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Interview: Poor leadership has forced Nigerians to have very low expectations and it’s dangerous — Nwaka Inem
Nwaka Inem
Business man and Chieftain of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in Abia State, Chief Nwaka Inem, has lamented that bad governance has led to a sad situation where Nigerians are beginning to have low expectations, such that they can now be bought over with little money.
Chief Inem who spoke in this interview with Mike Omeife, Richard Aderoun and Obinna Ezugwu also explained why Dr. Alex Otti, the APGA governorship candidate in Abia State is the right man to lead the state to greater heights.
Excerpts:
When you look at the overall political landscape in Nigeria, what impressions do you have?
I think we are going into the phase where people are beginning to have very low expectations and it’s a dangerous thing. How do people appreciate what is really good for them? Or what is ideal for them? Does the average Southern person prefer you giving him a keke to drive to staying in an organised environment? It’s the danger of people having low expectations, that’s what we are facing. Because if someone has low expectations, if you give him N10,000 to do petty trading, he would assume that you have done so much for him. He is not looking at the damage you are doing in the overall system.
If I give you a keke for instance, and the roads are so bad and you operate in a very hostile environment, where there are too many of these task forces like we have in Aba, if you make N1000, they will take N300 and out the remaining N700, you are going to repair the keke. In one or two years, the keke will break down and you may not even have the money to fix it. You find out that you have just been running round the same poverty cycle. So, for him to appreciate that this is not the best for him, in terms of making choices, is where the real challenge is.
What you have explained is what is going on in the country generally. People are deprived of a lot of things and are just given maybe peanuts and celebrate it. People would have expected political parties like APGA that has a lot of intellectuals to put up a lot of awareness campaigns to educate the people in this regard?
Yes, but while doing that, if you do it empty handed you will achieve little. When the Presbyterian Church came to the East for instance, the Calabar people liked their traditional ‘Egbe,’ so there was nothing the missionaries did that could convince the Calabar man not to go to enjoy that dance.
What the church eventually did was to allow them to wear their traditional ‘Egbe’ attire to come to the church. They reasoned that they had to come first and listen to you before you could convince them. So you must strike a balance. For you to just do ordinary preaching, it may be difficult. That is why we advised Dr. Alex (Otti) to join politics and help us. And the analysis was simple: not that those of us that were already involved in politics don’t know what to do, but the truth of the matter is that if you don’t have enough financial war chest, you will not be able to convince people to give you the chance to practice what you are preaching.
Talking about Dr. Otti now, why do you think he is the right person to govern Abia?
One good thing is that people from Abia have become enlightened. Again, because although poverty is a general problem in the country, it is not much of a problem in Abia or the South generally as it is in the North. If you come to my home town, Abriba, for instance, you will get at least 1000 boys who are able to play around with half a million naira. In economic terms, it is not much, but the money is enough to make him happy. It is enough to make him buy his tokumbo car and drive around. With that, if you play around him for sometime he can call your bluff and behave his own way.
We have had a situation in this current dispensation where we started with a governor who had no vision for the state.
When Abia State was created, the first governor was Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu who was in the academic, he was a lecturer. Some set of business men sponsored him. He didn’t understand the political terrain well. Of course, they didn’t last long so we cannot judge him on performance. He could not lay a solid political foundation.
The process was truncated and in came subsequent military administrators. The military administrators were sent to states that were not their own and they never had any serious commitment to those states. They were simply on merchant drive, taking command from their boss. Therefore, the idea of laying a solid foundation for a new state was not there.
Then the current dispensation came in 1999. At the time, many people didn’t have interest in politics for one reason or the other. So, the quality and character of the people that emerged, sorry to say, was so low. In Abia, we had Orji Uzo Kalu who, I won’t say he is not educated, but as far as I’m concerned, when we were in the university, they were these people that could be described as ‘let my people go graduates.’ And the level of understanding of those people is anything goes.
He brought that standard to the administration of Abia State, to the extent that he made it a family affair. His mother had so much influence in government. His brothers had much influence. He started with wrong declaration of assets; over bloating his wealth, giving the impression that he is doing the state a favour, whereas it is the state that was doing him a favour.
If you say you are a good administrator, Abia State had a state newspaper called Ambassador Newspaper, if you are good in attracting investment, why didn’t you strengthen the newspaper to remain at the same level as the Herald or Tribune? He used the state resources to set up the Sun Newspaper. He set it up when he was a governor in Abia State. He used the office to expand his empire. When they talk about corruption, it doesn’t end in dipping hands in the treasury of the state. It is using the time and resources you ought to use to run that office to run your private business. The attention given to you by business men all over the world because you are a state governor, instead of using it to bring investment into the state, you are using it to enrich yourself. He reduced governance to a very low level in terms of standards and discipline. And because you have done things that you were not supposed to do, naturally, you won’t retire and go home, you want to hand over to someone that can at least protect you or continue in that line.
In our days of apprenticeship, you find out that if you learn a trade under me, by the time you start your own, you will find out that your style of business will very well reflect the way you trained. T. A. Orji learnt governance from Orji Uzo Kalu who installed him. This idea of outgoing presidents or governors trying to install a successor is not right. We weren’t expecting anything for from T. A. Orji.
During T. A. Orji’s second term, we started reasoning that if we allow this thing to continue happening like this, we will just be moving in the cycle. During Orji Uzo’s time, what we had was his mother everywhere. Before you get any contract or any appointment or promotion, you must pass through his mother.
When he left and T. A. came in, the same thing continued in a different variant. We had a T. A. that had a son that was almost grown up. We now had a combined influence of the mom, the wife and the son. They were everywhere. You see big men bowing down to them.
I had an encounter in 2011 when I was involved. I tried to go to the House of Reps, T. A. denied me ticket, but there was a system he ran during that election. He told us that he was under influence and that was why he didn’t do well in the first tenure, but that now he wants to govern. We thought we could take him seriously. Those of us that were not given tickets were made the arrow head of the campaign in our respective localities. That time, I had a close encounter with Chinedu Orji, the man’s son. And what I saw was disgusting. I saw big men almost prostrating to the small boy. That was when I said no, I cannot play in this environment.
Under such circumstances, how do you expect the state to progress? It was then that people of like minds started saying no, for Abia to develop, we must move away from this set of people; we must move away from this mindset that governance is all about sycophancy, boot-licking and so on; that we must look for someone from a different background in terms of public administration, in terms of dealing with fellow citizens; someone that will not be playing god. It is that level of thinking that threw up people like Alex. And it was easy to sell him. So, it’s a combination of the inherent deficiencies of these two past leaders, and the desire to bring someone who has quality and is different from them.
Here is Alex who has been in the banking sector for years. I knew him when he was in Societe Bancaire. He left there for UBA. From UBA, he rose again and went to First Bank where he became the executive director. It was during this time that we began to discuss with him. And being an Abian, when we began to discuss with him, he became interested. Of course, it is an expensive game and when he made inquiries about the cost implications, he looked at it as a sacrifice he can make. Of course he has the educational qualifications, he has the administrative competence to go with it, and that was how he started.
So, to sell a candidate like that under this background I have explained, wasn’t a very difficult thing for us to do. And I know Abians appreciated it. That’s why we got the result we got in 2015. And I’m confident that we are going to repeat it and do even better in 2019.
In the last election, we were made to understand that he got a lot of votes and ordinarily he is supposed to be the governor. But there were dirty games, especially the burning of INEC office in the state which compromised a lot of information…?
All those things weren’t the real problem. The problem was not as a result of those incidents because actually, I was at the collation centre on the 11th of April when they brought those results from Obingwa and the Professor rejected it because it didn’t comply with the basics, before Olisa Metuh and later T. A. joined to make him to reverse himself.
When we were trying to say he must stick to the rejection, we had a signal from INEC saying ‘don’t worry, what they don’t know is that every polling unit, as you accredit people, it reports at the central server.’ So, based on that, and in fairness to INEC, they came to court, presented evidence to show that the 82,000 votes that were recorded in Obingwa is not correct. For Obingwa, their data shows that about 29,000 people came out and these 29,000 included those that the card reader rejected and those that it accepted.
Therefore, the total votes coming out from that place should not be more than 29,000, granting that all the accredited people voted for PDP. That was why the Appeal Court said OK, the accredited votes as announced and testified by the people that did the election is this, so the other is over voting. And even if you give all to PDP, they still lost. That was why the Appeal Court decided in favour of Alex.
But we didn’t know that the Supreme Court had already made a dangerous precedent judgment. Our problem was not all those things. I’m a medical lab scientist, I believe in doing proper diagnosis to see where the problem is. Our problem was that we did not stand our ground and not allow the Professor to reverse himself. But because the people who organised the election convinced us that there was no problem, we allowed them. And INEC did come to court to give evidence. Let me now say what happened.
During the build up to 2015 election in Lagos State, Jimi Agbaje and the PDP made an arrangement in Lagos to give recognition to non indigenes by conceding some state and federal house positions to them. That made non indigenes; the Igbo and non Igbo, to vote for Agbaje. And Agbaje was almost coasting to victory. The Yoruba elite felt threatened and said, ‘does it mean that Lagos, being our commercial capital, the governor will now be determined by non indigenes?’
That was when the Oba of Lagos and so on, were threatening the Igbo. And when the threat was not enough, they went to one local government and did that kind of thing that was done in Obingwa, to pad results. And when they sat, they knew that if Agbaje goes to court and INEC presents its evidence, he will win. Then, it would then mean that governors of Lagos are now being determined by non indigenes. They decided to use every means to stop it. And the legal team; lawyers and judges, agreed that the only thing is that loophole in the electoral act which ordinarily ought not to be because INEC has already been empowered to conduct elections and determine its processes.
The fact that the Act does not mention the use of card reader doesn’t make the use of card readers illegal. But they conspired; it was a judicial conspiracy that started in Lagos. While Abia State and other states were still filing methods, the judgment of Ambode vs Agbaje was already given. Because it’s a guarded approach, before you knew it, they got the same thing at the Appeal Court. We had not finished with the state tribunal and they went to Supreme Court and used their connection to get the judgment that since card reader was not mentioned in the electoral act, evidence emanating from the data of that card reader should not be a legal tender. It became a precedent
So, when other cases came up, and INEC was now presenting its cases, the Supreme Court could not reverse itself. So, burning of INEC office was not the issue. That is why everyone is saying that among every other amendment you are doing in the electoral act, recognise the card reader in the Act to give it full legal basis. So that the essence of the investment in the card readers, which is to make sure it reduces the cases of fraud associated elections is not for nothing. And whether you like it or not, the card reader has done so well in that regard. It has reduced ballot box snatching and all the thuggery associated with that.
So, I will not say it is political immaturity. I say it is one of the things that happen to get us to understand the society we are living in better. And maybe, if we had gone in, or if we were given victory in that 2015, the expectation people had couldn’t have been met. Alex may have been a victim of some certain forces, and they could have made him to make mistakes.
So I think we should leave everything to God and believe that it wasn’t yet the time to turn the state around. I think God decided to allow people to learn lessons so that they will appreciate the good things that are coming. So, the best is yet to come for Abia. And I believe that the things that made the people to reason the way they did in 2015, have not changed. The roads are still bad. The welfare of the workers is still being poorly managed. The infrastructure has even gone worse. So, the annoyance is still there.
The disappointment is still there. All it takes if for Alex to put himself together and say, ‘I’m still determined. I’m even more prepared to serve along the line of transparency, the line of constructive administration, the line of bringing value to government, blocking wastages, and being more purposeful.’
In 2015, there was a voting pattern that brought the results. What is Alex Otti doing to ensure that the pattern is consolidated and improved upon? Again, what is the core factor that decides how people vote in Abia?
Abia State is not a civil service state; 80 percent of the adult population are private traders and business owners. And the trading environment has not been very friendly, in fact, it has gotten worse. So, to reach out to them is not very difficult. It’s not like you are coming to tell them any stories. Forget all these things they do on AIT, the people that are experiencing it are enraged. If you are talking about workers, they are being owed. The other day lecturers in Abia State Polytechnic went on strike because they were not paid…. So you are not coming to tell them stories. And they have seen that most of the promises made to them for the past 20 years have always been ‘the more you look, the less you see’.
Apart from a few, because the market unions you have in Abia State are not really marked unions. The government will determine who becomes leader of the unions so you see some segments of the union trying to speak well of the government because they are more or less ambassadors of the government in the union. But the greater population of those unions is unhappy. For instance, if you go to Ariaria Market, once there is rain, no market for that day. The infrastructure is so poor. They are suffering and they are losing money. Life is difficult, not to talk about the insecurity in the state.
Our people have grown so strong that you can’t intimidate them. Yes, because there is hunger, some people need money for their families, if you give them they will take. If you take a sample of what happened in 2014/2015, at a time, if you drive through Aba, you will think that contesting against Ochendo (T. A. Orji) was just a waste of time because every vehicle was painted in his campaign colours, Ochendo Global.
But to tell you how independent minded these people can be, at the end of the day, they rejected him at the polls. So, what we are concerned about is assurance from INEC that they will do a free and fair exercise and of course, bring about a system that allows secret balloting in such a way that you can vote and get away. Do everything to stop this new menace of vote buying whereby people will give you money and tell you to go into the boot and snap who you voted for before they give you the balance.
If they checkmate all those things, I will tell you, these agents of imperialism as established by Orji Uzo and T. A. Orji’s regimes – everything associated with them will end. Most of them have joined the APC, it is still the same set of people. And the people know them, and the people are not deceived. All we are now looking at is for INEC to give a credible election.
They should do enough voter education and assurance that the method of crosschecking whether or not you voted according to the money given to you is not allowed. If they do that, I can assure you that these people will go. They will take their money, but it won’t have much influence.
You have made sufficient case for Alex. But what will you tell the average Abia person who will say that ‘look, it’s just a waste of time, after all, we voted for him in 2015, but he didn’t become governor?
It is not as if there was anything special that they did. You need to understand it from the perspective that they just took chance benefit of the legal maneuver that started from Lagos. So, you cannot say it’s as a result of their ingenuity. There are some millionaires you see and you know that they are just lucky to be at the right place at the right time, not because they invented something, or did anything special. And I don’t respect such millionaires because they can be poor any moment.
If they had done that thing out of political ingenuity, then we would have had cause to worry. But the loophole has been plugged. They won’t have chance to do that again. And it is left for us to educate the electorate to know that what they did was no big deal.
After 2015, INEC has conducted elections in Anambra, Osun, Ekiti and other places. Which other people have used that tactics to win election? None. Even before the amendment of the electoral act, INEC had employed some administrative measures to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. You give it to INEC. Every subsequent election has been an improvement from the last one.
But what about the Osun case where it was alleged that there was vote manipulation and intimidation?
I have not read the full report, but I think that what they did in Osun State was not over voting. It was not, for instance, that your card reader is saying you accredited 20 people, and you bring results showing that 100 people voted, which is what happened in Obingwa. Like I said, INEC has said that such things won’t happen again. Now, what they did in Osun, especially in the rerun was that a lot of money was spent in buying votes and with the negative collaboration of the security agencies, they identified those that would vote for the other people and blocked them from voting.
So, going by the result of the people who voted, you can’t fault INEC much. It’s the security lapse and the intimidation, not allowing the other people to vote. If you are judging from the administration of the process, you might not fault them. However, if you are looking at the overall free and fairness of the election, it was not acceptable.
Abians are actually hungry for a change, but the political space, the voting space is different from 2015. For instance, you have a party ruling the state and another party at the centre, maning that you have another contending force in Abia. How are you going to manage it?
We managed it in 2015. In fact, in 2015, it was even more difficult because the incumbent, T.A. Orji was there and by extension, they had Goodluck Jonathan. But let me tell you one thing about all these security forces. They too go to the market, they too buy things. They are not isolated from the suffering. In 2015 when we were at the collation centre, I went to ease myself and an armed uniformed police man came to me and said, ‘oga, make una no gree oo. We are the people that they will ask to force you people out, but if they give us such order, we will frustrate it.’ So you are dealing with security agencies that are equally feeling the pain of bad governance. We shouldn’t be afraid and we are ready to rise up to the occasion.
