Senator Nicholas Tofowomo represented Ondo South Senatorial District of Ondo State in the Senate under the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party between 2019 and 2023. In this interview with he speaks on the crisis in the leading opposition party and other national political issues

To be honest, I am not happy with the situation of the party in this state currently. This is so because the candidate of the party in the last governorship election (Agboola Ajayi) did not manage his election properly. When he won the primary, I told him to choose two leaders from each of the local government areas, making 36 and let us come and sit down with him and strategise. He said he was coming back to see me, he did not come and I couldn’t run after him. I remember when I became the senatorial candidate of the party, I sat down. I went to Okitibupa, we had committees we were organising, ‘how do we raise money? How do we campaign? How do we convince people? What were the government programmes that were bad that we could take advantage of? If he wanted to win, he would have won the election. Look at the bus shuttle, it did not work well. I managed the bus shuttle in this state. The bus shuttle alone gave former Governor Mimiko 44 per cent in Owo (during the 2012 governorship poll). When it was about a week before the election, I told Oga (Mimiko) to let us take the bus shuttle to Owo that it would help us. We took the buses to Owo and it worked. Trauma Centre is dying, Mother and Child are gone, and all those markets are not functioning. There are a lot of things on the table that we can address. We should have addressed issues that affect people in the state, not unnecessary politicking, not a jamboree; taking about 30 vehicles to the streets for the campaign. Let us have a house-to-house campaign and visit them in their houses. Tell them that this is what we want to do and ask questions. I have gained experience because Mimiko trained me.

No, I didn’t distance myself. God is my witness. I called him and I congratulated him when he won the primary and I said, ‘this is my party, I’m not going anywhere. Let us work together.’ He sidelined me. For four months, he did not talk to me. I will not go and beg him. You have won the election. You should come. How do we go about it? For four months, he didn’t get in touch with me. I addressed the press conference. I said, ‘This is me.’ I said I’m not supporting anybody. And they said, what about PDP? I said the PDP contestant did not reach out to me. I’m not angry. So, when he saw the interview, he made a move. He came to me and apologised. He said ‘it’s okay.’ That is good. Now, where is your campaign template? Let me see so that we can work together. I told him that when I was Mimiko’s commissioner, when we won the primary election, we didn’t dance around the town. No. Mimiko will call all of us. We will set up committees, they will give us mandates, and we will bring all those reports together. Some of us will go to the hotel for three, or four days to look at this and come up with a blueprint and we use it and win the main election. I said that is what you should have done. I said ‘that committee, you refused to set it up even though the committee you set up did not function.’ I said these things will not work. He said he would send the template to me. Maybe he will send it tomorrow. He did not get in touch with me. He divided my town into two. So, those people who are not with me, they are for him. Instead of him coming to and saying, ‘ah, no, this is our senator here, we cannot split this community.’ So, they did not carry me along, they wanted me to come and beg them. It is true I did not participate in that campaign. There was a day I complained to Chief Eddy Olafeso (a former National Vice Chairman of the PDP). I said, ‘Uncle, I’m not happy.’ He said they will make corrections. They did not make any correction. There was the day I followed him to Ikare. The style they were using was clear that they could not win. People were defecting every day. How can you win? It is because he did not carry people like us along. That was why Mimiko left the party. Mimiko left the party with over 100 leaders. When they were compiling the election committee list, they had 215 names. They put Mimiko’s name in number 78, they put me at 139, and someone who joined the party a week earlier was ahead of Mimiko. So, they messed up and I’m sure it must have gotten Mimiko angry. They treated us like lepers.

No, I did not. God is my witness. I did not work against the party. I stood my ground. I stayed at home. If there is any evidence, let them bring out evidence where I attended campaigns for APC or where I went to attend any meeting to say please vote for APC. We are all human beings, if they have any evidence, let them put it on the table. I did not work against the party. It is even immoral to work against your party.

Do you know what happened? Anybody who wants to contest will start putting things together. Atiku, who wants to contest, is now looking at how to organise himself. He has seen that the current PDP now cannot deliver because they have split the party through (Nyesom) Wike and that has gone. Now, what we shall be looking at is how we capture the East. Peter Obi is there. Peter Obi is no longer in our party. How do we capture some in the West here? Tinubu is there as the President. How do we capture in the North? (Rabiu) Kwankwaso is there. There are many people like that. All these big leaders, let us put them together and let us find a way for Nigeria to move forward. That is the coalition. So, there is nothing bad about it. Those governors are intimidated. That is why they are saying there is no coalition. When you have an exam and you score 12 over 36, you have failed. For example, let’s say we have 20 governors now. We can be boasting that we don’t want a coalition, that we are enough. We are not enough. Out of these 12 governors, some of them are already working with Tinubu. One of them has already defected to the APC, we now have 11 states. Some of our governors are saying if Tinubu is going for a second term, they will support him. We can hear them, about five of them. We know them. My advice to Atiku is that he should be focused. He should put the structure together and identify good people. There are good people around. That is what kills most of our leaders. They don’t identify good people around them. Reach out to people, and do it beyond the party. People who have not even played politics, who have brains, gather them together, let us salvage Nigeria from these political pythons that we have around. Do you know how much Nigeria is making daily? Billions. What do we have to show for it? Nothing. So, I am in support of the coalition.

Yes, we hold meetings. We are still a force to be reckoned with. We are number two in terms of party ranking. The ruling party is number one, we are number two. So, we are not dead, we are still existing.

We have to start from the House of Assembly, House of Reps and the Senate. When I became a senator, the party under the leadership of Clement Faboyede put a lot of things in place. We produced two senators and we produced three House of Reps members. The person who took over from Faboyede killed everything because did not listen. If we have a good chairman, who has the brain that can magnify and magnetise people together, we will win.  But, for instance, now, we are fighting, that it is the turn of the southern senatorial district to put a chairman there. Even people from the south are the people fighting for the north. People are angry, people that we see as our leaders in the south are the ones championing for the north, when we had never had a BOT since that party was established. We only had a chairman once for one year and other zones have done it for 12 years. People in the south will not be happy. People are watching us now. That is why I am crying out. We have the Elders Committee; it is now the time for the Elders Committee under the leadership of Dr Tayo Dairo to sanitise the party, to put what is right in the right place. If the elders forum can be sincere, they can salvage the party. That is the last hope we have. Let us be fair, these people have never had a BOT for 15 years. They are now saying that we had a governorship candidate. A governorship candidate is not a governor. It is because we are turning things upside down in the party. When you have a governorship candidate and they say you are the leader of the party, do they take you above the people that are BOT members?

Even if we agree that they are leaders, because I agree they are one of the leaders, you cannot say because Ondo South has governorship candidates you will cede that to us and you will take the chairmanship away and they are not entitled to BOT. We have had a governor once and that is the late Olusegun Agagu from 2003 to 2009. When Agagu contested, it was not zoned to the south. Some people contested with him from the north. It was just because that area is a PDP zone. As of today, when we hold the elections, the south still has more results than the central and north and we cannot afford to spoil it. So, I pray that our leaders, our elders forum and God will minister to them so that they can salvage everybody together because I have no other party to go to. I said it in the Senate and they asked me publicly, they said Senator Tofowomo said that if he left PDP, he would go back to his house. I said yes. Some people clapped for me. Some people have papers written and kept because of me, that if I defect like this, every paper will be filled up. So, I am not going to defect.

Yes. Since I was a Senator, they put pressure on me. They have approached me; they see me as an asset. But how can PDP send me to Abuja, to go and represent them and I will just change there? That means that I will be ungrateful.

Let me tell you one thing, it is unethical. They are in the house of God. God is everywhere. God is looking at everybody. That is why you see some people, they have been senators for a long time and now they cannot feed because they have sold their mandate. Some people will fall sick. I had an experience when I had an accident. Five of us were in ICU. Five of us slept, and in the morning four of them died. I was asking the doctor, I said, ‘am I dead too?’ He said, ‘when you are dead, you will not talk, you are talking, that means you are alive.’ That is still fresh in my memory till tomorrow. So, put clout into whatever you do. Think of the implications, because people, who voted for you, when they see you run to another party, curse you. You may not know and it goes a long way.

Do you still have plans to go back to the Senate?

Yes, if my people want me, I will. I’ve not quit politics. If my people say, it’s you that we want, I will jump into it. People are talking, but at the right time, I will take a decision. And my decision will be positive. So, I’m not running away. I’m living in my senatorial district.