I SAW HELL DURING OSUN GOVERNORSHIP ELECTION – ADELEKE

The first civilian Governor of Osun State, Isiaka Adeleke in this interview with some journalists, spoke on his ordeal at the just concluded election in the state
Now that the APC has won, what role do you think other parties will play; are you going to do away with them totally?
We have some reasonable people in the other parties, especially the PDP. There are reasonable people too in the Labour Party, the breakaway party of the PDP in Osun State, and I must confess to you that most of them will be coming back to the APC. Some of them are reasonable, and some of them very unreasonable. The leadership of the PDP in Osun State is very unreasonable. So, I don’t expect anything good from them right from Omisore. His deputy is not one of them. He was my boy, the former speaker, he only joined them because he wants position but if you look at the composition of those individuals that constitute the leadership, Omisore, the Police Affairs Minister, Jelili Adesiyan, and Gani Olaoluwa, they are not good people. Those are the ones in leadership.
I don’t expect anything good from them but there are some leaders like the elder statesman, Alhaji Shuab Oyedokun, Olu Alibi, Ebenezar Babatope, and the former woman minister, Erelu Obada; these are very reasonable people, they will cooperate with this government because we don’t have any other state other than Osun. So, whoever is in the saddle is immaterial. The election has been won and lost. To me, there is no victor, no vanquished. Everybody should join hands with the person that won to move the state forward.
Why did it take you this long to discover that you were in the wrong party?
I am not saying I was in the wrong party, the day I was crossing over I said that the PDP is not that bad but the leadership of the party in Osun State is what I cannot understand. I said we still have nice people in the PDP. I cannot condemn PDP because I rose on the platform of that party to become a senator, Chairman, Governing Council, Nigerian Export Promotion Council, Pro-Chancellor and Chairman, Governing Council, University of Calabar. Having got such positions on the platform of that party, I cannot say now that the party is totally bad, no, but individuals that hijacked the leadership of the party in the state are bad. Honestly, I cannot work with them. If I had remained in that party as a core party man, I will be forced to work for them and for the success of that party and I don’t want criminals again in the house at all.
Are you saying that if the leadership in Osun State changes, you might return to the PDP?
That condition has not arisen but I am now in APC and APC has won. I contributed immensely towards the success of the party. I don’t see myself going back to the PDP now.
Some people are of the opinion that you were bought over by the APC.
No, there’s nothing like that. It was based on principle. Period! If I wanted anything, I could as well have got it in PDP. If I had stayed with PDP, with those people that have hijacked the party in the state, definitely, they would have won and become this and that. We don’t want such characters in Osun Government House. I am satisfied. I worked relentlessly and tirelessly for the success of the party and ensured that those individuals did not get to government house.
We also learnt that your constituency voted massively, what are they going to get as dividend of democracy for their effort?
This is not the first time with the Ede people. When you talk about my constituency, it is not limited to Ede people. The federal constituency consists of four local governments areas that are solidly behind me in every election. This is not the first time. My journey into politics started way back in the late 1980s and early 1990s and they have been supportive and I have been giving back too. I have done a lot too. That is why anytime, I say let’s move, they move with me; when we moved from APP to PDP and then to APC, if election comes tomorrow, we are going to sweep the whole thing. I have always tried to give back, not only to my constituency but also to the whole state. I have done a lot in terms of scholarships, empowerment, employment and establishment of factories where people are gainfully employed. Now, many people are working in Adeleke University, we have established banks, First Merchant Bank, which has become Unity Bank, and so on. We are doing a lot for the people because of the support they are giving us. As we give, they give back.
Governor Aregbesola is in for a second term, what are your expectations?
I describe Aregbesola as a man in a hurry to develop Osun State. He was doing a lot in terms of infrastructure and that is what we needed but Osun is not Lagos. If you are doing that in Lagos everybody will be happy because nobody cares about any other thing other than provide good roads, electricity, water, security, enabling environment for businesses to thrive; that is Lagos but in an agrarian place like Osun-Ekiti if you are doing that without looking at the human development angle, they will say you have not done anything, they won’t even see it. We have to support him to finish what he has started. When he started, the revenue was so high, he had a lot of money to play with then, that was why he embarked on all those projects, the roads, the schools were so fantastic; they were designed like elementary schools in the U.S. He has provided school buses, they have lunch in the school and they don’t have to go out. That is fantastic. If he can complete that throughout the state, he will be one of the primus inter pares of such in the country, so we have to give him that support and I know very well that he will do that.
Are you contented as a kingmaker or do you intend to contest for political position in the future?
I am still going to run for office by 2015. I am going to the federal. I have always said I love to go back to the Senate. I enjoyed the Senate and I will love to go back there to make laws.
So far, how has the Senate fared?
We are growing. Right now, I have a lot of bills that are hanging because I didn’t go back. There are certain bills that I wanted to introduce. I am a criminologist. I have a masters degree in criminal justice and there are certain bills I will be introducing to the country to improve criminal justice. I introduced the issue of plea bargain but a lot of people didn’t understand what plea bargain was, it wasn’t that anybody that steals money would have to do plea bargain, no, plea bargain is a tool that we use to detect crime and nip that crime in the bud. For example, if three of you conspire to commit a crime and one of you is caught and is told that this crime you have committed, if convicted, you are going to jail for 10 years, if you do plea bargain and you let us get the other two, we can sentence you to two years, that is plea bargain; you do that in court. It helps you to detect the crime, arrest the criminals and all that. Those are the issues of plea bargain. We also have what we call probation. Our prisons are congested. Our criminal justice system is punitive rather than correctional. It is not for every crime that you sentence people to prison. Sometimes, you give them a suspended sentence. Put them on probation for certain crimes. That is what probation is. Let them serve the sentence within the community; they do community service. If you put everybody in the prisons, it criminalises the individuals, there are hardened criminals in there that will teach somebody who ordinarily wouldn’t have been a criminal to be hardened criminal, especially in an impoverished society like ours. Then again, we have what we call parole which is where you serve the rest of your sentence within the society. If you are sentenced to a 10-year period, there is something we call good time-one day off upon your good behaviour. It makes that person to be of good behaviour in the prison. The prison should be a place like outside the society. We have schools. There are people who have had Ph.D from the prison and they are good people today. So if you behave yourself everyday and you are sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, for everyday you stay in prison and you behave well, we call it check off system, they take a day off which at the end of the day, takes off five years or two and half years from the sentences. We should introduce certain reforms in the prison system like schools where people can teach.
Let us look at the issue of militarisation during elections. When it happened in Ekiti, the APC shouted, and when it happened in Osun, they also shouted but the election turned out free and fair. What is your take on this?
What I witnessed in Osun a week to the election was hell. I thought the SSS are secret service and are not to be seen. They are supposed to detect crimes and hand over criminals to the police for prosecution but these guys have turned themselves into thugs. The first day they came, I saw them with masks, standing on top of their vehicles and shooting sporadically in the air into scare people, what was that intended to do? Then, the police were not doing much but the soldiers too joined. We have a barracks in Ede. I was confined to Ede after the Tuesday mega rally, a couple of days to the election.
Culled from Daily Independent