|
 Daily Independent Online.
* Friday, June 11, 2004.
2007:
Why the Igbo must not aspire for the presidency - Macebuh
In
the first part of this interview run yesterday, Honourable Chinonyerem
Macebuh, the economist turned politician, adroitly analysed the
shortcomings of the National Assembly and what the leadership could do to
enhance their work. But today, he leaves the problems of the second arm
of government to dabble into the contentious issue of which zone should
produce the President in 2007. And his verdict on the quest of his
kinsmen to produce President Obasanjo’s successor is damning. Hear him:
“In the politics of Nigeria, if I must say it, including its military
politics, I don’t think that the Igbo are properly positioned to resist
coups.” His verdict is that time is not yet ripe for an Igbo presidency.
He spoke with Ikechukwu Amaechi, Deputy Editor, Politics in Abuja. Excerpts:
There is this raging
controversy over which zone should produce the president in 2007. The
North is insisting that for equity, justice and fairness, after
Obasanjo’s second term, power should revert to the North. In the same
vein, the Southeast is also laying a claim to it. What is your position?
First,
I want to say that the reason I don’t like the agitations for the
presidency is because they don’t derive from a desire to enthrone
competent people, or a competent person as a president. That is why I
don’t have a commitment to the issue whether it must come from here or it
must come from there.
After
all, the states make up the federation and each state is governed by its
own people, so what have the governors from those states done for their
people? I don’t like this nonsense about the president coming from my
zone or coming from here or there. That is rubbish and it is all an
instrument of deception; some people trying to grab power to steal money.
Anyway,
even though that is the case, the reality on the ground is yes, there is
that agitation and in a sense too that agitation could be justified given
the experience that these people as incompetent as they are, they get
there and they don’t look at the whole country as their constituency but
everybody wants to take care of his own friends, his own people. So, to
that extent, you can say people are right to say okay, the only way we
can get development or our share of the so-called national cake is our
own man being at the helm of affairs. Then it is our turn. Others have
had theirs. Again, you look at it that way and you say, these agitations
are right, they represent the realities on the ground, so let us now face
the realities.
Well,
I am a PDP man, any decision my party takes, I will abide by it. I
remember that sometime ago, it was said that the presidency should shift
to the South. The presidency shifted to the South and Obasanjo became the
president and won a second term in this democratic dispensation.
My
own estimation of the whole issue is that it is entirely left for the PDP
to decide. If they decide that the presidency should go North, the South
having had it because of Obasanjo’s tenure for eight years, quite
frankly, I do not see why I would want to knock my head on the wall over
that.
I
know that there may be some objections in certain quarters, especially
from our own Southeast where there is a strong feeling of
marginalisation, but I am more inclined to think that the Southeast has
not done well in protecting its group’s interest. I am also of the firm
opinion that, yes, they have the right to aspire to produce a president
of the country who is Igbo, or who is from the Southeast, but I also feel
that in fact, that if the essence is to attract development, if the
essence is to create wealth, if the essence of having this president from
our area is to advance the well-being of the people of the Southeast,
including the well-being of the entire nation, then the Southeast does
not need to produce the president or we don’t need a president who is a
south-easterner for the Southeast to achieve all these or to advance
their interest.
And if what we have done today
under the regime of Obasanjo is all the Southeast can do for itself, then
there is no likelihood that it will do much even when they are given the
presidency.
Obasanjo
is a Yoruba but if he is Igbo, he would have been accused of pursuing
Igbo agenda because the centre-piece of his development policy revolves
around the concept that is in tandem with the whole life, the whole
system, the thing for which the Igbo is known - enterprise.
If
Obasanjo were an Igbo and he is pursuing privatisation, people will say
ah! he is pursuing an Igbo agenda. But here is a Southwest president,
removing everything that has given attraction to the central government
from it and selling same to private entrepreneurs and Igbo are not able
to organise themselves in buying up these things. Rather than organizing
traders in Aba, rather than organising Igbo in the West African coast
from Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire to Republic of Benin where you find out that
among the wealthiest people in these countries are Igbo, but rather than
organising these people and getting their capital to invest, you find our
own leaders like Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu joining a mass action. If Ojukwu
is interested in the masses, he should be in Onitsha organising traders
in mass there, telling them the advantage of having to buy these
businesses that government is selling off.
You
don’t need an Igbo president to do this. The Jews don’t produce the
president of America, yet they are in control. Because the Igbo money is
in the hands of their less educated ones, they don’t invest well and the
ones that have education, who are in political leadership are not
organised in order to organize those who hold their money.
Secondly,
Igbo as a group do not relate well to those who hold power and when those
who hold power make passes at them and I am speaking to you with first
hand knowledge, they snub those passes. The accusation that Obasanjo
hates the Igbo, I have had difficulties finding its source. I hear
individuals who say it, but my experience within his tenure does not show
that there is such hatred. I know for sure that Obasanjo did make
deliberate overtures to the Igbo for cooperation and that opportunity was
wasted. I am telling you from first hand experience. If you doubt me, you
can go to the Ohanaeze, especially the past leadership and ask them, ask
their former president, Justice Eze Ozobu and he will tell you. It is
unfair and wrong for the Igbo for example to accuse Obasanjo of hating
them.
Okay,
today, they have the Finance Minister, Central Bank Governor, Senior
Special Adviser on Budget, if it were the Yoruba; we will say ah, this is
a Yoruba agenda. We are waiting to see what the Igbo would make of these
positions. Even at that, how much have they made of the Senate
presidency? If they cannot maximise the limitless opportunities, which
the Senate presidency offers because that is a constitutionally powerful
position, then there is no hope.
The
presidency of the Senate is third in succession to the presidency but
that is only in terms of succession, but in terms of constitutionally
conferred powers, the presidency of the Senate is a more powerful
position than the office of the vice president, which I know is what the
Igbo aspire to not even the presidency. Forget all the pretences.
Constitutionally, the president of the Senate is in a position to
negotiate with the president one on one, power for power. The vice
president has no such powers. The vice president lives in the shadows of
the president. The Senate president can bang his hand on the table before
the president and say, okay, we shall see. The vice president cannot do
that. He has no such powers. And we occupy this very powerful and
strategic position.
Now,
the question is, how have they managed to use that office? If you check
the political history of this country, the Igbo have had more Senate
presidents than any other group. What have they made of it? They have
taken the vice president slot before, what did they make of it?
When
Dr. Alex Ekwueme was the vice president, his governor gave him hell. When
Anyim was the Senate president, he saw hell with his governor. This
incumbent Senate president is also having hell. The others spent only a
few months and got thrown out.
The
biggest problem that Wabara has now is from his governor. Ohanaeze cannot
be pretending to want to take the presidency when it is doing nothing to
harness the benefits of occupying the number three office in the country.
That is sheer pretence and it is not acceptable.
Is
Ohanaeze unaware of the role of Southeast governors or for example, is
Ohanaeze unaware of the role of the Abia State governor, Orji Uzor Kalu
in destabilising the Senate and trying to remove the Senate President?
What has Ohanaeze done? Can it tell us what meeting it has called to say
look, can we give this man a chance peacefully and say look at what we
can do for the Igbo using the number three position?
Has
Ohanaeze ever shown any way of getting across to other groups who can get
across to their members in the Senate to say we want cooperation from you
for our man so that we can cooperate with you when it is your turn
somewhere, so that their son who is the Senate President will not have to
depend on the presidency for the security of his tenure? Because the more
you threaten the Senate President, the more he falls back on the presidency
for the security of his tenure. In a proportionate extent, you reduce his
bargaining power. You reduce, or in fact remove his ability to bang the
table. He will not move eyeball to eyeball with the president. He becomes
a shy man and in such situations, you cannot do anything and it will be
funny if you expect anything from him.
Are you saying that the noise about Igbo
presidency come 2007 by the governors and Ohanaeze leadership is a ruse?
They are only bargaining for the vice presidency?
Most
of them want to be the vice president. I am not saying that what they are
doing is wrong if they think they want to create a platform to negotiate
for the vice presidency. They have a right to. But I know that they are
more interested in producing the vice president than the president.
And
look at it this way; can an Igbo be president of Nigeria successfully? If
the agitation is that for them to get what they want, an Igbo must be
president, it means that something must be taken from somewhere to give
to them, and that means somebody must be getting less. That person who is
getting less must be somebody from the North or Southwest. And I want to
ask you, if you give the northerners less as you become president, will
they be happy or unhappy? You don’t even have to necessarily give them
less. But certainly we have seen those of them in the horizon. They know
only the politics of taking from somebody and giving to another person.
They can hardly create wealth so that more will be available and nobody
will be reducing anybody’s share.
And
for you to re-adjust things in the country, you will have to step on
certain toes. You cannot only be thinking of producing the president, you
must also be thinking of how to sustain the presidency. I want to ask
you, can the Igbo as a president resist coups?
Why wouldn’t they?
Well,
in the politics of Nigeria, if I must say it, including its military
politics, I don’t think that the Igbo are properly positioned to be able
to resist coups. I say this against the background that they don’t need
to be the president to pursue their interests. All they need to do is to
look for that non-Igbo, at least at this particular time who would rather
pursue their interest most or hurt it least. That is what the North did
in Obasanjo.
Forget
all the shouting that some of them do. It is just those who used to sit
on their mat and get oil-lifting contracts. They no longer get it and
that is why they are shouting up and down but Obasanjo has been very fair
to the North.
Generally,
though, I will say he has been fair to all sections of the country.
Moreover, he is well entrenched and he has the courage and things are set
up for him also to resist coups from any quarters. I say that, as at this
moment, a competent Igbo president will face heavy threat and we are not
yet at that point where such a president can resist such threats. Time
therefore is not yet ripe for an Igbo president.
Being Igbo, are you aware of the fact
that your proposition will not have huge sympathy in the Southeast?
I
am exercising my right to express my opinion, I am not saying that my
position should be upheld if majority don’t think that it is true, but at
the same time, what we have been doing all along will get us nowhere.
Many
Igbo are traders and the president in the last couple of months will wake
up one morning and make a policy, banning this and that and they will cry
to the National Assembly to say we placed a one-year or two-year order.
This is the kind of business the Igbo are involved in, predominantly
buying and selling, but they have shown capacity also to do a lot of
things. All I am saying is that they should cooperate with the president
so as to bring things to the East. Bring electricity to Aba and Nnewi and
the place will just explode with manufacturing.
The
Japanese are thriving because they produce and sell, not just buying and
selling. It is producing and selling that makes it, not buying and
selling. Igbo buy and sell and one man wakes up and bans this and that and
they are thrown out of business.
Yet, you are saying that the man who
deliberately bans what the Igbo buy and sell in order to throw them out
of business loves them?
Even
if he doesn’t love them, I have no evidence to show any conscious effort
to show hatred. There are a lot of Igbo who are close to the president
and I believe they should sit down and see how to exploit such closeness
between their kind and the presidency and that is legitimate politics.
Your state governor, Orji Kalu recently
accused the acting chairman of the PDP Board of Trustees, Chief Tony
Anenih, of plotting to kill him. How true do you think that allegation
could be?
Information
available shows that Kalu has apologized, at least the party has said so.
If the allegations were true, would he apologise even when the case is in
court?
When
he made those allegations, I knew that he was up to something. It is Orji
who is really a hunter. What I find amazing is that the man gets away
with a lot of rubbish. Orji is one of those who make the system not to
work. And the worst is that the man is aspiring to be vice president or
even president of this country. Orji is a destabilising factor to the
Nigerian polity and I am telling you this with all seriousness.
If he is this bad, why can’t the system stop him?
That
is a good question. I don’t know. It is just because there is something
wrong with the operation of our system somewhere. If you ask any bad fellow you
know who aspires to any high public office, they will tell you if Orji
can be there, why can’t they, and if Orji can remain there, why can’t
they go there and remain?
But Kalu can also tell you that in spite
of your allegation, Abia remains one of the states if not the only state
in Nigeria where there has not been any incidence of politically
motivated assassination since 1999. So, how do you reconcile that with
your allegations?
When
I talk, it is not only in respect to assassinations. I don’t know whether
there are assassinations or not, unless the police investigate and say
that there are no assassinations, whether of high or low people before
you can say that. But I am
also talking in terms of management. If you have a governor who just
takes public funds, then what do you make of such a person? I am talking
in terms of his inefficiency and mismanagement.
But Orji was rich before he became a
governor?
How
rich was he?
Very rich, at least he never gets tired
of saying so himself.
That
is correct. You have answered the question yourself. That is what he says.
And since he has been in government, he is busy acquiring wealth - buying
ships, buying aircraft, setting up newspaper houses. That is madness. It
is only in this country that you see such things. A sitting governor
doing all these? While his private newspapers are thriving, at the same
time, the state-owned one has crashed. He is busy buying banks; in fact
he is involved in everything. How rich was he before 1999?
You
people are journalists; you can always investigate these things. Find out
how rich he was before he became a governor and how rich he is now and
then tell us. Look, I represent Ukwa West and Ukwa East local government
areas of Abia State in the House of Representatives and you know that
Ukwa West is the only local government area in Abia where oil is drilled
at present, and you know that there is a constitutional provision that at
least 13 per cent derivation fund is given to the state where the natural
resource is derived from. And Orji has collected as of today about N7
billion since 1999 on derivation and yet there is no water project
anywhere in Ukwa land and there is no electricity project anywhere, which
Orji’s government executed. You can only get poorly constructed roads,
which he will start but never finishes.
But he was re-elected by the good people
of Abia State?
Who
re-elected him? He rigged himself back to power. Nobody re-elected
him. You see Orji’s case is
an interesting case. Let me tell you why Orji has thrived. He has thrived
because in the context of Nigerian politics, those who were by nature of
their positions supposed to check him didn’t have the guts to do so and I
can name them - those like Ojo Maduekwe when he was minister, Onyema
Ugochukwu, Vincent Ogbulafor. Even at present, the Senate president is
very unwilling to take him on.
Why?
Honestly,
I don’t know. It is just that that is the kind of people they are. Orji
is only thriving out of the commission or omission of the opposition, not
because he has done anything. Orji cannot win a free and fair election in
Abia.
If he is such a destabilising factor as
you claim, is the PDP also helpless? Why can’t the party discipline him
or even expel him?
That
is a legitimate question. I don’t know why anybody who created that level
of havoc will be written a letter asking him to apologise. That is what
is causing the problem in the system. The whole system is fouled up, I
don’t know why Orji will create that level of embarrassment and
disruption and create such anxiety in the society and malign people in
that way and then you will write him a letter asking him to apologise.
You seem to hate him. Why?
I
don’t pretend about it. I don’t like his administration. The man is
incompetent, so why must I like him? I am telling you that he takes money
from my area and he doesn’t do anything. So, why must I like him? I
represent my people. He
doesn’t like me either, I am sure of that. He tried to stop my
re-election, but failed and now he spends all his time and resources
trying to recall me, sponsoring fake petitions and so on against me.
Orji
should be man enough to sometimes acknowledge his actions. He is a
coward; he will never admit any of his misdemeanours. He is too cowardly
to admit his deeds. He likes to hide, he sneaks. The only thing he has
tried to do frontally, he has caved in, he has apologised. He can’t take
up the fight.
On May 29, Nigerians celebrated another
‘Democracy Day’. Five years down the road, what is your assessment of
democracy?
Some
efforts have been made in the past five years but they are not enough. I
think that the big problem if you look at it globally at the national
level is that Obasanjo’s efforts to a large extent have been sabotaged.
His government in my perception is a sabotaged government. There are lots
of people within the government who will not do the things that
government has stated in its policy that it wants to do. That is why I
say his government is being sabotaged.
I
think corruption is still high. Of course people are beginning to enjoy
certain basic freedoms. Economically, you can point at one or two things
and to that extent, you can say, yes, there is some progress. But at the
economic level, we need a great deal of radicalism. The country has been
blessed with a large population, which is not being utilised. This is a
country blessed with talented manpower. Ordinarily, industries in the
country ought to be viable because they have ready market locally. In
fact they should be battling with how to meet the demands of the domestic
market.
Given
all our resources, there is a big gap between what ought to be and what
is. But the goodwill is not lacking in the leadership? But I am not sure
that the President has around him people who are committed to his vision.
And I will advise also that he makes it part of state policy to improve
the benefits that Nigerians derive from his government. He must set
target for his ministers. I want to see in the next budget proper
targets. In the next 12 months, I want to see the president sack
ministers for lack of performance. When he matches their performance
against their targets, I want to see the president begin to sack people.
I
don’t know what question, in terms of performance the president for
example has asked his security chiefs. Why did they not know there would
be crisis in Kano? For something that was so predictable, why can’t the
President summon his security chiefs and tell them that whenever this
kind of thing happens and you cannot bring the Mullah who preached
vengeance, I will fire you.
Security
of tenure of office must be tied to performance.
• Concluded
|
