Proscribing Radio Biafra will not end the agitation- Igbo leader

Chief Anselem Njoku is a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Lagos State. In this interview with EZUGWU OBINNA, he says it will be unrealistic for President Muhammadu Buhari to pursue a Northern agenda in his administration. He also disclosed that he left the Peoples Democratic Party because the leaders only used Jimi Agbaje to extort money from Dr Goodluck Jonathan, adding that PDP blew their only opportunity to take Lagos. Excerpts:

You were once a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party but later dumped the party for the All Progressives Congress, why?

Yes, I left because I found out that the leadership of the PDP is not a serious leadership. They are just after money, and made no plans to ensure that the party emerges victorious either at the state or national level. So I could not work with such unserious minded people. In the last election, billions of naira was released to the leadership of the PDP to run the party’s campaigns but they only shared that money. They didn’t mobilize, in fact, they did nothing. I left because I am a serious minded person. When I was there, I watched them; the so called leadership of the party, the executive of the party, they murdered the PDP in my presence.  When I watched the so called leaders and the executive murder PDP, I had to leave because I cannot be part of the burial, so they can now go bury it. The leadership was an inept leadership; they don’t have any plan at all for the PDP in Lagos State.

When you say the PDP doesn’t have a serious leadership, do mean the national leadership?

No, I am talking with reference to Lagos State where I was an exco member of the party. I looked at them and found out that they have nothing to offer in the state. I cannot talk about the party at the national level because I did not serve at the national level, I have only done my politics here in Lagos State and I had been in PDP for a long time. So when I looked at them from the state leadership to the ward leadership, the set of people that were imposed by the so called godfathers in the state. They just came to loot the party, all they do is report back to their godfathers, they looted and when they do they shared it with those that installed them.

You must have heard of the over N9 billion that was given out for this federal task force based in Lagos and the money was embezzled by the state leadership, they didn’t pay the members of the taskforce a dime, that is why they voted against the PDP. Those taskforce people, they all voted against the PDP because the so called PDP leaders embezzled their money. Some of them were to be paid as much as N350 thousand because they had been working for a long time without payment, but this money was embezzled by the so called leaders and a dime never went to these men and women who worked. You have heard of much poverty alleviation programmes, which the PDP and its leadership in Lagos used to extort money from the people. They will get one form and ask people to pay N10 thousand but it amounts to nothing in the end. In fact, what they did to the poor masses in Lagos here amounts to robbery.

Was the national leadership of the party aware of this allegation and was any attempt made to address it?

Well, if the PDP managed it well, the party wouldn’t have been in crisis in Lagos State. There are parallel leaderships, the Bode George and Obanikoro saga. Even Ogunlewe was on his own making it three. Though Ogunlewe later managed to come together with Bode George, but Obanikoro was still there. Right now, Captain Tunji Shelle is said to have been removed as the chairman of the party by Hon. Olorinde who is loyal to Obanikoro, and there are other quasi factions from the ward, local governments to the state levels. So, such a party cannot ever do well; they can never get their acts together.

But in spite of all these problems, shouldn’t you have remained in the party to help rebuild it and make it a formidable opposition that would hold the APC government accountable?

That would have been reasonable if you had people to work with, who would I work with? These people are individuals that are after money and now that the money is no longer coming from Abuja, they are no more interested. They don’t mobilize, they don’t campaign; they were just after money so we don’t share the same aspiration, my aspiration is that whichever party I belong to must win elections. They don’t believe in that, theirs is to extort you, so I couldn’t put up with that kind of attitude and I can’t correct it. Number one, I am an Igbo man, not a Yoruba. There is a limit to the level I can press them to change their attitudes, otherwise I become an enemy. Simply because I voted for a particular aspirant during the primary election against some other leaders who wanted another aspirant, I was blackmailed as if the person I voted for is not a member of PDP.

Ordinarily, after primary election, whoever wins, everybody will close ranks and work for the success of that candidate, but that was not the case. They are not politicians; these are people who came to rob in the name of politics. Politics is all about interest. There is no permanent enemy or permanent friend. So when Jimi Agbaje was nominated as the party’s candidate, everybody would have protected and worked for that interest but they couldn’t achieve it because they were not sincere, and there is no way they can do it again in Lagos State because APC is well structured here and the Igbo are also embracing the party. The PDP has no place to hide in Lagos.

From what you are saying, does it mean the PDP Lagos chapter was not behind Jimi Agbaje during the governorship campaigns?

Like I just told you, there was high level of insincerity, I assessed them and found out that they are people who say one thing and do the other. They did not mobilize for Agbaje, they are extortionists who only wanted to use him to extort money from Goodluck Jonathan and they succeeded in doing that. They are all in London now enjoying their loot. That’s what they did, they never meant it for Agbaje to win any election because if they did, they would have worked for him. But they made enemies within the party when Agbaje won the primaries. When you make enmity with members who were supposed to work for him, what are you telling him? What they did was the more you look, the less you see. They were never for Agbaje, I knew there was no way he could win the election. That was why people like us left the party.

Let’s talk about the APC government. It is now over a month since President Muhammadu Buhari assumed office, how would you assess him?

You know that Nigeria is a complex nation; the problem of the country is so enormous. For you to start tackling the problems, you must first of all have a good statistics, you must do a little research on what you want to do and you must be careful because some people you appoint to help resolve a situation may go there and worsen it. So you must take time to study the situation. If you are not in government, the way you hear that government is operated or what you see is not real. It is when you get there that you see the reality. When you are now confronted with the reality, you now make sure you get your priority right. If you don’t get your priority right, you will mess up.

I want to assure you that from the handwriting I see, Buhari is going to get it right. The only thing I am advising him is to make sure that every Nigerian, irrespective of tribe, ethnic nationality or religion is carried along because I wouldn’t want a situation where some section of the country will be marginalized under his leadership. As an avowed disciplinarian; as a good disciplinarian, he must stand for justice. If you can’t guarantee equity, then you can’t be disciplined. He should work on that, he should not allow anybody to deceive him. That’s why I commend Bola Ahmed Tinubu who is the father of the APC; he is the person that made it possible so credit must be given to him. Without him, APC victory would have been impossible. His inputs should be taken into consideration because after baking the cake, he should be allowed to participate in the eating.

The President and Tinubu should work together; Buhari should consult him as well as other reasonable Nigerians. Ogbonnaya Onu is there, a man of humility, and the APC governors’ forum led by Owelle Rochas Okorocha as well as the party’s leadership. He should make sure that things work very well. We need to give Buhari a little bit of time, so that he doesn’t make mistakes. It is better to take time to do a good job than to rush it.

Buhari has made about 17 strategic appointments and no Igbo have got any appointment so far. Are you not concerned that the Igbo are already being marginalized?

Honestly, an average Igbo man is very uncomfortable with this kind of development, very uncomfortable. I am yet to find out the reason for that because I know that we have very credible individuals among the Igbo, people that are competent and qualified in all ramifications. As I said earlier, I don’t know the method he is going to apply now, but at the end of the day, what we want is less corruption in the system, let there be employment and let the economy recover itself and he should give us good governance. But like I have also said, he should do it equitably. Get some Igbo people into the system because right now they are marginalized with the few appointments that have been made. If I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t have neglected the Igbo or the South-South in any of the appointments because they are part of the system. It would be practically impossible for Buhari to run a Northern government. Nobody can try it in this country; he cannot try it under democratic rule. The appointment he has made now does not reflect federal character, I must say. But there is still remedy and I call on him to remedy the situation so that everybody will have a stake in his government.

The transfer of Boko Haram prisoners to the South East was greeted with protests; don’t you think the action was not well considered?

My take on that honestly is that though the prison act allows a prisoner to be put in prison in any part of the country, the prisoners that were transferred to the South East were mainly Boko Haram and that raised eyebrows. People interpreted it as a move to infiltrate the region with Boko Haram, I think the move didn’t come at the right time. The government has not stabilized, military checkpoints were dismantled; I was against that, and then these terrorists were transferred to the South East. So the average Igbo man cannot be blamed for rejecting the move because Boko Haram is a threat to this nation, Boko Haram is at war against Nigeria; they are evil and nobody can accommodate them anywhere in his region. They should not be sent to any other part of the country. They should remain in the areas they operate so that the government can fight them head on. That is why I applauded the president when he relocated the military command headquarters to Maiduguri so the army can fight them head on.

We are all aware that one of the reasons why Nigerians voted Buhari into power is for him to end Boko Haram insurgency. But their attacks seem to be getting worse now. Do you honestly think he can end the insurgency?

Like I told you, when you are not in government, you will be proposing so many options to a particular problem, it is when you are there that you will appreciate it better. I have confidence that Buhari will end Boko Haram because he is experienced in military tactics. But Boko Haram insurgency is not just ordinary agitation, it is a war against Nigeria and it must be taken as war. The war must be launched against them; there can’t be any benevolent approach to it. Now that the president has changed his service chiefs, I know it is a tactical move but he should also watch it because former president Jonathan told us that the military, the police, the navy, the air force and even the civil service have been infiltrated by Boko Haram. Another one is the collaboration with foreign countries, you know he must seek the support of the international community to tackle this problem and he has to be sincere about it.

Coming back to the South East, Radio Biafra is now raising a lot of concerns. What do you think led to this?

The issue of this Radio Biafra is about marginalization of the South East; it is about the South East being voiceless; it is about South East not being recognized in the Nigerian context by the successive governments of the country. Jonathan’s government did not even do better for the zone. Go and look at the amount of money he spent in the various zones of the country, South East is the least. In some cases, four times less. You see the quest for Biafra nation and the broadcast is to tell Nigeria that South East exists, and it is a civil protest because they are not carrying arms. And therefore, the radio station should be legalized and its content regulated. NBC should legalize it and regulate it so that they can talk about their people; talk about what they want. It is only when you have a way of ventilating your grievance that it will not bust into crisis.

If you are disallowed from expressing your grievance, this grievance will get combusted in you and by the time it explodes, it becomes crisis, it becomes war. So any section of the country that has any grievance to air should be allowed to do so in whatever medium, in as much as they are not violent and when you see such a situation, you call them and dialogue with them. So proscribing Radio Biafra will not end the agitations, it might even worsen it, but we don’t pray for that. I know as an Igbo man that an average Igbo man is not interested in violence in Nigeria today; he is interested in what will make Nigeria great, he has a lot of industry in him that he wants to exhibit. The Igbo can produce anything including automobiles, weapons of mass destructions. What the government needs to do is to encourage them and regulate them so that the country can even export these products.

You are organising an event in honour of governor Okorocha here in Lagos, what is the essence?

Yes, Owelle Rochas Okorocha is the leader of the Igbo in APC because it is only in Imo State that the APC was able to win governorship and some national assembly elections, including close to 90 percent of state assembly seats. And the man at the helm of affairs in that state is Owelle Rochas Okorocha, who is the leader of the APC in the South East. That makes him the apex leader of Ndigbo in APC today. Secondly, he is the chairman of APC governors’ forum. So since he has achieved this feat and the Igbo today are embracing the APC, we feel that if we can receive our own person and praise him for what he has done and learn from him, it will be a good thing. We also want the South West leaders in APC to know that we have embraced the APC here in a large number. We want to embrace the APC and extol the leadership qualities of Okorocha, and say that what he has done in Imo State can be done in other parts of the South East.