Former National Shairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance and federal lawmaker that represented Anambra Central Senatorial District, Senator Victor Umeh shares his thoughts on issues of national interest with Charles Ajunwa
Your party, APGA, has now produced three successive governors in Anambra State. That is a feat, considering the massive opposition you have faced. As somebody, who has been at the centre of the battle, how do you feel?
In the last gubernatorial election in Anambra State on November 6, 2021, I am very happy that despite the challenges that faced that election, we were able to win the election resoundingly. I was deeply involved in the mobilisation of the electorate to vote for APGA. I have always been in the forefront of working hard to ensure that APGA does not lose Anambra State because the party produced its first governor in its fold in Anambra State and anytime the party loses the governorship election, it would signal the end of the party. I am always desperate that APGA will ever remain alive, no matter the challenges that would be on our way. I will put all that I can muster as a human being in terms of influence and experience to support the party to win the election. Last election happened to be one that was very testy. In other words, it was knotty and we had to prepare ahead of time to put in a candidate that will win the election. There were scrambles in the beginning but we didn’t lose focus. We had our eyes on the ball. We were determined to field a candidate that would beat the other candidates in public reckoning. So, we got Professor Chukwuma Soludo to be our candidate. We stood behind him very strongly and of course, the messages we gave resonated with the people. He was actually seen as the best candidate among the lot. We are happy that in the end, we were able to overcome all the hurdles and he won the election. APGA is firmly in control in Anambra State. At least, for the next four years, that will make it the 20th year an APGA governor will be in office, if Soludo serves the next four years. We have done 16 years. Peter Obi did eight years and Willie Obiano did another eight years, and now, Soludo starting four years with a possible eight-year run in office. With that, I believe the party will continue to have hope to be able to expand its frontiers and getting to other areas but if we had lost the last election, it would have been a pipe dream to think about going to other places. With this victory that has come our way, we need to go back to the drawing board and work hard to take APGA beyond Anambra State. We have been in Imo but the former governor of Imo State, Rochas Okorocha misappropriated the victory we got there and frittered it away. We pray that if we break into other territories, that we will not suffer what Okorocha foisted on the party in 2013, when he went away from the party with our victory.
You talked about the challenges before the election. Initially there were doubts whether the election was going to hold with the IPOB issue. The governorship election was later conducted and it was described as one of the elections that had the brightest and best in Anambra. What was your winning strategy apart from having a roundly qualified candidate in the person of Prof. Chukwuma Soludo?
Our strategy was very simple; a consistent message. We had to continuously drum it to the ears of our people that since APGA came into Anambra State in 2006, through Governor Peter Obi and Willie Obiano, that the party has served the people of Anambra State faithfully and passionately. We have been able to drive developments in the state in various sectors. Peter Obi did well as a governor when he was with us but his case was that of somebody, who came to start afresh. The state had gone through a lot of decay before APGA emerged in 2006. Before that time, Chris Ngige, who did not win the election was declared winner in 2003 before we went to court. He tried to work for Anambra people. I will always give it to him, but the circumstances of his becoming governor couldn’t allow his efforts to endure. There were crisis between him and his godfathers. He was not settled to do any work until the court removed him. If he had stayed longer, he had the zeal to work for the good of the state but because he didn’t have the mandate of the people, we didn’t allow him to stay. We ensured that we removed him because democracy is about getting into government through the will of the people- use their votes to become whatever one wants to be in a democracy. It does not matter the great things one wants to do. If a mandate is stolen and one wants to do good things with it, it won’t go down well. We persisted and persevered in our legal struggle against him and we got him removed.
When Peter Obi came, he tried to cleanse the past and then turned the state in a new direction which APGA has sustained till the present day. Our people are very wise and discerning. They were able to go through the records of APGA’s stay in office and they easily agreed with us. One is that we returned peace to the state. Peter tried and laid a lot of foundation and his tenure ended. Somebody who came to lay foundation may not be able to erect things that every eye will see. We described his government as the one that laid the foundation for a greater Anambra State. He built the sub structure which is the foundation and by the time he was beginning to erect the superstructure which are things people will see, his tenure ended. So, in our campaign to get Obiano take over from him, we said that Peter Obi has built the sub structure and Obiano will now build the super structures. That is the consistency in movement. Because we promised continuity, Obiano did exactly that. He was able to do a lot of things people could see. Apart from security, which he made his major priority, he was able to foray into other areas and maintained some of the things Peter Obi did which was a healthy relationship between the government and the workforce. He continued to pay them their salaries, carried out general promotion of workers more than two times, workers became happy and they were never owed a dime. Obiano introduced payment of workers’ salaries on the 25th of every month. They computerized their salaries that once it is the 25th, workers get alert and he has maintained this for eight years. So, people who are there would remember history that there was a time they were not paid salaries, when they were owed many years of accumulated salaries. APGA never owed anybody under Peter Obi and Willie Obiano. It was a good point for APGA in our campaign. When the state became notoriously unsafe, Obiano came with a magic wand that drove criminals away from Anambra State and people started coming home to do their social things, bringing their investment nearer home again. Anambra became a beehive of activities one more time. People could come home again and do business and leave without molestation. It was also a major point in the campaign. Towards the end, he did what Napoleon Bonaparte could not do. He started an international cargo and passenger airport and he delivered within two years. His completion of the airport came at the heels of the election and people could not understand it was possible; even our opponents, who had said he would not be able to complete the airport were dumbfounded. They were criticising the airport, trying to demean the importance of the airport but the Anambra people both in the Diaspora and Nigeria were gladdened that such airport actually became a reality, and it started operations in December. Light aircraft first started coming, and bigger aircraft started coming this January. It is a place one cannot easily push APGA away in the consciousness of the people of Anambra State. We were talking to an electorate that was taking stock and they agreed with the things we were saying because they are seeing these things. I don’t know how an electorate would have been averse to letting APGA continue. That was why I gladly engaged them in all the various debates on television to pin down correctly the achievements of APGA in Anambra State. Nobody could wish it away. There is a saying in Igboland that says everybody likes to keep what is good rather than to let it go. The people flowed with us because we were pointing at the things we have done. They knew that a bird in hand is worth more than two in the bush. Others were making promises of what they would do but we were pointing at what we have done and what we are going to do if we were given the chance to continue. We came with a candidate that was well-prepared. Soludo has a brilliant manifesto and he was able to explain his manifesto to all and sundry during the campaigns. So, people reposed so much hope in his coming and that was why we went into the election, we won almost all the 21 local governments again. The challenges were stiff because other candidates did not go to bed. They tried to do all that they could muster to ensure they break the lead of APGA in the state, but it didn’t work. APC made a lot of noise; even they started buying APGA’s members to confuse the Nigerian public that APGA has collapsed and people have ported to APC. I dismissed such insinuations very strongly because I knew those things will not have any effect in the election and when the election came, it was a dismal outing for APC in Anambra State.
Did you at any time feel that Anambra was running the risk of falling into the hands of APC?
I didn’t feel that if there were credible elections but because there were potent threats that the elections will be manipulated and rigged, APC made a boast through their agents in Anambra that the election was already over. There was palpable anxiety in the state that the election will not be free and fair; that was when I became apprehensive and took on the authority in my press and television interviews that INEC must do the right thing and the government of Nigeria must allow credible elections to take place in Anambra. If in a credible election, APC wins, so be it. What I was convinced of was that in a credible election, APC will not win. They had nothing to campaign with. The environment was not conducive for them. The people, who would cast the votes, do not hold APC in good light. The agitation against the marginalisation of the Igbo people, the ordinary man on the street in Anambra State or in Igboland believes that APC has not taken care of our people in a measure that they deserved. So, everything was going against APC in the election but because they control the federal agencies and the apparatus, including people who will play some roles in the election, there was anxiety that they would rig the election. Their candidate had rigged the election before in Anambra State in 2007 when he was returned without getting any votes; when he came and was flouting it again that it is done, people became apprehensive. But our pressure has to fall in the right places and INEC saw to its responsibilities and followed public opinion to prepare for the election. They brought neutral people from the University of Calabar as against the touted people from the Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO). Remember, Hope Uzodinma was the driver of the APC challenge in Anambra State. We cried out and relevant authorities yielded to our cries and made sure the election was free and fair. The over 34,000 security agents that came did their job without hurting anybody. They mainly provided a serene environment for the election to take place and INEC was on top of their game. The security challenges that came ahead of the election were neutralized by the domination of Anambra State with a very strong contingent of policemen, soldiers, members of the DSS and Nigeria Security Corps, Anambra was completely shut down and people were allowed to go and cast their votes for the candidate of their choice. So, the election was saved by the combination of these efforts.
Is it a coincidence that the violence before the election stopped immediately after the election or were there some people in Anambra State that didn’t want the election to hold?
Remember, I said it clearly last year that the upsurge in the insecurity in Anambra was politically motivated. There were signs that some people were working to instill fear in the minds of the citizens, so that they would not be eager to participate in the election. You will also recall that when the insecurity became tenuous, the Attorney General and Minister of Justice called for a State of Emergency in Anambra State. What that would have meant is that Governor Obiano would have been kept aside and some arrangements would be in place for the election to take place. Those things were orchestrated to attempt to reduce the firm grip of APGA in Anambra State at that time. When the threat of a State of Emergency failed, the killings continued and I said that immediately after the election, those things would stop and immediately after the election, results were announced and those things faded away. It gives credence to that believe we had that the killings were politically motivated. Today, people can come to Anambra State and nobody will be molested. Life has returned to normal. When those things were at its peak, people were scared of coming to Anambra State, not even the electorate, or people of Anambra leaving the state could come for the election. But one week to the election, the grand forces have been mobilized from everywhere to Anambra. We had such number of policemen, security operatives and soldiers. So people who were scared of coming changed their mind and started coming in the week of the election.
Were you at any time convinced that IPOB was the one working against the election as alleged by the federal government?
One would not say categorically from where these things are coming. The case of Nnamdi Kanu’s incarceration and trial was a challenge because this is someone who has been crying out against the marginalisation of his people and he has been saying that because of the way the Igbo people had been treated in Nigeria negatively, that they don’t want to be part of Nigeria again. His arrest and detention during the process created tension in the South-east generally. It happened that Anambra had its own election during that period. It was a situation where the people were sympathetic to the plight of Nnamdi Kanu but constitutionally, there must be an election to fill in a new governor since the incumbent would be going. So, we were caught in that scenario. It took the deft management of the situation for that election to take place. Our religious leaders and traditional rulers tried to mediate because IPOB was saying no election while they also declared sit-at-home within the period. Sit-at-home in Igboland is like law now. Nobody dared to come out when IPOB said don’t come out. They declared sit-at-home in the week of the election. It was a big challenge. Our religious and traditional leaders had to get involved in the negotiation and then issued public and press statements calling for calm and appealing to all concerned to allow the election to take place. The sympathy the people had for Nnamdi Kanu’s struggle created its own problem. If IPOB didn’t call off the sit-at-home order in the week of the election, I can bet you that many people wouldn’t have participated in the election out of fear that IPOB would disrupt the election and secondly, because they share in the plight of Kanu. But through the negotiation by our people, religious and traditional leaders and members of the Igbo Diaspora communities were also involved, because we needed to redeem our land and the only way we saw it possible was by allowing election to take place. They reached out, negotiated and IPOB patriotically called-off the sit-at-home and directed people to participate in the election. Within 48 hours, the tension evaporated and people were mobilized to participate in the election.
Nnamdi Kanu is still in detention, some Igbo leaders say they are mediating but the President has said he would go through the full process of the court. What do you think is the best way out of his case?
I have always maintained that the federal government needs dialogue to resolve the problems with the IPOB and indeed the entire Igbo land. I have continued to canvas this position even when I was at the Senate and when I was yet to be in the Senate. I have always disagreed with the approach of the Federal Government of Nigeria in dealing with the agitation of Igbo people against the marginalisation they suffer in Nigeria.
In 2016, I was arrested by the DSS and taken to Abuja because I condemned the shooting of the IPOB elements. I called on the federal government to call these people and dialogue with them. I was accused of sponsoring IPOB. I was arrested in Awka and I was taken to Abuja by road. I told the then DG DSS, Alhaji Lawal Daura, that they were not getting it right. The worst thing one can do in life is to ignore somebody who is aggrieved; that you must talk with him. If you don’t talk with him, his agitation will continue to garner momentum and it will increase. So, something one would have dealt with when it was on a smaller scale can expand into a monster and that is what the federal government has done that has created this problem. I said why not call the leaders of these organisations and ask them what the problem is and they will tell you. If you are a responsible leader, what you would do is to tell them that you have heard them and they should give you time to make adjustments because what they are canvassing against are things that are just. If you tell somebody to give everybody equal opportunities in his own country, it is just agitation. It is the attitude of those who are in leadership that will solve the problem, not when somebody tells you we are not happy because we are not being treated well, that is when you would send soldiers to crush them. That is wrong. What the government has done is that the government has used force to quell something that would have been a civil unrest and that could be managed with dialogue, the government has refused to talk with them and it has posed so much challenges to government. If they had gone through peaceful way of dialoguing with them, this matter wouldn’t have gone out of hand but they said they couldn’t do anything. That is when something would be done and that is the situation we found ourselves in.
In the Kanu’s case, the government has no option than to seek a political solution. Two weeks ago, I was happy when I read that the High Court of Abia State delivered a judgement declaring Kanu’s arrest illegal and ordered that he should be released. That is the judgment of a court no matter how you look down on the level of that court. And they said they are challenging the jurisdiction of that court. They are just playing to the gallery. Judgement of a court subsists until it is set aside by a higher court and in this instance, the judgement of the Abia State High Court is a valid judgement. Government should actually leverage that judgement and seek peaceful resolution to the problem with Kanu and IPOB and then Nigeria will move on. Nigeria will not only move on if Kanu is released, Nigeria can only move on if we are fair to all people of Nigeria. Government has to develop the attitude of being fair to all. If you want Nigeria to be truly a united country where every part will want to remain in Nigeria, you must be fair to all parts of Nigeria. If you are not fair to all parts of Nigeria, the task of keeping Nigeria as one that must be achieved will be a mirage. When people are not happy, you must try to make them happy for them to agree and flow with you. Followership can only be driven by good action. Today, it is about the Igbo people. If the same thing is done to the other tribe in Nigeria, they would react the same way the Igbos are reacting. So, Kanu’s case has been badly managed. I have said it before when I was in the Senate, even in plenary that you cannot tell somebody who is not happy that you must be happy. I condemned the way government, instead of dialoguing with IPOB, went to court to proscribe and called it a terrorist organisation. There is no way you can use a court to proscribe the grievances of the people. The grievances will remain. They will continue to be angry with you. The way to proscribe grievances is to do things to remove the sources of the grievances.
The Abia High Court has given the government of Nigeria an opportunity to re-appraise its approach to the matter of IPOB and Kanu. Either way, the matter must get to the Supreme Court and I don’t know when it will finish. So, government must come back to a political solution because Kanu now has a valid judgement, saying that he did no wrong. Then, they are trying him in another federal High Court at this time saying that he did something wrong, these are courts of coordinate jurisdiction. For the government to prevail, she must get to the end of that one to the Supreme Court and maybe set it aside. Nobody knows if the Supreme Court or Court of Appeal will agree with you but this is something that borders on the fundamental rights of the citizen and if you go through the excerpts of the judgement as I read them online, one will see that one of the findings of the judge of the Abia State High Court was the military invasion of Afaraukwu in Umuahia, the hometown of Kanu was responsible for his fleeing Nigeria. There is nobody that will be attacked that way that will sit and wait for you because the person will be facing his imminent death. So, that military action against him made him run away to preserve his life. You cannot take him to court to say that he ran away because you provoked him from running away from anything you want to do with him. Preservation of life is the first instinct of nature. The president said the court will take its course and now a High Court has said release him, he did no wrong. Whether you like it or not, it is the judgement of a court in Nigeria, a High Court of a state. While we are still at that, I want to appeal one more time, consistent with my view in the past six years that the Federal Government of Nigeria should seek alternative dispute resolution ways of ending this strife in the South-east.
Again, with what is happening in Nigeria today in politics, one can see that change of tactics will be inevitable. The more the people feel they are not wanted in Nigeria, the more they will justify what Nnamdi Kanu is doing. So, there must be a change of attitude for everybody to lay their arms down to go back to the table and become one.
Are the Igbo in a worse situation under the Buhari government today than they have been since 1999 when democracy returned? I don’t know how much PDP did but in terms of political appointments, we got some…
I am a very objective person. I will always tell you the truth the way it is and the way I feel about it. There is a saying in my place that at the end of the race, you count the kilometres covered. The South-east has been groaning that since the war ended, they have not been fully integrated into the Nigerian mainstream through the activities of government. The Igbo have been discriminated against both in public service, sharing of amenities, among others. The military held sway from 1966 to 1999, apart from the four-year interruption of Shehu Shagari’s administration. The South-east has been terribly marginalised in the scheme of things. Even our people, who are in the military, have been denied promotions. At one point, it was a law; as a South Easterner in the army, one cannot cross the rank of Brigadier-General. Once they get to the rank of Brigadier-General, they will be retired and their course mates will go to the pinnacle of their careers. If in Air force, they cannot cross the rank of Air-Commodore, which is equivalent to Brigadier-General. Also in Navy, they cannot cross the rank of Navy Commodore, also equivalent to Brigadier-General. For those who crossed it, it didn’t take time for them to retire. This type of thing applied in all sections, even federal civil service, where our people will be in one position and people who they are more capable than, will move to the next level in their career. These were the things happening over the years that created this general feeling of marginalisation of our people since democracy returned in 1999. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed some people into positions through his government. Our people like Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Charles Soludo, served him in high places but these are people who were agents of the government. The government itself directs things that will happen. Those things that will get to the people will come to your people based on deliberate policy of the government, not as a good financial manager or finance manager. The economy is run based on the advice you give to the government- where roads will be built will be determined by the head of government; where appointments will go will be determined by the head of government. So, we have a plethora of people occupying very great positions helping Nigeria in those sectors but they were not bringing the dividends of democracy to their people because the president would be the one to direct projects to be done in a particular location. They were there working hard for Nigeria but those who decide who gets what, where things go to, didn’t do that for us under Obasanjo administration. To that extent, even Goodluck Jonathan that succeeded him had our people in government like the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Anyim Pius Anyim, and some other people but that is not the real thing; the real things are the things people will feel-good roads, siting of industries, government projects and activities that will improve the lives of the people. We didn’t have them that much under the PDP. Then Buhari came. In 2015, he didn’t get the vote he had expected from the South-east. He actually said we gave him five per cent but I will tell you as an objective person that he has done far more than the PDP in the South-east, things that are verifiable. I am telling you because I don’t tell lies. There are other things that we would need he hasn’t given to us but in terms of infrastructure, Buhari has done better than PDP in the South-east. They say that a hood does not make a monk. What is important are the things one can point to and confirm they are great things. If any Igbo person is saying Buhari has not built roads for us, the person is not telling himself the truth. There are other things we may not have gotten; we can still be talking about but for infrastructure, he has almost linked Enugu to Port Harcourt Expressway. Though , there are portions that are bad but there are construction works going on there. Work is ongoing on the Enugu-Onitsha Expressway. RCC has done some sections from Amawbia to Onitsha, almost linked 9th Mile.
The Second Niger Bridge, which Obasanjo and Jonathan flagged off, nothing happened, Buhari is almost getting it delivered. I will be a wicked person if I join in the saying that Buhari has not done anything in the South-east. He has done it. He still has a lot more to do. One greater thing he needs to do is to knock off the feeling of hatred of the people of the South-east. When I was in the Senate, I brought a motion about an urgent need to reconstitute the National Defence Council and also the National Security Council; a situation where officers from the South-east are not found worthy to head any of the military agencies in Nigeria is not acceptable. We don’t have representatives in the National Defence Council and National Security Council. I was told when I argued the motion that the Minister of Foreign Affairs was a member of the National Security Council and I laughed and asked them what command he had. This is the way Buhari will need to act to show the Igbo people that he doesn’t hate them. There was a time he made an unfortunate statement that the South-east was a dot in the Nigerian nation. That was very despicable and it is like saying we don’t matter anymore. It is not true. I know he is frustrated with a lot of challenges coming from the South-east and he can conquer those challenges with love. If he begins to make such adjustment by appointing people from the South-east to occupy important security positions, this is a type of reintegration we need; it is a psychological healing that can make other things possible. There was a day I read through the lists of all the heads of various departments in NNPC, I couldn’t find one name from the South-east there. These are things people are complaining about. I was in the National Assembly in the 8th Senate; they brought a report in 2018 for the Senate to confirm nominees to the EACC board. There was no person from the South-east and South-south on the list. Yet, there were six positions. We have six geopolitical zones in Nigeria and from the way it was, two people were picked from the South-west and four from the North. The Senate almost moved to confirm the nominees until I argued against it that it violated the federal character principle in the constitution, which is a very clear provision that in the activities of government, all part of Nigeria will be represented in any form and manner. I carefully explained it to the plenary why that list should not be approved and I was surprised at the level of support I got. It became rancorous. We went into a closed door session and at the end of the closed door session, everybody, both the South and North agreed that those nominations were wrong and stood it down and it was returned to the President with those observations. I was very happy that three years later, the President sent a new list to the National Assembly but now with a member from the South-east and South-south each and added the secretary of the commission, which comes from Cross River. This is the spirit, when returned to the Senate, they were confirmed and sworn-in and the balance maintained. This is the way to run the affairs of Nigeria and if the President continues this way, he would be able to reunite Nigerians and reduce the friction and agitation that are holding the country down. If everybody has a sense of belonging and carries everybody along, there will be no problem. Nigeria will begin to have what we called competitive advantage where square pegs are put in square holes and round pegs in round holes; not because of nepotism, you put people in positions where they cannot discharge the demands of that office and you want to have a better Nigeria. It is not possible. So, let’s draw our best brains from all parts of Nigeria where they can be found and put them to a national task so that Nigeria can become a progressive nation.
The South-east has a very strong claim to the presidency in 2023. What are your thoughts on the issue of zoning?
This is an open discussion. Othman Dan Fodio said that “conscience is an open wound, only the truth can heal it.” In Nigeria today, there is no right thinking person, who will look at you directly and say the quest for the president of Nigeria from the South-east geopolitical zones should be discarded. No right thinking person can do that. Like what I told you about what is justifying Kanu’s quest for the South-east to break away from Nigeria. If you think a South Easterner cannot be the President of Nigeria, why would you want South-east people to be part of Nigeria? That is the relevant question. In the 1995 constitutional conference, the late Alex Ekwueme of blessed memory proposed the six zonal structures for Nigeria. It was an Igbo man who did that, Ekwueme, in that conference said let us divide Nigeria into six geopolitical zones and rotate power or share power among the zones. One of the proposals he made, which was for the sake of doing it, was if a president comes from a particular zone, each zone will have a vice president. So, we will have one president and six vice presidents, I believe that could have been cumbersome but he was striking the need to carry all parts of Nigeria along in power sharing and since he made that proposal, it has stuck but not in terms of its contents, we now have six geopolitical zones in Nigeria though not in the Constitution of Nigeria but we have now used it as a means of sharing things in Nigeria. I was a delegate at the 2014 National Conference, the issue of how to get Nigerians to co-exist and live in harmony was topical at the conference and we discovered that one of the major things that caused division in Nigeria is where the president comes from. At the National Conference, we resolved that presidency should rotate between the North and the South and across the six geopolitical zones, if the North produces president today, if the president comes from North-east for example, after that president has served eight years, presidency will rotate to the South and go to another zone and if that person serves his eight years, it will go back to the North- this time to another zone in the North. If we keep this rotation in that order, North, South and across the geopolitical zones, every zone will have the opportunity to produce a president for Nigeria and by that means. If we look at Nigeria’s history, we will see that it is only the South-east that should produce the president in 2023. Obasanjo was president in 1999 from the South-west. After eight years, it went back to the North. Umar Yar’Adua took over in 2007 and unfortunately, he died in 2010. That opened the way for Jonathan to complete his tenure and went to serve as president. Jonathan is from South-south. He stopped from having a second term due to so many arguments that he has done a year and some months of Yar’Adua’s tenure and did four years. That would be five years and some months. If he goes ahead for a second term, he will be serving Nigeria for nine years. That it was a constitutional aberration. So many things played and he couldn’t get a second term and the presidency returned to the North through Buhari, who would have served eight years by the time he finishes his tenure in 2023. So, power will return to the South. By that arrangement and it comes to the South, the only zone that is entitled to produce the president in 2023 is the South-east. In terms of equity, fairness and natural justice, it is the South-east that should produce the presidency for Nigeria in 2023. It is shocking to me that I have been reading in newspapers and listening to people on the television where people are now coming again to become president of Nigeria from South-west, where Obasanjo has served eight years between 1999 and 2007 and now a South western son is the Vice President of Nigeria, serving with Buhari for eight years. So South-west wants to go for the presidency again. I think in the interest of preserving Nigeria, no South westerner should run for president, even the South-south should not come for president. It should be in the South-east. It is also unthinkable that somebody from the North will be wanting to run for president from the same zone with Buhari. The rotation is against Tambuwal. He is my friend and very good man. If it is in terms of attitude and character, he is a nice man, I have encountered him. He is such a good person but that is not enough for him to run for presidency now. Now that somebody from North-west is completing eight years, he is still young and I don’t know what tomorrow holds for him but on the principle of equity and fairness, nobody from the North should run for presidency. It is the turn of the South-east and when I say South-east, I mean South-east as a zone. Talking about tribes is not the situation. The South-south is made up of many ethnic nationalities. Once South-south has taken its turn, if it comes to the South-east, it is only the Igbo that live in the South-east. Then, a South easterner should be the person to be president. We cannot do otherwise. I was disappointed when I saw Bala Mohammed, governor of Bauchi State saying it belongs to PDP and since 1999, PDP has produced president from the South- eight years of Obasanjo and six years of Jonathan, making 14 years and Yar’Adua spent two years. That in PDP, it is the turn of the North to produce a president. That is a warped argument to make. He cannot say that. He is from the North-east and he will not forget if he was young, the constitution should tell him that Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was from Bauchi and he was the Prime Minister of Nigeria from 1960 to 1966. In terms of nation healing, people should shelve their ambitions and allow the South-east to produce the next president for Nigeria. That is the way I am thinking that Nigeria will begin to become a truly united country. Anything short of that will breed distrust, and will not guarantee national cohesion. The only way you can get everybody to believe in Nigeria is when everybody is seen to have the opportunity of doing what somebody from elsewhere is doing in Nigeria. This is shameful and embarrassing that people will want to go ahead and say they want to be president and neglect the South-east. This is a South-east you don’t want them to break away from. It is not about saying something.
Practical steps must be taken to achieve what you want, if you want peace in Nigeria you must do the needful, if they finish the nominations and South-east is denied the opportunity to produce president in 2023, you will not blame Kanu if he says we don’t want to be part of Nigeria again because what you have told him is that his agitation is justified, you are telling those of us who believed we can use dialogue to achieve one Nigeria that we are not thinking properly, so there must be concession, I want Tinubu with all due respect to him to shelve his ambition and anybody from the South-west who wants to be president before a South easterner as the president is an enemy of the nation, they are calling for the breakup of the country, he cannot by good conscience says he wants to be president of Nigeria, if he is doing that, he is saying we don’t exist and my generation of Igbos will not take it that we have been reduced to insignificance in national affairs where we could just fly across us at will and you want us to be with you, this is the time to do it, Nigeria has a chance, not by threat but in the national interest that Nigeria elects a president from the South-east zone, that will bring everybody back to the table, if there are things that are still outstanding, they can be discussed but if in a brazen manner, you are telling a people that they do not exist, that they will continue to follow you, you are the one causing the problem, not the person who says I don’t agree.
They have done it before. In 1999, Obasanjo had no chance of becoming the president. In fact, he was in prison but due to a national expediency, the powers-that-be, following the annulled June 12 election, decided that the president should come from the South-west to calm them down. In that arrangement, the whole country agreed, despite the fact that the late Dr. Alex Ekwueme played a pivotal role to get the military leave government for civilian administration to come in and he was a pioneer and founding chairman of the PDP and had presidential ambition. He was pushed aside. Obasanjo was brought out from prison and put there. In all the set out criteria for somebody who will be presidential candidate for PDP, Obasanjo didn’t qualify in any manner because I was a founding member of PDP. The party said someone who will be president must deliver his ward, local government and possibly his state in the local government election that took place in December 1998. In that election, the then Alliance for Democracy swept the South-west, defeated Obasanjo in his polling booth, his ward, his local government and in his state and they brought him to displace Ekwueme, who delivered the whole South-east to the PDP. That was the first injustice and Ekwueme left it. As it were again, in the then APP, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu emerged their preferred candidate but in a consensus arrangement, they merged with AD and produced Olu Falae. He was the presidential candidate of the APP and AD; two people from the South-west to make sure that compensation was made to the South-west because of annulled victory of MKO Abiola. Nigerians voted for only two candidates- Olu Falae and Olusegun Obasanjo. Every other person went home and Obasanjo became president. Why is it that they cannot see the compelling need to differ to the South-east, if we are preaching one Nigeria to produce the president in 2023? That is the big question. I am not against anybody in Nigeria but what I am against is injustice, denial of people’s rights in a manner that will make them look subhuman. No matter the power conspiracy in Nigeria against the South-east people, Nigeria cannot make progress unless they put behind the prejudices of the Nigerian Civil War because that is the kernel of the issue. Anytime it gets to a critical stage, the power conspiracy will play out- the South-east people should not be given power-but you like us, you do business with us; you marry our daughters and when it comes to becoming president, you remember the war. Every nation that has fought wars came out stronger. It is only in Nigeria that the war has refused to go away. The memories and prejudice of the war have refused to go away. People who worked together during the wartime to defeat the South-east or Eastern region as it was are still playing those politics till today. That is the people holding Nigeria down. We have gone beyond that. We have friends across the country. There is no great man in Nigeria who doesn’t have friends in the South-east and vice versa. Let us bury the war and embrace one another. Let us stop talking about who was killed in the war. There was an interview I gave to BBC but it has not been aired. I said what started the first round of killings in Nigeria in 1966, that military coup that took place in 1966, all the people that took part in it are all dead, but they all have historical records of what transpired. I have all those books. Those who participated in the coup gave me their books. I have Ademulegun’s book, Col. Nwobosi’s book, Col. Ben Egbule, it was Nzeogwu that didn’t write a book. Those are the five major actors and if you read their books, one will find out that Nigeria is deliberately telling themselves the lies that are dividing the country. The coup of Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu and co failed because General Aguyi Ironsi did not support it. It failed because Gen. Chukwuemeka Ojukwu didn’t support it- two prominent Igbo people in the army then. Why are they now saying Igbo carried out a coup to kill people and if you read their books, one will see how they acted. The first thing they said was the problem; I interviewed them. Colonel Nwobosi was my friend before he died. He told me these stories. I worked very closely with Ojukwu for five years as the leader of APGA and I was chairman. He told me about events that led to the Nigeria Civil War, even the military coup itself. I have these details apart from the documented stories that I have. It was never a coup that was executed to give the South-east or the Igbo any advantage in Nigeria. They came to fight the politicians. These were people that were colleagues in Sandhurst Academy. They came with their Western radicalism and decided to do away with politicians that were corrupt and they chose Obafemi Awolowo as their saint. Their plan was to bring Awolowo out of prison and make him Prime Minister if the coup had succeeded. Obafemi Awolowo was not a South easterner. These are people who were driven by their Western radical education and unfortunately, it happened the way it did. Nobody told them to go and do it on behalf of the Igbo. They were military adventurists and it happened that the way the coup was executed, gave it a name because Michael Okpara and Nnamdi Azikiwe were not killed. Because of that, the whole Igbo people will be killed. If I was a member of the coup gang, I would kill these people. It was their mistake that left us with this stigma but we have to bring it to an end and move ahead. This is 52 years after the war has ended. Nigeria cannot continue that way. Let us not carry this and pass it to our children and they will pass it to our many generations to come. We keep talking about the same thing. Anything can lead to war. In Europe and some other countries where there has been a war like this, they put the reasons why they fought behind, corrected their mistakes, and moved on. There is no nation that is progressive that didn’t fight wars in the past. America fought a lot of wars. In Europe, wars were rampant, there were so many wars in history and those nations are doing well now. It does not mean there wasn’t somebody from one county that started it all. I am using this interview to plead with Nigeria to pursue peace and the only thing that can pursue peace is justice. Let us not play Ostrich to injustice and hope to have a good country. It will never come. We have the opportunity now to redirect our action. Let us do fence-mending and building and see ourselves as one people. If we can live together in Abuja, why can’t we live together as Nigerians. Let us run a Nigeria where no part is left behind. That is the only thing that can cement us as a nation. Trying to do otherwise, we will be postponing the doomsday because I don’t see any hope in sight unless we change our attitude to ourselves.
(Thisday)
