Oludare: Tinubu is Way Ahead of Other Presidential Candidates

US-based medical doctor, hip-hop artiste, socio-political and economic analyst and member of the All Progressives Congress, Marindoti Charles Oludare, in this interview, applauds the presidential candidature of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, describing him as the best man for the job. Deji Elumoye brings excerpts:

You have been campaigning for Asiwaju Bola Tinubu to become President, through your hip-hop songs. What is the basis of your conviction?

Why do I think Asiwaju is the best candidate in Nigeria’s presidential election? I don’t think Asiwaju is the best candidate, I know he is the best presidential candidate. I know Nigeria is 20 years too late for a Tinubu presidency. And why do I know this? Because this man has been saying the right things for over 24 years. Things were not quite in the position of convinience when he started sprouting these ideas. But he has persisted and is still the same old ideas that he has been speaking about, that he has been advocating for as solution to Nigeria’s problems.

There is no sector in Nigeria that Tinubu has not formulated ideas for, on how to revitalise it. None of his ideas has so far been faulted.

Now, everybody is talking about restructuring, everybody is talking about state police, and all the other neglected ingredients of the presidential system; all being what Tinubu has been speaking in favour of. This man Tinubu is way ahead of everybody. Ideas that he espoused when I was 10 years old are still relevant till date, and he has never deviated from them.

As I grew up and started to study in other climes, like the United Kingdom and the United States of America, I saw that he was simply trying to bring sanity into the system in the country.

So it is the consistency and potency of the ideas that he has had since the inception of the Fourth Republic that is the reason I believe and know that Asiwaju is the best candidate for President.

As a matter of fact, he is the best presidential candidate in the history of Nigeria. Yes, I would proclaim that he is also the most successful politician in Nigeria. He helped to make the opposition party get into power in 2015.

Nigeria needs a smart man that can make a perfect judgement call on things that he is even oblivious of. And Tinubu perfectly fits into this.

Could it safely be said that you have been supporting Tinubu particularly because he is a Yoruba man like yourself?

I have had Chinedu, Emeka and Olumide ask me this same question. Do I fail to see their own prejudice in that question? If I’m not a Yoruba man, I’m doomed not to support such a man with great ideas. I do not give vent to ethnicity. I actually always tell friends that I would rather be scammed by an Igbo man than be helped by a Yoruba man, as while that Igbo man is scamming me, he will make me feel good; but while the Yoruba man is helping me, I will feel terrible all the way.

So I have no predilection for ethnicity. We’ll probably be faced with the choice to be amenable to reason or to condemn it to ethnicity. Tinubu as a Yoruba is a man who has espoused the ideas that are going to solve the problem of Nigeria.

So my ethnic description has no bearing on my decision.

Before your relocation to the US, you were in Lagos. Tell us your own experience to justify your claim that Tinubu is an achiever.

I’m an Akure (Ondo State) Boy. I had never been to Lagos until 1996. I could remember then, I joined my father’s friend to Lagos. One day, we went out and I discovered that most parts of Lagos were stinking. I had to ask my father’s friend ‘Sir, why does this place always stink?’. Also, Oshodi was badly crowded with no structural focus. But  I was in the university in 2007 or thereabout, and that same Oshodi had witnessed a great transformation. I was actually expecting the old scenario of commotion.

I asked that where was the uncontrollable crowd we used to see of Oshodi on TV. Such was the bright achievement of Asiwaju Tinubu.

Tinubu at the time also started the programme of One-day Governor for the best student, which was rare. It was aimed at encouraging students to strive for excellence. At that point in time, this also made me to be striving for excellence in the expectation that my governor in Ondo State then would emulate the gesture.

This man Tinubu is a genius in everything he has done. Even when you see the way he managed the hooligans or touts in Lagos, popularly called Agbero, you would marvel. People who say he is a friend of Agbero have missed the point. T

They expect that Tinubu should have thrown them into the prisons as against the various rehabilitation programmes in form of empowerment he gave them.

My question to those people is that, what prison facilities do we have in Nigeria to absorb these people they want out of circulation?

But Tinubu managed them, and made many of them responsible citizens. Every doctor knows what is called management of cancer.

In that instance, what you are trying to prevent is disease progression. If you have a stable disease, then you are adequately managing that cancer. So far the cancer is not progressing and spreading to other parts. The fact that you are giving a drug that is keeping the cancer from causing more damage, that is management.

It was to avoid chaos and put everyone in check for Lagos to grow. That is intellect. Such had been replicated in the United States when the country was fighting organised crimes. They undertook the efforts from 1920 to 1990, to cage virtually all the Capons, a period of 70 years in fighting organised crimes.

So Tinubu laid a solid foundation for what we are becoming to affirm as modern Lagos, and he looks good to replicate it at the national level.

Remember he also set up the Rapid Response Squad, a proactive move to curb crimes.

So, Tinubu created a system and managed it, that allows people and the community to progress.

Therefore, as Tinubu is an APC candidate, do you expect him to use President Buhari’s template if elected?

Bola Tinubu is Bola Tinubu, Muhammadu Buhari is Muhammadu Buhari. Do not expect Tinubu to use his (Buhari’s) economic template. But to be fair to Buhari, he actually runs an efficient government. He runs Nigeria efficiently. Nobody can say any form of fraud or corruption is traced to him. Nobody can say the President is illegally or unduly influencing a situation. Buhari is actually a man of integrity.

But as the Yoruba would say, Buhari has used a small fart to destroy a good buttock. And that small fart is his currency control policy.

It is wrong to turn your country to an economic bandit. How can you have this type of system and expect foreign investors to come?

That’s the only thing that Buhari has used to shackle his administration.

But the Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Godwin Emefiele, has explained that the new economic policy is meant to shore up the value of the naira and also boost productivity in the economy…

I read a statement by the CBN Governor comparing the pound to the naira, saying the Brits carry 20 pound note and that nobody wants to touch the 50 pound note and so Nigerians should also not be interested in the one thousand naira note.

A lot of Nigerians saw the squid game-squid game is a South Korean show that ends in Netflix. And the money notes in the Korean ‘won’ (South Korea’s currency) are highly devalued. A dollar is about 2,800 to the Korean won. That is why they have 1,002 note and 5,000 and 10,001 notes.

The devaluation of the Korean currency definitely came as a result of the Korean war in the 1950s and the Asian financial crisis in 1997. But that too has no bearing on their monetary policy in terms of saying you want to restrict access to high-value currency. The currency is a factor of the value, not the number on the currency.

So this is what brings me to the issue of maybe the next administration wants to re-denominate or maybe, wants to print higher currency notes.