Chief Goddy Uwazurike is a lawyer and a former President of Aka Ikenga. He also introduces himself as a humanist. In this interview with Assistant Editor, CHINWE MADUAGWU, he speaks on political events in the country and the fate of the Igbos.
TNE: You like to introduce yourself as a humanist, what do you mean when you say you are a humanist?
I believe in the betterment of life for everybody, for the man. I’m not a politician.
TNE: Even though you say you are not a politician, I believe you still follow political events. So what do you make of the political events in the recent past?
I don’t think we are on the right track. I think we are being manipulated by evil minded people. Evil, because they know what is good but they will choose to go on the wrong path. They’ve seen the right things to be done, they will not do it, and if you are not doing what is right, it means you are doing what is wrong. And if you do what is wrong persistently and with a negative mind, and with the objective of coming to power, I will call you an evil person. If you are holding on to power without doing the right things, I will call you a dictator.
TNE: Looking at the relationship between the government and the National Assembly, who would you say is on the wrong path?
Our constitution defined the three arms of governments succinctly and lucidly. There is no area of confusion. The National Assembly has the powers to make laws to the exclusion of any other arm.
The judiciary has the powers to interpret and the executive has the powers to implement the decisions of the National Assembly and the courts. In other words, execute all the laws first as defined in the Constitution and any subsequent laws made by the only authority.
The same constitution, I think in section 315, however, says if there is any law that is inconsistent with the Constitution, the President can make some amendments to bring it in line, in other words, if it is marginal amendment such as name. That is the only way the President or the Governor can amend a law.
Since 1999, we’ve been having Presidents and Vice Presidents. It is only with Buhari’s government that we have the Presidency. So, you have comments coming from Presidency. People who are retiring, they say their tenure has been extended by the Presidency.
We all know that even on the grounds of age Mr. President cannot even execute the powers as President of this country. In the first place, one cannot fight nature and if Mr. President has the habit of delegating powers to competent people, then we can all relax. But as it is today, I don’t see that happening. I don’t see him delegating powers. It’s like whenever he goes on one of these his trips, governance stops, what we call governance as understood by them. You see the Vice President making some trips, making some speeches, which I call self speeches not governance changing speeches.
I have seen from afar the kitchen cabinet of Mr. President. I don’t think the Vice President belongs there. In the kitchen cabinet, these are not necessarily office holders, they are people who sit with Mr. President, who are called close friends, who tell him how things are going and how things are not going. Those people are called the most powerful people in the country. If Mr. President is not broad-minded, he will only bring in people with myopic views, those who agree with him, yes men, who will never tell him the truth. No man is an Island. We have the official cabinet and if in the official cabinet, we have competent people but they are afraid to discuss with him or he doesn’t have time for them or he doesn’t have time to read the memos they drop, then they will all be marking time, waiting for him to tell them what to do.
I will give an example; the man called Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, is one of the most competent and determined persons I can see in the government but the government overloaded his ministry and that is part of the problem. If they can just give Fashola works only, I’m sure he will do well. You know a minister has a limit to what he can do. A minister may have ideas but it’s for the President to approve and if the approval is not forthcoming, there is nothing he can do except mark time.
Again, if Fashola is given Power ministry alone, he will make things happen but there’ s still a limit. If Mr. President cannot give access to those who are supposed to make things happen, but they must wait till the President sees them for things to happen, then that government is stagnant and that’s what is happening in this country today.
We are also relying more on propaganda than on action. For example: from time to time, you see people whom you respect come and say work is going on, on second Niger Bridge. But work cannot go on when there’s even no contract. As soon as Mr. President came, he stopped the contract being done by Julius Berger under PPP, Public Partnership Project. The money had already been set aside by the former Minister of Finance and then, since work was stopped in September 2015, by an order from the ministry that they want to do soil testing, no work has gone on. Whatever was being done there has been overtaken by events. The event is a natural event, in other words, the weather – it has dealt with the site.
The other time, they said 40% of work had been done, I laughed at them. What 40%? Then they corrected themselves and it was the access road that they were talking about. Which access road, I ask?
They were shouting, ‘Enugu -Onitsha road, we are doing it,’ and they show some pictures. Go through that road, the moment you leave Onitsha to go to Awka, a short distance, you can’t. The road is terrible, yet we are bombarded with disinformation about work going on. Meanwhile, no work is going on.
I think Mr. President centralised money control under him. In the past, the Accountant-General would be the one you go to, but I don’t think it is so now, which is why, yes, budget has been done but nothing happens? If you centralise everything too much, trouble starts. Mr. President travels a lot. So, if he travels what happens to release of money? If, for instance, there are 100 people queuing up to see him everyday, how many people can he see? On grounds of age, I don’t see him being awake by 11p.m. It’s nature and you can’t fight nature. You are looking at 80 and then somebody wants you to work in the office till 12 midnight. You can’t. And if his physical health was not that sound before he became president, it would get worse.
TNE: Let me fast forward since you have brought in the issue of age. This is just his first term and he is eyeing a second term. If as you say, he can no longer cope with the demands of his office, what will happen if he comes back for a second term of another four years?
Well, if he is very slow today, then he is going to be extremely slow. You can’t cheat nature. You either age gracefully or you may not age gracefully. You have no control over that. Which is why somebody will die at the age of one, and another person at the age of 100. You find a man at 90 still driving around while others at 70 can’t. So, if your health is not that strong, you would be the one to advise yourself that things are not what they are supposed to be and if Mr. President is advancing towards 80 and next year he takes over and starts again, with what energy? He doesn’t have any energy. It’s advisable that he goes home and writes his memoir.
TNE: Let’s say he doesn’t want to write his memoir but he continues in office next year, where would that leave the country? Where would she be as a country?
If we are crawling now, then, you know what will happen. As soon as Mr. President took over, the first thing I realised was that the pace of governance slowed down and I realised he was trying to bring the pace of activities to his own pace. In other words, you can’t see him waking up by 6a.m, going to play Squash, coming out by 7a.m, and as he’s having his breakfast, the Security Adviser is briefing him, everybody is briefing him etc. No, you may not see all these. By 12 midnight, I don’t think you will see him having one meeting or the other. It’s nature. There’s a limit to what you can do and remember that in all these, files are pilling up for his assent. So, you are going to find a lot of abuses, you will see and hear such things as decisions ‘approved by the Chief of Staff and others.’ Even when you see ‘approved by the Chief of Staff,’ you don’t even know whether Mr. President saw what was approved.
Even as at today, there are many things going on in an esoteric manner and I don’t think it should be so. Governance should be open. If it is open, then, we have no room for mistakes.
TNE: We are seeing a lot of movements from one party to another, do you see the interest of the masses in all of these or are they are moving for their personal interests or because they are looking for a platform to affect people’s lives?
I don’t really know what you mean by their own personal interest but a politician is more or less like the Red Cross. He receives money, he gives. The day he stops giving to his constituency or his followers, he has lost it. If you are a politician and you are not giving, nobody will follow you. Let me be realistic: let’s say senator AA wants to visit his constituency in Imo State, before he takes off, he informs the leadership, his own constituency and even the state that he is coming to visit. At the airport, they will all be there in various hired vehicles with music and all. It will be a convoy that will accompany him. They will stay with him that day, the next day, following him wherever he goes, then they will see him off.
Those people following him, have left whatever they were to do that day and followed him, so how do they take care of their financial needs for that day? The legislator gives them money. So the Red Cross character is what he uses to keep a hold on his constituency. Believe you me, when you see anybody who is no longer a legislator, minister or commissioner, go to his home, you will see nobody. But when he was in office, before he even wakes up people are there. So that need is always there. Some legislators will do anything in order to take care of their constituencies, which is also why when they are jailed, you see people screaming and when they come out, they are hailed as heroes. This is the reality of politics in Nigeria.
Now as for moving from party to party, the reason is first self survival. So a legislator moving from one party to another is about his self aggrandisement and to be called the leader of the people.
TNE: 2019 election is around the corner, what do you see?
If I tell you what I see, you will say I’m pessimistic.
TNE: Let’s hear it sir.
I think disaster is just awaiting us. Those in power are more interested in how to retain power than in governance, which is why you see all these maneuvers going on. I do not believe that if President Mohammadu Buhari was in town that the DSS’ boss, Lawal Daura, would have been sacked. I don’t believe so. I have a feeling that his absence made a lot possible. If Mr. President wants to clean up the Augean stable, he has to send all the security men out – from Police to the military, everybody and start afresh. But in the calculation for power, he may not do that because for him to retain power, he needs all those his trusted men. Whether those trusted men are efficient in governance is another thing but if they are efficient in covering his back and protecting him, he will retain them. And the disaster is that we are going to retain mediocrity in all we do which is not good.
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So, 2019 portends a lot. The prognosis is bad. It is frightening because if we go by what happened in Ekiti and even Kogi, then we are in trouble. Obasanjo put it well 11 years ago when he said it was ‘fight to finish.’ So I think 2019 is fight to finish. Then, there is the problem of the credibility of the election. The EFCC man was shown the other day wearing a pin up of Mr. President 2019. In one second he destroyed the image of the organisation. So, if you ask anybody whether the EFCC was partisan, they will say, of course, it is partisan. And if you leave APC , the next day they will come after you. Did they come after the Benue Governor? Yes, they did. Did they go after Akwa Ibom Governor? Yes they did. To cleanse themselves of that negative image will take time and a leadership change.
The Army, Air Force, Navy and so on, people don’t see them as representing us. The average man in the Middle Belt talks of who will save them from the Fulani invaders, the herdsmen, and what is the response of the police and the army? The police says it is a communal clash, army says they are doing exercise. Meanwhile, the people there cannot go home. They are still in IDP camps. If you ask the man from the Igbo land what he thinks of the military, he will remind you of those who came there with jets flying all over to fight IPOB and what weapon did IPOB have, their fists. What of those who have AK 47s, the Middle Belt is full of them. Is the army doing anything about them? The answer is no. Is the President talking about how to cleanse the area of those marauders, the answer is no. Anytime you hear the military talking of success or the President talking about success, they are talking of Zamfara. Those are cattle rustlers coming from all over the North to steal the cattle of Kebbi and Zamfara people and they are talking of how to rid the area of them, but they are not talking of how to rid the Middle Belt of the herdsmen.
So we have a serious problem. As we go into 2019, only God will save us.
TNE: You are a former leader of Aka Ikenga, a group that speaks for the interest of the Igbos. In all the permutations, in all that you see, where do you situate the Igbos come 2019?
We are no where today. We are not near the seat of power, we will even be very far from the seat of power then. If we are one kilometre away from the seat of power in 2019, if Buhari comes back, we are going to be 20 kilometres far away. But if he does not come back, we will be nearer. That’s the way I see it because if there’s any government since 1999 that totally ignored the Igbos, it is Buhari’s government. The government holds us in contempt. Whereas the average Igbo man is not seeking to dominate anybody, all he wants is a level playing field.
Perhaps this is why Lagos is shinning above others. Here in Lagos, they don’t really care where you come from. If you want to build, they show you where knowing very well that you are actually developing their area, and we the foolish Igbo people don’t even remember to go and build in our home. This is why, when I was President of Aka Ikenga, I started the campaign, ‘look home, think home.’ You can have 50% of your investment outside, but also have some inside. But the bigger burden lies on the governors to make the environment conducive.
Believe me, if a governor sees you as his enemy, he will do everything to deal with you and those working with him will also do same. As was said by the King of England many years ago, if a king or president or governor says ‘who will rid me of this troublesome person,’ what will ‘his people’ do, but to carry a machete and cut off his head because they see him as the enemy of the governor. So if a governor wants development, he will do something.
We had an opportunity many years ago for something to be done. When Ikedi Ohakim was governor in Imo State, he and other governors had an agreement that a particular spot where the five states in the South East have a boundary should be turned into an industrial hub. But as soon as Ohakim left, Rochas, you know him, had no interest in such. The rest as they say, is history. We really need men with vision. If we have a man with vision as governor, he will create an industrial area, give people one year to build or forfeit the land. So as people from outside are bringing in money to develop, those inside will become labourers, those selling goods like building materials will be happy to sell, and you are stimulating the economy. But most of the leaders are interested in pedestrian things to think of progress.
TNE: A lot of Igbos argue that their so-called leaders have not truly led or guided them properly. In fact, some go as far as accusing the leaders of selling the people out. Do you agree with that position?
I do. It’s like a governor in any Igbo state thinking of farming a ranch. Is such a person in control of his senses? I wonder. Kano has already offered enough land for the ranches. The land Kano said it has provided is bigger than anything the five South East states, including Delta and Rivers, will provide. But the Federal government is not looking that way. All they are looking for is how to have ranches all over the country and ranches actually mean Fulani settlements and every settlement will have a Mosque. So you have Fulani settlements all over the country and when a settlement is established, it is under the control of the Federal Government. Whereas President Mahammadu Buhari is planning a refinery for Katsina for crude oil coming from Niger, he is planning settlements for Fulani people all over Nigeria.
At the National Conference, this issue came up and the decision taken was that it was a state matter. If a state wants it, nobody will tell it not to after all, land is a state matter. But I still remember one man from Kano saying, ‘when we go anywhere you must give us land, anywhere we go, there must be land as we move about with our cattle.’ So those people in the bush are not the brains behind the whole thing. The brains are somewhere.
TNE: You talked about developing the South-East. In recent times, Lagos has been facing the challenge of bad roads and traffic gridlocks due to the number of articulated vehicles and tankers trying to access Apapa port because that’s the only functional port in the country. What in your opinion is the difficulty in developing the ports outside Lagos?
The difficulty is very simple, ineptitude of government. For a trailer coming from Maiduguri, it criss-crosses Nigeria to come to Lagos. But if Port Harcourt wharf is really functional, the driver goes in a straight line. The same things go for all those in the North-East and part of North-West. But myopic leadership says ‘leave those places, after all, Igbos will benefit.’ Chad for some years now prefers to go through Cameroon. If we had our wharfs fully functional, it would be a direct road and each time we say that, somebody will say it is not Buhari’s fault. Please the bulk stops on the table of the President. Buhari should stop going about blaming his predecessors, this is his time, let him work and show what he has done. Blame game is never a policy but he has made it a policy. He spent the first two years blaming Jonathan, the last six months blaming Obasanjo and PDP and the next six months, he’s going to blame Saraki. So the entire energy of the government is on Jonathan, Obasanjo and Saraki and that is a tragedy. He is elected for four years and he had spent 12 years planning, yet what is he running? Blame, blame, blame!
When they are not blaming, they are doing propaganda. Recently, in the papers they were talking about the progress of the Ogoni clean up, but there’s no work going on. On the pages of newspapers there’s progress. Contract has not even been awarded. This is the third year since the Vice President went there on behalf the President to cut the tape to commence the clean up. Nobody knows whether he will go there before next year. At the end of four years, he would have passed through this place but there’s no evidence that he passed through here.
Jonathan can say, ‘you can deny everything but you can’t deny the presence of the universities all over the country.’ What about Buhari? The first thing he did was to revoke licenses of some of the newly created universities.
TNE: The voices calling for restructuring are many and quite loud. Would that solve Nigeria’s problems?
That’s a first step. Restructuring is a natural thing but in Nigeria they are making it sound like a death sentence. Restructuring is natural because even a new born baby keeps restructuring from day one; you buy clothes, after a while, you have to change them, it is restructuring. As they say, the only thing permanent in life is change. In this country today, we have all noticed how Apapa wharf is choked up. We have a military, they have army engineers, why not send them to take care of the access roads, divert ships to other ports and things will move. But military men have a funny habit. When Olusegun Obasanjo and Murtala Mohammed were in power, they asked all ships carrying cement to dump them in the sea and we paid when they could have told them to divert to the other ports and dash the cement to the people but they didn’t.
In the same way, we have another general in power. When you are talking of governance, the man is not interested. He is interested in power. A general is a power holding man, a civilian is there trying to please the people. So if you look at the governance of Obasanjo and Buhari, granted Obasanjo was positive-minded and ebullient, but they both held on to power. The two civilians in between tried to please the people and during their administrations there was no tension but now there is tension every day.
When President Buhari was coming, he talked about restructuring. It is in their manifesto, they talked of reducing the prize of petrol. They insisted that the standard of living must go higher while the cost of living must go down. Has any of that happened? The prize of fuel has almost doubled. We are talking of conducting elections, look at the figures. What justified the increase? Nobody addresses us so there is no communication. They are now fighting with National Assembly when they knew four years ago that there was going to be an election in 2019. When he was presenting the budget for this year, they knew there will be an election, yet did nothing, now they are launching campaign against the National Assembly, trying to blackmail them. Everybody knows that every year, since 1999, the National Assembly goes on recess at this time. It’s like the judiciary, everybody knows that there’s vacation for judges. But now the campaign is to blackmail the National Assembly. Adams Oshiomhole is jumping up and down castigating Saraki.
TNE: If Nigeria must be restructured, along what lines would you suggest?
I will give you the key areas. One is resource control. You come to take my land, what do I get in return? Nothing. You have destroyed my land, you have destroyed my personal economy, I have nothing, I cannot fish, I cannot do anything. So what happens to me? I can’t be floating. I must have a certain percentage and that is a restructuring. The Petroleum Industry bill moved in that direction and it says ‘community’ and that is the last word they want to hear in some quarters.
You talk of the burden of the Federal Government as it is today, they even do boreholes. The Federal Government should offload some of the burdens and give to the states so that it can reduce even the money it gets and increase the money the states get. With this, the Federal Government will now be in charge of Finance, Telecommunications, Police and one other area.
The states will still have their own police too. It’s important because you cannot have a Kanuri man come all the way from Borno or Yobe to Epe to be the DPO. What does he know about Epe? Or you get a man from Kalabari, Rivers State and send him to the far North to be the DPO, it makes no sense. So, you must have commensurate police people with knowledge of the area, the language of the area, the culture of the area, the sensitivities of the area.
Then you talk of governance. You reduce the cost of governance. It’s part of restructuring. If you reduce the cost of governance, you can also make the National Assembly part time. As it is, it is part time alright but not the way it ought be. You have sitting allowance, in other words, the number of times they sit determines what you get. There are also other areas where government wastes money. All these need to be restructured.
TNE: There are so many challenges facing the country, so many issues. Can Nigeria really be fixed?
Yes it can. All we need is just one person who has the will to serve as president or governor. If we do that things will change. I don’t think the legislature is the problem of this government. What is the problem of this government is how to control the legislature and that is not good. They should not control the legislature or the judiciary. The Supreme Court as it is today is standing firm and I’m proud of it. They know their rights, they are sticking to it. So, one chief executive who has the will power to change things positively will make the difference.