didn’t act well on time, so a lot of things will happen subsequently. It is worrisome that people just make quick judgement that because Buhari is Fulani so he must be supporting Fulani herdsmen, nobody running the affairs of a country will condone something like that, I don’t think so, not even a mad man.
What do you make of the President’s body language on the rule of law?
In fact, right now, the way some of us perceive him is that he has become too soft. Seriously, there are a lot of things he is insisting on, that we should let the law run its course, don’t interfere, don’t go and rig elections for anybody, let the electorate decide. Those are democratic values.
On Dasukigate, I guess why you are talking about body language is that here is a military man, a general in the Nigerian Army who has fought wars now seeing that you are sending young men to the war front without providing them with the needed ammunition. You are stealing the money meant for ammunition to build houses, to take abroad to your banks. That is where that body language comes from, if he has not been a military man who was involved in going to war, he wouldn’t have been worried about sending young men and women to the war front without the necessary equipment.
The facts are there, very clear. You go and buy severely used helicopters and within one month of bringing them in, they have all crashed killing so many people. You go and buy bullet-proof vests that are not “proofing” any bullets and to cap it all, you send soldiers to battle with a sachet of noodles per day to feed on. These are adults who are fathers and husbands. When you have all these facts and you see that some people use these money for something else that may explain his body language. If it were to be when he was in the military, he would have had all of them arrested, court-martialled and executed.
But, now he knows he has to go through the court, they will ask for bail, they will pay lawyers, pay judges and live well thereafter, it can be very frustrating and discouraging, and that for me explains his body language.
What can be done to fast-track the whole judicial process?
Again, that explains the kind of frustration that we are facing. You steal N10 billion and set aside N1billion or 2 billion for court cases. You buy a good lawyer, you buy the prosecutor, you buy the judges, which means you have bought the whole process entirely, and you go home in peace to enjoy the rest of the money. It’s unfortunate, Buhari cannot fight corruption alone, and all of us have a role to play. The judges have a role to play in fighting corruption, the police have a role to play, the prosecutor have a role to play. Same goes for all those fat cat lawyers who believe they can make money at the expense of majority of Nigerians. It’s a problem. Buhari may be upright, he may be clean, but all of us have to show some indignation towards corruption and say “no, this is unacceptable in a decent society, all of the money that could have been spent to build good roads for us, construct rail lines, great airports, run great airlines and do several other great things that will make life easy for all of us are being stolen by a few set of people” and yet there are people within the system who are saying “yes, go ahead continue to do it”. So there are problems.
Are you then saying that the judiciary is the problem of Nigeria?
Yes it is. All of us recognise that. They continue to grant long adjournments until people lose track of the case, they continue to throw all manner of stumbling blocks on the path of justice. Some of them have been caught exchanging text messages with accused persons coming before their court, money have been found in their accounts deposited by those who are appearing before them or lawyers who are standing for one accused person or the other. That will not be accepted in any decent society, if you do that in China, your trial doesn’t take more than two days, they will try you and tie you to a stake and shoot you.
But, again, to show that Buhari is a democrat, he is not going through that route, he is appealing to their conscience, he has asked the people to talk to them. He is trying to make sure that he is not high-handed.
Yes, if you must grant adjournment, it must be that there is a need for it, if you must grant bail, it is not a matter of a person going to obtain a fake medical report and then you give adjournment.
Talking about corruption sir, some people are saying that President Buhari is fighting the symptoms and not the ailment itself. For example, in the case of Dasuki, Former President Jonathan authorised the payment, yet Buhari has not gone after him?
Again, that is an ongoing debate. Here is somebody who contested an election against the president. If Buhari decides to pounce on him now, people will begin to say “Oh, he is being vindictive, he is unforgiving”, and that Jonathan willingly left power for him and all that sort of thing. Well, if you are a military man or you are put in charge of managing the security of the nation and some money were kept in your charge to buy some things and you didn’t buy it, whoever approves the money for you does not matter, but you must account for the money.
But there was a memo from the Finance Minister that he must account for the utilisation of the money and the former president looked the other way
Yes he did. All of these facts are available, I am just saying that again, it is a two-way thing. Some are saying “why don’t you go after the man on whose table the bucks stopped?” Yes, that is a good argument while some will also say why go for a man or why beat a horse that is already dead? Why don’t you just leave him alone and let all those who messed up pay for it? Like I said, it is an ongoing debate. A section of Nigerians will say Buhari is not hard enough while another section will say Buhari is too harsh. So, the man is trying to strike a balance.
What do you make of the president’s frequent travels?
I do not see any problem with his trips, reason being that we are confronted with security problems, we are confronted with economic problems, and we are confronted with image problems. All of these problems require that the president does not stay at home and lament the situation, all of that requires that he moves out.
First of all, cultivate a new image for the country. Secondly, network with leaders of other nations who have experience in fighting the kind of problems that we have security-wise. We have neighbours from where people bring in small arms, we have neighbours where people are been recruited to come and fight on our terrain. He needs to meet with the president of these countries and get to sign agreement with them on how people and material will come in and go out of the country.
Thirdly, there is the issue of the economy, the economy is bad, the price of oil is falling, our foreign reserve is dwindling and yet he must keep the country working and there are countries that can help. Look at the kind of help that we are getting from China, look at the kind of assistance we are getting from America. If he had not gone to America, they wouldn’t have given us such help to send back almost $400m that some people are keeping illegally in the country, they wouldn’t have helped with the kind of facility they are giving us in the fight against terrorism. So, Buhari needs to move around. Again, people seem to have forgotten that the world of today is different from that of 20 years ago. Anywhere you are in the world, you can have a link with the world with the help of your mobile phone. He can hold a Federal Executive Council meeting through Tele-conferencing, the president can be in China and have a conference with his ministers back home in Nigeria. Work continues. People should also realise that he is not the only one in government, he has ministers, he has the vice president, he has the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), he has the Chief of Staff, and he has an array of staff that ensures that work goes on. The world has become a global village, everyone has to relate with one another.
If he sends a minister to America, there is a limit to what the minister can agree on, there is a limit to the treaties he can sign, but when the president goes, it is a different ball game.
All of the gains of the China trip wouldn’t have been possible with a minister in attendance, so, for me his trips are justified.
If he had gone on a jamboree to attend a party or to go on a pilgrimage, we may begin to criticise him, but, that is not the case, it is a working visit, and each time he comes back, he has something to show for it.
