From: Okey Sampson, Bende
The former governor of Abia State and candidate of Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA) in Saturday’s Abia North senatorial district election rerun, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, recently granted interview to select journalists at his Camp Neya country home, Igbere, where he specifically talked about coming Saturday’s rerun and his chances in the poll.
Excerpts:
You are in the race for Saturday’s rerun, what’s the difference you are bringing to the table?
What I’m bringing to the table is that my tribe, the Igbo, has lost leadership at the centre and I want to rekindle their hope, to bring back hope to the hopeless, bring back hope to the people of Abia North, people of Abia State and indeed Nigerian people. My voice is a very strong voice, because I am fearless. I am courageous and I can talk to anybody; that is what a legislator should be.
Mind you, I have been a legislator before becoming a two term governor; people forget that. I am going to be among the three most ranking senators, if I get to the Senate. I will be ranked among Kwankwaso and one other person. These other people, including Enyinnaya Abaribe and T.A Orji will be junior to me, they are legislators of yesterday. I was a legislator in 1991 in the House of Representatives.
Your major opponent is the candidate of the PDP, which is the ruling party in the state, and going by what happened in the past, there is this fear the election could be manipulated in his favour, are you not threatened by this?
No, no, no. We will check them. We will check them. I was governor of this state for eight years and we know every part of this state. If they want it to be rough, we will match them, whatever they bring on the field is what we will give them; we are not going to spare anybody. I am ready for them, and there is no cause for alarm, no shaking.
The only thing I will add here is to advise the security personnel, whom they have largely used in the past to rig elections in the state to be very careful because President Buhari is not former President Jonathan. Anybody that attempts to do what the law does not permit, will only have himself to blame. It is not a threat to anybody, but it is a call to duty and I thank God that the helmsmen of the security agencies in the state are new, they were not part of the old order.
More importantly, voters themselves should be more vigilant. I was an election observer in Zimbabwe with former President Olusegun Obasanjo as the leader; I was the deputy leader of that delegation for African Union (AU). I am surprised when community leaders will come out and say they are thinking about security. The security is the people, because you do your voting there, you tell them to count it there. Who could be more powerful than the society? It is only in Nigeria that people have gone back to their shelves. Democracy is a beautiful thing; but it is very enduring, people must come out to support and defend democracy.
In the North and South West, nobody is rigging elections because the people have decided that nobody will rig elections again in their areas; that they will choose who will lead them, whether that person is a thief or not, but here you see people manipulating election. Manipulation of election results in this part of the country should be a thing of the past. Town unions and age grades should ensure that this is stopped.
There is one thing I want to let Nigerians know, people should stop thinking about party, parties have collapsed and it is only individuals that can save the situation in Nigeria today. We now know that all political parties are the same, whether it is CCP, UUP or PPM, they are all the same.
I will also want to advise the youths whom they give N2,000 and are using to cause mayhem and after causing the mayhem, they will suffer for another four years to desist from that and think about their future, which is very great.
You have high hopes of winning the rerun, why this optimism?
Before, the PDP through very senior government officials in the presidency have a way of manipulating elections but they cannot do it now. If anybody tries to do something funny this time around, the price will be very high. So, it will be better they don’t try it.
Again, forget what my detractors are saying, my optimism is also rooted in what I did for my people when I was governor. What Abia people missed when I left office was not that I was no longer governor, what they missed was the software of democracy that I gave them, respecting peoples’ opinion, adherence to the rule of law and obeying court orders. When I was building Obohia Road in Aba, for example, the court gave order that I should stop and I stopped. I didn’t say because I was governor, therefore, I should disobey the court. I was paying teachers’ salaries, the same for local government workers; pensioners’ entitlements were also paid. Those were the software components of democracy and people got them.
The hardware components, we also gave out. This Ururuka Road that has become an alternative route to Aba, I built it. When people talk, they tend to forget easily. The Azumiri-Obehie-Owazza Road, I built it. It was not done by NDDC. Lomara-Leru Road in Umunneochi Local Government, Okun Ohafia-Elu Ohafia; Nkporo-Item-Igbere-Ozuitem-Bende; Igbere-Umuhu Ezechi and many other roads I built. During my first tenure, I concentrated on Aba roads and during my second tenure, I shifted to other areas. The people have not forgotten the free education and free healthcare service I gave them and that is why people show me love anywhere I went to, and that gives me the optimism. And it might pain you to note that there was no single thing my opponents did in the area nine years after I left office.
I must have made some mistakes when I was governor because I am human. But I think the good things I did for my people far outweighed whatever mistake I made.
People have endorsed you and are now working for you across party lines, what happened?
I have a lot of followership, not only in Abia North but across Abia State as a whole, because of the populist government I ran when I was governor, which helped to make many politicians in the state, including some of those opposing me today, although they are few in number. Coming to your question, the fact remains that some top officials of the immediate past administration in the state, using the name of the wife of the former president, harassed and intimidated so many of my supporters, which was not right. People were living in bondage in Abia State. They threatened workers and they threatened everybody. Abia became a ghost state that nobody could speak out; nobody could say anything except me and somebody like Prince B.B Apugo. Times were when spies were sent to my house at Igbere to write the names of people who come to see me and some of them were dealt with. This put fear in so many people but with the change of government at the centre, the backbone of the oppressor has been broken and the oppressed set free.
So, the endorsements are coming openly and on daily basis, because people know that with the change of guards in Abuja, that President Muhammadu Buhari will not tolerate any nonsense from anybody; they are lucky they are still walking the streets.
If you get to the Senate, by the end of your tenure, what will you like to be remembered for?
People who want to be legislators and they go about promising the electorate heaven on earth are not good and sincere politicians; they don’t even know the job of a legislator. What I would like to be remembered for is that at all times; I will like to give my best, to be remembered for the lives I had touched positively. I am not going there to look for money, influence or popularity. I am going there to do the right lobbying that will provide things that are not in this part of Nigeria, that is what I am going to do and that is what I will like to be remembered for.
I am already living in Abuja. I have lived in Abuja since 1996 when Abacha was military Head of State. In fact, I live very close to the seat of power and I don’t think I will allow anything to pass my people by. So, Abia North, Abia State as a whole, Ndigbo and indeed Nigeria will benefit immensely if I am in the senate.
You are going to the senate on the platform of PPA and we have a sitting governor who is of PDP, won’t there be any clash of political interest?
Since we are going to serve the same people, my interest and the governor’s interest will be the same. My interest and that of the president will be the same. I was the person who brought PDP to this state. Nobody knows PDP better than I. So, the governor had worked for me before, he had been my local government chairman and he had been my Special Adviser. So, we will never quarrel; that synergy must be there because the issue at stake is not personal. It is about development. I am even going to be more effective than those in his party. There will be no clash of interests; rather I will give him every support for him to work for the development of the state. Together we will bring back prosperity to the people of this state, I promise you that.
Some people believe that you were part of the mess in the state when you made your former Chief of Staff governor, what’s your reaction?
I am not God. I brought T.A. Orji out with my entire mind to be governor but I never knew he was not going to perform. In 2011, I opposed him not to come back as governor. It was you people that put him back as governor. It was you people, the press, through your propaganda, the police and other people that put him there. I disconnected with him two weeks after he became governor. I never went to Government House. I am not God. He was my Chief of Staff for eight years after which I made him governor to be able to give service to the people; but he failed and his shortcomings should not be visited on me.
Somebody brought former President Goodluck Jonathan, should people blame former President Olusegun Obasanjo who brought Jonathan? Are people also blaming Obasanjo who brought the late President Umaru Musa Yar’adua? I brought T.A. Orji in good faith, that after working with me for eight years, that he should be able to perform. I never knew he would go loose. The T.A. Orji I handed over to, was not the T.A. Orji I saw as governor. The day I handed over to him, I said to him, ‘I leave Abia to you with your conscience, rule us with your conscience’. If he did, that is not for me to judge because God is the final arbiter.
I am very happy. I am thankful to God. I am thankful to Abia people. They have seen the light. They have seen the truth and they have seen who was in bondage, who was liberated and who was not liberated.
What word do you have for your constituents?
Well, the word is very simple because if the Igbo should have only one slot at the senate, they will want me to go and represent them. And if they want to have three senators, I will be one of the three and if they want to have 10 senators, I will be one of the 10 because they know that I will go there to represent their interest, not mine. So, why wasting the votes by sending someone that will go there just for the sake of it? I know I can reach the president, I can reach the senate president and I can reach out to anybody in power in Africa, not even in Nigeria. So, going to the Senate will put me in a vintage position to solve the problems of our people; not just talking only of Abia North, because it’s too little a constituency for me to represent. I am going to represent the interest of Igbo people and we are going to address this issue of Biafra because some of these things accrued from injustice. These are the major things because if we have strong senators, who can speak to the president and advise him on some of these things, he will listen. And this exactly is what I’m going to do in the senate.
I am not looking for money. I am not looking for anything, and neither am I looking for name. If I want name, I have three newspapers, three radio stations. I have a network television station broadcasting out of South Africa, TV 24; if I want publicity, they will publicise my name there everyday. That’s not what I’m looking for; I want to work for the people of Nigeria and Abia State for the remaining part of my life .