By Chidi Obineche
OSITA Okechukwu, the Managing Director of the Voice of Nigeria (VoN) is the South-east spokesman of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC. He has been with President Muhammadu Buhari since his entry into partisan politics in 2002, starting with the defunct All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP, the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, and the All Progressives Congress, APC.
He was also the Publicity Secretary of the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, CNPP. He speaks on waste and corruption, former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan,the zoning convention among other national issues.
The political atmosphere appears to be a bit charged now following the ruling party’s re- registration of members exercise. How do you rate it? Is it geared towards the 2019 elections only?
To be honest with you, we took on the exercise with some nostalgia .Nostalgia in the sense that in 2013/2014, we had a similar exercise. For instance, in Enugu, we recorded about 70,000 memberships. We now ask ourselves, how come we are doing registration again? That was where the pain emanated from. There is no other political party in the country doing re- registration again.
What you did was registering new members?
No. Revalidation, or re-registration. So many times, we had wanted to get a data base, but that did not happen. Amaechi and others had promised to create a database for us in Enugu. Then, our leader, Owelle Rochas Okorocha, the governor of Imo State said that the database should be domiciled in Imo State. Amaechi, Asiwaju who were interested in the database in Enugu were performing, and said okay, governor go ahead and do it. Up till today we don’t know what happened to it. But when the party made a concept and found out we were not on the database, we were requested that if we wanted to claim that we are members of the APC, we should go and reregister. That was it. The luck we had was that part of the initial take-off grant and nostalgia, it happened that it had its own new dimension. We noticed that there was a surge, or what I may call an exodus from the PDP and APGA to the APC, because there were signs on the horizon that the president had paid contractors and they had moved back to site. The development brought the surge as expectations were high that the roads in the South-east were being rehabilitated. They were happy over the government’s performance in terms of infrastructure. Nobody would be happy that the federal roads n the South-east were allowed to decay, got into very bad conditions that everyday people kept on repairing their cars. The cost was enormous. Some were tricked into believing that the president was going to Islamize the country. We are happy to say that two years down the line, there is no bill in the National Assembly towards Islamizing the country.
Yes, there is no such bill, but some people are worried about the activities of Fulani herdsmen.
The Fulani herdsmen like I normally say, we tend to confine anything bad as if it is only in their zone. The Fulani herdsmen are a national malaise, national calamity of unknown proportion. I don’t think Agatu is in Igboland. The mayhem that happened there is unheard of. Same thing in Zamfara state; same thing in the South-west. That shows it is a national calamity that even the Fulani themselves will also tell you that those Fulani are not Nigerian Fulani. But the issue is that we have also noticed that the security agencies are now intensifying efforts in that direction. Just recently, about 661 pump action guns were impounded by the Customs. I think we should continue to increase vigilance on the security side and anybody who is not authorized to be doing certain things is arrested, interrogated and prosecuted. I also know that the military hierarchy has also set up a high powered investigative committee headed by General Edward Nze. Because of the nature of the profession, the General has failed to disclose the findings of the committee. But I know that the search is not only limited to the military.
What do you think is responsible for the mindless killings and rampages by the Fulani herdsmen without being apprehended?
Why do we have the crisis? That crisis is what the various committees set up is looking into. Because of our shortsightedness, when we voted money to open schools and recruit teachers for herdsmen, I never thought that the money could have built ranches. And that was when we were in money. I remember when Prof Jubril Aminu was minister of education; he introduced that idea of teachers that will follow the herdsmen. It didn’t even occur to him, or any of us that the money for the herdsmen could have been used to build ranches across the country or even in the North. There are a lot of houses and land that could have been used for that. We could have learnt from the Americans. No herdsmen are running around America and Europe. No herdsmen are running around Latin America as well. They are all quarantined in a ranch.
You have been with President Buhari for a very long time, right from his days in ANPP, APP, CPC and now APC. What do you find as the attraction to him and exciting about the man?
What I find very exciting about him is like what the president would say. He would tell you that he is not an engineer. But when he went to a small training in the Transport Corps, he discovered that one has to be careful, diligent, and transparent. He said a British instructor told them that at the Academy. One way or the other, money will be voted to repair the trucks. That in the event of managing the trucks and it breaks down on the road, it can cause mutiny at the war front, and it can lead to the desertion of troops which can cost the country a war. So early enough he learnt that transparency helps. In fact, when he won this election, the first call that I got was from a German that works with Julius Berger here in Abuja. He said they were happy with the victory. I asked him why? He said nobody will come back and tell them that Mr. President wants 15 per cent. But usually, in a mega project, the same Berger might tell you that they are returning half per cent as their own way of saying thank you. And the person will accept it and say thank you. But they will not come back to tell you that Mr. President wants 15 per cent. And there is no way you can find out if the president actually gave the mandate to anyone. You know he will not tell anybody and no one will have the guts to front for him on that. That is why I tell you that when people started talking of selective war against corruption, I said the people do not know him. If you know him, you will know that he is waiting for some of us he appointed to miss the road. Any of us that slips, he will not spare the person.
But the SGF, Babachir Lawal and the EFCC Chairman, Magu were recently indicted somehow by the Senate and he swiftly gave them a clean bill of health
Didn’t you listen to Senator Shehu Sani who happens to be the chairman of the Ad-hoc committee that indicted them? Even as president, sometimes you may not get it alright. I have not actually seen any full investigation. But I know that in the fullness of time, there must be a day both of them will come to the senate to face the plenary and answer for themselves. If anybody says that the man who chairs the EFCC should not live in a home of comfort shielded from the mob and those he is prosecuting, and because of that he should go and live in Gwarimpa where there is no security, that will be another case for another day. But I know that one day they will acquaint themselves with the evidence at their disposal. And if they fail to, then nobody should call Mr. President. Mr. President didn’t say that any of them should not be interrogated. I don’t think to the best of my knowledge that Mr. President is blocking anybody from being interrogated. So, interrogation will at the end of the day tell us where Babachir and Magu fall into within the divide. I think we should better leave it to that day.
Let me take you to the prevailing hunger in the land which I think will pose a problem for the APC in 2019. Dont you see that the economic problems will dwarf every other achievement in the evaluation index?
Sometimes, I think we are not computing things the way we should. Audu Ogbe, (Minister of Agriculture) and the records have shown that this year was a very successful farming season. There were bountiful supplies of products. So, if we continue to increase with emphasis on agriculture, the hunger will not persist. But as in the local parlance, when we trade blames or hold the blame on the current administration, we should also recall that we should not forget where the rain started. On May 22, 2013, N80 billion was withdrawn from our vaults.
A letter written by the then finance minister requested what she called Resource Fund for Management of Affairs and payment of some contractors. Between 2012 and 2015, if you know how much that was withdrawn from the Nigerian treasury, you will be shocked. These three or four years interval, we got almost $20 billion dollars. In 2012, we got almost $60 million plus dollars from oil sales. 2013, about $50m plus; 2014, the same thing. In 2015, there was a slide. So, where did they keep those funds? If you cast your mind back, on 13th of May, 2010, six days after Goodluck Jonathan became president, he executed one of the contracts planned during the late Musa Yar’Adua regime to build three refineries. One of the refineries was to be sited in Bayelsa, one in Kogi, and one in Lagos. Then, on 13th of May, 2010, in what Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala called a review, it was awarded to a Chinese firm for $23billion. But it was carted away. We did not see the money; we did not see the refineries. Those refineries could have been completed by today. And we could have saved Nigeria billions of scarce foreign exchange that we use in importing refined petroleum products. Nobody wants to remember that.
Even when my sister Patience Jonathan came agreeing that $15million seized by EFCC is her money from her labour, people were outraged. Some people in the South-east went to the streets to protest the seizure as if to say that since this woman has grabbed this as her own, why talk about it? They do not know what $15million mean. If Obama was found culpable of just $100,000, he would have been impeached. We must at all times remember how the rain started. On that May, 2010, Nigeria had $17billion excess crude account.
What came in the following years was not accounted for. What they will tell you is leave the files that are secret. Why should it be secret? We are used to getting an average of $90 per barrel. Suddenly, we are getting below $50. And there is no other production process. Peter Obi did so well the other day. He was honest enough to say that as a member of the economic team, he remembered when they were insisting that there should be savings, but nobody agreed. And these were members of the executive who were enjoying themselves. So, these were the major drawbacks.
Former President Obasanjo recently flew a kite, making a case for a president of Igbo extraction in 2019. How do you relate this to the existing realities on ground?
I am saying that Obasanjo is behaving like an agent provocateur. It is a suspicious statement. He was the one that tore his membership card of PDP. And up till today I am not aware he joined APC or any political party of note. So, how then does he arrogate to himself the power to determine who gets what, when and how? I have always said that Obasanjo was the man that killed democracy. It is only that Nigerians refused that democracy will not die with him. If not for the resilience of Nigerian people, democracy would have died with him. For him to be telling us when we should be president is it not to the greatest shame of the Igbo? Can he show us any federal project he completed in Igbo land in eight years? At least, as a lover of the Igbo. He couldn’t even complete a less than 10 kilometers road that goes from Agege to his farm in Ota. That road is not completed up till today. So that man is enemy of democracy. Sometimes, as an agent provocateur, he will choose one style. This is a beneficiary, a prime beneficiary of the zoning convention. I remember vividly what happened in February 1999, few days to the PDP convention, the late Abubakar Rimi insisted that he must be on the ballot after it had been agreed that power was going to the south.
The convention had to be postponed from Saturday to Sunday after Rimi had agreed to step down following series of meetings .The same persuasion that the northern political elite made out of patriotic interest was also raised against Dr Olusola Saraki of blessed memory. He wanted to run under APP/AD ticket. They begged him. They said please; let power go to the South. We look at power as ‘Food Is Ready’ so that if you are in charge of the spoon and the knife to cut the yam, let your brother be in charge the next day. And Obasanjo enjoyed it for eight years, wanted to truncate it with his push for third term. But luckily, Nigerians stopped him. He could not do the second Niger Bridge. He could not do Enugu coal.
Rather, he privatized all federal assets in Nigeria and much of the money not accounted for. If you ask Obasanjo about the ledger where the accounts of the Coal Corporation of Enugu are, he will not know. The banks? What he called development he did was that the few banks that were trading in foreign exchange were owned by his cronies. They were making billions of naira. That they brought telecommunications, i.e. GSM? Nigerians talk a lot. There is nobody who floats a telecommunication firm that will not make a gain. While his private companies were growing, the publicly owned ones died. Sometimes, I do not want to discuss the former president. He was a calamity to Nigerian democracy. If Ekwueme or Falae had been president in 1999, democracy would have followed a different trajectory. He fought everybody that became Senate president under his watch. We have not asked him questions. One day, history will ask him questions. So, he just woke up somewhere asking people to look for an Igbo to be president, while there is a convention. As an elder statesman he should be one of those who should not toy with the convention. Is it right? Yar’Adua wouldn’t have been president. He was aware the man was sick. Jonathan never told him he wanted to be vice president. The day he distanced himself from Jonathan, it was as if he wasn’t his protégé. He forgot he was the one that produced him for the country. He brushed aside all the leaders and got him to be president, and consigned him to the dustbin. And that was a man that had no inkling about governance at that level. That is why we are where we are.
Fortunately, Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha has put paid to that. And the PDP has also said they will not listen to him. At least, he bought some of our lands. Without being immodest, we have always been open to conventions. Even when Rochas wanted to run I told him not to do it, that there is an existing convention; that the convention was that the thing should go North. I pleaded with him within the South-east caucus. I told him, this race you’re doing will infringe on Igbo interest . I told him to support President Muhammadu Buhari who was then an aspirant. I said this Buhari got 10 million votes in 2003, in 2007 he got more than that but the then INEC chief just came out when we were doing collation to announce results. With our micro- CPC, Buhari repeated the vote tank of 10 million in 2011. I said how can you battle with a man with 10 million votes? He told us that he is also from the North; that he will do the battle with them in the North, share the delegates’ votes; and that the only thing he was looking for was for all Igbo to give him bloc votes.
If he got the Igbo votes, he will pocket the South- south and go to Lagos and win. And that did not happen. Luckily we are happy that he has apologized in Owerri saying it was bad politics. I am happy with him, because the basis of Christianity is repentance and remorse. He said that publicly that it was bad politics. He also said that “the APC had a convention, I did not obey it. But now, I have come to reason with them.” He didn’t mention my name, because he has not forgiven me for telling him not to run.