Gbadebo Patrick Rhodes-Vivour, also known as GRV, was born on 8th March 1983. He is a Nigerian architect, entrepreneur and politician. He was the gubernatorial candidate of the Labour Party for Lagos State in the 2023 gubernatorial election where he finished runner-up with incumbent Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu picking the mandate. Rhodes-Vivour, earlier, had been the senatorial candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the Lagos West Senatorial District in the 2019 Senatorial election. The 42-year-old activist was educated both in Nigeria and abroad having attended Chrisland Schools, Ikeja, Lagos State, Nigeria up to JSS3, and then proceeded to Paris, France to attend École Active Bilingue, where he completed his secondary education proceeded later to bagging his Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the prestigious University of Nottingham, United Kingdom (UK), a Master’s degree in the same field from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He partook in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) of 2008 after his first master’s, completed it in 2009 and later attained a second Master’s degree, but this time, in Research and Public Policy from the University of Lagos (UNILAG). Rhodes-Vivour is from a prominent Nigerian family of Lagos, son of Barrister Olawale and Mrs. Nkechi Rhodes-Vivour. His uncle was a one-time Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria, Bode Rhodes-Vivour, and his grandfather was the late judge Akinwunmi Rhodes-Vivour. He is also the great-grandnephew of Steven Bankole Rhodes, the second ever indigenous judge appointed in Nigeria, and his great-great-grandfather was the wealthy 19th century planter, William Vivour. In this interview with some media executives in Lagos, he speaks about the ideal leadership as a position of service not gloating about punishing people, the 2027 general elections, the type of Lagos State that will and more. EXCERPTS:
Let’s start off from where the 2023 campaign ended. One of the major issues of that campaign was the introduction ethnic cleansing, which was directed at you, the introduction of ethnicity, the Omo Igbo or no Omo Igbo. Please, take us through the experience and the reason why I am asking that question is, presently in Lagos, the front burner is the issue of ethnicity, street naming, some people are not wanted in certain locations, the issue of ‘no man’s land’, how does it define Lagos that you know, a cosmopolitan state, how does this ethnic narrative define Lagos?
Thank you for that question. You see, the main issue here is that the majority or a lot of people are being plagued. They are being plagued by person that is taking advantage of their lack of understanding of what is actually happening. All of these people that every time they start these agitations and push for these narratives, that are just there to distract you. It is a classic divide and conquer strategy. If I get all of you to be hitting your heads and fighting yourselves, you can never ask me about why you spent two billion on air freshener. You cannot ask me about why I am spending billions on consultancy. You will not talk about why the company that got the contracts for Coastal Road without any proper bidding or transparency situation or how Seyi Tinubu is also on the board. You would talk about any of those things. So, it does two things. One, the people that are supposed to come together and demand good governance, that is Yoruba and Igbo, which make up the majority of the population in Lagos State are now fighting themselves or arguing and so, they cannot come together to demand good governance. Second, they are not talking about the issues that actually matter to them.
When we really think about it, at the end of the day, does the renaming of streets really matter compared to how much fuel is? Compared to how much is paid for electricity? Compared to how messed up your gutters are and how they are not covered? Compared to the fact that none of these people leading us can send their children to the same public school they went to when they were younger? Meanwhile, they got solid education in those places. All of these people, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Bola Tinubu when they were growing up, at least for the ones that grew up in Lagos, when they opened the tap, water was coming out. Well, for the last two decades, despite hundreds of millions of dollars collected in aid to be able to deliver pipe-borne water, it becomes difficult, even the water corporation doesn’t have water. This is a fact; I am not just talking. I talk about this all the time. My father’s house in Ikeja, one of our neighbours whose building separates us is close to the water corporation and I remember at a time the borehole collapsed, they brought in a huge bill because they had to excavate the whole borehole, redo it again, go deep, get the pumping machine out, so the cost was so high. And then we thought, you know, we are neighbours to the water corporation, why don’t we just go and talk to them and see if we can connect water to them? We went there, and they don’t have water.
So, these are the issues that affect your life. If we have pipe-borne water in Lagos State, first of all, the pollution in terms of plastics will reduce significantly. Second, cholera epidemics will reduce significantly, and a lot of typhoid and other diseases that are linked to not having clean, processed water will also reduce significantly. These are issues that affect people, and their children. But instead, they showed that discord, so that you are talking about things that do not affect your life. It does not affect how much the fish is on your table costs, it does not affect how much is the rice your wife is buying, it does not affect the school fees that you have to pay in September. You are talking about street naming; it is a strategy. I employ Lagosians and Nigerians at large to understand and see through this strategy. Because it’s a game. They are playing a game. After the elections, we go back to living our regular lives, where we are doing business with people of different tribes. But the suffering of bad governance follows us. Meanwhile, they are enjoying themselves, they are spoilt by the country.
You say that you came into a country and you met a country that was bankrupt, almost bankrupt, broke, poor, that’s what they’re saying. At the same time, you use N20 billion to go and build or renovate or finish the vice president’s house. You gave a contract of God knows how many trillions for Coastal Road when we have all the roads that are linking the farms to urban centres that are deplorable, which is why 60 percent of goods that come from farms to urban centres spoil and rot, which is also why the transport cost is so high, and which then determines food inflation? The same situation has created a crisis of cost of living that Nigerians have seen, that they have not experienced in the last 20, 30 years. These are the real-life issues. But they do not want you to talk about them. That’s why they’ll talk about language, they’ll talk about the names of streets, they’ll talk about who is living where and who is not accepted. But I will tell you something, you see Lagos is peculiar, there’s no other state like Lagos in Nigeria.
There is no other state. The indigenes of Lagos are peculiar. They are peculiar human beings, not because they are any less Yoruba than their brothers that came from Ife, but their exposures are different. In Lagos, we have a situation where we had a group of people that were never conquered by Oyo, Ibadan or Ondo or any of those people, they have created their own system. Then Lagos was the place where, from Badagry ports, Lagos ports, a lot of people were kidnapped from here, and shipped abroad as slaves or enslaved because nobody was born a slave. There were so many neighbours that were capturing their neighbours and exploiting them. They were stealing human beings. And it went through the ports of Lagos. That way a lot of people that were elite at the time made a lot of money, they benefited. Now, these people were dealing with the Europeans, Portuguese, British and Spanish, all of them. That’s another level of exposure. You are seeing the white man; you are understanding the white man. All of a sudden, a person that has been that exposed is not thinking the way a tribal person is thinking because they are now interfacing with the world.
If all of us go to England today and we are experiencing racism from the British man, we are no longer calling ourselves Igbo or Yoruba, we are now black, we are now Nigerians. Yes, that is because we have been exposed to a bigger identity. Do you understand? Then the enslaved people that were able to get their freedom, fight for their freedom through any way, through any form, came back and a lot of them settled in Lagos. When they came, the monarchy and everything gave them pieces of land. “Okay, go and develop these places”. These people now came with all their experience, in terms of their architecture, their trade, their education, their knowledge and came into Lagos again, as a third series of exposure. All of the South West did not experience that exposure. And then you now have a situation where it was now colonialism that came in. You now have a situation where the governance of Nigeria was based in Lagos. So, you had politicians coming from everywhere to talk about the matters of Nigeria in Lagos. Another level of exposure. People were interacting with people from all over Nigeria. Interacting with people from all over became the norm.
Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe had this place as his base. You were dealing with people. Chief Obafemi Awolowo from Ogun State was in Lagos doing his politics. Lagos was the capital, investment had poured in, and then you had the fight for Independence. The motion was still moved in this same Lagos. Lagos had been a colony way before there was a South-West. Lagos itself was a protectorate. It was first a protectorate before it was called a colony. Before all the ancillary lands that we now got after Mobolaji Johnson was able to get the freedom of Lagos again, I mean with the support of people like the late Oba Oyekan and so many others.
We have been leading and ruling ourselves before there was a Nigeria, before there was a South-West, so why should we now be under someone else? And they fought for their independence and to get that independence, they gave up all their rights on WEMA Board. Despite a lot of investments on Lagos land, they gave up their interests and their rights in Wema Board in exchange for being independent. That’s how important it was for them to be independent. So, I highlighted several exposures, it is these exposures that made the indigenous people of Lagos create the environment of Lagos that welcomed the world of Nigeria. And it’s that welcoming of the world of Nigeria that Lagos became the commercial capital of Nigeria and one of the largest city economies in Nigeria. This is because if you we come here, you feel safe. The indigenes welcome you, they want to do business, they are welcoming, they are accommodating, that is what it is to be an indigene of Lagos. So, when you see all of these things, you start to see the nature of Lagos changing. Why? This because Lagosians are not at the helm of affairs, they are not. Everything that you are seeing today, all this talk, ‘we name these streets,’ I mean, go and look at the names, go and look at people behind them, I’m sorry, they don’t carry this story. They don’t carry this legacy. Their grandfathers have not passed these values down. They are coming with values and exposure system that is very different, that is what is now changing.
Because if all of these things they feel is the right thing, then let them create another Lagos in their respective states and let’s see if it’s worth it. Go back to your state and be this hostile to people and see if people will come with investments. Talk of just 100 people in Nigeria, wealthy people, even northerners, they must have a base in Lagos. Why? It is because the indigenous people of Lagos, from the Awori to the Egun to the Saros, the people that make up Lagos as what it is, to the Benin, to the Tapa, have gone through struggle. You noted what I said that if all of us go abroad, and we meet a white person that has come to where we stay and beating and beating us, after a while, we would not see ourselves as Igbo, Yoruba or Hausa, we are now, in a struggle, see ourselves as black. Now that is what Lagosians own and that is the identity that created the city state called Lagos and unfortunately now, a lot of these are being usurped because most of the people living in Lagos, fanning this ethnic and tribal thing, they are not Lagosians.
This is not the first president we have had that is Yoruba. We had Obasanjo, was anybody doing any of this at the time? Nobody. Obasanjo was our president. Did we have this kind of ethnic strife? No, but for one man’s ambition, they will go to any length to just divide, dehumanise, insult, belittle, hurt. But all of it, Nigerians, Lagosians, need to study more. They need to think more. You know, when someone just talks about this street name, it’s your ego that kicks in. And that ego will make you kick in and just talk about surface things that don’t affect you or your family or your children. And that is what they’re going to do. That’s a distraction. So Lagosians, Nigerians, they need to see past it. These politicians should come and tell us what they’ve done with the money for 20 years. They should come and tell us why Lagos owes so much money to the banks and what they’ve been using the money for. They should come and tell us why they’re spending so much money on consultancy fees and air freshener and all of these things. Right, Lagos State has money. Why are our children in such poor educational system? Why is it that the majority of people would rather send their children to private schools than public schools? Why do we not have water running from our taps? Why is it that you’re in Lekki and the water is so bad you have to bathe with brown, smelly water? Why can’t you have the waterworks that supply water to all the people here, knowing full well that this is all sand-filled land? Right? Why are our inner roads so terrible? You come off a decent highway that has been created, that by the next rainy season, it has all washed away, and then you turn off, turn right or turn left, and then the whole roads are, you think you’re in a village.
The whole Lagos West, go to Ojo, go to parts of Amuwo, go to parts of Festac town, go to parts of Badagry and even Lagos East, go to parts of Ikorodu, right, why are they like that? These are the things that affect you. I remember when I was campaigning for Senate, when I went to Badagry, people would tell you how a woman is trying to give birth, she’s ready to go into labour, and she has to go through all these bad roads to get to the hospital on the express. It’s the most uncomfortable thing. These are the issues. When we talk about issues, it is to the benefit of Lagosians. Talking about issues, people like Babatunde Gbadamosi (BOG), myself, other politicians that have talking about Blue Line, Blue Line, Blue Line, train, train, train, it’s about opposition talking about issues. So as Lagosians and Nigerians, we do not do ourselves justice by ignoring issues and falling for this their trap, we don’t gain anything from it.
What do you identify as Nigeria’s problem, because, recently, the National Assembly committees, that is, the House of Representatives Committee and Senate Committee, were here on the Constitution Review public hearing and people were asking for state creation and additional state creation? They are also asking for true federalism among others. What exactly would you say is the problem of Nigeria? Is it leadership? Is it inter-changing the constitution and making it a federal constitution? What exactly is it in your own view?
For me, the problem of Nigeria starts with bad leadership, poor leadership, absolutely poor leadership. When you look at what China has been able to achieve in the last 100 years, it is the direct result of quality leadership. Those are the brilliant people that want to do the best for their country and take pride in doing the best for their country, not their bank account, not the cars that their children are driving, but the best for their people. And the fortunate thing is, once everybody is rich, you will become rich. That is what these people don’t know. They think they can steal from the country and develop the country at the same time? No. It will never work because your mind is constantly on how you will steal money. So, the quality of your decisions is poor. You will give a contract to somebody that is not deserving because your son is on the board. Meanwhile, you could have given that contract to someone else at a cheaper price and still get a better quality for your people. Right? But you are making bad decisions because you are constantly thinking about yourself and your interest. You are not there to serve. So, these are some of the problems. I would say poor leadership because that is where it starts. If you look at our Constitution, well it might not be perfect, as a working document, if we follow it to the letter, we would have a good country.
Our Constitution says one of the reasons why we should remove a sitting governor is if you find out and able to prove that he has sworn an oath of allegiance to another country. That is the Constitution of the country. You take that to court and you prove that somebody has sworn an oath of allegiance to another country, and is also chief security officer, and the court will bypass that and pretend as if they it did not see it, and you think we can have a good country? How does that make sense? Your chief security officer? The Nigerian leader should be the best of us. Best of us does not just mean a business man or a big man. He should be best of us in terms of willingness to sacrifice himself for something that is bigger than him. That is why in the past, in America, if you served in the Army and you showed a desire for service and love of your country, they took pride in you running for president or running for governor because you have shown the ultimate love for your country. But here, you have a situation where we are looking at a big man. He is a big man, how? By making money for himself? Because someone is making money for himself, why do you think that he can make money for you? Why do you equate that?
A quality leader is somebody that, at some points in life, has shown a level of empathy, a level of compassion, a level of love for his people and humanity at large. That is a sign of service. We don’t really have that in the leaders that we have (in Nigeria) today. A lot of them are career politicians, a lot of them are about their interests, a lot of them have finetuned their way of playing all these scheming and tricks to get to their positions. That is why they don’t have shame. A person can come and lie. You can see on his face he knows he is lying, and he will continue to lie. It doesn’t matter. A person can come out and say “this man is good”, and tomorrow he comes out and say “this man is bad”, just because he has gone to go and see the president. Bull shit! So, poor leadership in terms of intellectual capacity. Go and look at the quality of intelligence that the people that lead England, that lead America, that lead China have. These are brilliant people. Because, to make a difference in the world we live in today, you must be brilliant. You must be able to see far. You must have vision. You must be visionary. Even If you don’t know how to do something, you should be brilliant enough to find the brilliant people that can help you achieve that. But we don’t have that. We have leaders that are poor in character. We have a leader that has associated himself with selling drugs. We have a leader that we are not sure of his or her real name. Certificates are forged. We have a leader that is taking pride in getting lawyers to protect his results from being made open to the public. And he is a public servant, and public figure. So, you have all these and, somehow, you expect a country that works? How?
How Is a person that is hiding his own degree going to show you how he is spending your money? You are putting him in trust of your commonwealth. All the money that is supposed to look after you, he’s the man in charge but this man is using lawyers to hide his certificates and it’s not just him, we have a lot of leaders that will not bring out their results. They will not bring out their certificates but they will carry fake certificates. We have a president, or a leader that we cannot see any of his school mates. The one that we saw as his school mate, we now later found out that the man was much younger than him and was not in the same country, and I don’t even know. It’s just one controversy after the other. Something that is supposed to be very straight forward. I have all the documents of my grandfather. I have pictures of him when he was schooling, I can tell you he was here at this time, we have evidence. There’s nothing you want to tell me that you cannot find evidence for. So, these are some of the things that bring about poor leadership. Leadership is not just about quality of a manifesto or policy of documentation. Character, compassion capacity, intellectual capacity. When you put your leader in front of other world leaders, you should be able to feel that, that leader is an intellectual giant. And you know what’s so painful? Even in this country, when you meet Nigerians, you will know that we have brain. We are highly intelligent people, all over the world. But look at the quality of our leaders. The only person that I can speak confidently and say he achieved that attribute was Obasanjo. He was a Titan intellectually. You cannot rubbish him. I will pause on the situation of poor leadership.
And the last one, which really also stands for poor leadership, is that we don’t have leaders, we have rulers. A leader leads from the front. A leader tells you to follow him because he has told you about a vision and you have been brought into the vision. So, you are following him. A ruler you have him whether you like it or not. He tells you “Go there”, you have to go there. He might not come out of his palace for a whole year but if he tells you to go to the market and bring yam, you must go there and bring yam. You must adore him not because of his intelligence or capacity, but he’s just a ruler. That’s why they come and they buy their way into the office. So, they don’t have to be accountable to anybody. They can do anyhow. They can steal money and use that money to buy their way into that office again. Those are rulers. A leader has to highlight or explain a vision for a country. Short term, medium term, long term. A big vision. Now look at the vision of China, when they started on their journey. Look at the vision of America. Look at the vision of Singapore. Likwan Yule. Go and read his books, you will see his vision, and he implemented it. There are people that will rule over a country or lead a country and the people will say, “Oga, stay, stay, please, you are not going anywhere”. Because they can see the vision manifesting.
Like in Burkina Faso, where people asked a military man to please stay there?
Exactly! So, well, people might give many excuses and say, “Okay, on the ethnic background, there was this, there was that”, the poor man on the street…. But, if the politicians, the politicians are fighting because you want position but if they go and impact that poor man on the street the talakawas, people in the ghetto and you are elevating them out of poverty, nobody is going to be talking nonsense, if they can feel your governance. So, that is it. And you know, we need justice. If justice is strong in the society, it will really flourish.
Would you say that the loss suffered by the president to the Labour Party in Lagos is why you are going into this contest again?
It’s not about the loss of the president in the last election in Lagos State. President Tinubu was not campaigning when Jimi Agbaje was contesting, and they were calling him Jimi Chukwu, and they were putting banners up, saying that Jimi Agbaje was the governor of the South-Easterners. Once a Yoruba man stands up to challenge the hegemony of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the first thing they attack is his Yorubaness. They will take his Yorubaness away from him. You have a titan like the late Chief Ayo Adebanjo, because he supported somebody else, they were questioning his heritage. They said his mother is Igbo, they started creating lies. Same thing with Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, a man that delivered the best performing economy, whether you like him or not, the numbers do not lie. I remembered when I was in school when this man was president, all my mates in America, we were all rushing to come back to Nigeria because we were afraid that we were missing out on something, right? He delivered that. Now, because he does not support you, you are now creating stories about who his father is Igbo and all that. You know, I just gave example of Jimi Agbaje, Jimi Chukwu, you see, when people don’t have a vision to sell, they sell division. Do you understand? Can you imagine if somebody like Prof. Osinbajo was contesting for president, do you honestly think that he would have been playing tribal card? When you don’t have anything to say, you don’t have anything to sell, that’s when you bring things like this up. It’s stupidity, they are taking advantage of our lack of knowledge and if we continue falling for these people, I am sorry, but we are being stupid. At a point, we have to tell ourselves the truth. If we continue the same thing over and over again, it is madness, if we expect a different result.
But, look, you are a Lagosian and the situation as it is that we have Lagosians, who also are backers of Tinubu. In fact, they have sustained him so far in government. What do you say to that because, Lagosians are also behind him?
There are people that kidnapped people to sell and then called them slaves. And you point to the white man and say the white man is bad for doing it, but your brother was kidnapping people, I am talking about neighbours kidnapping people at night and selling them. There are a lot of people that only care about themselves, their pockets and their family. They will go back to Lagos Island and see what Lagos Island has become and they will close their eyes. They don’t care because they have access to the president. The president has put some of their children in government. The president has taken care of them. They have access to him. When he calls them, they can come to his house, and it is a disgrace. You see, Lagos in general, and not just Lagos Island, Epe, Ikorodu, Badagry, you have places that people made so much impact that their history is so well documented, so they know what Lagos has been. It’s not about “Oh I think”, you know. These streets that are flooding today, Herbert Macaulay walked on these streets. Henry Carr walked on these streets; we know how Nigeria was formed in Lagos. So for you to go there and sit now and just pretend as if you don’t know, as if you don’t know what your grandparents passed down to you, or the legacy, and you just want to close your eyes and say you are backing someone because of your unselfishness, I mean, history will judge all of them, ultimately. History will judge all of them.
And ultimately, you know, some other people will stand. A whole bunch of Lagosians that want to be at the helm of affairs of their state should be in control of the indigenes of the state. A whole bunch of that are shouting that call and crying about it, it’s not even about right or wrong, it’s about fairness, it’s about justice. Right, a Dosumu cannot go and become governor in Ogun State, because everybody says Lagos is a Yoruba Land. Okay, fine! Lagos is linked to the South West and Lagos is Yoruba, fine. But the indigenes of this same Lagos cannot go and be senator even local government chairman in Osun, in Ondo, in Ekiti, it can never happen. Then, when you have a James Faleke representing Ikeja, then you now went and run for deputy governorship seat in Kogi State. Or you have a commissioner like Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola in Lagos State Government that then went to become governor in Osun State, or you have Senator Olamilekan Solomon (Yayi) that was serving Lagos West, and then he now went to go and become Senator for Ogun West. It’s not reciprocal (Laughs). It’s not reciprocal.
And even this thing, we are even talking far, can an Osun man go and run for governorship seat in Ekiti? Can an Ondo man go and run for local government chairmanship position in Ekiti? It is not possible. So, this whole idea about Yoruba Land only has a say in Lagos because, again, it’s a distraction. It’s a form of mental colonisation and a form of just trying to take the voice away from indigenes of Lagos, or people that describe themselves as Lagosians and this is their only home. And when it comes to talking about fairness, people should look at it and say, “Why not? We are all here, we are all benefiting. These people don’t have any other place they can go. Let them control their state. That will even be better. Let’s try it.” The person’s that see this place as their legacy, right? The way they will hold something will be different from some other persons that still have another place to go. It’s just the truth, whether you like it or not.
The ADC, a new coalition is a household name, how do you see the development?
So, for me, for the longest time, I have made it clear that the only way to face the APC is by forming a coalition. There is no group that can face President Bola Ahmed Tinubu by themselves. You saw how tightly contested 2023 was. If we are fair, you will see that there was an attempt by former President Muhammadu Buhari, now late, to conduct a free and fair election. There was a genuine attempt that we’ve seen, to ensure that the election would not be monetised. Now, that’s not going to be the case. You have seen huge amount of money that is being borrowed by this government, that is what they are using the money for. A lot of these funds would come in to monetize these elections. So, you need a coalition. We cannot afford to divide the opposition. And dividing the opposition is not just in votes, it’s in ideas, it’s in strategy, it’s in network, it’s in working together. Those forces coming together will be extremely formidable. So, in my opinion, you know, and when you even add Peter Obi’s votes to those of His Excellency, Atiku Abubakar’s votes, they defeated Tinubu’s votes with almost 5 (five) million votes. Now, five million votes are a very hard number to reach. You cannot just hide five million votes, you can try it and change 10 to 100, 20 to 120, to do that to get to five million votes, to cover five million votes, it becomes a very, very difficult task.
So, I am of the opinion that we need a coalition. We need a united opposition. And my hope is that reason will prevail and we will be able to get an opposition that flies a ticket that Nigerians can truly buy into. I am not talking about a section of the country. I am talking about the whole of Nigeria because the suffering of the whole of Nigeria is not shared by just one section of the country, it is shared by all of us. Bad governance is shared by all of us. Right, it might not be you that terrorists are coming to your farm and chasing you away from the farm, but it is you that is going to the market and buying tomatoes that are much more expensive. It’s connected. It might not be you that is sending your children to public schools that the education quality is very bad, but it is you that’s struggling to find skilled staff that are going to be able to work for you. You might have the money, you might have everything to side step all the bad situation of bad governance, but bad governance would still find, it will affect you. So this the thinking that we must imbibe as Nigeria from all classes, from all sections, from farmers to the bank CEOs. If government is working, if Nigeria is working all of us will be better for it.
Ahead of 2027, do you see the PDP still maintaining its name as a main opposition? Or are you saying that we need this coalition ahead of 2027 instead of just relying on the main opposition party?
The coalition is a reflection now of the new type of politics we have come into. There was a time when it was not so much about the person, it was about the party. If you have a solid party, there are solid men on ground in every state, they will put everything together to work for you and deliver you. But what His Excellency Peter Obi has shown is a new type of politics, a reflection of a new type of Nigerian, a new type of person, that is looking at the individual. Also, that is tied to the new type of way we live. Our phones are always with us. So, you can fall in love with a candidate, not necessarily the party. You can watch his videos; you can do research. At the time when you were 15 or when you were 18 and you were coming of age to vote, you did not have a place where you could just Google and see how somebody performed four, five, six years ago. Now you have that at the palm of your fingertips. How did Peter Obi manage his budget? How did Atiku create employment or investment and you get the answer right away? So now, people are not googling how the PDP performed. No. they are googling personalities. So, when those personalities come together in a place, the party now becomes strong. Before it was about the party, now it’s about the personalities coming together, and even the individuals themselves. You know that Labour Party did not have any structure, but in most parts of Nigeria, but you can see the number of votes he garnered. The effect of Peter Obi coming into Labour Party and total votes garnered by the party that has no structure, and in a situation where 70percent of the polling units were not manned, right. Now, you have a situation where people are more passionate about individuals, because of you really look at it, there is no party with any real ideology. You might have ideology on paper, we are not there yet. So it is not so much about party, it’s about the individuals that make up that coalition.
Don’t you think the strategy of instigating a crisis in the opposition is being used against the ADC? Talking about individuals, there is also the PDP trying to woo Peter Obi back into its fold, in other words trying to break the ranks of ADC and the momentum already gathering, how do you read the game?
The game is a very dynamic one, I don’t think Nigeria has experienced this kind of dynamism in its politics at least since I have been in my adult years to even understand or observe what is going on. It’s a very, very dynamic one. The people that we are up against are very solid politicians in terms of their idea of playing the game of politics. Not so much in terms of governance. Their focus and their strength are mainly on politics. These intrigues, creating problems in parties, so they extinguish the opponents, so they don’t have to face them. There is fear of competition because they are not doing enough that makes them believe that when you show the people what is being done, you will be given a second term. Because they are not doing that, their main strategy is to destroy any party that wants to stand up and put a mirror to their face. Now, think about it, if a person is doing well, if you have truly impacted the lives of people you are leading, you will want to show off that. Who are you? Who is your father, come and debate, you would to say that? Can you imagine a Lagosian like the late Chief Lateef Jakande with everything he did, resorting to bigotry in an election? I cannot imagine it. Maybe, I was too young, I did not know, but I have read a lot about the man.
I have to look at the things he did, I have researched about the man, in fact, I am reading a third book on him right now. He was a man that deliberately made sure that his business was completely separate from government and also the businesses of those people around him as well. You can see the car he was driving when he governor, it was his personal car. When he retired, he remained in his house, he did not take over government’s guest house on Bourdillon or former Deputy Governor’s House on Queens Drive, right. And you can see a man that brought his all for the benefit of Lagosians. Jakande brought substance. He brought value. When you are bringing substance and value, you want to show it. You want to talk about it. And that’s what you see with Peter Orbi doing, every time, he comes with data. He has gone to Egypt to go and see how they are generating power. He has understudied and wants to share his ideas. So, he is not trying to divide people because he wants to govern on your view. If all of you are happy and you are working well, that would also make my life easier. So, all this tribal thing they are doing, what has it come to? A lot of people would tell you that all these demolishing they are doing and things they were doing were targeted. Meanwhile, all your canals are overgrown with weeds, your gutters are uncovered, you are not disposing off your waste in a timely fashion, and you are going destroying people’s houses you gave approval for directly or indirectly. Now, whether it’s a fact or not, if a person feels or believes this is ethnicity motivated and violence is triggered from that and then escalated, would the governor be happy, would the president be happy? The people who have love for Lagos do not want people fighting. They do not want division. The only thing you might hear some people say as indigenes is let us also have a say in our affairs. Which is fair. That is not divisive. That is not violence. People feel bullied. They feel intimidated, let us have a right.
Still on the coalition, we are seeing there is a gathering of people of heavyweights for a common purpose at the federal level, how are you galvanising for Lagos?
We are galvanising because there are a whole bunch of people that are coming together. There are a whole bunch of people coming together, we are having stakeholder meetings. We are interacting with people, we are building our structures, we are mobilising. And because again, the same thing is going to reflect down here even those that were upset with the ruling party, they have joined us. We have the intention to work together and we pray God will grant us the wisdom and unity of purpose to sail through. So, the coalition has adopted ADC as its party for the coalition. So, whether you are from PDP, whether you are from APC, whether you are from SDP, this is the party we are adopting. So, you have to join the party. How are you going to participate in congress if you are not a member of the party? ADC has been adopted by the leaders of the coalition. I don’t see that changing anytime soon. I think that even if other parties are registered, they will be brought into the coalition.
How are you preparing to face the challenge of thuggery, and the police, in various polling units, come 2027 election?
We are letting people know from the beginning of our campaign that this is not a situation where you are going to vote and go home. All these thugs, all these Agberos, how many are they compared to us? The reason why they can do these things that they do is because they go after one person, and everybody else is going, and everybody’s running away. Look at what happened during #EndSARS when they brought buses of these thugs with matchets to Alausa, they were chased and they ran away. So, we must be organised, our campaign is going to sensitise people, and we are making a lot of arrangements, I assure you. It is very painful to understand that the people who have been in charge of the state for over 20 years have to resort to violence and intimidation to win an election. They have had the benefit of over 20 years, I should not even be a threat, I should not be a challenge, I am just 42-year-old. I contested when I was 40 years old, right. I should not be a challenge no matter how smart I am if they have touched the lives of the people. They should be able to say omo boy, just sit down, ehn, these people are doing well for us, our life is better, our children are in good schools, let them continue. These people they are ruling over, what is it that they want? Do you think that the people in Ojo or Ajeromi or Amuwo do not like Tinubu, just because he is Yoruba? No, it is because they have been dealing with bad governance.
Badagry Local Government is made up of indigenous Lagosians, yet they consistently vote in favour of the opposition. Why? Because they have been abandoned for a long time, and they are also part of the state. For the longest time, what the government do is to punish them more. Oh! you did not vote for me; no development is coming to you. Now, it has built that resentment to the extent that it is now what it is. After a while, opposition is making issues, they now went and do that Badagry Road. Issue-based politics is what we should be doing, even if you don’t like a politician, you should always encourage issue-based conversation, because it will put fire on under the ruling party that they need to do this thing. And when I think about it, you realize that these people have no desire. You see, they see Lagosians as an inconvenience. It’s unfortunate that need the Lagosians for elections. Ideally, the APC is just a special purpose vehicle to generate a lot of money for the people in the APC corridors of power and their colleagues. This is because when you see the way they handle things, you realise that it’s not love. I mean, if I want to run for an election now, and Ikorodu people do not vote for me, or Epe people do not vote for me or I did not do well there, my reaction would be to go and make them fall in love with me. As soon as I get into office, I can build a satellite secretariat there, I will spend time there, I will be interacting with them, I will do their roads, I will do things that would make them fall in love with me. That’s the normal reaction because I am a Lagosian and I love Lagos. So you don’t like me, don’t worry I will make you fall in love with me.
It would not come to my mind to be beating you, punishing you, not bringing development to you, getting unemployed young men, empowering them with weapons and drugs, to come and be beating fellow Lagosians. What does that say about the kind of person you are? A lot of times you clap and you say it’s politics. No, no. It’s not politics. It is the crop of people and their behaviour. It is not politics. Politics does not have to be like that. I cannot imagine that, a well-behaved person, a well-brought up person should not think like that. Because if you are in politics, you are there to serve, to love, to shepherd, to guard. So, there is a lot of work we are doing at community level to make sure that people would not be out to intimidate our people in the next election.
