Ekwueme Explodes ■ Why Jonathan Won’t Get Block Votes in South-East. Though it was not a Sunday, Dr Alex Ekwueme, former Vice President, who had a scheduled interview appointment, took The Sun team to his chapel, a sanctuary in the upper chamber of the right wing of his house. He had led the way from his living room to climb the staircase to the chapel, explaining that it was the only place the interview could be held without much distraction from visitors. After we had ascended the ‘holy’ upper chamber, we began the business of the day that lasted for about two hours, with the octogenarian looking at the country, remembering what had happened as if they occurred just yesterday, appraising power equations from independence in 1960 till now. Dr Ekwueme, who co-founded the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with some other illustrious Nigerians, also looked at the current state of the party, saying that things have fallen apart in the PDP envisioned to be a mass movement that would rule the country for 60 years. He also told the story of how the party has derailed from the original vision of the founders, and how the leadership has abandoned him. Looking at the crises rocking the PDP across the country, he said that he was not sure if the successes of the past would be the same during the February elections. He pointedly said that President Goodluck Jonathan may not be fortunate again to have overwhelming support like he had in the past in the South-East, saying that he had taken the zone for granted. Dr Ekwueme spoke just as there are vociferous voices from the South-East, alleging unfair treatment by the Jonathan administration. It would be recalled that when Dr Ekwueme turned 80, the president did not attend the ceremony, but he was in Lagos to attend the birthday of Dr Tunji Braithwaite. Former Abia State governor, Dr Orji Uzor Kalu, had written President Jonathan then, pointing out the possible oversight, but the president reportedly minuted the letter to Chief Anyim Pius Anyim, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, who merely laughed the matter off. Just on New Year eve, Catholic priest, Father Ejike Mbaka, had also delivered a sermon, which was very critical of the Jonathan administration. In fact, the priest asked the president to step out of general elections coming up next month, as he would not get a second term in office. Excerpts of the interview with Dr Ekwueme: Your Excellency, how has life been with you? Well, I cannot thank God enough for all He has done for me. At 83, I’m fit and lively. This morning, I’ve played two sets of tennis, there are many people at my age who can’t walk unsupported and some are bedridden, but by the grace of God, am still very fit and moving about. So, life has been good to me, and I cannot thank God enough for all these benefits bestowed on me within these 83 years plus. What is the secret of your good health? I don’t really know, but I think the main factor is that everything should be done with moderation. I drink, but I don’t drink to a point where I start misbehaving. I eat, but I’m not a glutton, I just eat enough to satisfy my appetite. I smoke, not cigarette anymore, I smoke cigars once or twice a week and I try to exercise to keep fit. I think these are basically what I can refer to, if you want to call them the secret of my good health. Okay, let’s look at Nigeria. In 1960, you were a youth. What was the Nigeria you saw at independence, up to the time you became the Vice President in 1979 and to the period you left in 1983? In 1960, I was at the Race Course, as it was called then, on October 1, when the Union Jack was lowered and Nigerian flag, the Green-White-Green was hoisted and Prince Alexandra handed over the instrument of office to Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the first Prime Minister of Nigeria. At that time, we had very lofty expectations of what Nigeria would become. In fact, those of us then, we felt Nigeria would be the pride of the African continent, and that it would be a model of the ex-British colony because the journey to independence was very tortuous. There were many conferences, starting from the Ibadan Conference of 1950, so many conferences in Nigeria, so many in UK until arrangement was fashioned, which was acceptable to the leaders at that time. So, we were very optimistic and hopeful that with this detailed work at independence, that Nigeria would be a success story of British colonialism. Now, as you know, that has not been because within five years and six months of that exercise, the political terrain had become so rough to a point that those of us who lived in Lagos could not travel to Ibadan in safety without fear that you would be stopped on the way and your car burnt, and there was almost a state of anarchy. In that confusion, some young soldiers thought the best thing to do was to get rid of the leadership, not just the leadership, but their own leadership, the military leadership, which was what happened in 1966 and which triggered a chain of reactions and counter reactions. In July, the same year, there was counter reaction which resulted in the elimination of most of the military officers in Eastern Nigeria and after that it got to a situation where we had to scamper from the North to the Eastern Nigeria in search of safety, the rest is now history. There was secession and there was civil war and after three years, we came back in January, 1970, until 1979, the military decided to hand over to the civilians. That’s how we came on board. But three months in the second term, they came up again; they put us aside and took over. On December 31, 1983 they had a palace coup within the military, which changed the leadership that lasted almost eight years, the Babangida regime, until he stepped aside and then brought in an interim government. From interim government to Abacha, from Abacha to Abdulsalami and Abdulsalami decided to hand over to the civilians. In 1999, ‘civilians’ (in quotation marks) came back on the scene but the civilian who came back was the military civilian. At independence, you had lofty expectations and in 1979 you were given an opportunity to become the Number Two citizen. What efforts did you make to ensure that those lofty dreams were realised? First and foremost, anybody who has a sense of history will know that for about 34 years we were enslaved, until on December 31, 1983, which can be regarded as the golden age of Nigerian politics, because there was democratic freedom in the real sense of it. The party at the centre then, NPN, (National Party of Nigeria), the chairman of the party came from the South- West, the President from the North-West, I, Vice President from the South-East, the President of the Senate from the South- South and eventually Speaker of the House first, from the South-East and later from the North-Central. So, every part of Nigeria had a sense of belonging, you cannot buy that cheaply in the market. That is the main thrust of our contribution. But unfortunately, the military was impatient to let that experiment grow and three months in the second term they came again; otherwise, if we had continued, Nigeria would have become a modern democratic state in which every Nigerian will have a sense of belonging, which is the most important thing and everybody will have a sense of citizenship and nobody will feel he or she is a second class citizen and we would have provided security and a mass oriented programme like housing, Green Revolution, that’s agriculture. So, these are the contributions we had. You said that the return of civilian rule, the first one by Obasanjo, was a kind of military civilian administration. We remember that you were at the head of the G34 that metamorphosed into the PDP that drafted Obasanjo into that election; so why did you say so? It is not G34 that drafted Obasanjo. He was in jail in Yola when we organised the party and the first election under the new civilian dispensation was the local government election in December 1998, which was to be a litmus test for deciding which political parties would be registered, and as you will recall, PDP swept the votes throughout the country. It was a very popular party, so we made the party at the risk of our own lives. If you go back to 8th May 1998, one of the magazines had a shouting headline: ‘Ekwueme takes on Abacha.’ It wasn’t a pleasant thing for Abacha to hear. If I do not have friends who warned me, I won’t be alive talking to you now because he didn’t like what we were doing at all. And of the 34 who were represented in the G34, I was actually the one that was signing the memorandum, it is my signature that was on it and in other documents because I was chairman of the group, and he didn’t like it. And Directors of the SSS in Enugu where I stay, in Anambra here, my home state and in Owerri, Imo State where I have business interest, were told to keep 24-hour watch on me so that anytime it pleases Abacha, I would be picked up. But somebody, a friend who didn’t like what probably was to happen, came and told me, and said I must get out of here very quickly and I did. I drove from here to Cotonou to Ghana and from Accra I fled to London and I was in London planning how to strategize to come back, and then Abacha died. Then Abdulsalami invited us, the United Nations, Kofi Annan came and spoke to us, the G34 group, the Secretary General of the Commonwealth came and spoke to us, then we moved on until the actual return of civilian politics. But don’t forget the background that led to the popularity of the PDP in the December 1998 elections, that is local government elections, House of Assembly elections, state governorship, National Assembly and presidential elections, which our party swept across the whole country and the idea of the party was not that it would be an ordinary party, it was intended to be a mass movement, that’s why I said everybody should come on board including people who were fraternizing with Abacha. I remembered in one meeting we held at the Federal Palace Hotel. That was the first day Barnabas Gemade came to our meeting and Jibril Aminu objected to his presence there, because he was the chairman of the Committee for National Consensus, that is, the five parties that had adopted Abacha’s presidency. Jibril Aminu said he should not be allowed to stay and I was the one presiding over the meeting and I said he should be allowed, that we were starting on a clean slate and that we wanted this party to be a party for all Nigerians to come together and it would be a mass movement, so that all things being well, we would follow the philosophy that inspired the organisation as a party that will rule Nigeria for 60 years. It wasn’t a bluff or a matter of bragging, it was the reality of the situation. I wouldn’t say that our original dream has been sustained because it’s no longer the mass movement that we envisaged. So, what went wrong?
Posted on: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 15:50:02 +0000
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