Dr. Frederick Fasehun
The founder of Oodua People’s Congress, Dr. Frederick Fasehun, in this interview with GBENRO ADEOYE, denies using the proposed pipeline security contract to make money
You look younger than your age, what’s the secret?
The secret is contentment, peace of mind, grace of God.
What branch of medicine did you specialise in?
I studied general medicine, then I
specialised in anaesthesiology and pain control. It has nothing to do
with acupuncture. It has to do with surgery; you cannot do surgery
without anaesthesiology.
How would you compare doctors’ training in your time to what we have now?
In the past, training in medicine was a
very rigorous thing and of course, lecturers didn’t go on strike. So, if
you were a medical student, once you entered in the first year, you
continued working and studying for the next six years. There were no
long holidays, there were no long strikes and students did their work as
students, not as masters.
So, what is a medical doctor doing running a hotel?
During the era of (former Head of State,
Gen. Muhammadu) Buhari and (Major Gen. Tunde) Idiagbon, the doctors had
some confrontations with that regime. And I was building this place then
as a hospital and the then government wanted to punish the doctors by
nationalising their various clinics and hospitals. I had borrowed money
to start this and if I completed it and the government nationalised it,
where would I find money? So I decided to turn it into a hotel.
Otherwise, this would have been a hospital. So I decided that there is
no way a reasonable government would nationalise a hotel business but
they could nationalise a hospital business. So that was why.
What kind of relationship do you have with Gani Adams today?
I will not answer that question because we are already in court.
What if I told you that Gani Adams said you’re supporting (Maj. Hamza) Al-Mustapha because you’re broke?
Well, I have never taken a kobo from
Al-Mustapha to assuage my being broke and I have not taken a kobo from
any Nigerian to assuage that. And I thank God that I’m a doctor and I
have a hospital where money comes in virtually every minute and I have a
hotel where money comes in virtually every minute. I am not
extravagant; I’m not profligate, so I let my earnings take care of my
needs.
You said you didn’t collect money from anyone to assuage your being broke, are you saying that you’re actually broke?
No, I’m saying I’m not that broke as to ask people for money or as to receive bribes
What about the house people said Al-Mustapha bought for you on the Banana Island?
A house is a physical thing, go and find
out; you’re a journalist. Please go to Banana Island and find out. I’ve
never been on Banana Island to start with. And if Mustapha has got me a
house on Banana Island, I appeal to him through you to let me know the
address.
Are you not bothered that some Yoruba see you as a traitor because of your relationship with Al Mustapha?
No, I’m not bothered. I’m a crusader for
justice and I stood by justice and the justice I stood for has been
confirmed by the Appeal Court. So my position has been exonerated by the
Appeal Court. The Sergeant Rogers that said that Al-Mustapha sent him
to kill Alhaja Kudirat Abiola is the same man that came back to court
crying like a baby, saying that he told a lie against an innocent
person, that he was never sent by Al-Mustapha. Now the gentleman called
Katako, who said he drove the car to the point of the assassination came
back to court to say he told a lie, that even in the month of June that
year, that he was never in Lagos State, he was not near Lagos State and
on the very day that Alhaja Kudirat was assassinated, he, Katako was
getting married in Kazaure in Bauchi State. How could he have
assassinated a human being in Lagos at about 9 o’clock and be getting
married at 10 o’clock in Bauchi? And if you listened to the lower court
judgment, the lower court said “although the prosecution witnesses were
unreliable,” that it was sentencing Al-Mustapha to death. Despite the
fact that the prosecution witnesses were unreliable, their testimonies
were unreliable, on what does a judge base his judgment? Alright, so at
that point, is it not enough for me to think that Al-Mustapha did not
kill Kudirat? And not only that, Al-Mustapha, when he was arrested was
put in jail for two years without any charge. They didn’t even tell him
why they were arresting him; they just put him in jail. It was after two
years that they started looking for charges. And the Appeal Court said
that much, that they kept him for two years now they were fishing for
charges. Go and read the Appeal Court judgment. Now, I stood by him
because I did not see any truth in what I heard in court. And the Appeal
Court exonerated him. Even after this young man had spent 15 years in
jail, the lower court was still sending him to death. And the Nigerian
constitution says maximum sentence is 14 years in prison. And
Al-Mustapha had spent 15 years when that judgment was given, so he
should have been allowed to go home on that day. But instead of
dismissing the charges and saying you have spent the maximum 14 years
imprisonment, he was not allowed, he was resent to the gallows in
addition to having complied with the maximum sentence. Where is justice
in that?
Did you feel pity for him?
Did I? Of course . He’s a human being.
Must you shed the blood of an innocent person? I had no reason to queue
behind Al-Mustapha because he was part of the era that jailed me for
almost two years, but I must queue behind justice. You people didn’t
think, ‘why should this man be fighting the cause of this man? Is it for
money?’ No! I have never taken a kobo from anybody. Is it this building
on Banana Island (laughs)? No. so I’m a crusader for justice, social
justice, honesty, integrity, democracy, fairness, that’s what I stand
for. And I don’t care who is involved. I don’t care what I go through to
sustain justice. Isn’t it better to die for justice than to die for
shedding the blood of an innocent person?
But someone could have gone to court to deny what he earlier said?
The public view that could not mount the
pressure to release an innocent person in 15 years would not succeed
mounting pressure on a fake testimony. If the testimony was not fake,
why was it that some people who said Al-Mustapha sent them to commit
that atrocity, why were they set free? Why were they walking free? I
mean, if I confess to you that I killed somebody, you don’t need any
other prosecution witness. I have prosecuted myself. And if you the
judge then allowed me to go and live with my wife and children and be
walking the street free., then you’re not a good judge. All you needed
was my confession and if I had confessed, I should face the music as
dictated by that confession.
People said that the late Kudirat
Abiola did a lot for you during her lifetime. Don’t you think you
betrayed her by being close to Al-Mustapha?
Did what for who? Like what? You should let me know what she did for me. Maybe that will trigger my memory.
How about her husband (late Chief Moshood Abiola), don’t you feel that you betrayed the family in any way?
No! MKO was my friend and throughout his
struggle to become the president, I was with him. Beko Ransome-Kuti,
Gani Fawehinmi, Femi Falana, Olisa Agbakogba. And we did so much to
ensure that justice was done to him. And when justice was not done to
him, and he was murdered, we cried foul. And even after his death, we
thought that the death of Abiola should be a centre point for
complaints, agitations, but maybe Yoruba people thought otherwise. As
far as I’m concerned, the Yoruba people should feel greater loss on
Abiola than on anybody else. Many people died as a result of that
struggle; many people. Even those whose children were killed during the
struggle still don’t talk about their children, they talk about others
that fell victim of the struggle at that time. MKO was our man; he died
and we shifted our emphasis from him, alright. People shifted emphasis
from MKO.
But people also describe the
situation as a paradox, saying the same OPC used to fight the government
during Abiola’s struggle is the same OPC being used to support someone
some Yoruba see as an enemy?
Who is the enemy? I don’t believe that
any member of the OPC will declare another ethnic nationality as an
enemy because the OPC had set out to protect, defend and promote Yoruba
interest and ensure that justice is done to people of other ethnic
nationalities. That’s what we set out to do. We didn’t say we were going
to defend at all cost, we were here to defend justifiably, protect
justifiably, promote justifiably and to ensure without provocation that
justice is done to people of whatever nationality.
Which party do you belong to because you were seen showing support for the Labour Party in Ondo State?
Isn’t that standing by justice? I belong
to the UPN-Unity party of Nigeria. I am the national chairman of the
UPN. I’m not a card-carrying member of any other party.
Are you using UPN to destabilise the Southwest? People say the party was formed to destabilise the region.
I hope you’re not a sponsored journalist.
No, it’s hot seat interview and these are questions that the people want answers to.
Good. What was that question you asked again?
That UPN was set up to destabilise the South West region?
Do you as a hot seat journalist believe
that Dr. Frederick Faseun will work to undermine the South West? Yoruba
nation? In view of what I have gone through in my life for the sake of
Yoruba people, you think I had gone through all that and only to come
back and destabilise my people? No. That was an effusion from warped
mentality. There is no way. I have been fighting for the Yoruba people
all my life. I’m 78 years old, so anybody who said that Dr. Faseun was
predisposed to destabilising the South West is either mad or he is
unappreciative of good deeds. Now, when the Yoruba people were being
persecuted in Jos, I sent 250 people for the rescue. When (Patricia)
Etteh was being persecuted in the National Assembly, I stood behind her
and for your information, up till today, I have not seen Etteh with my
naked eyes but that she is a Yoruba person. Won ni omo eni ko kin buru-buru ka ni ki ekun o gbe.
And when the speaker, Dimeji (Bankole), even when the Yoruba people
were chastising him and tying him to the stake to set him ablaze, I
stood behind him to say ‘no’ you can’t do that and so on and so forth.
When I saw that the Yoruba people were being badly marginalised, I put
it on my shoulder. I was the first Yoruba person to cry out against
marginalisation. Is that undermining my people? So and when I noticed
that my people were being relegated to the background in the politics of
this nation despite their contributions, I came out with a platform
that corrected the situation. Is that undermining the Yoruba people? And
I can go on and on and on. When I thought the free education we pride
ourselves on was getting messed up, I founded the Yoruba Education Trust
Fund; is that undermining the Yoruba people? People have not been fair
to me.
Don’t you think that UPN is operating on an illegal platform since it was proscribed by the military government in 1993?
Was PRP (Peoples Redemption Party) not
proscribed? PRP has since been resuscitated. Was NAP (National Advanced
Party) not proscribed? NAP has since been resuscitated. So what makes
UPN different from all other political parties that were once proscribed
and re-registered. What makes UPN different? What is good for the goose
is good for the gander. If government proscribes party A, B and C, for
one and the same reason, and government in its wisdom now says, let us
resuscitate party A, why should B not be resuscitated, why should C not
be resuscitated? If party A was re-registered by INEC (Independent
National Electoral Commission), so we have the right to be resuscitated.
Why did you clash with Lai Mohammed?
Lai Mohammed was doing his work but he
shouldn’t have told a lie against me. He said I founded UPN because I
had applied for the pipeline protection work and that the money
derivable from that would be spent to empower the UPN. And even up till
today, this minute, government has not given us the award.
You mean you have not been paid for the work?
They have not given us the job, let alone
paying for it. Up till today. Government has not awarded that contract
even as at now that we’re speaking. So where did he get the information
from? And I thought maybe he had intercepted the letter that was coming
from NNPC (Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation) to us and I even
begged him if he was holding on to the letter that he should please
release it but six, eight months later, since that appeal, we don’t have
the letter, we don’t have the award. And even if government had
awarded, does anybody in this country have the effrontery or the right
to complain against about 40,000 Yoruba people offering their services
to rescue this nation from pipeline vandalism? Can you imagine 40,000
Yoruba people earning salaries from their sweat? Can you imagine how
many tables will have food on them? Let’s assume that the 40,000 members
on this job, none of them has extended families but the father, the
mother, and him, that will mean three per unit of the workers and that
will be 120,000 Yoruba members being fed from that job. Has anybody any
right to say we have no right to have food on our table? I think it was
bad advice for them to have criticised that effort and I don’t see how
they are going to swim out of the mire they got themselves into.
Criticising the feeding of a 120,000 Yoruba people when the Yoruba
people were crying against marginalisation? It was very unwise.
Is that why you don’t like South West governors?
No, that’s a very bad conclusion. They
are all my friends. (Babatunde) Fashola is my friend; I will do anything
to promote Fashola. (Olusegun) Mimiko is my friend; (Ibikunle) Amosun
is my friend; (Abiola) Ajimobi is my friend; (Rauf) Aregbesola is my
friend. Fayemi is my son; not biological. So whoever is feeding the
public with this terrible rumour that Faseun is hostile to the
governors, no-no, we were in the struggle together. I will not abandon
the struggle and those who took part in the struggle.
If the contract has not been
awarded, then why do people say you’ve started making money from it by
selling out forms for N5,000 each?
For N5,000? That’s a lie. Now, if you
require about 35,000 to 40,000 youths to do a particular work, are you
going to start recruiting those youths the day you’re given the award?
Are you going to start recruiting them on that day or would you have
recruited them awaiting the award? I think it’s wiser to recruit them
awaiting the award, alright. That’s why we made the forms and
distributed the forms. Of course, forms are printed. The printer will
not print 40,000 units of forms and give them to you free, so we charge
N1,000 per form. But we understand that in some states in the South
West, people come here to collect the forms paying N1,000 and they go
out there to sell the form at a profit. I understand some even sell for
N10,000. Is that my fault? There is no way I would have been
superintending people who come for forms from the riverine areas of Ogun
or Ondo states. Or people who come from Kwara. Ours is to make sure
that forms are available at a reasonable price and only to those we
believe would treat the forms the way they should be treated. So if
40,000 people have collected the forms in Nigeria, even people differ in
their character. So you would expect all these people to be decent
people, but where you find decency, you also find indecency. If I had
the power to regulate the cost of the forms in areas distant from Lagos,
I would, but there is no way I could do that. But where we get
information that anybody has given out the forms at inflated prices, we
sanction such characters.
What kind of sanctions?
If they hold any official positions, we
remove them from such positions and we don’t do it privately. We do it
publicly in the midst of the organisation; the shame is deterrent
enough.
Gani Adams said he has 99 per cent of OPC membership behind him, are you then the leader of the remaining one per cent?
Well, it’s up to him to claim any
numerical strength. If you were given a chance to select between
quantity and quality, what would you go for? And I don’t know where he
got the statistics from, so I will not comment on that.
Gani Adams once said that your weaknesses are money and beautiful women; how true is this?
No, he said ‘Dr. Faseun can kill for
money, power and women’. In that same interview, he said Dr. Faseun was a
cunning person; he loves money more than life; he was instrumental to
killing about 300 OPC men; he said all sorts. Alright. And we are now in
court because of the libellous interview. Any information you give on
the internet goes worldwide and I have worked very hard for my name. I
will not allow any street urchin to come and embarrass me and at the age
of 78, I have never had anybody that makes it a pastime to embarrass me
all the time. And I do not respond to embarrassment because those who
churn out embarrassments are looking for relevance and I’m not going to
make a conveyor of embarrassment (for) irrelevant characters so I don’t
respond, but where it bothers on integrity, spite, malignant lies, then I
let the law defend me. That’s why I have sued for libel asking them to
compensate me and make amends.
How much did you sue for?
I have sued for N10bn. I have a heavy
name; a name I have worked for all my life and I will not allow anybody
to just come and spatter me with mud like that. If I deserve the mire,
okay, spatter it on me; throw it at me. But I know I don’t deserve that.
I have worked with integrity all my life and I hope and pray 10, 20
Nigerians will be able to say that much in this country. That’s why I
have gone to court. The court is the saviour of the common man. I have
cried out to the court to say “save me o from powerful people.”
So what’s the latest on the pipeline protection work?
It is yet to come. We have attended
interviews, we have done various things but even then, our own people
said we shouldn’t be given the award; they said Yoruba children should
not be given the award. It has nothing to do with Dr. Faseun. It has to
do with you, him, her, but since those who are governing us in the
South-West are saying we shouldn’t be given that award, do you blame the
government that has not given us?
Is there any reason in particular that the government has cited for the delay?
It could have been because people are saying ‘don’t give them’, it could have been.
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