“Red Biro Judgement Sacked Me From Government House” Says Oni

Segun Oni, a former governor of Ekiti state, is the National Vice Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the South-west. In this interview with the Editorial Board of Blueprint, he explains how “red biro judgment” sacked him from the government house. He spoke on other issues bordering on the development of this country. SAMUEL OGIDAN was there. Excerpt:

Did you actually win that election? Would you honestly accept that you rigged the election? What actually happened?

Let me make it very categorical and I have said it many times; nobody has been able to come out to challenge me, I won the election fair and square. I did not rig any election; I am not of the upbringing that would subscribe to rigging an election. I grew up in a very conservative home and somehow I went into politics first believing in the power of the intellect. I have a Bachelors degree in Chemical Engineering, I have an MBA, I have been in management consultancy, I have been in operations, I have been an expatriate in XEROX. I was trained in strategy and I believe that I am somebody who can deploy strategies to any environment. I did not really want to be governor; I tried to support Professor Adeniran, he lost. I spent a great deal of money, I wanted nothing out of the system. I supported Chief S.K Babalola, he lost in the primaries and in each of these we had a group of young men who knew that they had no business losing if they followed our strategic direction and these guys came to me and said, we are not supporting anybody again, you have to go and run, but I gave them a condition. I said let me ask two people who are like elder brothers to me. If any of them was interested ‘we would back him, but this time they would have to write us an undertaking that they would have no say in how their campaign would run, that we would take over the campaign, run it from the beginning to the end.’ I talked to Professor Aborisade, he said no, I talked to Professor Adeniran again and he said no, so I took up the challenge.

Let me tell you. Journalists are supposed to be facts diggers. At a stage the infrastructure of the PDP nearly collapsed virtually under the Fayose administration and that was a very big blow, but I had started developing a brand, the Segun Oni brand independent of any political party and we gave ourselves the targets that, by the time we are at the election time Segun Oni must be in the mouth of even a four year-old, and and we achieved that.

I invested in micro credit, I was doing free JAMB all over Ekiti state for people who are qualified and I was paying for their JAMB including even whatever they would spend to access data. We did 15 weeks training in every local government, I was paying teachers, I was paying coordinators, I did that three times before I was to contest election. I knew I had then a basket of goodwill that nobody in Ekiti could rival at that time. I followed up the JAMB thing with a scholarship scheme.

These are all strategic works and we were monitoring, we were measuring and we knew that there was no way we could lose. The last straw that broke the Carmel’s back for the ACN was the fact that they had a primary that was very controversial and 15 of their governorship aspirants, a former deputy and others shifted. They said since Segun Oni is the one on the PDP side, they were all ready to come and join me and they all joined me and the people who joined me were politicians of substance. By the time we were going to election the Niyi Adebayo government had only Niyi Adebayo left, his deputy, his SSG, his Speaker, his Attorney-General, majority of all his cabinet, the local government chairmen that won election just before Niyi, out of sixteen, thirteen were already on my side including the chairman of Ado local government in Niyi’s time of blessed memory, who was later Attorney-General and Chief-of-Staff, so, we had everybody. The people called the ACN were just a pack of unknown guys, who had no reach even within the community.

Why did you think that the perception was so strong out there?

Because the press sold it and they were paid to sell it. Opinion writers, even editorial opinions were bought and some of them are still coming around today. Your colleagues were paid and they did a hatchet job and I didn’t have that kind of money to throw around and if I had, I wouldn’t spend it that way. But I was always telling everybody that cares to listen that truth is always infallible, falsehood has a short life span. The falsehood that has been exposed about the ACN today is because the expiry time has come and it will not get better for them. People will now unravel one falsehood after the other. I always feel very strong and say if anybody can prove that Segun Oni rigged election, I am ready to face trial for it. They cancelled my home base twice, so, it means nobody was entitled to vote even in my town. Whereas in Fayemi’s town the PDP got only 14 votes and they burnt 17 houses, which means there were still 17 house owners that were still as chronic; they destroyed their houses and we got only 14 votes. And nobody was willing to talk about that. The nearest village to his, they drove them all out, they set the ballot papers in Ilemesho on fire and I still challenge them and the people called INEC and I keep saying it even in the last election. You know why I was thrown out the first time? They said some people marked a sheet with a red biro; it was a red biro judgment.

In the Agbaje versus Fashola case, they upheld Fashola and that red biro was not of material significance but in Segun Oni, it became of material significance. Go and check all those judgments. The question that people should raise is if some people were supposed to tick with blue and they came with blue and blue was not functioning, they changed to red. Why should they come with red, because red is not an alternative to blue. If you are to write an examination and your blue biro malfunctions as a student, you don’t go for red, you don’t even use red and so, red is not an alternative. Why did red biro surface? Nobody had the incisive intellect to even ask. Was it a setup? And why was it that everywhere Segun Oni won was cancelled? Was it cancelled because everywhere Segun Oni won was done in red or because it was an exaggerated position? All these facts are still there and they will be there till eternity. People can go there and unravel it, but I was sent packing because some INEC agents ticked accreditation sheets with red biro.

Would you say it was because of your party’s inefficiency that you were sent packing?

I don’t think it’s even the inefficiency of anybody. There was an organised falsehood and it was backed with heavy spending. I was always sent packing at the Court of Appeal not at the Tribunal. The second time I was sent packing, they said I burnt Ido-Osi, that my agent burnt Ido-Osi INEC office. They believed the evidence of one guy who said he was actually the one who burnt it. Ido-Osi local government I still continue to win election there. Even after I left my party person has confinued to win and we have always been producing the winning candidate since the beginning of this republic, whether it was Segun Oni contesting or not. Even the current one is still there against Fayemi incumbency.

That is not the totality of it. They said I was the one who orchestrated the burning, but somebody went there to confess that he was the one who burnt it. What is Jega doing? An arsonist confessed to burning your property and you are sitting there and you have never asked for prosecution even up till now because that person went to give evidence against Segun Oni.

You are blaming INEC for this?

No, but some of it. I am just saying that…you see when you see a ring of cheating and a ring of falsehood, it will always leave question marks. People spent heavily to pocket this institution. You all know that. There should be no pretences.

The impression has always been that the biggest problem is the PDP

No, I don’t think so. Let us face it; yes the world will always side with the underdog but the underdog could be a crook operating under the cloak of being an underdog and that you have seen and you will see the latest that happened in Ondo is beginning to show also the face of crookedness that is expiring fast. I have said it many times; if INEC wants, it can even ask the world to conduct an inquisition into the elections that I participated in, so that Nigerians and the whole world can learn. Why is it so difficult that I have offered myself to be tried if there is any problem, why is it so difficult? Somebody said he burnt INEC property and INEC is keeping quiet. They did not even say look this arsonist… and let me tell you about the arsonist. The reward for his arson is that every month he collects (N10, 000) ten thousand naira from every local government in Ekiti. The caretakers have been asked to give him N10,000 every month.

Was he working for ACN?

Of course, we know he was working for them. If he committed arson, it’s not because I asked him to. We know the guys who burnt the place, they were led by a guy, who was a former deputy Speaker and he has now gone to meet his maker. What I am trying to say is that Nigeria should also begin to be conscious about the fact that truth is the only thing that can make this country better. We have venerated falsehood so much. The system doesn’t ask for what is the truth. In the process of my tribunal trial, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) committed forgery and perjury in the name of one Avian Smith, who is also now of blessed memory, a Briton expatriate, who came in as a forensic expert on the side of the ACN. He was not there. They put in an affidavit in his name and somebody from the chamber of that Senior Advocate now added another affidavit to say I was there when he deposed to it. When Avian Smith came we were waiting for him because we knew that if he were in Nigeria his passport would have been stamped in and when he was leaving, stamped out. He knew he would be in trouble. It is public knowledge, if anybody goes through the content of the records you will find all that.

Nobody however stupid, however incorrigible would defend the truth, absolute truth with any shade of falsehood. If you know that what you are holding in your hand is the truth you will guard it jealously, you won’t allow a tint of falsehood. So, if anybody goes to the tribunal with a fake or forged affidavit, know that that person also knows that the beginning and end of all they are presenting is falsehood. I wouldn’t need that because I don’t want to be tainted. If I had done a little of that, now that is what the whole world would be singing about and that is why I am very confident today to say that Segun Oni did not rig any election, Segun Oni did not do anything against my upbringing, against my conscience and against the religion I believe that I practice, which is Christianity. That is why I know that I will outlive all those falsehoods.

Don’t you think it is the misgovernance of the PDP that has now affected you?

I don’t think there was any misgovernance. There was no misgovernence, the thing is the crooks put together instrumentation of falsehood and they unleashed it. The Ayo Fasoye hegemony was stripped down by me. I told you I developed a new brand and approach and people knew me and Ayo Fayose did not support me, he supported the ANPP in that election, so, everybody knew clearly that Ayo Fayose was not on my side. If there was any beneficiary of his style, it was the ANPP first, then the ACN later. During my re-run, there was nothing he did not do. This is somebody who was going to his father’s funeral and decided to ride on the back of a motorcycle with a placard that says vote for Fayemi. If I did that to my father I am sure he will find a way of turning in his grave to say that is sacrilege, but he did it because he believed that was one way to rally the people more for Fayemi and I defeated all of them together. They cancelled it again because they said I was the one who orchestrated the burning of Ido-Osi. The person who confessed to be an arsonist is still working free, he’s collecting money now.

What do you think is wrong with the electoral processes especially the role played by the judiciary?

I believe that first elections should be won only through the ballot boxes. Why I did not complain about the red biro judgment was that it said go back and re-run. And I told everybody since we won before we should be confident that we are going to win again. They spent over N5billion. Go and find out, but I won again. If the judiciary limits itself to any election that it seems to be in doubt… go and re-run it, it is going to cause innocent people extra work but they should be able to justify their innocence. That is the first one that I want to say that election should be won only through the ballot boxes not through any pronouncement.

The second thing that I would recommend is that election tribunal issues should be based more on facts than on technicalities. The Nigeria judicial process now is skewed on the side of technicalities too much and if we continue this way, the average person will lose confidence and if he loses confidence what would he become? Let us make truth sacred. Yes technicalities, because people don’t even bother to find out what is the exact truth. I was at a public function about a year ago where one of the foremost law reporters said that more than 70 percent reported cases on evidence in Nigeria are procedural, so, it means you win and lose 70 percent of the time or more than that by mere procedures. We are promoting jungle justice by some of these and this is where Nigerians and I want to appeal to all of you. Nigeria should be our collective project; journalists, lawyers, politicians, judges, it should be our collective project, we should be asking questions. Is this building an enduring future? And every time I talk about Boko Haram somebody said you have never come out to condemn them and I said how do I condemn people I have not heard out. I don’t do wholesale condemnation, but I don’t want violence.

Can you give us the story of this your personal investigation, efforts to unravel the controversy surrounding the Court of Appeal decision on your election?

I will not want to dwell very much on that now, because the case is at the Supreme Court. What I have taken to the Supreme Court is different; is very simple that I believe the Hon. Justice Salami should have excused himself from sitting on matters concerning the ACN because of his relationship with Governor Tinubu. That is the be it and end it of my situation at the Supreme Court and we are waiting for the Supreme Court to dispense justice.

What do you expect to gain from there?

I expect to gain justice. I don’t know what justice will translate to, but whatever justice translates to is worthwhile.

You don’t have any relation with any judge?

No. I know people, a lot of people that I know before they became judges. I am one person who will live and die trying to work towards a Nigeria that I believe in and not a Nigeria that is convenient for me all the time. Therefore I am a man of conscience. That is why when I speak I am unequivocal. If anybody knows anything to the contrary about these issues that I am talking about that he thinks I must have refused to be truthful about, I am always asking them, come up with it. I am deriving satisfaction from the fact that I am proud to say that I am one Nigeria who tries to live by the rules; it doesn’t matter whether people call me stupid. There must be some stupid people amongst the 140 million smart Alecs that we believe we are putting together to make up a smart country. As far as I am concerned God has prospered me enough, I don’t even need any tip on top of what God has done for me, but I want to live and die with this belief and that is why I am not bendable when it comes to matters of principles like this.

The rate of poverty and unemployment in Nigeria is very high and worrisome and recently Obasanjo said it could lead to a revolution. Do you believe that?

Poverty and unemployment are not only in Nigeria, I am not saying this because I want to be an advocate of the PDP or because I am PDP, but we Nigerians are always hard on ourselves. Americans voted Obama back, they did not say that they were completely satisfied, they did not say unemployment has disappeared, they did not say that the poverty level has been wiped off. Every country in the world is struggling, if you see what is going on in Greece and each time I watch Laliga I will say this is the only aspect of Spain that is untouched by the state of their economy. People are struggling everywhere; Nigeria is not an Island untouched by the problems of the world economy. I am not saying that government should not work hard to reduce unemployment, I am not saying that government should not work hard to reduce poverty; we all have that responsibility to also contribute our quotas to ensuring that the level of human misery would reduce. Everywhere there is a reasonable level of belief that there is no country now in the world that people are absolutely and completely satisfied. There is always enough to do and that is the business of politicians to do as much as they can. If they solve the entire problems what would be the essence of incoming administrations, they would have to do what they can and they must do what they can. I am not saying it because I am PDP; I am saying this because that is the reality.

Nigeria is where people go about with wholesale condemnations; are the lives of people in Lagos perfect? Are they happy? You know the history of Lagos, the ACN has been running Lagos since the beginning of this republic, have they been able to drive away poverty and misery? Or is it not the responsibility of any government at any level to secure those things? Has it been completely different in Borno? Borno has been ANPP from the beginning to this moment, have they wiped out human misery? We are just trying to give a dog a bad name all the time instead of concentrating on the business of constructive criticisms and giving our leaders impetus to continue to strive to improve. Of course, if you come across poverty you should expose it, human misery you should expose it and if there are things government itself is doing to make the achievement of good results almost impossible you should expose it.

There are at least 37 state governments with substantial resources; there are other 774 LG with resources that can make a change. The human development index analysis done in 2009, if it continues by states every year, we will know where the substantial contributions to human misery are coming from and it will also ginger up those states to work harder, but we lay every blame now on the federal government. The federal government is not the only government.

Are you satisfied with President Jonathan’s administration? Is there nobody who is bold enough to tell the President that the country is sinking and that we have lost confidence in him?

I don’t think the country is sinking. I hold a different view from you. You see, Nigerians are always underscoring Nigeria, we are always underpromoting it, we always refuse to accept the good things about Nigeria. We are the killers of Nigeria by what we do; therefore we describe our government in very horrendous adjectives. If you compare performance here with government in some other places, you are likely to now ask why we are so virulent against our own leaders. I don’t believe that Nigeria is sinking, I believe that this country first is very solid, is a very big entity, it cannot segregate, it cannot sink, I believe that like any reasonable human entity we can always do better.

I am not saying we have a perfect system, we can always do better, but by all means the government doesn’t deserve those horrendous adjectives. But this government should do more to improve on the lives of people, to reduce human miseries, to ensure the promotion of equity, fairness and justice and so on. We should always ask government to do more, but when we say things like this, the country is sinking…, no, this country is not sinking. I believe very much in this country. I am one stupid Nigerian who believes in Nigeria and I don’t believe that this country has done very badly. We have not done enough, but we have not done badly by all means. In fact if you look at what is happening in Greece now you will wonder how a so called developed country find itself in a situation where it is and here we are a third world…

What constitutes riches? Riches are about the accruing and the belief of the individual in their system. It is not about the oil. If you believe the system will create the right level of investment in the oil money, but if part of that oil is being stolen and I can bet that if anybody goes there to prevent crude oil theft tomorrow it is the same system that will say you are killing people. We should understand the peculiarity of Nigeria. Nigeria is one country where people believe they are smarter than their government. That is why they don’t pay tax. That is why even when they see a criminal working their street they will not call the police, until it becomes their own burden. We all have to find a constructive way of restructuring the thinking of the average Nigerian.

If the process is functioning, nobody can be smarter and if the process collapses, people do what they like and take advantage of the situation.

I agreed with you perfectly, but it is the responsibility of all of us that is why I am a crusader. The way I am is what can we do to turn around the hand of that clock? What can we do? First we need proper public enlightenment, we need processes that will work and be dependent to the latter. I will give you an example; somebody went on the rostrum to say that he spent millions of pound sterling to support Mimiko case till today we are not sure first, that the security agencies are talking to him. If you spent millions of pound sterling is it to pay lawyers and if you pay lawyers is it Mimiko lawyer alone you pay the millions of pound sterling to? Then we check also the taxes that those lawyers pay, we check the taxes that the person who spent the millions of pound sterling’s pay and if it not to Mimiko’s lawyers alone to who? The tax authority would have moved in, the security agencies would have moved in to say you said this and they would have followed up, but who will follow up? Tax agency has not said anything; the security agencies have not said anything and so on. We must first ensure that nobody will be above the laws of this land. If a President of the Court of Appeal is said to have committed perjury and the evidence of the most credible source two former justices of Nigeria… you can’t get a more credible evidence than that anywhere in the world, why is government shy to put into trial for perjury, why? A big man should never be put to trial is that the implication? The processes are not operated, if the processes are not operated we will always have trouble and this contradictions are what is leading us to more trouble.

People are talking about Boko Haram. People are talking left and are talking right; let me put together what I believe from what they have said. ANPP said it is the ANPP people that are being killed that is probably fact, who are killing the ANPP people? Boko-Haram. Why will it be Boko-Haram? Some people also said that this Boko-Haram people were agents of the ANPP before and that the ANPP government used them, dump them and now unleashed terror on them that is why the Boko-Haram is also insisting that a former governor should be tried, fact again…… if it is Boko-Haram that said it then it means reasonable people can put some facts together to say it is a relationship turned sour.

I am not claiming to know who is behind Boko- Haram, I don’t. What I am saying is that if we do not care about justice, if we do not care about fairness, if there are big men before the law and a Nigerian is still being tied, blindfolded therefore he should not be able to discriminate between the big man, the small man, the poor man and the rich man, let us operate along those lines.