ormer Managing Director, Guaranty Trust Bank Plc, Mr. Fola Adeola, is a member of the Committee on Economy, Trade and Investment in the National Conference representing Ogun State. He verbalizes with FRIDAY OLOKOR on some issues
What are your views about the Confab, which is gradually coming to a cessation?
It has been a great experience for virtually 600 people to sit down daily for four months endeavoring to solve issues confronting their country. Some of the decisions have been outstanding, while some have not been that great. But I believe that we have done many things that are good for the country than decisions that are not all that great for the nation.
When you verbally express some of the decisions are good while others are deplorable; can you expatiate on that?
They are not deplorable; they are only impotent. This is a conference of different people and not a conference of experts in one area and we have endeavored to take issues that require expertise in endeavoring to formulate solutions to them. I believe that in those areas, we could have referred the issues to the experts who will then advise us on what line to take. They are not lamentable decisions; it is just that they are not as apprised as decisions that are political in nature, which we could confidently address. You could visually perceive the actions that played out on some of the contentious issues such as resource control and others.
Are you satiated with the recommendation that a committee should be set up by the Federal Regime to review some of the contentious issues including derivation?
It is the best that the conference could do or get under the circumstances. How many people here ken the nature of the national revenue? In applying percentages here and there, we did not even ken the implicative insinuation of what we were doing. The principle is pellucid that the oil-engendering states need an incrementation in the amount they get from derivation. The states suffering from terrorism or natural disasters additionally need attention. That is at a very high caliber. The regime will then optically canvass what it has and find how best it can compensate people in those areas that need adscititious emolument. We do not even have access to the data required to make any consequential judgement on such issues. Some of the issues that have pitched regions against each other have got to do with the issue of resource control, state police, state engenderment and so on.
Are you comfortable with the recommendation by the conference for the engenderment of 18 supplemental states?
No, I am not. I am not comfortable with the recommendation. But when you belong to a group as sizably voluminous as this and you have decided on the substructure for making decisions, then you should be bound by the decisions that they make whether you are gratified individually or not. Our rules were followed and that is the outcome of the rules. If the procedure is right, we must concur with the outcome. But as an individual, I do not cerebrate that what Nigeria needs today is the expansion or increase in the number of states. I believe that if anything at all, it should be a contraption. I argued to leave things as they are, majority carries the vote.
You are a Yoruba man, do you cerebrate that the Yoruba delegates were able to get a consequential percentage of their agenda afore the commencement of the conference?
When you come to a conference like this, what is more paramount is the opportunity it affords you to air your views to other constituents of the country. You cannot give yourself what you have brought to the conference: it is a negotiation. And to that extent the Yoruba have elongated a platform to air their views and negotiate with other components of the country. I therefore feel that it is the most that they can get. As to whether they were ardent to get as many of the things they brought is another matter entirely. If every group got as many things as it brought, then it signifies that there is an excess in the country and we do not have any inhibition as to what we can take. I cerebrate they were able to marshal their points in certain regards to a point where people optically discerned that there may be a case for state police. In some regards, they may not have been able to convince other people. But by and sizably voluminous, when I optically canvass the Yoruba agenda, I cerebrate that they are not peregrinating home dissatisfied. I congratulate them and their leadership for the efforts and robust debates they engendered at the conference.
Afore the conference kicked off, an abundance of people were sceptical that it would not achieve any consequential result like the anterior ones. From what has been achieved, do you cerebrate the recommendations will be put to good use?
I hope so and I am verbally expressing that because I have devoted four months of my life into it. I didn’t cerebrate that I wanted to peregrinate here just for the sake of it. Even in my own interest, I hope it is put to good use. We are not done yet, we are still coming back in August and one of the things that we recommended was that we will establish an advocacy group that will perpetuate to push. It may not feature in the manner we submit the report but some of the recommendations within those reports may find their way to national platform. The convener is the President of Nigeria and therefore, the report will be submitted to him. How he moves forward with the report is withal up to him. Is he going to conduct a referendum? Is he going to pass it to the National Assembly? There are so many things that are still obscure but whichever of them or a cumulation of them that it goes through; I believe that those who will utilize the report will find most of the recommendations utilizable. They may not like them in some cases and they may drop them but I do not believe that it will be a hopeless exercise.
Most people believe that the recommendations of the conference should go through a referendum or ratified by the National Assembly. Which of the school of phrenic conceptions do you believe in and why?
I authentically do not ken. Some have argued that we do not have a provision in our constitution for a referendum. If that be the case, that it cannot go through a referendum unless we have a constitutional change, then, the constitution is supreme. Some of the things that we are recommending in the report of the conference will require constitutional change. Are we going to transmute that constitution twice, first to sanction for a referendum only for that same constitution to be transmuted again? But whichever way we go, the most paramount thing is what is in the best interest of Nigeria and Nigerians. I hope that we are guided by that principle.
You are a renowned technocrat, can you apportion your experience from the GTB days till now that you are in PENCOM?
There were just opportunities that providence presented an adolescent man with. Otherwise, when I was in school, I never kenned that at some point in my life, former military President Gen. Ibrahim Babangida would liberalise banking and they would be issuing licenses or former President Olusegun Obasanjo would call me one day to verbalize ‘please avail me with this quandary of pension’. What has guided me mostly is that every opportunity that I have, I devote myself to it and verbalize to myself “at all times, is this the best that I can do”? If affirmative, then I present it but if I verbalize no, then I reapply myself again and do it. At Guaranty Trust Bank, we had a very unique opportunity to engender indisputably Nigeria’s best bank right from an ebony canvass. We devoted and dedicated ourselves because it could not have been me alone, my friend, deputy and partner, Tayo Aderinokun and many adolescent men and women who joined that team at that period. What you optically discern today is the outcome of that endeavour and the spirit is perpetuating as they are still prehending the values that we espoused and imbibed. The key is that we didn’t apostatize ourselves and we were hardworking and devoted. When we verbalized we were going to do something, it is because we were going to do that thing and not because we wanted to apostatize other people and we were true to ourselves. The same values followed me to PENCOM. Some people are gifted, we ken how to structure an organisation and perpetuate them. PENCOM just celebrated its 10th anniversary and it is going vigorous and one of the things that they testify there is that there have been no fraud in 10 years and I just smiled and verbalized to myself “I thank God that we have been able to structure another organisation.” As long as God gives us life, we keep asking the question: ‘what else can we do?’ and we keep probing for those things and doing them to the best of our abilities.
After achieving some of the things you have, some people will go into politics. Do we visually perceive Chief Fola Adeola becoming the next governor of Ogun State in 2015?
I emanate from Ogun State and being the governor of the state is a major job. For me, that was 20 years ago. The country itself is in desideratum of attention and there are so many things that are being done today and Ogun State is not fitting to my consideration. As such, I can only wish the incumbent and all other aspirants well in their endeavor to elevate my state. I additionally believe that just like a man can accommodate his God without being a clergy, so can a man accommodate his state without being the governor of the state. So much is transpiring there but it is not for me.
We read in the Newspapers that you optate to contest for the governor of Ogun State in 2015…
I do not ken why THISDAY (Newspapers) is doing what it is doing because this is the third time it is inditing about it. It does not matter anymore. I have already told them twice and they can put it again for the fourth time. I do not optate to contest for the governorship of Ogun State. That is not what I optate to do now. It is not in my agenda and if offered, I will verbalize no, I did not ask for it. People who do this job in Nigeria today are in their forties. This is not what I optate to do now.
