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Full Text of Dr. Adewunmi Adesina’s Speech at Bowen University’s Convocation Ceremony

Published

6 years ago

December 3, 2019

Eric

Vice Chancellor, Registrar, Members of the University Council, Members of the Senate, Deans of Faculties, Senior Officers of the university, lecturers, parents, families and friends of the students, and most importantly, the great students of Bowen University!

Congratulations to you all on the 13th convocation ceremony of the Bowen University.

I am delighted to be here today to deliver the convocation lecture. I’d like to congratulate the university on graduating another set of students that will shape the future of Nigeria, Africa and the world.

You prepare leaders through scholarship, knowledge and biblical principles. You set up your students on solid foundations. The storms and the waves may come, as they face life, but Bowen has prepared them to stand. Their anchors will hold in the storms of life.

I am a believer in Baptist education. I attended high school at Ejigbo Baptist High school. We sang from the Baptist Hymnal. I remember so well one of my favourite songs “I am pressing on the upward way, new heights I am gaining everyday… a higher plane than I have found, Lord plant my feet on higher ground”.

Oh, how I always cherished the words of that hymn, its call for us to reach for glory land. It always inspired me as well to reach out to higher ground here in life, by pressing on. Today, I ask you to press on to higher ground.

That is the kind of higher ground by the Nigerian Baptist Convention when it established Bowen University in 2001. Then, it had only 500 students. By 2017, it had 5,000 students. And all its programs are accredited by the Nigerian University Commission.

One of my favourite scriptures is the parable of talents. One had 5 and invested and doubled to 10. Another had 2 talents and doubled to 4. One had one talent but buried it. When the master came he praised the first two and gave them more. He berated the third one for not investing his talents.

So today, let’s talk about investing your talents through entrepreneurship.

Universities are known as citadels of leaning. They are reservoirs that nourish the mind, sharpen a sense of inquiry, unlock intellectual curiosity. You are taught to question things, to always ask why and why not, to find alternative pathways and solutions.

In my days at the university, you got a job immediately after you graduated. Your future was set.

No longer. The graduate today is graduating into a world of uncertainty. Over 13 million young people enter the job markets each year but only 3 million get jobs. Africa will have the largest number of youths joining the labour market by 2030 than all the world taken together.

I took a look at your website and noticed that according to the Stutern Nigerian Graduate Report, 2018, 60 per cent of Bowen graduates are employed. Two things stood out to me. The probability of getting employed is 60 per cent. Second, your graduates are working for others, though it did not say what kinds of jobs they have.

But one thing is missing: it did not talk about how many of the students were entrepreneurs, who created businesses, employing others: Job creators, not job hunters.

This is the time to remember the song above, and press on to higher ground. That higher ground is not to depend on others to employ you. The higher ground is for you to be job creators. The key to that is entrepreneurship.

Scott Belsky, the Founder of Behance said: “It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen”.

How true! How pertinent! Indeed, it is entrepreneurship that makes ideas happen.

To be a successful entrepreneur you need some attributes that you were not taught in school. The key one is perseverance. Perseverance is defined as “persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success”.

Steve Jobs said, “I am convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from non-successful ones is pure perseverance”.

The university system does not teach you to make mistakes. You are to be perfect. You got an F, your future was finished. Really? Maybe not. Do not get me wrong, I am not advocating failure. But to be an entrepreneur get used to failures.

You will not succeed at your first idea. Indeed your idea may lead you many times to want to quit. But don’t.

Think about Thomas Edison who developed the light bulb. He was said to have failed 1,000 times when trying to develop the light bulb. He had a different view: he said no, I did not fail 1,000 times, the development of the light bulb required 1,000 steps”. What a perspective.

Albert Einstein said, “Anyone that has never made a mistake has never tried anything new”.

Universities should shift away from rote teaching into allowing students to experiment, try things, put ideas to work, and innovate.

To do this, universities need to have structured institutional arrangements for supporting innovations. In the US universities set up offices for innovation development and commercialisation of innovations developed by universities.

Developing patents is not enough. Patents must lead to business and that can only happen through supportive environments for them to thrive. Setting up university foundries is a good way to achieving this.

Take Purdue university; it runs a foundry that supports its students to turn their ideas into businesses.

Stanford university has programs in entrepreneurship for students, start-up garages where ideas are tested and venture studios that it uses to connect graduate students to a world of ideas, other innovators, community of entrepreneurs, including its own alumni.

How many students here have taken courses on entrepreneurship? How many even know about venture capital or angel investors?

By the way these are not angels in the Bible, just so we are on the same page!

I read a book while I was a student in the Christian union fellowship in the university undergraduate days called “Angels on Assignment”. It talks about how God sends angels to help us in difficult situations.

In the world of business, for your ideas to be turned into a business generating money, as a start-up you will need angel investors. They size up your ideas, your business, value your business and provide financing, usually convertible debt or debt they convert to shareholding.

While God has angels watching over billions of people without knowing, angel investors watch over business ideas, looking for what may work. Where there are no ideas that can thrive into viable businesses, you will not find angel investors.

Now, how many angel investors have you seen on your campus? You can measure the likelihood of a university generating wealth by whether you see angel investors hanging around your campus. If you don’t find them, check yourself: you may not be driving and nurturing entrepreneurship and innovation. You may not thriving. You may be missing great opportunities to turn the university into a hub of innovations that will lead to successful big businesses.

And women are great entrepreneurs. Just take a look at women in Nigeria. They are very enterprising. Everywhere you look you see them hard at work. Women run Nigeria!

Young female students deserve special entrepreneurship programs to unleash their potential.

Think about the case of We@Yale that was created to specifically support women entrepreneurs at Yale University to launch 500 business ventures in five years.

No bird can fly with one wing. When women’s potential is fully unlocked, Nigeria will fly with two wings.

The African Development Bank is supporting entrepreneurship programs in African universities. One example is the Rwanda Institute of Science and Technology, a collaborative program on Masters in ICT, jointly with Carnegie Mellon University in the US. With $40 million support from the Bank, the school is world class. And 100 per cent of their students get jobs even before they graduate, with many setting up their own ventures.

Such is the case of Clarisse Irigabiza, a student who set up her own IT business, and sold it for $21 million at the age of 27. What did the university do to help her? World class education, yes. But much more: exposure to entrepreneurship.

Rwanda has set up with our support the Rwanda Innovation Fund to support its young entrepreneurs. The university is linked to the Kigali Innovation City, a modern tech enabling hub linked to universities to help ideas grow, to turn ideas into innovations, and turn innovations into thriving businesses.

One of the important areas ripe for entrepreneurship is the agriculture sector.

One of the young people in Nigeria I am very proud of is Dr.Tope Aroge. I met him when I was Minister of Agriculture and provided him a grant of $5 million Naira. He is a medical doctor, now farmer. You may say wow! Yes, go ahead.

You are wondering why did he change from being a medical doctor to farming? That’s because you do not know that the size of food and agribusiness in Africa by 2030 will be worth $1 trillion. Yes, you heard me right: $1 Trillion dollars.

I did not say Naira. Today, Tope has a 300 ha farm, and he has set up a high quality cassava flour/ industrial starch processing factory which has a 6,000 tonnes capacity. He is an agricultural entrepreneur. Some of you should be like him. Here is why: The future millionaires and billionaires of Africa will not come from oil and gas, but from agriculture sector. So, universities should move beyond agricultural science, to agriculture as a business.

That is exactly what the Wageningen University in Netherlands is doing. It has food-manufacturing companies, including Nestle, the world’s largest food manufacturing company; research and innovation centres located on its campus, investing tens of millions of dollars. No wonder it is ranked number one in the world for agriculture.

The ranking of the 100 most innovative universities is instructive. US universities have 45; African universities have none. Stanford University for the past several years have consistently ranked number one. Others in top ranks are Yale, Harvard and MIT. In the UK you have Imperial College.

Listen to a quote on Stanford by David M. Ewalt published just few days ago: “Located in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley, Stanford University has played a key role in the development of our networked world. In the early 1970s, Stanford professor Vint Cerf co-designed the TCP/IP protocols that became the basic communication standard for the Internet; and in 1991, physicists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center deployed the first world wide web server outside of Europe. The university’s faculty and alumni have founded major tech companies including Google, Hewlett-Packard and Cisco Systems.

A 2012 study by the university estimated that companies formed by Stanford entrepreneurs generate so much revenue that if they formed an independent nation, it would rank among the 10 largest economies in the world.[1]

The lesson is clear: universities must understand the needs of the private sector and look for how to drive technologies, innovation and entrepreneurship to meet those opportunities. That’s the kind of win-win partnerships that the private sector is looking for from universities.

The world today and more so in the future is and will be dominated by science, technology and innovations. With the fourth industrial revolution, there is rapid advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, automation and quantum data analytics.

It is not data that will control the world, it is those who control data. Think of it: every time you use Google, WhatsApp a friend, post on Instagram or Facebook your data has been collected.

While they offer you nice networking social media they are mining your data. Chinese universities are surging forward in the field of artificial intelligence, with rapid research in medical sciences, neurosciences, machine learning and big data analytics. Listen to a recent piece by Sawahel and Sharma: “Chinese universities make up 17 out of top 20 academic players in artificial intelligence”.[2]

Africa is getting itself positioned to improve its relevance in this space. The African Institute of Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) is becoming a significant platform to strengthen science, technology and mathematical sciences.

Start-ups are emerging in Africa. In 2015, Africa had 3,500 new tech-related ventures and $1 billion in venture capital. By 2019, 6,500 tech start-ups have been established, with $2.27 billion investments in tech start-ups.

The continent’s Internet of Things (IOT) is estimated to be $12.6 billion by 2021 in Africa and Middle East. By 2019 financing for Big Data start-ups inched to $9.8 million.

So what does it all mean. Let me start with the lesson from the Bible. It says to your faith add… My question you is: what are you adding to your education?

Today, I ask you to add new skills, entrepreneurship, and make the university not just about knowledge, but about transformative knowledge, one that is enabled to create the next great businesses for the world.

Transformative knowledge is best captured by the World Economic Forum on human capital: “the knowledge and skills people possess that enable them to create value in the global economic system”.

This is quite instructive! We must not look at knowledge in terms of local environments. Knowledge, to be transformative, must also have global relevance.

You can measure the extent of progress of nations by how much they spend on research and development. The most innovating country in Africa is South Africa. Not surprisingly its universities are doing much better on innovations. A report about to be released by the African Development Bank found that of 24 universities surveyed, 23 have technology transfer offices.

Today, South Africa has developed the largest 3D printer in the world. This is already positioning it to be able to be competitive in industrial use, such as to develop parts for airplanes and shape aeronautics.

Despite this, our review of the readiness of countries for the use of innovations as drivers of growth showed a pattern: of 16 African countries looked at, on a score of 0-100, they all scored between 3.28 to 5.37. On a scale of 0-100, Nigeria is at 3.68.

What this tells us is clear: Nigeria needs to urgently spend a lot more on research and development. That’s what others are doing.

Take for example the case of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. They have just set up the Mohamed bin Zayed University for Artificial Intelligence; the world’s first University dedicated only to Artificial Intelligence. It will train masters and PhD students. And they already have over 3,000 applicants, drawing the best professors and innovators from across the world.

And guess why? They recognise that the size of the Artificial Intelligence market will be worth $15.7 trillion by 2030; just eleven years from now. Dubai, which Nigerians flock to today, as consumers, is already building itself to the AI hub for innovation and entrepreneurship in the world.

Only those that see the future will invest for the future. Only those who see the future can move to higher grounds. My favourite Baptist hymnal echoes in my mind. Lord, please set our feet on higher ground. O Lord, please set our nation, Nigeria, on higher ground.

This is not just a prayer. It is something I believe in very strongly. This is what led me to donate $1.1 million, representing the combined prize monies and matching funds from my 2017 World Food Prize Award and my 2019 SunHak Peace Prize to create the World Hunger Fighters Foundation, to support the youth entrepreneurs in food and agriculture.

And how excited my wife, Grace and I, were two weeks ago to unveil our first set of 10 Fellows – called Borlaug-Adesina Fellows – at the World Food Prize in Iowa, in the United States of America.

They are great talents, just like those I see in front of me here today.

The youth are not the future. They are the present. Our collective responsibility is to prepare the youth to thrive today to drive the future, through entrepreneurship.

So, what is the path to the future for entrepreneurship and universities. Let me offer seven short suggestions.

First, all students in universities must be supported to become entrepreneurs. Not only grades should matter. All must pass the entrepreneurship requirement. That way, universities become knowledge transmitters, as well as entrepreneur developers.

Second, universities should set up technology business incubator and innovation hubs. They should be connected to venture capital and angel investors.

Third, governments should set up financial systems that support young people. Instead of talking about youth empowerment, we should focus on youth investment, for the future. Governments should set up Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Banks. They will be banks that support hope, not those that hinder hope. Banks by the youth, run by the youth, for the youth.

Fourth, private sector should be encouraged to locate research, technology and innovation centres on university campuses. Students should be supported to have internships in these centres. Universities should set up endowed funds to invest in ventures of their students.

Fifth, what is not measured does not get done. The measure of the growth of countries should not just be GDP. Nobody eats GDP. Rather, we must begin to measure the contribution of the youth to the GDP – what I call Y-GDP. And that can only happen when we support small and medium sized enterprises of the youth.

Six, Nigeria needs to set up a National Science and Innovation Fund, devoting about 20 per cent of its oil earnings to driving innovation for the faster tech-enabled growth of Nigeria to power the Nigeria of the future.

Finally, we must believe in the youth. Faith is the evidence of things hoped for and the substance of things not yet seen. Our hope must be in the youth. And that hope must be brought quickly from the future into the present. For hope delayed, is promise denied.

As I look around here today, I see hope. I see a generation destined for success. I see a cohort of graduates, prepared to be global change makers.

Go ahead and become entrepreneurs! Take on the future from today. Reach for the stars. Or better still, become the stars yourselves!

Lift your eyes to the hills, for your help comes from God, the maker of heavens and earth. He will not suffer your feet to be moved.

Instead he will set your feet on higher ground!

Thank you all very much.

Speech By AfDB President Dr Akinwumi A. Adesina

Featured

I’m Not Leaving ADC, Rhodes-Vivour Vows

Published

17 hours ago

May 5, 2026

Eric

The 2023 governorship candidate of the Labour Party (LP), in Lagos State, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, has opted out of the Obidient Movement, saying he is not leaving the African Democratic Congress, ADC.

Rhodes-Vivour is a staunch supporter of Peter Obi, who moved from the ADC to the Nigerian Democratic Congress, NDC, on Sunday.

Since Obi and his prospective 2027 running mate, Rabiu Kwankwaso, joined NDC, there has been a gale of defections from the ADC to NDC.

However, in a statement on Tuesday, Rhodes-Vivour said himself and his team would remain in ADC to fight for a better Nigeria.

“To those who have made the difficult decision to move on to a new platform, I offer my genuine respect and best wishes.

“These are hard choices, We are all fighting for a better Nigeria, even when our roads diverge. I want to make it clear that I am staying in the ADC,” he said.

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Obi, Kwankwaso’s Exit Painful, But Not ‘Mortal’ Blow, Says ADC

Published

17 hours ago

May 5, 2026

Eric

The National Publicity Secretary of African Democratic Congress (ADC), Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, has claimed that the party favoured Peter Obi more than any other aspirant while with them.

Abdullahi said this while faulting Obi’s claim that internal wrangling was part of the reason he defected to the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC).

Featuring on Arise Television’s Prime Time, Abdullahi said Obi and Kwankwaso’s defection means a lot because they are significant politicians.

He said: “I will be lying to say that their defection didn’t mean anything because these are two significant frontline politicians in this country and when you lose those two politicians then you will fill that you have lost something.

“But it’s not a mortal blow because what we are trying to do is to build a broad based coalition that would include everyone.

“The reason we are building this coalition is because our individual parties have been destabilized and the only way out was to come together.

“There was a consensus among us that the direction this country is going was quite precarious and the only way we can win election and rescue the country from the misrule of the APC is to build a party that is formidable enough.

“Obi and Kwankwaso have a different political idea of what the party should be doing.

“Obi said himself that once we present two candidates against President Tinubu, we have given him a chance. I wonder what has changed.

“So if the legal challenges are the reason that we have left after creating the impression that ADC is drowning in these mountains of legal challenges, the answer is no.

“At the moment, we have only three cases which are flimsy without trying to be prejudicial, as the National Publicity Secretary of ADC.

“I can tell you that none of the aspirants and leaders have been favoured like Peter Obi.”

Featured

It’s Stupid to Say Only Southerner Can Be President in 2027 – Dele Momodu

Published

2 days ago

May 4, 2026

Eric

By Christy Anyanwu (The Sun)

Veteran journalist and Publisher, Ovation Magazine, Chief Dele Momodu, is a former presidential aspirant and a member of the African Democratic Congress (ADC). He has been one of the consistent voices against what he terms bad policies and actions of the incumbent All Progressives Congress (APC). In this interview, he spoke on the Tinubu administration, the opposition ADC, the 2027 elections and other issues of national importance.

What are your concerns about the 2027 general election? Do you have any fear?

I have no fear whatsoever, though there’s a bit of agitation everywhere. If you ask most people, they would tell you, Oh, Asiwaju will rig the election. They are sure Tinubu will do this and that. He has the power of life and death and so on and so forth, but I’m not bothered. As you get older in life, you begin to understand the God factor better. I believe that whatever APC likes, let them do. When it is God’s time, he will push them out and I think, this 2027, we are closer to it than ever.

You are in the ADC, and your party says the challenges and troubles in the party were created by the ruling party. Could you explain that?

I said APC, whether they like it or not, the whole world knows that they have failed. And now the people are thinking it is political parties that chase away government? No, it is not parties; it is the people. When the people rise up and say it was the people that chased away PDP that time, it was the people. In this case, those who will chase Tinubu and APC away are not just members of ADC. They are Nigerians who are fed up, completely fed up, who will look back at the last three or four years and ask pertinent questions like, Was my life better in 2023 than it is in 2027? Was security much better in 2023 than it is in 2027? Was electricity better? Was water better? Was infrastructure better? Was our foreign policy better? Was the quality of ministers better? When you answer all those questions, you will see that the majority of the answers will be no, no, no. And that is what will determine why people will vote them out.

Whenever you talk about voting APC out, voting Tinubu out, many people are like, Dele Momodu was very close to Asiwaju. What actually happened?

Nothing is happening. It is nothing personal. I love Asiwaju as a person but I have always maintained that I do not like dictatorship. And that is the main issue. I wish he would just perform well, instead of wasting money up and down, chasing shadows and all that, instead of just settling down to work. If he works well, it will be palpable. Everybody would see it. And Nigerians are not expecting miracles from Asiwaju. They just want the basic necessities of life. If he works, you will see it. Go to other countries in Africa and see how they are making progress. Here, we are just wasting money. Today, it is City Boys, tomorrow, it is City Girls. The profligacy is horrendous. You asked me, is Asiwaju not my friend and brother and everything? Yes, he is. I will never deny him. He is a good man. He is a nice man. But that does not make him a good leader. He is a great politician who knows how to manoeuvre his way and everything, but that does not make him a good leader, because leadership is not about politics. Leadership is about managing people and resources. And I don’t think he has managed our resources well. That is the truth. Only a true friend will tell you the truth. Everybody goes to him because their lives depend on him. They need one thing or the other, they will tell him lies. When tomorrow comes, they will dump him. When Buhari was there, when he was in power, everybody, including Tinubu, was praising him. After he left, they started blaming him for handing over a useless government to them. That is what they will do to Asiwaju whenever he leaves. I don’t know when, but he will leave one day. And you will see the true colour of human beings then. They will say the most horrendous things about him. I have no doubt about that. That’s when you will hear that EFCC is chasing him, chasing his family, chasing everybody. Why don’t you end that rat race? Just end it. Don’t victimize anybody. How could Nasir El-Rufai have done all he did for Asiwaju and the guy today is being harassed, and they pretend they know nothing about it? It’s because he committed an offence. When they put his name among nominees for the cabinet, you know, he was supposed to be a minister. He went for screening, then, suddenly, they said he wasn’t cleared by the security people. Who is fooling who?

As the 2027 elections approach, more problems are emerging in the ADC. Some people are claiming ownership of the party. There are issues of recognition by INEC and so on. Are you people going to merge with another party or what?

Let me tell you, I’m very worried about media coverage in Nigeria, especially political coverage. Because the questions you are asking me, I believe, should not have been asked. There are more issues within APC than you have in ADC. But because APC is in power, you all tend to pamper them and focus all attention on the opposition. In my own generation, journalists were more for opposition, for the betterment of the country. But today I don’t know why. And I will now give you a reason I am saying what I am saying. APC has problems everywhere. If you go today to Benue State, they are fighting in the party. APC members are fighting all over. In fact, in Ogun State, just yesterday, they locked out Otunba Gbenga Daniel. They were having a stakeholders’ meeting or whatever they call it and they locked him out. A former governor. Is that not APC? In Lagos State, nobody can utter a whimper. In Lagos right now, nobody is secure in the party. Those who were hoping to contest, the former governor, Akin Ambode, we were hearing he wanted to come back. We were hearing that even Gbajabiamila wanted to contest. We were hearing all sorts of things. We were hearing that Alausa, Minister of Education, wanted to contest. The President just gave an instruction and, right now, nobody is able to pursue their own ambition.

In Ogun State, the Lagos style has crept in. Suddenly, the President has chosen one man for Ogun State. I have nothing against the man. He’s my friend. He’s my brother. I have nothing against him but that system is tyrannical, where one man takes every decision. They have issues. People are grumbling. People are fighting. Some people have even taken APC to court in some states. So, I dare INEC to derecognise APC leadership. Some people even took the chairman of APC to court. Have you heard anything about it? No. Every day, what I hear on television is, ‘ADC, you have too many internal problems.’ Who doesn’t have problems? In the case of ADC, one man, or, maximum, three men, from nowhere, said the party belonged to them. So, right now, in order to kill any political party in Nigeria, all it takes is to raise one disgruntled man and say he’s a faction, and journalists, too, will start addressing him as a faction. Where on earth can one man just stand up, because he’s angry, he’s disgruntled, he’s bitter, he’s enraged, and then you call him a faction, a factioner? PDP, factions. Labour Party, factions. ADC, factions. And that’s how journalists have connived, by using these descriptions and adjectives, to justify murder in Nigeria. When we all kill this democracy, history will remember all of us, because journalists are the ones who should educate everyone. When did one man become one faction in a party? And, we all promote it.

When they talk about zoning, and it’s the turn of the South, when, tell me, when in Nigeria was it written in the Constitution of Nigeria that it’s the turn of the South? Tell me, I’m asking you, when? You cannot answer. In eight years of the North, whether the President passes or not, whether we have better candidates from other regions or not, no, now the only qualification is where you come from. So, if a man fails the exam, you will promote him because he’s the only southerner in the race. He has spent four years, let him finish his remaining four years; why are we so stupid? Why are we so docile? Why are we so backward? If you don’t agree with that, then they say, one man is too old, it doesn’t matter if the President is older or not, or if he’s healthier or not, we should beg him not to contest. When did we get to that level where you discourage people from pursuing their own dreams in life? I’ve never seen anything like this.

Joe Biden was much older than Barack Obama, he served under Obama and, later, at his age, he was in his 80s, he was President of America. It’s the same thing today with Donald Trump. Trump was removed in 2020. He’s back today. Now, people say Atiku should not run, he’s old. When did age alone become a crime? Are we not all wishing to be old one day? If God has blessed you with good health, will you kill yourself? Something is wrong with us, some people are manipulating our brains and we’re all behaving like ‘mumu’. Let everybody run, that’s democracy. I don’t care who gets the ticket of ADC. I swear to God Almighty, I don’t care. But let everybody go and fight for it and then tell us your qualifications, why you think you are better than the other candidates. It’s as simple as that. It is not just about, oh, this is where I come from, oh, it is the turn of the South. It is stupidity of the highest order that we are displaying, and the whole world is so ashamed of us, that Nigeria has not gone beyond this level of ethnicity and religion.

Now that you have mentioned Atiku, it’s a known fact that your preferred candidate in ADC is Atiku…

There’s no question about that: he’s my preferred candidate. But I don’t care if someone else might beat him. I don’t care. That’s why I’m different. I like Atiku for his credentials, for the things I have seen, for the things that I now know about him, I have followed him since when he stepped down for Chief Moshood Abiola in 1993 in Jos. I have followed him with keen interest. I don’t see any politician at his level who is able to manage his own business without living fat off Nigeria. Atiku left power in 2007. Have you heard that he controls any state in Nigeria, where he can go and take money like some people are doing in some states? These are little, little things that we should appreciate. He is not desperate, you will not find a vault in front of his house, you will not hear that he’s planning to go and rig at INEC. Why don’t we appreciate good people in Nigeria? Must we waste and sacrifice all our good people on the altar of greed, nepotism and all that? What is his offence? In 2019, Atiku gave Peter Obi a national platform. Bloggers kicked against him, they fought him. Today, some people say they are supporting Obi, abusing, attacking and insulting the man every day. I can never support that. Never!

I don’t have more than one vote but when people do what I feel is beneath us, we speak up. The same way I am complaining about Tinubu today, about the dictatorship, about everything, if I see the same thing with Atiku in the future, I will talk.

Really?

Did I not talk when Buhari’s people were misbehaving? I was one of those who supported Buhari but, within two months, I tendered a public apology. I will never support tyrannical behaviour and say, because I like Atiku, Atiku can say anything and do anything. Not me. If you ask him, he will tell you that Dele respects himself. I respect myself. I don’t follow people blindly.

Some people say you’re with Atiku because of his money…

Does Atiku have one per cent of Tinubu s money? Why do we talk this way? Go and ask Atiku, if I’m one of those scavengers who will beg Atiku. What money has he got more than the federal government, more than the state governments, more than all the governors in Nigeria? So, because of Atiku s money, that’s why I’m following Atiku? (Laughs) Oh my God!

What’s your assessment of Tinubu’s fight against corruption in Nigeria?

The only thing I’m interested in about Tinubu is the condition of the people. Whether he is fighting corruption or not, when tomorrow comes, you will see the truth. Every government comes and they say they are fighting corruption, when, at the end of the day, the majority of the fight is about witch-hunt. I am not interested, please. I don’t follow pretence and I don’t enjoy it. There’s nobody in Nigeria who does not know those who have unlimited or unrestricted access to the resources of Nigeria but they are untouchable. That’s fine.

Let’s talk about the insecurity confronting the nation. People are still dying every day. What’s your advice?

What advice can I give when all the governors are there? They just killed someone, a driver, around Edo State. Did Edo not promise to deliver three million votes to those who cannot protect lives and property? So, how do I talk about such things? Look, when we are ready, we will know what to do. We all know that we are not ready. Nigerians are not ready, especially our leaders who are desperate only to remain in power. They are not interested in anything else. How many people have you heard that Tinubu sacked in the military or in the police for incompetence?

What’s your take on Tinubu’s recent state visit to the UK?

In terms of sound and fury, it was okay. That’s what they wanted. They wanted people who would validate them and they got a willing partner in our people in England. That’s okay. Congratulations to them. But I don’t think that will change anything back home. They came back with more debts. Congratulations.

What do you mean?

Is that not what they reported? Did you not read about it?

It is said that Nigeria will gain a lot from that visit…

You can put out that you ‘think’ Nigeria will gain something. I told you they gained more debts. Is that not good news?

Culled from The Sun