Shortly after defeating two incumbents to emerge the Senator representing Oyo South Senatorial district, Dr. Mohammed Kola Balogun during an interview on a popular Ibadan based Radio station bared his mind on the 2019 general elections in Oyo state and the country in general, his victory, his plans on the actualization of Ibadan state and what led to his victory
You were commissioner for works and transport in 2006 and also the commissioner for commerce and cooperatives in 2007-2011, lets quickly have a little comparison of the Oyo state then, now and the Oyo state you expect in the future
Oyo state then was ruled by former governor, Otunba Alao Akala. He did his best, paid attention to infrastructural development, local economy, health care delivery system and to our education system. He tried his best to pay workers’ salaries, pensioners fairly well and of course our agricultural sector. Oyo state is a potential agricultural state. He came, served and tried his best. Yes, the present administration is in the saddle still and of course, the record is there. The administration is also doing its best. The government of the future that you are looking at in Oyo state, I can speak on that because I am an authority so to say on that, I’ve been a part and parcel of the campaign of Engr. Seyi Makinde. I’m conversant with his blueprint and I can say he’s also committed very strongly to service delivery. I know that he has plans for the education sector. He has said it very well. One of the things we have with our education sector is the fact that we are not putting enough money into the sector. What to do is to raise the budget spending. If you cannot raise the UNESCO standard of 30 percent annually, it should be at least a little close to it, so he has said that. When you have enough money to invest in infrastructure, money to train and pay teachers’ salaries, provide learning aids for students and teaching aids for teachers, you’ll again have money to invest in the education sector. I am sure he has his eyes on the primary health care delivery system because that is the closest to the grassroots. He works assiduously to ensure that we have affordable, qualitative and functional health care delivery system in Oyo state. He’ll ensure that we develop our local economy, no capital flight, he will ensure that local contractors are given contracts because once you do that you are helping to develop the local economy. I know that he has promised that workers’ salaries will be paid as and when due, teachers, of course, the pensioners as and when due. I am also aware that he’ll pay attention to the security of life and property in Oyo state. Yes, looking at the future, these are the plans the governor elect have for the people of Oyo state.
Now if you weren’t a politician but just an average Nigerian, that aspects of the economy will you rate the outgoing governor Ajimobi high and what aspect will you rate him low?
I don’t like to get in the business of rating anybody rather I would wish that we leave them to the general public and you media because sometimes no matter what you say, you’ll still have people say it’s because you are in PDP or APC. Rather I would say, Governor Ladoja came, he served and he left his legacy, Governor Akala came he also served he also left his legacy and so gov Ajimobi is also in service and he also did his best but I will rather the general public gives him his report Card and media professionals like yourself should also give him his report card but if you would get me engaged, we should talk about what we plan to do for the people of Oyo state.
We will get there in the cause of the program but before then, let’s talk about the election that got you into the post as the senator-elect of the federal republic of Nigeria at the state level and the federal level. How would you have considered that election?
For Oyo state, we thank God because the story could have been different. We in the PDP worked very hard, campaigned very hard and prayed very hard and so we were ready for the election. What we were clamoring for was a free, fair and credible election and to the glory of God, INEC in Oyo state has done very well. The commission was able to do his best to give the people of Oyo state what they were clamoring for which is a free, fair and credible election. Though stories out there some confirmed, some not yet confirmed. For me, we couldn’t have had it better. And I think the last state election in Oyo state has become a model for the rest of the country as far as I’m concerned, we are doing very well and the majority of the staff of the commission did their best to ensure that people voted.
Right now let’s take a look quickly at the ongoing presidential election petition tribunal. INEC said that the election result that’s being paraded by the PDP presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar were fake results because INEC did not collate the result electronically but manually and there was no way the result would be on the server. What do you have to say about this?
I really don’t have much to say because INEC was before the tribunal aside from the APC. So INEC was being challenged at the tribunal to come and tell the whole world what went wrong, so you don’t expect them not to be able to defend themselves, they just must say something. So we must leave the judgment on that to the men and women of the bench, the respected and respectable, our lordship in the bench to look at the argument, the pros, and cons from both sides but what I crave for is for the judiciary to live up to the expectations of Nigerians, to do justice so that this will serve as a measure for those who in the future will be planning to rig election, it doesn’t matter what political party they belong to because I think the only way we can sustain democracy is for us to encourage by whatever legal means to encourage free, fair election. Once people know that their votes will count, that they will go to the polling booth and vote for candidates of their choice, then we know that we’ll begin to move to the next level in our national economic prosperity that will enthrone in our society in the rule of law, let wait to see what the tribunal will say. Alhaji Abubakar has come up with his petition and he’s coming up with the evidence and since INEC itself is also being taken in before the tribunal so I’m not surprise that INEC has said what they said because naturally, you would expect them to say something, so we will wait for the ruling of the tribunal
I know you said you are not in the business of rating others but let’s take a look at past legislators that we had in this country, do you think Nigeria has had effective and efficient representations at the National Assembly so far?
I will say Yes and NO. Yes because looking at this side, I know that we’ve had some highly respected and respectable legislators in this country, though few in numbers and we have had those who were there for other reasons. My take on that is that you will only get the kind of government you are voting for so the electorate themselves must wake up and try to screen those they are electing into such positions. Unless we begin to do that, we can’t really come back to complain. If it is money you vote for during the election, that is what you’re likely to get. The quality of leadership you get is the function of the ability of the electorate to screen and elect qualified and credible people. Though we’ve had some highly dedicated legislators who have succeeded in passing and supporting legislations that are for the best interest of the people of the country and yes we have those who were there for another reason. My hope is that the ninth assembly would be peopled by those who will serve this country because we really need to have credible people, people whose commitment to service delivery is intact, not just in the legislative but the executive arm of government and the judiciary. The local government too, we have to have that for us to move on as a nation. We cannot have that unless the electorate themselves begin to shun money on election day, as a nation, as a people, begin to work against violence, speak against it. Of course the media, you also have a role to play I know you’ve been doing your best but you can do some more because after all you also don’t have another country you can call your own.
A lot has been said about the 8th Assembly, good and bad, now the ninth assembly is what we are expecting. As a part of the 9th Assembly, what are the mistakes of the 8th Assembly that the 9th Assembly should look out for?
Well, there was so much interparty crises at the eight assembly, so much of people being sponsored to cause confusion as a result of membership affiliation. I hope that will not happen this time because once you become a member of the national assembly, yes you should still hold allegiance to your party because your party sponsored you to that point but then national interest should be considered as the overriding procedure, so whatever you do, you might want to consider legislation, present legislative bills which will require for you to reach out to lobby your fellow legislators, they don’t have to be a member of your party as long as the bill you are trying to process is for the national interest. For me, we should work together as a body elected by the people of the country to meet their interests. but of course, there’s no political party that would be upset with you just because you are doing something in our national interest so I hope for us not to witness such because from the onset, in electing the leadership of the eight assembly because the party that has the majority was sponsoring some set of candidates for that office and we also had some candidates that have the freedom of course guaranteed in the constitution, just to seek for the same position so they reached out to other political parties and of course they came up with one party producing the Senate president and the other party producing the Senate president. Once that happened, the political leaders ought to have left them alone and encourage them because the bottom line is performance and not what party you belong to or who sponsored who. All that will not happen at the 9th assembly.
Now let’s quickly do something personal, can you take us through your journey from SDP to ADC then to PDP and your defecting to PDP, did you at any time believe that it will boost your chances of winning?
I’m not God and I cannot tell what will happen tomorrow or else you’ll tell us what will happen tomorrow…Laughs
Laughs… you know as a politician sometimes you believe that if I go this way, this permutation will work out.
I’m a man who also believes strongly in almighty God, there’s no how I can predict tomorrow. You want me to talk about my political career, that’s a long one. I am a nomadic politician. I’m nomadic not because of what I want to be but because of the fact that we have party managers that are at best and believe in unity and in position and for as long as we still don’t have the freedom to contest as an independent candidate, we will still have to move from one party for different reasons. Yes, I started my career in the SDP days, I was the elected state editor for SDP in old Oyo state and then I continued. I play politics because I have a flair for politics. I am not uptight to the political position. If I was looking for a political position maybe I would have done it differently. For me it wasn’t because of what I wanted to be but because I had a flair for it. Of course, if you look at political environment and political factors in our environment, you have a lot of discouraging factors, you will have a lot of things that will make you want sick to your stomach, some practices that are not in conformity but then I knew that it is part and parcel of growing up. It is when you are evolving as a nation, you are bound to have such unacceptable reasons and factors but again if you can’t stand the heat you better get out of the kitchen. I was able to cope and since then as the state editor, going forward I was elected the national secretary. I started as a grassroots politician, I was further elected as a world delegate in SDP. I was again appointed as the commissioner for works and commissioner of commerce. I was the director-general of labor party for the Akala campaign organization, chairman of the board of trustees of an outfit called team Akala to support Akala’s aspiration for governor. That is the long and short of the story of my political life.
As the candidate before the election, eventually, you were victorious, you fell two incumbents; incumbent governor of Oyo state and the incumbent senator representing the Oyo south senatorial district. What quality do you think you possess that made the people of your constituency place you over these people?
To be honest with you, we have a lot of people who are more qualified, better educated and had a lot of money. For me, it has to do with the will of God, not by my power, wisdom or anything. Remember I was also running for the governor of this state before I left the labor party, I joined APC, I drove my governorship position in APC, I was a member of the unity forum, unity forum decided to join ADC and I was very active in ADC. Then we had a crisis, the kind of crisis you have when you are faced with impunity in position. So we left for PDP and my team offered me the senatorial post and we worked to get it. So it all happened this way by the grace of God.
Let’s talk about the realization of the Ibadan state. Will you be pushing for it?
Yes, I will be pushing for it. Ibadan deserves a state. It’s annoying sometimes when you look at the geographical structure of Nigeria seeing a state with just the size of Ibadan north and south put together; I think its injustice to the people of Ibadan that we are not a state. I would be at the forefront of the crusade to drive for the Ibadan state agenda at the national assembly. I will engage my colleagues across the aisle. I’ll try to convince them that it’s only fair we have an Ibadan state.
If you had to choose between creating Ibadan state and restructuring Nigeria, which would you choose?
Well, restructuring is uppermost on my mind because whether we have other states, regardless, we need to restructure this country. Even if we have not succeeded in doing so we should be given a state. That is where we start from. Ultimately, unless we restructure this country until we ensure that the natural resources are not being exploited without adding value. If you don’t add value to natural resources, you are creating a recipe for tomorrow’s disaster. Unless we restructure, we won’t have the funds that we need to develop the state and the local economy because that’s the standard practice. We are called the federal republic of Nigeria and we are still struggling to be a republic, we need to have faith.
Senator-elect sir, how do you understand restructuring?
I understand restructuring to mean that every state in this country has its own potential that can aid development and I know that once you do that you’ll allow every state, region and every unit of this country to develop. Ones upon a time in this country we had regional government. The West was being developed with cocoa money, the North with groundnut money or palm oil from the East. What we’re going to have is every state leveraging on its own potentials whether its agriculture, industrial or whatever it is that they have. Necessity is the mother of invention when people know that you can’t continue to wait for a handout from Abuja or for you to be out there and promote yourself as the government of the people you must come out to promote your local resources. I am looking forward to a restructured Nigeria where you would really be federal by practice and by every standard where you have judiciary that is completely and totally independent of the executive arm of government and an executive that is free from the interference of the legislature or any other arm of government and the legislature that is completely free from any interference from any arm of government. We could also have state police. Our country is too big to have just one central police. We can have vigilantes at the local level whereby they get trained by the civil defense and properly organized and made professionals. For me, restructuring is all about having every segment, state and unit of the federation to leverage on its own resources to develop a political environment.
Dr. Kola Balogun, you are going to Abuja, you’ve been there for orientation and induction and people’s expectation are very high. Apart from the push for the creation of the state, what other bills are we likely to expect from you?
What we are sending any legislator to go and do is in three-fold: for him to legislate in the interest of the country, to do what is called oversight function because when you as a legislator allocate funds for the executive arm of government for any project, you are duty- bound to ensure that those funds are utilized in accordance with the understanding of the agreement in the budget. The third is to ensure that you attract federal projects to your districts and constituency. When I was going for campaign, I met people and got to know about their needs, some have to do with water, electricity and road networks. I am carrying the reports to Abuja and I’ll begin to work on it because it is your duty to attract federal projects to your constituency. There’s also something we call a national assembly intervention project. We will also look into that, see how we can support the state government in the area of education health and possibly agriculture. These are the things I’ll be taken to Abuja and I know by the grace of God I’ll be able to bring back to the state.
In times past we have had people complain about the constituency allowances. We’ve heard that it’s huge and most senators don’t even spend it rightly?
From the induction that we just had, we were told there’s nothing like constituency allowance, we have constituency projects, and the money by itself is not given to the senators. They appropriate such funds in the appropriation bill which is the budget then it goes to the executive arm of government then to various MDs, ministry and government agencies for implementation. What you could do as a legislator is to ensure that whatever you have in the budget that is of relevance to your constituency or district, to ensure proper implementation of it. I don’t know if we are on the same page, I remember one of the senator elects asked a question in one of the sections and we were told there’s nothing like that. Of course, if we are talking about what senator Shehu Sanni had talked about before about the money being paid monthly, I’ll say yes, that is true.
Let’s talk about the leadership of the ninth assembly that’s been causing a lot of serious issues. We heard APC would not allow its members to reach out to you. They gave the nod yesterday for their candidate for the leadership, that’s the speakership and senate presidency to reach out to their PDP fellow senators and the house of reps to woo you?
Laughs… APC leadership is entitled to whatever it says. Before the first was said, the first was don’t talk to PDP, don’t negotiate with them, take everything with the majority and all that. I think that’s the function of ignorance of what the legislation is all about. Once you become a legislator, yes you were sponsored by a political party and you should have absolute loyalty to that party but there is something called overriding national interest and if you are that kind of a player at the national level and you are doing things for the national interest, no political party will keep grudge with you over that. But if they change their story to say go and negotiate with PDP senators elect, it’s because they now have reality staring them in the face, they now know that they were talking before thinking. The leadership of APC was really talking before they began to think. And truthfully, what you should do as a reasonable person is to think before you talk. We are going to the national assembly to elect the presiding officers of the national assembly and irrespective of party affiliations, those officers will be those that will serve the best interest of this country.
