Former director APC Presidential Council for 2019 general elections, Dr Theodore Ekechi, says a stooge to become president is not a crime and questions the complacency of Igbo politicians arguing that they are not investing in their bid to produce the next president of Nigeria. Emeka Nzeh brings excerpts.
Some people want zoning discarded for merit, what’s your view?
On the surface of it, it appears to be a very difficult question, but it could be a trap. It could mean that one is trying to set one on the path of contradiction. But if you want to relate to this country as a statesman, as a man who is committed to the unity and future of this country, then you speak the truth no matter whose ox is gored and that is the perspective I wish to speak now.
I’m sure you have asked that question because a lot of my Igbo brothers and sisters have been clamouring that this is the time for an Igbo presidency. While I will support and indeed agree that the Igbo deserve to rule this country like any other part of the country, I want to differ from them a little bit from this perspective. There is never a time that is the best time for an Igboman to become president. Every time has been the best time for an Igboman to become president. The earlier we realized it, the better for us as Igbo people and as Nigerians.
We have got to a point where some people are beginning to talk about the presidency as if it is something that has to be given to us. We are talking about the presidency as if, unless we beg, we will not get it. We are talking about the presidency as if it is a position we have been deliberately denied from achieving, as if there is an orchestrated force that denied the Igboman the opportunity to become president.
To the contrary, I hold this opinion. When Ekwueme challenged President Obasanjo in the same party with him, it is on record that Alex Ekwueme indeed shook the table and nearly would have snatched the nomination from Obasanjo at that point in time. He was an Igboman. The support that he had with which he rattled Obasanjo was the support that transcended the Igboland. It was the support that he got from the South-south, the South-east, South-west, North-east, North-central and North-west. I called it providence, he would have been the president if he had got that nomination.
We are saying that is the best time, where are the Igbomen who want to be president? Where are the Igbo personalities who want to be president? Presidency is not given in Ochanja Market, the presidency is not in the bar in Owerri, it is not shared in Nsukka or in Enugu, the presidency is not shared or decided by Ohanaeze NDIGBO for which they can now take back to Enugu and now decide which of our sons is best qualified to become president.
There should be a personality of Igbo extraction who will rise above parochial sentiment, who will rise above clannish sentiment, community sentiment, who will rise above zonal considerations. We are talking about a Nigerian president, we are not talking about a South-east president and you and I know that today, right from 1960 when we gained our independence, that you cannot become the president of this country except you have the support of other parts of the country.
Abiola became a “president elect”, I will say, in one of the best elections. (But let me now leave that controversy for another day), not because he was only a Yorubaman but because he scored more votes than his opponent even in the North. How was it so? He literally bestrode the whole of the South-east and the South-south with support that came naturally and spontaneously. That wasn’t because Abiola was a Yorubaman.
Let’s get it right and let’s get it clear. He was able to achieve that because he was cosmopolitan, he was a national character and he did not build it in the year of the election. It was a consistent, planned build up that spanned a period of not less than 10 years. Nobody remembered Abiola was Yoruba.
Whether you like it or not, Buhari could not have become the president of Nigeria if he did not win the APC nomination, not because he comes from Katsina or because he comes from the North. Buhari became president because he consistently and persistently strove to become president, contested the presidency for how many times and lost even against the Southerner. Which of our brothers have made 10 percent of such sacrifices?
You can’t become president of Nigeria without making such sacrifice or without being supported by some people who have made sacrifices. Where are our billionaires? Is that how the rest in politics: they wait until the last hours of the election, they identify the man that is likely going to win, they go to him in the dead of the night, they drop for him about N2billion or N100 billion, the person becomes president and they nominate the minister and perhaps begin to influence who becomes governor in their own states? That is bad politics.
The money we spend in Anambra state during governorship elections, the money that is wasted in Imo state during governorship elections, if you give me that kind of money, I will cover all the surfaces of the states in this country. I will be able to make a little bit of an impact. If you give that kind of money to an Okonjo-Iweala’, she will literally be able to cover the cost of logistics to convince Nigerians that she is capable of becoming president, give that kind of money to Charles Soludo, you will see an impact. We are not investing in that direction.
I ask again, which president had emerged through allocation? The AREWA had not made a president in this country. Quote me, that is the president I had from history. The AFENIFERE as cohesive as they were never produced a president in this country. There were other dynamics. So let our men, those who want to be president, stop clamouring for presidency from the motor parks, Ariaria market, the bars in Owerri, or the Ochanja market, in Anambra state. Come down to Abuja, meet people from other clans in this country, discuss the presidency on your own merit.
When many equities become equal, that is when morality will prevail. When Nigerians will begin to say, “if Mr Okonkwo is as good as Mr Dauda, and Dauda is as good as Mr Dele, let us give to Mr Okonkwo because Dele and Dauda have had their own fair share. But until we get to that level of quality or contest, it will be fruitless for us to talk about IGBO presidency.
Do you agree that Igboman is not prepared to take the presidency because of disunity among the people?
There is no part of this country where you don’t have disunity amongst people but one thing I find very common within the Igbo clan is our failure to see the presidency as a very huge investment. The investment is costly both in terms of time and in terms of financial resources. It is also very costly because it comes with a lot of risks. If Buhari had lost in his last attempt to be president, perhaps he would have become bankrupt because everything he had earned all his life he had put into the search for presidency.
Those who think they are capable of becoming president, let them jump into the field and begin to convince Nigerians why they should be. It will come with a cost. The cost is that that mansion you have in your village may be the only property you may own at the end of the day. You may sell the one you have in Abuja, Enugu and maybe in America to prosecute that search for presidency. How many of them do we have? So it is an attitudinal problem.
Suddenly Igbos are beginning to behave as if they are the ones that have complex and not the other way round. I don’t have any complex. If I have the resources, I will give the presidency a shot, God in heaven knows. I’m already thinking about it. Let those who have the resources come. If you think you don’t have the integrity and the character because it’s not enough for you to have the resources. Sometimes you have the resources but you don’t have the integrity and you don’t have the character, look for those of us who have the integrity and the character and back us. Don’t jump into the fray, such people are not welcome.
Let me also warn, for a long time, we have cried against what they call, the damage that was done against the IGBO race by the creation of states in 1973 or thereabout. We have struggled overtime to heal the wound that was created by the creation of states to reaffirm the Igbonness of the Igbo people, to prove to the world that Igbo race spans beyond the River Niger, across the west of the River Niger, to include a lot of communities, tribes and clans in Delta and Edo states, We have struggled for almost 40 years to prove that the IGBO national spans beyond Nsukka and Obollo -Afor that we have our brothers and sisters and kith and kins across Obollo Afor, you find them in Benue and Kogi states.
We have struggled overtime to prove that Igbo does not end in Ngo -Okpalla local government which is the bordering local government of Imo state, we have struggled to prove that the entire land of Port Harcourt, Ikwere and Ektche and even some parts of Bayelsa states are Igboland. Now we are talking about Igbo presidency. The first thing people are doing being defensive is by trying to exclude certain personalities and certain people that they are not Igbo when such people have claimed they are Igbo.
For instance, Chibuike Amaechi. I want to say categorically that Amaechi is Igbo. Amaechi is not IGBO because his name is Chibuike Amaechi, no. He is not Igbo because he is Igbo or that he says that he’s Igbo. Amaechi is not Igbo because his community Emeoha shares contiguity with the next local government Ngo-Okpalla in Imo state. No. Amaechi is Igbo because of his heritage, sociologically, anthropologically, culturally, religiously, the whole of Ikwereland, Port Harcourt, Etche, they are Igbo.
If you ask me, without prejudice to any other Igboman, that’s an opportunity for us to reaffirm that Igboland indeed extends beyond the borders of Ohaji, Ngo-Okpalla and Imo River. It’s an opportunity for us to reaffirm that the whole of Ikwereland is Igboland. I want to sound this note of caution to all our Igbo politicians who want to score cheap points. It is dangerous and irresponsible for any Igboman to attack Amaechi as not being an Igboman.
What would you advise the Igbo to do should the major parties fail to nominate Igbo candidates at their primaries?
What we will do is exactly what we did in 1999, 2003, 2007 2011, 2015, 2019, when the two major political parties failed to nominate an Igboman. The time to do what we want to do is now so that an Igboman will be nominated. when an Igboman is not nominated, the country will not crash. This is the time to work on the talk. Don’t sit at home, we are igbos how do we define politics? It is a contest for power (Ndorondoro ochichi). Politics does not connote allocation (nnyerenyere ochichi), it doesn’t connote sharing, it doesn’t connote bequeathing, it is ndorondoro not nnyerenyere.
So those who are already speculating or trying to imagine they should please bring their ingenuity to bear. In some other ways, those who are imagining what would happen, that thinking should be devoted to how to ensure that we are nominated. How do we get nominated? Nothing will happen in 2023 if an Igboman is not nominated.
I tell you the first coordinators that would be announced if the candidates of the two major political parties emerge are going to be Igbomen and all the prominent Igbomen that I know including serving ministers are already positioning themselves as coordinators of the people who are contesting. So why do you want to fight for such people? We must put our positions and challenges in proper perspectives. This is the time to fight. I will be happy to see the Igboman become the President and Commander-in-Chief of this nation. But that wish must be transformed to a need, then a demand, must be backed by a good purchasing power.
It seems that some of those clamouring to become president are likely to become stoogies of the North. Would it be proper to elect a president who is indirectly being controlled?
Let me assume you are correct. We have more politicians from the South-east who wine and dine with the people from the North. Why can’t they become stooges of the North so that directly or indirectly you can become the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria? Why will they allow a man from the South-south to transform himself to a stooge in order to become president?
There is nothing you do that is legal to make you become the president of Nigeria that is bad. It is also part of the struggle for power. Let our brothers and sisters from the South-east states who want to claim that he is the core or real Igboman, if he believes it’s the only formulae of becoming president, let him go and become a stooge, get the power first and let us then after taking the power, we do as we are doing in Edo state, in Imo state and in Lagos state. You can take the power and then you can say I’m not going to go your own way again. Let them go and play the stooge and become president.
