By Paul Odili Before the mayhem broke out in Anambra last Wednesday and Thursday, Sir Victor Umeh, National Treasurer, APGA, had spoken to Vanguard about political developments in the state. He specifically pointed at the local government election scheduled for 18th November as capable of causing problems in the state. At the time he spoke, he had no way of knowing what was to happen. Since then however, what was feared had become a national crisis.
Excerpts
The APGA petition against PDP at the tribunal, can you tell us what is happening?
Well, we have been waiting patiently for the tribunal for justice to recapture the mandate which the people of Anambra State gave to APGA and its governorship candidate in the 2003 elections.
Since we closed our own case in early March 2004, the PDP and its candidate have spent sixty-eight days in the tribunal and they have called a total of 192 witnesses. Our own case was presented within sixty-seven days, and we called a total of 45 witnesses. The system we have is very unfortunate because it is according legitimacy to fraud. So the system has given an open-ended time for somebody to go to the tribunal and waste the tribunal’s time. What Chief Christian Uba was reported to have said in the United States that APGA won 90 per cent of the votes cast for the governorship election in Anambra State was not any revelation, because it is an open-secret to everybody that APGA won the election. So, the fact that Uba just stepped out now to confess is, maybe, a way of asking God to forgive him. It also means that people cannot run away from their acts, one day their conscience will be heavily burdened, and they will let it out that these are the crimes they had committed.
Are you then reconsidering your court action in the light of the delay?
There is no letting up on the pursuit to recover the mandate which was openly stolen. There is nothing we can do outside the presentation we have made. We are all law-abiding people, we cannot embark on anything that is unlawful. We shall be patient enough to see the end of this matter. We shall be there, the case will come to an end one day. And the truth we are sure will come out, because if we abandoned what we are doing now because of the frustration of delay on the part of the people who are in government there will be no future for the country. There will be no future in the electoral process. A time will come when people will come out and fight on the part of honour and rectitude to insist that wrong things should not be condoned, and that is what we have started doing. So, we can never let it go. We shall see the end of the matter even if they conclude the case one month to 2007. So far, they have not done anything serious to prove that they won the election. You remember they called one old man from US, who says he was a handwriting expert and his evidence was reported in the pages of newspapers, he came here and ridiculed the entire team. They prepared questions and answers for him and gave him, but he came to the tribunal and said that was what they asked him to say.
Can you comment on the reported alliance between Chris Uba and Peter Obi?
That alliance cannot be and it couldn’t have been. If you read Dr. Ngige and his propagandists saying that Mr. Peter Obi has teamed up with Christian Uba to destabilise Anambra State is quite laughable. The young man, Chief Christian Uba had a specific objective before the elections and sought out people that would serve his purpose. Ngige suited his search and he agreed to everything that no other person accepted including going to the shrine to swear for him that he would be totally loyal. Somebody like Peter Obi rejected any form of negotiation or agreement with anybody in Anambra State and it is a challenge.
Let anybody come out and say that he sat with Mr. Peter Obi to discuss how the state would be run in terms of sharing money that accrue to the state. Not one person can come out and say it today. So it is ridiculous that Ngige who accepted all the conditions both in writing and going to the shrine to swear that he would implement all the agreements can now come out to shout to the people of Nigeria that Mr. Peter Obi had an agreement with Christian Ubah in far away United States. So it is a cheap blackmail. I can say categorically that there was no such thing. I have said in previous interviews that we have never had any working relationship with Christian Uba. Even, what will Peter Obi gain from Uba now? When we were presenting our case before the tribunal, that would have been the time to discuss with Uba if we were ever ready for such thing, so that he can come to the tribunal and say what he said in the United States that Peter Obi won the elections, that APGA won 90 per cent of the votes.
That was when it mattered most. We didn’t discuss with him then to come and give evidence, and now that we have closed our case, somebody is shouting that there is a partnership going on. Will Christian Ubah come and force Ngige out of office? So this shows that there is no basis for such discussions at this material time. Ngige is very smart in blackmailing people. He has painted Chief Christian Uba in very terrible colours. He has painted him out of existence in Anambra State. So what he is doing is to say oh! Somebody has gone to this evil man to dine with him. A man he slept with and used him to hijack and steal mandate given to another person is now telling people to say oh! This man is going to him. So it is cheap blackmail, that is the way I describe it. There was no such alliance.
Apart from the tribunal matter, your party did not win any other elections except for one or two seats you won in the House of Assembly, and your party did not win because of the electoral fraud you are alleging. Are you now in the position to contend with the PDP and other parties at the local government elections coming up in December?
I have no doubt in my mind that they have perfected strategies to rig the same elections. I was reading in the paper this morning where the state electoral chairman, one Chief Umeh was barking that he will rather resign than be intimidated by anybody including Dr. Chris Ngige. This is mere posturing. Col. Umeh is Dr. Chris Ngige’s uncle, he hails from the maternal home of Ngige. So he knows why he planted him there as the Chairman of ANSIEC. And how are you expecting them to conduct a free and fair poll when we have 21 local government areas in Anambra State, and in constituting the electoral commission, he brought two people from his local government. One is the chairman while the other is a member, so two people from his local government are going to conduct the elections. So Ngige is not a fool. He knows what he has set out to do. What he would do is to try to sell dummy to the public that they are trying to conduct a free and fair elections. They are going to write the result as usual and how are we going to prevent it. There is no way we are going to prevent it, they are going to do exactly what they have done before.
So all the laws about making sure they conduct a free and fair elections are mere rules. They are going to write the results again, and I tell you there are too many issues involved in this local government elections. How can you guarantee that there will be a contest when in the state there is no peace yet even his own party, the PDP, they have two chairmen running the party. And Dr. Ngige has his own factional party office while Chief Christian Uba’s faction has its own office in Awka. Chief Uba’s faction is recognised by the National Working Committee of the PDP.
And they are telling who cares that they are going to conduct election. We will submit the names of candidates to ANSIEC. Ngige has vowed that he will never accept the leadership of the other faction in the state. It is unthinkable that the PDP will submit a list endorsed by Uba to ANSIEC constituted by Ngige, and that ANSIEC will go ahead to conduct the election. I know that perhaps it is a gimmick to deceive the federal government that they are about to conduct local government elections so that they will continue to receive statutory allocations due to local government in Anambra State.
So when they create that impression, money will continue to be given to them. By that time, you will begin to hear another story, but due to lack of security, his Commissioner for Information said two weeks ago categorically in one newspaper that they will not conduct the local government election until at least the governor’s police orderly and security contingent are returned. So now there is no sign that the policemen will go back, and if the policemen will not go back, who will conduct the election? Who will provide security in the elections? Is it the police that is bending towards Uba’s fight that will supervise to see a free and fair poll in Anambra State? How is that ANSIEC going to conduct the elections?
Is your party going to compete in that election? Or are you backing out?
No, we have not taken any decision to back out from the election. We are watching the development. Our party is a political party and we have people who are aspiring to be chairmen and councillors. We will encourage them to go for the election and compete if there is a guarantee that there will be elections at all. What are we going to gain by fielding candidates in the election and waste our resources and some people sit in their private homes to write results and announce again. It does not make any meaning. That is why I am saying that before that election should take place, there must be a transparent assurance that a credible election is in the offing. If it is not going to be in the offing, what is the essence? Like I said, APGA is a party that contests any election conducted in Nigeria. And we will continue to make the point. If they go and write the results for the local government elections in Anambra State, we will continue to shout to tell the whole world that the same thing is till going on. If we stay out of the contest, we lose the right of complaint.
What do you make of Emeka Ojukwu and the SSS face-off?
I think the government is getting it wrong. I think what is important would have been to unravel the essence of MASSOB. That is what government should have done using relevant agencies. You have the Nigerian Intelligence Agency that is supposed to be providing the information to government on which the government can act.
If Nigerian Intelligence Agency had done its work, they would have been able to unravel the essence of MASSOB. Its operational structure and its capability. These things would have been summed up in a classified document made available to government, so that the government can become jittery or ignore certain things. So what they have done is not being able to go to the essence of the matter, which actually is what MASSOB is saying. MASSOB is saying we are tired of this marginalisation of the Igbo people in Nigeria. If all the efforts made in the past forty years have not yielded anything, government has not changed its disposition towards the Igbo people, marginalisation is a state policy by the Nigerian government, since the war ended 34 years ago. MASSOB is saying in a non-violent manner that if you don’t want us to be part of Nigeria, we should go. They should allow us to go, let us not be part of Nigeria. For thirty-four years now since 1970, the Igbo people have been put down in all spheres. They are now observers in Nigeria. People come and say it is not true. That is the essence of the struggle of MASSOB.
They say we don’t want to be part of Nigeria if you don’t want to accord us the rights of citizenship and all the privileges that go with it, that is what MASSOB is saying, and that is the essence of MASSOB. And if Nigerian Intelligence Agency has looked at MASSOB very critically, at least they would have been able to prove whether arms had been amassed by MASSOB to distabilise Nigeria. They have not been able to arrest anybody with arms saying that they are MASSOB members who are trying to leave Nigeria for Biafra through violent means. So what they are trying to do is merely to ignore the call for justice by a section of the Nigerian people, the Igbo people, and use all manners of action to intimidate them. So, that is it. The essence of MASSOB struggle is the same essence that led to Biafra in 1967. The Igbos were being killed.
Ojukwu who led Biafra at that time was a victim of circumstance. He said let this pogrom stop, and it continued. He then said if our people would be killed, that means you don’t want us so let us go. So the Igbos did not levy war on Nigeria, Nigeria levied war on Biafra. So on the invitation of Chukwumeka Odumegwu Ojukwu to Abuja, I can say that it was ill-conceived. It was totally out of place. If they want him to come to Abuja to deny his involvement in the cause of MASSOB, it will be unfair on the part of SSS, because Ojukwu has not said a new thing. It is what he has been saying since that if you don’t want my people, you should allow them to go. And it is out of extreme frustration that he had come out to say that I support what this people have done..
Is there any relationship between your party, APGA, and MASSOB, because each time the leadership of your party tends to speak in support of MASSOB, thy seem to give the impression that they are in some relationship?
No, not at all. We have no relationship with MASSOB. APGA is a political party. Like myself, I have never seen Uwazuruike as a national treasurer of APGA. If there is any relationship with MASSOB, I would have known who Uwazuruike is, at least in one meeting or two we would have met. But let me tell you, it is the perception of people who will not want APGA to progress that will continue to say APGA is MASSOB. Where was MASSOB in 2003 elections? The entire victory in the South-East and some places in Nigeria were taken away brazenly.
Did you ever read in any newspaper where Uwazuruike condemned the rigging perpetrated against APGA in the South-East? Did you ever hear of any riot engineered by MASSOB in the South-East as a result of the day-light robbery in those elections? Not one. So it shows that these two bodies are quite distinct. We in APGA are not saying we will leave Nigeria. We are Nigerians and we are going to be Nigerians, and we are going to continue to fight until our rights and privileges are returned to us and our people. We will never give up. Our leader, Chukwuemeka Ojukwu has made his comments as a person out of his own personal convictions, which of course, he is entitled to in accordance with the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. When he was saying that he supported MASSOB, he never said it as the presidential candidate of APGA, I support MASSOB. He said, I, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, I support this. It is a personal view, and since MASSOB is struggling against the injustice meted out to the Igbo people, obviously, people share their aspirations.
