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OGUN PDP Chieftain, Otunba SEGUN SHOWUNMI
I admire the organizational ability of my rivals. I accept the organizational ability of my rivals, the APC, and I accept the challenge of their style, but I cannot ignore the vision of the president. I would be a damn hypocrite if I said I don’t accept that local government should have autonomy. I can never, if you like, call me anti-party. That’s your business. Am I going to be anti-what I believe? You can’t see that and not say this is something commendable. I can’t accept that you’re going to tell me that removing subsidies so we don’t have to be having queues in December. How do you want me to? I’m supposed to say that that’s wrong? I can’t do that. Some other people can. I’m not begrudging them for saying that, but I can’t. I cannot pretend that I don’t like the concept of the coastal road. I have taken you to the coastal road. You saw the excitement in my spirit from the tip of my toes to the grain of my hair, just closing my eyes and looking at that road in completion and imagining the kind of infrastructure, the kinds of hotels, the kind of aquatic life, the kind of things we can do on that road.
Everybody is looking at where to invest in Africa. We are the investment destination of choice just by the sheer size of our markets. And because our market is large because of the population, we need to settle the country. We can’t run a country where every day, the people are abusing Nigeria and the Nigerians themselves. And you want everybody in the world to come to your country. How will they come? What a nonsensical excuse we’ve been making. People are coming from Chad. Are we crazy people that don’t know that we’re supposed to control our own borders? Why should we be part of an ECOWAS protocol that has now started killing our own people? And we don’t have the courage to call the people in ECOWAS an ECOWAS. Nigerians have bled enough for all of us and integration. If you guys don’t stop these miscreants from coming into our country, we are going to get out of this free movement of humans. Why should America wake up in the morning and put a wall around Mexico and say, and we’ll sit down here and people are killing us? We’re not serious. And the problem that we thought was a northern problem is now in Kwara. It has entered your territory and I look at the people that are calling themselves leaders here. I can’t see strong vision. I can’t see know-how. I can’t see capacity to attract the kind of brains that will get the job done. And you think I shouldn’t offer myself? Show me any one of them that has a better idea than me and I’ll give them the ticket. All they talk about is they have money, they are this, the president likes them. What kind of nonsense is that?
After I give you the power, what are you going to do with it? I’m supposed to accept that you’ll be dancing around, saying nothing about development, just going all over the place, and that’s the basis of how we’re going to deliver our own state to you? Well, we all know good together. I don’t have the power to force you to do the right thing. After I have done what I think I should do, before almighty God, I’m going to be sleeping like a baby. Because at least I will say to myself, Father, all our ancestors, I tried my best to show them the right way. I don’t have the power to force them, but let it be a record. Everything I could give, I gave. For our today, and for all our tomorrow. So that’s really what the ambition is. And if it is the will of God, and you people can also support me and do the bit you can. So if you’ve been interviewing them, do they even come close? That energy, that effort was what people like me hoped we would create and continue to feed, to improve, to deepen. And he was lucky because he then took a platform called Labour Party, which, if you will be fair to yourself, is the only ideologically recognizable, grounded platform by creation. By virtue of the fact that anywhere you have a Labour Party, there’s no ambiguity as to what it really represents. Be it in London, be it in Japan, anywhere there’s a Labour Party. So you kind of feel like wow, Peter Obi struck Gold. He’s gotten an ideologically stable organization, or what ought to be an ideologically stable organization, and he has also given us the grace to believe that the Nigerian people are yearning for a new order. But what did Peter do? He assumed that life in politics is a bed of roses and he ought to know better. We had a PDP that had a lot of problems. We had a Peter who was taking away the energy that had been invested and infused into the Labour Party and then he became even doubly frustrated.
So that was why I tried very hard, and I’m still trying very hard, hoping that the PDP comes out of court. Then we can see whether the house is not empty. Even if it looks empty at the top, it may not be empty at the base. And then we can try for the sake of all of us to say this PDP doesn’t have to look like one leader. It has the grace of more than 25, 26 years of constant conversation in the grassroots, with recognizable logos, recognizable symbol umbrella, and recognizing people at the grassroots. So like you asked me: am I running for governor in 2027? Yes I am. I am eminently qualified. I know all the players like the back of my hand, where their issues are, where the excess is, who is angry, who can be pleaded with, who needs to be put in his place, who needs to be stopped. We have run 24 years, the last 24 years, by a very aggressive power transfer between people who should have been friends. And therefore, I see that it has affected our ability to build harmoniously in a direction like they did in Lagos. After the tenure of Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, we knew that they were going to go to the next person. And whoever they took, which in that case it was Fashola, we had an idea that he was going to continue. And then they brought Ambode. Even when they dropped off and they brought Sanwolu, we knew that, come what may, they were going to continue. I was desirous of that for a while.
But we have not had that luck in Ogun State. After Governor Daniel came in, the one who brought Amosun was a hostile exchange, and that made it very tough. And then when Amosun came in, it was extremely painful that he himself even allowed the hostile situation between himself and his friend Dapo. I want people to see that I have a bit of a soft spot for the governor, Dapo, never mind what people have to say that is a little bit critical. The softest spot I have for him is just the mere fact that he has the courage to continue some of their projects. One of the projects is the airport. I knew when we were getting approvals for that airport. They didn’t touch it until he came back. Now we have that airport. Am I supposed to pretend as if we did not design that or that he did not do it? What would have happened if he had come and said that he was not going to go with that airport? I knew when we were getting approval for OKLNG and all of that. It didn’t happen. But I’ve seen the amount of energy he’s putting into it. I knew how long we have known that we have oil in many locations. We have it in Eba, and we have it in Tongeji. But what would have happened if he didn’t put all the effort in to even get us the right to go and prospect in Eba? For the mere fact that he’s even following some of those things, am I not going to forgive him compared to those who saw the design and didn’t follow? So for me, I don’t think that immortality is in being the governor for four years or eight years. I consider that place like a golden prison. But if we are to develop nations, human beings like me must not be allowed not to present themselves. We must present ourselves and we must be courageous enough to let the people of that environment make their decisions. I won’t begrudge them if they don’t vote for me. I am absolutely sure that I’m the best deal now. Since we have started this republic, I guarantee you there’s none of them that has spoken about development, reorientation, and how we can do better than I have.
I have been standing righteously with our vision, hoping and praying that we get it right. And now, I think I’m able to do better than them. I’m even able to reconcile them. I can look at them from a distance and say, no sir, this was the issue you had with them. Hey sir, this is the reason why you are angry. We can apologize to you here. But this is, hey sir, this was the mission that was truncated. You need to be there to be able to do it. I should be able to look up and say, oh, who’s that man calling? Okay, I remember now. You can’t develop a nation or a state above the head of those that statutorily live there or originate from there. If you don’t build around consensus, you will not build anything because nobody is going to continue what you built. If you agree that you must continue to see where the glasses are full, add more, then you will see that you will scale up. Look at Lagos. You may be angry that they’ve not tarred the streets in front of your house, but you cannot pretend that some developments are not taking place. Lagos is now being run like a country within a country. They are on their third rail line. Lagos already has an activated multimodal transportation system that includes moving people on water. You’ve got to know that these things happen via vision that is built. Lagos has extended its shoreline in the Aquatic City because somebody dredged it and stockpiled it. That location is where the biggest investment of the United States of America for an embassy exists outside America. You have to understand that these things yield to continuity. And so, I am running. My prayer is that we start it at my party.
