At a recent parley with select journalists, the zonal chairman of All Progressives Congress (APC) for South-south, Ntufam Hilliard Eta, shed more lights on developments in Edo state before Gov Obaseki decamped from APC. JOSEPH OBUNG was there.
As the South-south zonal chairman, can you comment on the feud between Comrade Adams Oshiomhole and Governor Godwin Obaseki before the latter decamped to PDP considering the fact that both gentlemen are from your zone?
Well, Politics is driven by personal interests and there are local issues and national issues, or even zonal issues. Sometimes, issues thread through those hierarchies. Efforts were made for the reconciliation of the issues in Edo state, unfortunately, those efforts perhaps were not enough and it culminated into Obaseki leaving the party, which is his right and nobody can divest him of that constitutional right. We’ll have election between our candidate, Pastor Ize-Iyamu and the candidate of the PDP which is the governor of Edo state, Obaseki. It is as simple as that. Elections must be contested by people. It just so happens that in this instance the candidate of PDP was once the candidate of the APC and the candidate of the APC was once the candidate of the PDP. That is unfortunately one of the recurrent decimals of our political firmament given the level of our political development.
Please tell us why the face-off between Oshiomhole and Obaseki could not be resolved by your party?
First of all, let me tell you something. There is a misconception which of course is politically profitable to Governor Obaseki, that there was an attempt by Comrade Adams Oshiomhole to tele-guide Governor Obaseki and become a godfather. It is far from the truth. The truth is that when Obaseki took over power, he decided that the politicians who made him governor were expendable and it was in the defense of these politicians that the friction became evident between the two. Now, one can freely say that Oshiomhole was fighting the battle not for himself but for the political class of Edo APC. Now I know of godfathers and I know of god-fatherism. Godfatherism is a system of teleguiding and remote controlling someone who may have benefitted from either your political structure or resources to get into office. This never happened because one of the things that godfathers do in Nigeria is that they will always nominate people into your cabinet or nominate people to work with you. Governor Obaseki himself has accepted that Adams Oshiomhole had only one commissioner in Edo state and if you don’t know, let me tell you even until very late in the life of his administration, he never constituted boards of parastatals and companies in Edo state; so there was no opportunity for the supposed godfather to have nominated people into these institutions. The question is, in what area was the threat of teleguiding or remote-controlling? Was it in the business of governance or those who could help him supervise the governance of Edo? It is easy to talk about godfatherism because Nigerians will always like to listen to such things. But I will like that when they hear these kinds of things, they do a bit of interrogation because I am a politician and I know we like to play with the intelligence of people. I may not completely subscribe to that; in fact, I don’t subscribe to that. But most politicians like to play with the intelligence of those they are supposed to lead. It is not true that the issues of Edo bother on godfatherism. What is true is that Governor Obaseki refused to accommodate the politicians who helped him into office and in an attempt to bridge that gap; acrimony erupted between himself and the former national chairman.
Don’t you think what Oshiomhole once said about Pastor Ize-Iyamu in the last election have the capacity to affect his chances of victory in the coming polls?
Whatever you say because you want your candidate to be elected into office in most cases could be very damaging. No politician in Nigeria can claim that in the event you are canvassing for your candidate, that you have not said terrible things about candidates of the opposing party. And so I cannot imagine that having selected Obaseki at the time as a candidate of the party that Adams Oshiomhole will allow the PDP candidate, no matter who he was at the time, to come and take the seat that he was vacating. So you must put it in that perspective. I am not completely in support of the personalisation of political contests in Nigeria. I believe that we must grow out of personalising political contests; that we must bring issues that have bearing on the people and of the country into focus and prominence in contesting for political offices.
Many Nigerians believe Governor Obaseki was qualified to run as governor on the platform of APC but was screened out due to the power play occasioned by the feud between him and the former national chairman. Was it not so?
I was a member of the National Working Committee not the screening committee. We selected the screening committee and we ensured they were Nigerians of impeccable character. You know we had just come out of the Bayelsa experience and we decided that anybody that would pass through the refinery of contest in our party must show absolute transparency in terms of his certifications and his claims, given that, even the PDP had earlier taken Obaseki to court and they were ruled out of time, and not because they did not have a provable case. So when all of these things came to us, we decided to play on the side of caution. So that is exactly what happened. It was the PDP that told us that Obaseki had three credits and so could not have been admitted into the University of Ibadan. It was the PDP that actually told us because they took him to court. So when he came the second time, we now said these are some of the things that PDP took you to court for and we want all of those gaps to be filled and in the wisdom of the screening committee, Governor Obaseki was unable to fill those gaps. That was the reason for his disqualification.
You are being addressed, in some quarters, as immediate past acting national chairman of APC. Can you throw more light on these claims?
Well, when the court decided that the erstwhile national chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole had been suspended by his ward and the Court of Appeal agreed with the court of the first instance, members of the National Working Committee immediately resorted to the constitution of the party and the constitution of the party is very clear as to the succession in times of assault. It clearly spells out that the deputy national chairman from the zone of the national chairman would act in his absence. At that time, Senator Abiola Ajimobi of blessed memory was incapacitated and the constitution further states that in the event that he cannot act, that members of the National Working Committee shall choose among themselves who to act as the national chairman, and in that regard, 17 out of 20 members of the National Working Committee invited me to act as the national chairman and that was until when the presidential pronouncement of the dissolution of the national working committee.
But the national secretary also laid claims to the position?
Well, you need to consult our constitution. The national secretary is in charge of the secretariat and to be very candid, at that time he was not the national secretary because the person in the position at the time was Arch. Waziri Bulama. The person that laid claim, albeit unconstitutionally and illegally, was the erstwhile deputy national secretary. Now, secretaries are not in the succession of the national chairman. In fact, secretaries are not in the succession of any chairman of our party and so it was a travesty and unconstitutional.
There were insinuations that upon the dissolution of the NWC by President Buhari, you also ceased to be the zonal chairman. What is your take?
The national vice chairmen of the party were elected with two mandates: one as members of the National Working Committee which was presidentially dissolved, and two, they were elected as chairmen of their zones and zonal executive committees have not been dissolved. So they remain chairmen of their various zones and so I remained chairman for my zone, South-south.
