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New Page 16
If Ngige must go, due process must follow-
Onuekwusi
Dr Ndi Onuekwusi, President, League of Anambra Professionals
may not be a career politician but he insists that the full weight of the law
must be brought to bear on those who participated in the destruction of public
institutions in Anambra State in this interview with KALU OKWARA and
UCHENNA NWARU. Excerpts:
HOW did you react to resurgence of
political crises in Anambra State that culminated in the destruction of lives
and public buildings recently?
Every Anambra person felt bad. Every Igbo
man, and I believe every Nigerian must have felt bad equally. It was an
unfortunate development. It made one shed tears because we don’t have anything
in the state, not to talk of burning the little we have. We don’t have any
federal presence in the state, and we’ve never had any significant presence of
any government in Anambra State. Anambra people have always been people endowed
with tremendous quality for self development, community development, common good
pursuit, and support of neighbour. That is why our people take up an apprentice
trader and after some years, they give him a lot of money to start up his own.
There is this monitoring support network. So we do feel very bad about what has
happened.
Now there is a presidential peace
committee headed by Governor Sam Egwu. What do you expect from this committee?
I don’t really know about those aspects.
You know, I’m not a politician, I have no partisan political leanings. But I
believe that there are different issues involved in the crisis. The issue of the
relationship between the governor and his godfather, as Nigerians have baptised
the relationship, is one aspect and that is a political issue.
Let us first and foremost make it clear
that patronage for people who have participated in electioneering is normal in
politics everywhere in the world. And as I always say when I teach lifestyle
strategy, which is a hobby of mine, I tell people that every issue has three
factors that need to be considered when you are analysing it. One is the issue
of substance, the other one is the issue of process, while the last one is the
issue of balance.
In this particular case, there is nothing
wrong with the issue of substance. That is, does someone who has participated
actively in politicking expect patronage when they win? It is normal. That is
the way politics is played everywhere in the world. Clinton went to Washington
with his people and when he finished he left with them and Bush came in with his
own people. It is the same thing anywhere, everywhere at all levels of politics.
But if you come to the issues of balance and issues of process, based on the
information available in the media, it would appear that there are distortions
on the issue of balance. How much was being expected, may be out of balance. If
one side wanted too much that would incapacitate the other, then it would be an
issue or imbalance. Then you come to issue of process. You know, there is a
normal process in doing things and process is the most important single factor
in quality control, in everything in the world. So issues of process are not be
sneered at. The issue of process in political patronage demands that state’s
money, must be dispensed through a normal process. So the people can be given
contracts that have been properly evaluated and awarded through due process.
That is the way of patronage. So they will have favourd considerations but you
must meet basic standards.
Even issues of process in appointment have
to be gone through. The people have to be qualified. They have to have clean
records and be able to do the job, for which they are being appointed. So, these
are the three levels of consideration, which are important in even setting the
problem at hand.
So, we have dealt with the question of
godfatherism, patronage and balance. The relationship between the governor and
his friends who have become adversaries is another thing. All of them are my
friends. The governor is my friend, and a number of people in his government are
my friends. On Christ Uba’s side, I don’t know Chris Uba personally but a number
of his associates are very good friends of mine. Chief Dan Ulasi is a very good
friend. Chief Uchenna Emordi is equally a good friend of mine. Uba’s most elder
brother, Dr. Ugochukwu Uba is my very good friend for many years.
So, I have friends across board in the
issue. But that is not the issue. This is not an issue of friendship. We are now
discussing things that need to be looked at from the level of truth. You know,
truth is absolute. So those three levels of consideration - substance, balance,
and process must be considered.
Coming to the question of violence in the
state, an issue of process easily comes into focus. First of all, if the
governor is to be removed, he should be removed according to due process. Now
coming to violence, everybody must condemn violence in Nigerian politics. It is
not only an Anambra issue. It is a Nigerian issue, it is a world issue, because
the world can only make progress if people accommodate differences of one
another without resort to violence. We cannot allow violence to become an
allocation mechanism. If violence becomes and allocation mechanism, then we are
finished because we shall just have different kinds of warlords springing up
everywhere, any time people feel disgrunted. And part of politics is that people
feel disgruntled often because democracy is based on the majority opinion
holding sway. That means that the minority will always lose.
So if you lose out because you are in the
minority and you carry guns to effect a change then we cannot have a country.
The whole country will go up in flames
sooner or later. So the federal government and, indeed, Mr. President, being the
head of security in Nigeria, must ensure in the interest of the old, young and
the children yet unborn, that we nip in the bud this growing influence of
violence in Nigeria’s politics. Violence must never become an allocation
mechanism. Indeed, anybody who tries to use violence should be denied the
allocation he is looking for. Because once you encourage it, it begins to grow.
Look at what violence has done to the Middle - East. I’m sure we don’t want to
go to that extent.
If you have this advantage of good
relationship with some of the people involved, at a personal level what advice
do you give them?
I cannot discuss that here now. I have
discussed this crisis with people from both sides. I’ve told you I don’t know
Chris Uba but I know his brother and some of his key associates, and I’ve
discussed the crisis with some of them.
Anambra elders are demanding for
reparation. Do you support that?
It’s obvious that the things that have
been damaged should be rebuilt by the federal government. I think that is a
clear cut demand and I think government should take immediate steps to vote
enough money to Anambra State government to rebuild the structures that have
been destroyed. And then make arrangements to pay compensation to the
individuals who have lost any property or life.
What, in your opinion, is the way forward?
Well, they need to preach political
accommodation. But there is also the need for criminal justice system to take
its course and deal with the culprits of the mayhem. The culprits should be
found and dealt with.
Thee are two aspects to it. The political
crisis should be resolved politically within the party or whatever way it is
supposed to be resolved politically. But the arson, murder, intimidation, should
be dealt with by the criminal justice system.
Your league has proposed an economic
summit. What is it all about?
The League of Anambra Professional (LAP)
is a development agency with worldwide membership. It is a development agency
conceived to bring anew vista of intervention in our homeland. It is a new
concept and it is an organisation that plans to encompass men and women from
Anambra State in all professions, academic, business, and as well as trade. It
is for people who have reached a stable level in earning their living, so that
we will not be having people who look towards the league as a means of self
advancement.
LAP is a kind of holding company. It will
operate through subsidiaries with operational focus. What we mean is that we
would have different institutions. There enters Anambra Development Summit (ADS)
The ADS is, therefore, major subsidiary of the LAP. This major institutional
framework under which the league will plan development activities for Anambra
State.
So, the ADS is both an institution and
activity development summits in Awka and then decide during this activity the
priorities of the organisation in the upcoming year.
This will be an annual event. As an
institution, it will have the organisational structure for thinking, directing
monitoring evaluating and for planning the different activities that Anambra
professionals will engage in as a development agency.
Now let me give you a little bit of
background as to why this is necessary. Anambra is one of the major human
capital producing states in Nigeria. We have produced the best people in the
world in any fields of human endeavour. Unfortunately, over 70% of these best
people of Anambra origin are outside Anambra State. That means that those left
behind in Anambra State is a weak demographic structure, which may not be best
suited to maintain and sustain any society.
If in your family, or in your town or
village the best 70% of the people are outside your family or town and if they
have no relationship with his home base, it will mean that the home base is
weak. The weakness of the home base can cause you diverse problems including
political problems, economic problems, social problems, and cultural problems.
So, some of us see this situation in
Anambra State as being part of the problem of the degeneracy in the state in the
past few decades. If you take for example a place like Lagos state, most Lagos
state indigenes live in Lagos State. Their best people live here. Thus, they
make contributions, visible and invisible to the economic, political, social,
and cultural stability of their environment, and there is a limit to which evil
can take place because these strong members of the society based on natural
endowment, it doesn’t matter what characteristics you are measuring, they are
there in their home base.
So where the opposite is what is happening
in our state, we need to create an institutional framework through which we can
ameliorate this handicap. This is part of the background thinking behind the
formation of the league of Anambra professionals and its major subsidiary, the
Anambra Development Summit.
Is the ADS as an institution mainly
focused on economic activities?
No the ADS as an institution has about
seven to nine sectors. We have social infrastructure, which is health, education
and environment. We have physical infrastructure which includes roads,
electricity, water supply and telecommunication. We have economy and finance,
commerce and industry, we have agriculture, we have governance and security, we
have oil and gas.
So it covers most areas of human endeavour
and it is not just for development.
We need to look at our language. The Igbo
language has a problem that everybody recognises. Indeed, some people are
frightened that the language may disappear. Some of us do feel strongly that the
tampering with the language in trying to structure the written Igbo that is
studied in schools has defaced the language to the point where it is becoming a
difficult language to study. This might be contributing to a threat to the
study. ADS will look at it again because we have different versions of the
language that are beautiful and people like to speak and even non-igbo people
learn and speak easily. But if we convert it to a difficult language and it
becomes like Latin, then it may die like Latin. So we need to take a second look
at this. I’m just giving you an example of some of the thinking of ADS that are
not purely economic. We’re also thinking about our cultural base, our music, our
dressing, things that make us Igbo. About our interpersonal relationship.
What can we gain from the children of
oduduwa. They have become the winners in Nigeria so much so that no matter
the crisis Nigeria goes through, no matter what phase of development in Nigeria,
they turn out to get the upper hand. What in them has endowed them to Nigerians
so that even when they are dominating things in Nigeria people don’t feel
offended by them. They manage to get by. They can go to any place and dominate
their economy. Yet, we are people who just have road-side stalls doing a
turnover maybe of less than hundred thousand a year attracting adverse reaction
whereas those who runt he oil companies in those places, or the big businessed
in those places, or own the banks in those places, the insurance companies in
those places do not attract adverse reactions. They control the economy of those
places and yet they are seen as not being adversarial.
So it is important for us to look at this
from proper, well rounded perspective.
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