Mr Abiodun Ladepo started as a journalist with The Guardian, before leaving for the US in 1988 for greener pastures. An alumnus of the University of Ibadan, Townson University and University of Maryland, both in the US, he works for the United States government. Ladepo is a regular contributor to many frontline online publications where he shares analyses and opinion on the state of the polity. He was in Nigeria briefly and HANNAH OJO caught up with him.
What bits of fascinating experiences can you recall while growing up?
I was raised in Zaria. My grasp of Hausa is as good as my Yoruba. I started elementary school in Zaria and I finished in Bukuru, a small village in Jos. Because my father was a bank executive, we used to be transferred all over the place. I started secondary school in Ikirun, Osun state and I finished in Banbanloma, Jebba. Thereafter I did A levels at the Oyo State college of Arts and Science, which was UNIIFE before it became OAU. I went to UI where I studied linguistics. I lost my dad when I was in form four and things changed dramatically. Part of the reasons why I had to leave Nigeria eventually was because getting ahead in life became my own responsibility, so I had to do what I had to do.
Your work with the US government involves extensive travels; can you share your most remarkable travel experience?
I will actually say it was my first driving experience from Ibadan to Accra, Ghana. I had driven 21 hours from Kuwait to Iraq to Baghdad. I also drove 13 hours from Frankfurt in Germany to Naples in Italy back and forth. I have driven to London many times. I find my first travel from Ibadan to Accra most exhilarating because some of the things I saw made me feel like we suffer a lot in Africa. We don’t cherish what we have. If you have such a long expanse of road by the ocean (which is what they have in Togo) in the US, it will be filled with all kinds of five star hotels where people will want to stay just to watch the beautiful ocean. It is the kind of thing you have in California where you have long stretches of houses by the ocean and people pay to stay there.
What was the experience like as a Nigerian immigrant working in the US?
The good is that in 30 years of living and working in the US, my pay cheque was never delayed, even when I worked for private firms. You can imagine how hard it will be if I was working in Nigeria at the moment and in some states, people have not been paid for eight months. The first obvious thing about living as an immigrant overseas is that you are not with your family and friends. Whenever I come to Nigeria, I feel like I’m home. The universities I went to in the US, I can’t even remember somebody with whom I am still in touch but I am still in touch with my friends here. Then the other thing is the racial part but what I discovered in the US is if you are hardworking and honest, you will be respected regardless of where you come from. Are there discriminations? You have them here in Nigeria too.
One of your widely read articles on the internet is titled ‘five big problems I have with Nigerian pastors’, what is your take on religion?
I am a born again Christian but I am not stupid. It is one thing to go to church and it is another to take everything the pastor says hook, line and sinker. In my sojourn in the US, I have met so many people who have been taken by their pastors. I was a deacon and a choir leader in the church in the US. For me, religion is something between you and God. It is sad when you have a church leader sleeping with church members; a church leader visiting voodoo men and burying charms under buildings’ foundations, it happens in Nigeria and Ghana. You have pastors embezzling church funds. There are just too many religious men and women who don’t care about God. Some churches have built private universities, how many members can afford to send their children to those schools? A lot of them on the Lagos-Ibadan high way don’t care what happens when they are having their programmes. Why can’t the church invest on the road by expanding it in order to ease traffic? My house in California, there are four churches on my streets, I don’t hear their service. In Ibadan, I have a church right behind my house and I can’t sleep well during their revival. Will I pray for that pastor?
You seem to be a huge fan of President Muhammadu Buhari… do you still hold him in high esteem in spite of recent developments?
I still hold him in high esteem. If we have a leader who is serious about corruption, more than half of our problem is solved. I hate to criticise my friends in the media but the problem Buhari has is his media team. His media team needs to go and learn how to set agenda just like the media in the US. You write a piece of information to put out every week to control the news cycle to manage people’s expectations. What we now have is the opposition being able to go into people’s mind and turn them against the president, knowing that this man did not cause the problem that we have right now. The fact that petrol is N145 now is not Buhari’s fault; we should have been paying 145 a long time ago. Even at N145, we pay less than Ghana for fuel. The first thing is to condition our minds to being patriotic, that is one major difference I find between Nigerians and the Americans. What the ministry of information should be doing right now is leading all kinds of propaganda to help Nigerians to be patriotic.
The ministry of information came out with the ‘Change begins with me campaign’ but Nigerians are saying change should begin from Aso Rock?
I think that campaign was improperly launched. What the ministry is trying to do is to tell us to change ourselves too. Some of us bribe the custom agents at the boarder because we don’t want to pay duties on goods. We need to change but in the middle of hunger, when you tell Nigerians to change, they will look at you and say you need to change and give us food. I attended a meeting of my party ward and there are people asking me for money. When you ask your leader to give you money, he is going to steal that money back.
People have the impression that President Buhari’s anti-corruption war is one sided?
They said the same thing about Obasanjo, next time when the PDP gets power, let them go after APC thieves. Bukola Saraki is a very senior member of the APC too. I am not saying he is a thief but let him prove himself in court. Alex Badeh is not in any political party, he was supposed to be a retired air force officer. So let him prove himself in court.
Some members of the President’s cabinet are facing criticisms in terms of performance, how does this hamper on delivering the dividends of democracy to Nigerians?
In a political dispensation, you have to also factor in politics. There were politicians who worked their butts off to get the government in power. If you look at the cabinet, there are technicians who are not strong party members. I am sure Kemi Adeosun was not an APC ward member. Godwin Emefiali was not a strong party member and a few others like that. Of course people who have contributed to the emergence of the party will get something. People like Kayode Fayemi is a brilliant person that should be in anybody’s cabinet. The president has to think about the mix.
I am dissatisfied too with some of them. I don’t think the ministry of communication should be a cabinet post, I think it should be a parastatal that is filled with technocrats. But you can’t have 36 Babatunde Fashola in government. You have the A-class cabinet members as well as the B and C class members.
Your work schedule in the US involves extensive travels, yet you find time to write frequently on the state of the polity, what kindles your interest in Nigerian politics?
Nigeria gave me the opportunity to dream. My dreams were accomplished in America so I give both countries the credit. I will never say anything bad about the United States of America because that country has been good to me and my family and so is Nigeria. I have never spent my annual leave outside Nigeria since I left the country, so why would I be a Nigerian and not know what is going on in Nigeria? Eventually when I retire from service, I will probably return to Nigeria and I will like Nigeria to be better than the way it is. I hate to be a critic, Prof Wole Syoinka and the late Tai Solarin are people who spend their lives as critics without getting into government. When I was in UI, there was a symposium held at Trenchard hall where Professor Wole Soyinka, Femi Falana and Gani Fawehinmi were present. I was in the crowd and I asked if they could take their discussions outside the gate and change to vernacular so that people in Beere, Oja Oba can understand. I believe social critics should also get on ground and get into politics if their employment allows it.
Is there a possibility of you contesting public office when you eventually retire to Nigeria?
I will definitely not be idle. I will contribute to Nigeria wherever I can be useful having spent the last 20 years in security/military issues. I am definitely not going to be quiet. I will be writing but I will back up my writing with political activism. I will be in a political party and I will still be writing. That way I can put my money where my mouth is. That is if I retire to Nigeria!
You are married to an actress, how does it feel like watching her act?
I am married to Oluwatoyin Adeyoola, she is the famous Adunni Alapa dollar. She is an actress, vivacious, she studied Dramatic Arts at the Obafemi Awolowo University. She has a movie coming out soon that she shot here in Nigeria. I once saw a movie where an actor kissed her and I poked fun at her asking, ‘why does he have to pull you like that to kiss’? What attracted me to her was reading what she wrote. She is a short story writer and I fell in love with her style.
How do you make time for relaxation and family?
I drink Hennessey. That is my relaxation whenever I come home from work. I am a voracious reader of news. I am on CNN all the time and I read news about Nigeria online.
What is your advice to Nigerians coming to the US to seek greener pastures?
My advice to anybody is contained in that article published online titled, “thinking about checking out of Nigeria? Read this first!” Anybody who wants to leave should go and read it. The summary for me is this: if you already have a degree in any discipline and you are under 25, you should stay in Nigeria. Even if you do your masters and you don’t get a job, if you stay two or three years later, you may likely get one. Whatever job you got, 20 years later, you will not be a junior staff anymore. You can’t have a masters degree and be a junior staff. You would have gotten married, have kids and maybe have a parcel of land somewhere you are developing. Yes, you will be in this nasty traffic and the heat but by the time you are 50 when your first child is now 18 or something, you go to the same church or the same mosque, you are somebody in the society. But if you leave, especially if you left the country with a visitor visa to the United States or the United Kingdom, it will take you not less than eight years for your stay to be regularised. That may include having to marry an American. If you don’t have any plan of coming back home, then you can leave because coming back home is more difficult than when you are leaving.
Why is that so?
I have been extremely lucky, so you can’t use me as an example. People don’t look at the other end of the story; they look at the beginning because of the hardship here. There are many Nigerians who are in their 60s in the US and the crisis they have now is how to return to Nigeria.
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