by Wilfred Okiche

Dele Momodu runs a pretty tight schedule. For 17 years, he has been the show runner of Ovation international magazine, the publication that changed the face of lifestyles in the country. At various points in his life he has been a teacher, journalist, public speaker, business man and presidential aspirant.

YNaija sat down with him for a no-holds barred interview and for the duration of the hour, calls were unanswered, messages were unread and blinking phones were ignored as we discussed the troubles with Nigeria and how they can be remedied.

Enjoy.

It’s been 20 years since June 12, 1993. For someone who was a player back then, how do you begin to process that?

It has been 20 years of agony, anguish, pain, waste because 20years ago, miraculously, Nigerians came together and decided to vote for change. We had our own Obama before America in Chief MKO Abiola. That election was not an accident, the man prepared for it. Abiola took that spirit of planning and organising to a different level in Africa. It was obvious that it was only a matter of time. Waking up to realise that that beautiful election was killed just by a handful of people and since then, we have not known peace is of the greatest regret.

This year President Jonathan remarked that June 12 1993 marked a watershed moment in Nigeria’s democracy and it would seem that his administration is making some effort to recognise the date and the struggle. Is he doing enough?

We have not done anything. We haven’t even started. You see it is very easy to speak about something and another thing to act on it. What this government has been doing is to stylishly politicize it, stylishly claim to support it but they are yet to take concrete steps towards redressing it.

What are the steps they should be taking?

I don’t like to criticize without saying what I would have done differently so for example if I were the president, I would have changed that May 29 democracy day back to June 12 because May 29 was an Obasanjo concoction. Obasanjo concocted it to suit his own purposes. Everybody knows he was totally against June 12 for whatever reasons. He has not come out to tell us what Abiola did to offend him and really I don’t care any longer. If Abiola was a mad man, Nigerians voted for him and that is the meaning of democracy. In Kenya, the new president has a case on his neck bordering on human rights abuses yet the people voted for him. America dislikes the president of Iran with a passion yet he flies to New York to represent his country at the UN, that is democracy. You cannot stop a man on our behalf even if we were all stupid while voting for him. It is not even by naming streets or buildings after the man, the most important thing for us, for the generations unborn is to ask in the future; ‘’why do we have a public holiday on June 12?’’ That is what is done in America; for people like Martin Luther King, their days are marked. We should stop hiding behind one finger like Abiola himself would have put it. If truly you believe in June 12, don’t play politics with it. Be realistic. Change May 29 because nothing happened on that day except for the fact that Obasanjo was sworn in. How does that become democracy day? And it is unfortunate because he was the greatest beneficiary of June 12. He was brought back because Abiola died in prison. The man spent 8years in office and did nothing so Jonathan should do something serious. He must find the courage. I know he must be afraid because the people around him are those who killed June 12 and he is looking for a second term. Which is sad because it is only God that brought him there and it is only God that can remove him. So he should not be afraid because as long as he acts in the way of God, he will always find fulfilment. I tell people, this man did not fight to get to power, why is he fighting to retain it? This is Jonathan’s chance to be a statesman like Mandela.  If I were president I would bring everybody together; the Abachas, Babangidas and I would tell them to offer public apology, acknowledge that what you did was wrong. We should learn to own up to mistakes.

One would think that some genuine effort was made with the botched renaming of the University of Lagos…

Oga, even that UNILAG thing was an afterthought. President Jonathan wanted to celebrate his one year in office and had nothing to present to Nigerians so some strategies were hurriedly cobbled together and that is why the thing was aborted because the guys at UNILAG had no idea what June 12 stands for and do you blame them? Some of them were not born at that time, many were toddlers so it goes back to what I was saying. You must prepare the minds of the people ahead. You don’t just wake up and say I am naming a street after Abiola, it has always failed. They named Kingsway road, Ikoyi after Pa Alfred Rewane, how many people call it Rewane today? Because there is no history behind it. People did not know that Pa Rewane was funding political parties right from the time of the Action Group, he was funding NADECO and some people went into his bedroom and shot him dead, you have to tell the people then it becomes a matter of interest to them. They didn’t know Abiola so you can’t blame those kids.

The kids that revolted because their school would lose it’s funky swag do not know that the greatest institutions in the world are named after great men. They don’t know that we must honour great men and it takes greatness to recognise greatness in other people. People ask who is Abiola and I shout in surprise because there is nowhere in the world you will ask such a question.

But it wasn’t just students of UNILAG that revolted. Faculty, staff and alumni wanted no part of the renaming.

Let me tell you, it is lack of preparation. The people say they were not consulted they just heard it on the radio. The natural instinct of man is to resist change. If you took them into confidence, called their leaders, explained your decision, Abiola’s sacrifice, that of his wife, family, businesses, then  things would have turned out differently.

How much of it do you think is Obasanjo’s fault?

You see I don’t really care, we know who did what in the past but let us move forward and in moving forward, history has shown that no nation can be great by living in perpetual stupidity and backwardness. We are not going to be like this forever. I prophesy that a leader with a popular mandate will emerge and he will walk as tall and proud as a Mandela because he will do what others have been afraid to do. We need leaders who will rise above political patronage and give us a new direction for a greater Nigeria

This year, only a handful of South-west states announced a public holiday  on June 12, do you fear that it has been sectionalised the same way only the Igbos seem to remember Biafra and the Ogonis, Ken Saro Wiwa?

June 12 isn’t about celebration but about imbibing the spirit of transparent elections, true democracy, tolerance, unity where nobody cared about ethnicity, religion or family background. Abiola had his own issues but people looked beyond all that. That is the spirit we must inculcate in the new generations. It is not about declaring holidays or leaving it to a particular tribe but the spirit. PDP that seems to be an offshoot of the oppressive military regime has a lot to learn from the June 12 spirit.

You ran for the presidency in 2011, what are your memories from that experience?

A lot of people did not support me when I contested in 2011 but they see me today even on Twitter and they apologise and say to me that it was because they didn’t know me. Truth is no one since Abiola has done what I have been doing. I was so close to Abiola that I studied his blueprint for the ’93 elections. I had about 70-80% of his modus operandi. There is no one who networked more than Abiola globally. I have been doing that. I have been on all the continents, giving speeches, meeting people, talking to students. I studied Obama. He ignited a passion in the youth of America but in Nigeria because of our tragic over emphasis on money, people were like we love you Dele but can you fund this? We suffer from self-defeatism, one million obstacles before you even start. Even Abiola failed initially, ’93 wasn’t his first attempt. So nothing that I passed through is new. I have been building on my network. I have 113,000 followers on Twitter today so from this room I can reach millions globally, sending out my pictures, telling my story, sharing my experience and people are responding. Some tell me, Dele no Nigerian leader has achieved what you have before getting into power and it stands to reason. If Jonathan isn’t president, he would not know any presidents or world figure but in my private capacity I have done all these and more. I created an impression in that elections without money.

What exactly is your mission in politics, should you not have stayed in the private sector?

My mission is to succeed where everyone else has failed. There is nobody, no matter how stupid that does not know the right thing, problem is the courage to do so. If Jonathan wants to be the greatest statesman in Africa today, he knows what to do.

What should he do?

He must have that singular purpose to do things even if the heavens must fall. People tell me I don’t have political experience and I laugh because Nigeria is a place where people think that leadership is the same as politics. It isn’t. leadership is about managing people and resources. Most people in government today have never managed people nor resources and that is why they never managed the country. I joined politics in 1982, longer than president Jonathan who came in 1998. I was teaching A’ levels about the time he was teaching O’Levels. I built a global brand from less than 20,000 pounds such that wherever in the world today you mention Ovation, it rings a bell. I am frugal. If I didn’t know how to manage resources there is no way we will survive. You know the mortality rate of magazines but we print 364 pages today from England. We have been with the same printers for 14 out of 17years. I have my head screwed right on my head, I have interacted with world leaders and this thing is no rocket science. David Cameron and Nick Clegg who run Britain are both under 50. The leader of the opposition is also under 50.

These things are as simple as if I want to build a Burj Kalifa in Abuja, I go to Google and find out the cost say $1.5billion so if a mad man comes to me with inflated prices I tell him to go to hell, call the same people that built that of Dubai, mark up 20% for inflation and Nigerian factor. Simple. Here give then twice, thrice the amount and still they cannot deliver. For over 5-6years they have been building the road that leads from the Abuja international airport to the city, with open gutters too. They say that cleaning closed gutters would be difficult. Why must we think like we are in the jungle?

These problems are not exclusive to the leaders, they occur in all spheres of our lives. Is there something irredeemable about being Nigerian?

There is nothing peculiar about the black gene or irredeemable about the Nigerian gene, after all we have GTB, Globacom, UBA doing fantastic things all over the world.

Yes, but these successes seem to be limited to the private sector

Is it not the same human beings that are in the private sector? Our leaders are so selfish and have given up on the country so everyone sees it as their chance to grab all they can before the country collapses. The average politician believes the country will collapse soon so it is a rat race to grab as much as they can because really how much money do you need to survive in life? I can teach you how to live like a billionaire without having a million. Every politician here suddenly becomes full time with no job. You must have something to keep you busy when you are out of power but they don’t have it. Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, these guys have made even more money outside government. Tell me how much anybody has made here other than getting oil blocks. Incidentally, the closest person to being such a personality is Obasanjo but he bungled it. Go to Otta, his farm. No roads. When you talk they say shut up. People of Beirut used to go and enjoy in Lebanon but after the war in Lebanon they faced their development and now have surpassed Lebanon. So when I say I want to run this nation, it is no ego trip. I know what I am saying and what I can do.

 

– Watch out for the concluding part of this exciting interview tomorrow June 30, 2013.