Dr. Marindoti Oludare is Convener/National Coordinator of Social Rehabilitation Gruppe (SRG), a socio-political organisation. In this interview with Kayode Fasua, he explains why his group deployed resources to boost the presidential aspiration of President Bola Tinubu during the last election; describing Tinubu’s ultimate victory at the Supreme Court as all that ended well.
Oludare, a Nigeria-born, US-based medical practitioner also sets varied agenda before the current administration.
Excerpts:
You have been resonant on TV and radio programmes and also on the pages of newspapers, promoting President Bola Tinubu, as a contestant and now as President. What is the motivating factor?
My primary motivating factor is the injustice that the president is subjected to by many of his detractors and the fact that many don’t think hard enough to see what is being done to them and how this man is trying to end the exploitation the masses have been subjected to. I had always agreed with the President’s policy positions and I had come to the conclusion that he was the only one that could do what is needed to be done to fix the nation.
I was alarmed by the negative attention the “Agbado” statement got, Nigeria is a country where an egg sells for N200, and our unthinking youth do not know that the lack of agbado to make poultry feed is the reason the eggs cost that much. Maybe if they were that witty, they would have rushed to the farm to make more agbado instead of making memes about agbado.
Many gigabytes of content was posted on social media, however the kilobyte of knowledge that should be posted in their brain is found wanting. I am a medical doctor, I have done many great things in my life, but campaigning for my president is the greatest thing I have done so far. His victory was my proudest moment. His success will be the greatest testament to my impeccable judgement.
You recently had a war of words on prime TV with David Hudenyi, a journalist and critic of President Tinubu who lives in the Diaspora like yourself. What is the perception of majority of Nigerians in the Diaspora about the President?
Some still don’t understand the problems so they are misguided. But the vast majority have come around to reason with what the president’s position is and they agree with him. The president has the Midas touch. David Hudenyin is supposed to be a journalist, he filed a freedom of information act request for documents against President Tinubu, when I asked him to request same for Atiku Abubakar, a cat got his tongue. Halliburton and Jefferson Williams are all part of public record in the United States. He likes to call the president bad names; When I presented salient exculpatory facts from the document he released and he was asked to give a rebuttal, he chickened out. I guess he’s shy of the facts. You can ask 50cent, Jay Z, drug is what you do when you’re broke, not what you do as a Treasurer of a multinational company like Mobil. This is commonsensical. I guess David needs to rethink his choices as a journalist. A journalist should be on a mission to discover the truth not to witch-hunt or wish-think. David is a man with vivid wild imagination which he often projects to beguile his unassuming followers.
You are at the vanguard of calls for official control of some excesses in the social media. Won’t this amount to suppressing freedom of speech?
I won’t characterise it as control, I’ll call it regulation. We must admit social media has wrecked palpable havoc on collective fabric of our shared humanity. It used to be that children were raised by nature or nutrient, now parents can’t raise their wards anymore, algorithms raise their children for them. David Hudenyin once told Olisa Agbakoba (a 70-year-old-man) shut up on social media. That is uncouth, rude and unAfrican. We are cultured people and I’m sure David’s parent didn’t raise him that way.
My solution to the ills caused by social media is to first shift liabilities on social media companies for contents people view. People should only be allowed on the platforms upon subscription and should only see what they’ve paid for. Let me elucidate further, if I’m a sex addict and I go on social media for lewd and lascivious content, the next time I’m on there, that is all they’ll continue to show me. So why should I not be able to sue them for reasonable money for worsening my condition.
A lot of children have committed suicide over the addictive contents they’ve accessed on social media. We should all be able to sue them for making us sick. Mark Zuckerberg is the new Pablo Escobar, selling us the drug of content and making us sick. Now we have a generation as dumb as a rock. I fear for my future, a future where people in my generation have been deprived of their 6th sense. Internet is a beautiful being, social media is the cancer it has. Let’s put it into remission
The Nigerian economy is currently in distress, judging by the worsening exchange rate and huge debt profile. How should the Tinubu administration ride the storm?
They are doing exactly what they need to do. As a doctor, I tend to use the human body to analyse. Nigeria needed a radical surgery to remove multiple highly invasive cancers that will threaten the very existence of the body. During that process pain will be caused, there will be blood loss. Blood is a connective tissue just like dollar connects our economy. The resultant blood loss might mean you’ll need to give that patient blood transfusion while on the operating table. That is why the Minister of Finance has sorted the crucial loans we needed. Once the radical excision of our economic cancer is over, the country will start to recuperate and I can admit that we are at the beginning of our recovery process. The tremendous growth that Nigeria will experience will make President Bola Ahmed Tinubu the greatest black politician in the history of mankind and nobody will ever come close for centuries. I love that man.
The body chemistry of the present government in Nigeria shows more youths are being drafted into governance. As a 34-year-old, what is your political aspiration?
Personally, I believe I have guts and guile to lead my state. However, I only have the wits and not the wherewithal. It’s not the right time. Hence I’ll have to wait for my turn. Èmi Kọ́ Ló Kàn.
