Industrialist and former minister of State for Education, Olorogun Kenneth Gbagi, a founding member and governorship aspirant of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who dumped the party on the eve of its primary election for the Social Democratic Party (SDP), where he emerged its candidate, spoke to South-South Bureau Chief, GODWIN IJEDIOGOR, in Oginibo country home on why he exited PDP, his relationship with Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, his chances and rotational presidency, among other issues.
On the eve of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) primary election for the governorship, you announced your withdrawal from the race and subsequently the party, citing threat to your life and intimation, among others. What actually happened?
I have largely lived, starting from my father, a life of honesty. I am a detribalized person; my staff, from example, cut across the country and the only thing that keeps us going as a country is honesty.
I have been crying and am crying that a man that a man so trusted, for the first time as a criminologist, lied to me, Imean Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State. We have been together for seven years and I believed everything he told me, particularly telling me with the Bible. That is the only regret I have; other than that, nothing else. After all, politics is a whole lot of antagonism, lies bickering, envying and all such things.
What I didn’t agree what about 99.9 per cent of everybody around me said the man was lying to me, including Chief E. K. Clark, who had told me over 50 times not to believe the governor; that he was lying to me. I said no, that I disagreed, including my inner family members. The only thing is that they saw what I didn’t see, but what the man and I were doing privately, they didn’t also know. Those were the things that had led me to believe that the man couldn’t lie. In any case, why should a man above 50 years lie? This would is so transient. I never believed he could lie to me or betray or be mischievous.
But it doesn’t stop the fact that he is my friend and brother. The tongue and teeth may quarrel and fight every day, but they remain together.
At what point did it dawn on you that things had change?
That Saturday morning, when I drove in my Rolls Royce to Government House in Asaba, and the governor’s Chief of Staff, Festus Agas, came to meet me that the governor said I should go, that I was not invited to a meeting that was my legal right to attend, as an ad-hoc delegate from my local government.
Despite three or four hours of Agas pleading with me to leave, that the governor specifically said he did not want me at the meeting, it became clearer to me when the governor saw me and drove past without saying hello, in difference of my position in the state as a former minister of the PDP. It dawn on me when my governor saw me and ran away.
Before that Saturday morning, everything Okowa told me was like though God told me Himself. That was when the scale fell from my eyes and I realised that I had been deceived for seven years. I needed to react, and the reaction is what you are seeing right now.
As an elected ad-hoc delegate, didn’t you partake in the state House of Assembly and National Assembly primaries, what made you think the governorship was going to be different?
No, I didn’t take part; I abstained.
Why was that?
I know, from what played out that eventful Saturday, I was convinced that my friend, my brother, the governor, had been helmed into a regrettable corner. And at that point, I needed to run a race for myself, professionally and all that I represent.
As a founding member of PDP, how did you feel leaving the party?
The question is, as a founding member of the party, we rose to become a minister, how did they feel about the maltreatment meted out to me? I needed to hold my head up, take a decision as a lawyer and as somebody who had been tested and trusted in taking decisions; hence I took what has now turned out to be the best decision.
Were you intimidated, was your life actually threatened?
Definitely!
What informed your choice of Social Democratic Party (SDP) as the next destination?
SDP is the oldest party in Nigeria. And don’t that am very close to the Yoruba people. My father was a bailiff in Okitipupa in Ondo State, Ado-Ekiti in Ekiti State, Ile-Ife in Osun State and Ibadan in Oyo State, where the Gbagi-Dugbe Market was named after him. Most of my half brothers and sisters are still in Yoruba land.
The late Chief M.K.O. Abiola, who was the SDP presidential candidate in the 1992 election and who actually won that election, symbolises a national appeal. So, looking at all the other political parties, I believe SDP is the best platform to realise my ambition. It’s a social movement.
Every major party in the country spoke to me after I left the PDP. Come next year, I will win the governorship election in Delta State. They (other candidates) have nothing to offer; they have no home and businesses here, they are not recognised; they come in only during the elections. But I have my footage here and no less a person than the governor himself has told the whole world that I am the most visible private investor in Delta State.
So, you are optimistic that SDP can match the PDP and All Progressives Congress (APC) in particular in that election?
Yes! I am sure I would be sworn in as governor on May 29, next year. I am going to win that election, by the grace of God, because I am putting everything in me into this project.
It is not unusual to see politicians leave a party and later return, for whatever reasons. Would you return to PDP at any point later after the election, win or lose?
I will definitely win the election. A number of currents and former governors and presidents are asking the same question. But if despite my relationships with the youth, market people and traders, etc, my only offence is that I am not controllable, and SDP believes in me to fly its flag, how will I then use that party to win election and later dump it and return to a party that didn’t find me good enough in the first place?
If you had contested in that PDP primary election and it was free, fair and transparent, do you think you would have won the party’s ticket?
I would have won landslide. I am contesting because of my love for Delta State and Deltans. If you watched the videos of my consultations with the people and delegates, you will observe that I was the only one that did the same across the 25 local government areas of the state. Members of the state working committee talk to me individually that the governor, who only sees what he has seen, to take this plunge, would not carry them along.
One thing that gives me confidence is that the governorship election is not a delegate election; it one in which the market women, students, teachers, the youth and aged, Christians and Muslims and others will voted according to who they believe will protect their lives and make their lives better.
I am happy that for the first time in my life, I am not just an aspirant, like I had always been, but a candidate. This is the first time I have reached the level of being a candidate. I have what it takes to change the fortunes of Delta within one year; Delta has no business being a poor state.
Was it not possible for the PDP elders and major stakeholders to have intervened to dissuade you from exiting the party?
There is no elder or major stakeholder in PDP in the state; everybody is a stooge of the governor. You either follow what Okowa says or to hell with you, and you are treated, damaged and destroyed in the process.
Including former governors and leaders of the state?
You saw what he did to Chief James Ibori and Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan! I am close enough to know the governor. Okowa sat down here (pointing to a chair in his home) when I made him governor in 2015. For you to know a man who is normal, expose him to power and money. If he succeeds and remains your friend, then forever he is a great man.
What is your relationship with the governor at the moment?
I find myself in a very funny situation. I was in this house when his senior sister, who was like a mother to him, came here to thank me for what I did for her brother, how I stood out for him during the 2015 elections.
She later said their father would like to see me and subsequently visited their father, who is late now, who said he had adopted me as his second son after Ifeanyi. He said he didn’t know the differences among Ibori, who is also a son in the house, Ifeanyi and myself, but that we should resolve it and the governor will hand over to me in 2023. Very prophetic!
I still believe, irrespective of whatever has happened, that his father’s prayer is sacrosanctly good for me, and I told the governor when we met privately, that no matter what is playing out, he will hand over to me come May 29, 2023. The only person who can ‘de-adopt’ me is his father, who is late now. So, not even the governor can do it now.
So, about our relationship, as the governor of the state, I respect him. I expect that he respects me too when he should respect me. Like a brother, we will not quarrel. We still relate.
What would be your focal points if elected governor?
I will remove every Delta youth from the street, thereby increasing the state’s GDP. I will ensure security for everybody living in and around the state. I will increase business opportunities available for Deltans. I will revamp all state-owned moribund industries, setting up more to harness the state’s abundant human and material resources.
There will be free education up to university level for all Deltans. Delta is well-endowed; all it needs is a disciplined governor or government. There is so much in the state that can surpass the current internally generated revenue and federal allocations put together. We will tap into them.
The common man in Delta trusts me to deliver, based on my antecedents. I want to assure them that it is possible to better their lots. The people will stop complaining, with my emergence as governor of Delta State come 2023.
Who is your running mate or where is he/she likely to come from?
Quite honestly, my running mate will come from Ndokwa nation. I am working on that and have up to July 15 to announce my running mate, and I am working hard on that.
Is there a shortlist?
I will know by Wednesday, June 23.
Do you believe in party intervention or interference in the choice of a running mate, given the scenario in some states and the PDP presidential ticket?
I believe strongly that it is not a solo affair for the candidate alone; so I believe that the party should participate in arriving at such choice, probably up to 90 per cent.
What is your take on rotational presidency and clamour for the position to come to the South next year?
My position is that given the bickering and agitation in the country, there was an understanding that power should rotate between the North and South of Nigeria. President Muhammadu Buhari must have spent eight years by May 29, next year and it is only fair that the next president should be from the South.
Anybody who works contrary to that agreement or arrangement is a criminal before God and the people of Southern Nigeria, one without conscience. To that extent, my party’s presidential candidate, Prince Adewole Adebayo, is from Ondo State and that the man I am going to support and work for.
There are other candidates from the South and it will by ungodly and irresponsible for anybody from the South to believe that after a northern has done eight years, for whatever permutation, another northerner should continue. It means that person is a slave and wants to remain a slave for life. It is non-starter and we must maintain the North-south balancing in the governance of this country to ensure peace, unity and togetherness.
But your former party, PDP, is most culpable of this?
At a point, I had urged Okowa to run for President, because he is from the South. I even held a prayer vigil in my home for him to be president, because I believe that power must come to the South in 2023. Anything to the contrary will be a catastrophe and against the interest of Nigeria. We must live as a people with principles
What is your view regarding Muslim-Muslim or Christian-Christian presidential ticket?
A Muslim-Muslim or Christian-Christian presidential ticket is another foolish decision that will never stand the test of time. You cannot play on the intelligence of the people.
Looking at the sensibility and what we have just passed through and God is taking us through in the next seven months, it is unthinkable to ever dare such an arrangement.
But it happened with the late Abiola and defunct SDP in 1992, why not now?
When Abiola was a presidential candidate and he tried it, there was a Nigeria. Where is Nigeria today? Is it the same Nigeria that is bedeviled with so much insecurity, Boko Haram, banditry, herdsmen menace? These were unheard of during Abiola’s time.
We were coupled together as a country, today we are loose nations. With the situation on ground, to entrust the country with a Muslim-Muslim or Christian-Christian ticket will be barbaric and unacceptable to many Nigerians.
