Tinubu Has The Best Expertise, Exposure And Capacity To Turn Nigeria Around Than Others – Akande

Since he joined politics over four decades ago, he has remained constant  in his political beliefs.
As somebody who grew up during the era of political ideology, he has remained in the progressive fold till date in spite of the dysfunctions and diffusion in Nigeria’s political culture.
As a former Deputy Governor of old Oyo and later Governor of Osun states,Chief Bisi Akande combined his astuteness in corporate world to impact his knowledge which eventual helped him in becoming the first Interim national chairman of All Progressives Congress,APC which defeated the ruling People’s Democratic Party ,PDP in 2015.

Today, after eight years in power and challenges of nation building, Chief Akande believes ,Asiwaju Bola Tinubu,the presidential candidate of the ruling APC,his political bedfellow and closest confidant, possess what it takes to turn Nigeria around. He speaks on this and other issues in this interview conducted for his 84th birthday.
Excerpts from the interview.

Chief Akande, we wish you a happy birthday. Please tell us how it feels
getting old and get entrusted with more and higher societal responsibilities as you have been found?

Getting old, to me, is a pleasurable part of growing and seeking relief for simple and naughty problems of life as they come.
Getting entrusted with more and higher societal responsibilities makes me feel a recognition of my capacity to seek relief for problems within the scope and degree of any such society to which I belong from age to age.
However, getting very old make me feel slow in thinking and recalling events, sluggish in actions, and pains in my joints. It makes me feel less and less enjoyment of personal life. Since my life has been dedicated to service, however, I’m becoming constantly anxious to do more towards maximum services but always conscious of the remaining flying short time.

Q: You have been able to access many of the very best situations of life, were they coming to you just by stroke of luck or there were things you did differently that made them manifest?

I have always stumbled from one challenge to the other, in life, as any other human being. Apart from seeking knowledge and struggling for professional uplifts in my area of expertise, I had no political ambition beyond serving assiduously and loyally using whatever organizations and political associations as platforms to serve according to their objectives from time to time. Luckily, I have always participated in the formation of and also in the formulations of whatever policy objectives for all such organizations and political parties – from the various Ila clubs and community associations and from the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), Alliance for Democracy (AD), Action Congress (AC), Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) to the All Progressives Congress (APC). And luckily again, I have always been asked, by consensus, to serve in whatever positions that I had found myself. To me, organising clubs, groups and associations including the political parties, is mere finding platforms for services only.

Q: Can you still relate in greater details, with your growing up time in Ila Orangun, your school mates, some memorable events, friends, family situations, etc that can inspire the youths of today?

I attended very scanty schools because I was not lucky to have formal secondary and tertiary education. Most of my Primary school classmates have gone to the world beyond. I may not want to recount a sad memory of the dead. I remember with nostalgia every prize-giving days when I was constantly marching forward to collect prizes of excellence in characters and scholarships.

Q: Looking back at the past years, what were the activities you were missing and would like to engage in if opportuned?

I think that I had lived to usefully participated and contributed in what made most people to progress in life. Maybe, I have however wanted to try to learn to tap palm wine or alternatively to have a modern scientific method of producing similar healthy fruit juices for the historic and economic advantages of the Ila community. The more my nostalgia, the less my opportunity to arrest the obsolescence of palm wine as staple drinks.

Q: What was your growing up like? Did you at anytime dream or envision what you have become today?

In my growing up, I was fool-hardly bold and always stay in the forefront to speak for any group that I might have represented. Also, I was always working not only to succeed but for excellence. I don’t know if I had reached my dream stations or my envisioned position in life. I am still working hard.

Q: Would you say you are living a fulfilling life? Is there anything you wish/desire that you are yet to achieve?

I have been a Governor of Osun State for 4 years and a national chairperson of four different major political parties for eleven consecutive years including being the pioneering national chairman for the ruling party – The All Progressives Congress. It remains for me to desire being generally accepted as a good leader. I love a life of moderation. And I am still working very hard towards cardinal virtuousness as a human and as a leader.

Q: You rose through the ranks in politics, starting with Councillor, on progressives political lane, with Nigeria’s diverse sociocultural and ethnic viewpoint, what should have been the country’s focus that could make it different?

I wish politics could be made part time for councilors and law makers generally to enable most professionals excel in their chosen professional careers and, at the same time, to have opportunities for becoming proficient in the art of rural community management, public debates and law enactments which are essential to good governance.

Q: You have written many books and issued statements on the need to restructure Nigeria, do you still believe in that advocacy?

The country’s political, social and economic institutions had been so badly de-structured by the military in their twenty-nine-year intervention by force that only very few remain knowledgeable enough to know how to restructure the polity. And I am not certain if any such sufficient unity of purpose as would be needed for beneficial political, social and economic restructuring can still be easily achieved. The level of the de-structure has so muddled up the systems of governance that I’m not optimistic of a quick and easy restructuring.

Q: Sir, you are a leading protagonist of Bola Tinubu for president, what informed your standpoint and do you believe Nigeria, with its complexities, can have a good bargain under Tinubu’s presidency?

Bola Ahmed Tinubu has better advantages of experience and exposure of general business and public management than the other presidential candidates that would make the management of Nigerian problems much easier for him than for the others. As a young man, he studied Business Administration and Accounting and worked as an Auditor with an international Audit  firm before finally coming to work for Mobil, an American oil firm of an international repute. As an auditor, he was exposed to travel internationally to meet clients in different geographical locations and to study the working procedures of various corporate firms in manufacturing, marketing, storage, distribution and in engineering fabrications and in business consultancy and insurances services of numerous corporate dimensions.

By the time he came to politics, his knowledge in various dimensions of corporate managements had been enormous. In politics, he had a stint in the Senate – a law making institution before ruling Lagos State – a Nigerian most complex polity, for eight years. Tell me the experiences and the exposure of the other candidates before I can tell you more. It will be an extremely good luck for Nigeria to seize this opportunity of using Tinubu at this crucial moment of Nigerian national history.
 

Source: Tunde Abatan – New Dawn