All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain and Chief of Staff, Imo State Government House, Uche Nwosu, has given reasons the majority of his party members want President Muhammadu Buhari to run again in 2019. According to him, Buhari has done so well that Nigerians still need him to sustain the gains achieved in the last two years, as well as for him to do more. He believes the President has overcome his health challenge which could have been the only encumbrance. In this interview with INNOCENT DURU, he also speaks about the controversial statue erected for South African President Jacob Zuma in Owerri, saying that Governor Rochas Okorocha would soon unveil more statues in the state. Excerpts:
RECENTLY, many APC governors who your boss, Governor Rochas Okorocha is their chairman, gave President Muhammadu Buhari the nod to run again in 2019. But while some of the governors think that Buhari deserves an automatic ticket, the opposition think that he is not fit enough to continue in 2019. What is your take on this?
I support the governors that President Buhari should run in 2019 because I see him as a man who has come to lay a solid foundation upon which other presidents coming after him can build. I said so because it takes somebody like President Buhari to drag the country out of recession. It takes somebody like him to stand firm on the issue of corruption. It takes somebody like him to battle the issue of insecurity in the country. So, I am happy with the idea that he should run in 2019.
Whether he is given an automatic ticket or not, I think what the APC governors, particularly their chairman, wanted to show to the world was that the APC has and respects internal democracy. And they want to demonstrate that Buhari can still win without people thinking that if he runs in the APC primary he will lose. They want to prove that if Buhari runs in our primary he will still win. So, it was meant to demonstrate to the world that APC has internal democracy, unlike some of these other parties where someone is given an automatic ticket. It is only when you are not popular that you will look for automatic ticket. Buhari is very popular. So, we believe that if the APC primary is conducted 100 times, Buhari will win.
Why should the APC clamour for President Buhari to continue in 2019? Does it mean that the party has no alternative?
I don’t really understand what you mean by President Buhari not fit. I wonder if the people saying this have come close to the President to ascertain his fitness. Anybody can fall sick. There is nobody above sickness. The matter is that when you are sick, you go to the hospital to receive treatment and thereafter continue with your work. So, President Buhari was sick and he went to the hospital to receive treatment and he is now fit and has since returned to his job, running like every one of us.
Can you in all sincerity say that President Buhari has delivered enough dividends of democracy to justify his coming back in 2019?
Yes, President Buhari has delivered the dividends of democracy very well. Remember that when we came into power in 2015, the country was going down. Remember what was happening in the North East—most of the local governments had been taken over by Boko Haram. Are we talking about the billions of naira and dollars stolen from the country? Are we talking about corruption which nobody cared what would happen? People thought that corruption was part of the system. Things were going wrong and nobody cared. Now, we should be proud to say that Nigeria has moved from what it used to be to a country that we can call our own. Nigeria’s reputation abroad now is something all of us can be happy with. Before now, when you got to any embassy, you would be ashamed of the green passport. And when you were on the queue, you would see Ghanaians and Cameroonians move pass the immigration in the US, but when it comes to the turn of a Nigerian, they would keep you and ask you so many questions. These are some of the things Buhari has corrected and we are happy about them.
On the issue of recession, some countries go into recession and in two years they are not out of it. Today, Nigeria has come out of recession. This happened so soon because President Buhari has been able to manage the affairs of this country very well. Look at the internally generated revenue from the Federal Inland Revenue, it has gone up to trillions. But before now, all the money went into individuals’ accounts. Or is it the issue of agriculture? Nobody is talking again about foreign rice. If you go to Ebonyi, Kebbi and even Lagos State and many other parts of the country, they are producing rice, and now the quantity of rice imported into Nigeria has gone down because most families now prefer to eat the local rice.
So if you ask me, President Buhari has done very well. All we need to do as Nigerians is to support him. These are things that had gone bad for many years under the PDP. So we need to support Buhari fully so that the country can regain its lost glory completely. Now, people know that you cannot just dip your hand into the government coffer and think that nothing will happen. Buhari therefore is the only one who can strengthen the gains achieved and do more.
How much of these dividends of democracy have come to the Igbo? Because the people of the South East still believe they have not got their due under the Buhari administration.
When it comes to the issue of infrastructure and dividends of democracy to the South East, let me start from Agriculture. I know that Buhari, through the Central Bank of Nigeria, has intervened in rice production in Ebonyi State. Ebonyi is one of the states in the South East that is very good in rice production. The Federal Government has rendered some assistance to Ebonyi in rice production. So now, most of the people, including myself, eat Abakaliki rice. Nobody cares about foreign rice any more.
On the issue of roads and other infrastructural facilities, just a few weeks ago, the Vice President told us that the Federal Government had released the sum of N2 billion for the Second Niger Bridge. Remember that this is the same bridge that we have had promises in the years past and nobody was able to do it until Buhari came in. On the issue of roads, if you go through the 2017 budget, you will see that most of the roads in the South East are captured in the budget. Let me give you examples from the one that cuts through my state, the Port Harcourt-Owerri Road, which was started by the Niger Delta Ministry, the Federal Government has promised to bring the contractor back to site to complete the road. Then there is the Aba-Owerri Road; work has commenced on that road. And the Enugu-Onitsha, Enugu-Aba roads are receiving attention from the Federal Government.
When a budget is made, it does not mean that within two or three days, work will commence. It has to go through due process before work will commence. But the assurance the South East should have is that President Buhari will not forget the zone. The President Buhari I know will treat every political zone as one single entity and one country. So, I don’t believe that the South East has not got the dividends of democracy under Buhari.
Even here in Imo State, we never knew that Imo as a state in the South East could have an international cargo airport. If you come to Imo today, the airport is almost 90 per cent completed. It was President Buhari who gave us Imo Cargo Airport. We never had any Airforce Command, but Buhari gave us one. The same with the Army Command School and so many other laudable projects. And it is the same thing in the other states of the South East. So, our people should support President Buhari to be part of the moving train.
APC has been ruling Imo State in the last six years, but it appears the Imo people are not happy. Do you think that the governor, Owelle Rochas Okorocha, has done well in the state?
When you say that people are not happy, I wonder the people who are not happy. Are we talking of many families whose children are enjoying free education from primary to the university level and in the polytechnics and colleges of education? Are we talking about the roads? Are we talking about the hospitals, other infrastructural developments and other things that have come to Imo through Owelle Rochas Okorocha?
I think when a few individuals and those who deep their hands into government coffers, who feed fat on government, who do not have any other job apart from politics make noise because they have access to the press, you yourself can go to the streets of Imo and tell the ordinary people, like Keke riders or market women, that Owelle Rochas Okorocha is not working, and they will tell you that you are a new comer to Imo State. People are happy. Everybody who lives in Imo State is happy with Owelle Rochas Okorocha except those Abuja or Lagos-based politicians or those who are based abroad who never find time to come back home.
Today, Imo State is one of the fastest growing states in Nigeria. Owelle Rochas Okorocha has done very well. Is it the free education, the eight-lane roads, the hospitals, the markets or the new taxi scheme? If you count the projects the governor has done in Imo State, they are more than 1,000. He has achieved what the PDP government could not achieve in 15 years.
So, why is it that controversies are always surrounding Imo, from demolition of structures to building roads to the demolition of the controversial Eke Ukwu Owerri and the erection of the statue of the South African President, Jacob Zuma?
To make an omelet, you have to break an egg. And for you to get the yoke, you must break an egg. No leader in any part of this world would allow himself to fail. And to succeed as a leader, you must take the bull by the horn. If you are a leader and you depend on sentiments or what people would say, you will never achieve anything. Owelle Rochas Okorocha is the man who has taken the bull by the horn.
Let me start with the issue of road dualisation. Today, people are happy that we have eight-lane roads in Imo State. It can only take a governor with a vision, a governor with a strong mind to clear the shanties on the roads and make Imo roads eight lanes. Before now, Imo State capital was like a mini-local government where the only roads you could pass through were either Douglas Road, Wethdral Road or Bank Road. But today, we have the First, Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth Inland roads connecting the new and old Owerri. We also have the Akachi Road. It takes a man of courage to achieve that.
And let me correct an erroneous impression; the structures demolished were only illegal structures. There was no building built on the right place that was demolished except that person had encroached on the road or government lane. So, the demolition was carried out in the right direction, and those demolitions were mainly on shanties which gave way to the eight-lane roads.
On the issue of President Zuma, I think people misunderstood the coming of President Zuma, the statue and the rest of it. Owelle Rochas Okorocha did not bring President Zuma to Imo State for a jamboree. What Okorocha brought was South African economy. Some people do not know the importance of a sitting president visiting a state, not a country. By the coming of the South African President, Imo businessmen can now travel to South Africa and do business there based on our relationship with President Zuma. The President Zuma Foundation is working hand in hand with the Rochas Foundation College. Most of our children from Imo State who want to study in the universities in South Africa from the Rochas Foundation College can now go to South Africa easily to study. The South African cargo plane will land in Imo State very soon because the South African Airline has now signed an agreement with the Imo State Government so that they can be part of this Imo Cargo Airport when it becomes functional.
But some people don’t see all these. What they see is the visit of President Zuma. And when you talk of having the statue of President Zuma, it take a wise man who knows how to get something to act fast. There is this saying that when you want to catch a butterfly, you also fly and dance like a butterfly. For Christ sake, South Africa is not a small country. For you to get something from South Africa, you need to lure them into the state. So what Governor Okorocha did was to simply bring South Africa into Imo State, so that when Imo people go to South Africa they are warmly received there. So I believe that by that singular act, Okorocha has taken Imo State to the next level of business opportunities.
Remember that the President of Ghana also visited Imo State and stayed for two days. The Prime Minister of Zambezi came to Imo State and stayed for two days too. I have not seen in the history of the Federal Republic of Nigeria where a president will move straight to a state on a private visit. I think I give it to him; he is a man with good vision and heart. It will take only my governor, Owelle Rochas Okorocha, to do this.
But most Imo people believe that it was not wise to use a whopping N520 million to erect the statue of a foreign president. The money, they say, could be used to pay teachers and pensioners in the state. How do you react to that?
I laugh at the people who say this. So, looking at a shrewd administrator and businessman like Owelle Rochas Okorocha, you think he can spend N500 million on a statue? This is laughable because I know my governor very well. This is a governor who, for him to bring out N100,000 for a project, he must first go to the place to see it. We are talking about Rochas, not about somebody who is used to swinging money around. Rochas is very prudent with money. Rochas would rather say let me go and stand there so that you can give me the N500 million and I use the money to build more roads and schools. By merely looking at the statue, you can guess how much it is worth. You can get an artist and ask him how much it takes to erect that kind of statue.
There are other statues standing next to that of Zuma. When is the governor going to unveil them?
I think on the day they will come for their merit awards. In Imo State, we are giving the highest awards to some of those people. Like Dr Alex Ekwueme got his own and his statue is there. The President of Ghana received his own, so his own statue is there. Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe’s statue is there. His is a posthumous award which we are going to give to his family.
What we want to do is to create a space in Imo State where the entire country or world can come to read history about these people. Not only that, we also have the hall of fame for them. When you enter the hall of fame, you can read everything about Dr Alex Ekwueme, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, the present president of Ghana, President Zuma and others. So, it is not just about erecting a statue but what we are achieving with it; the end result. So, there is wisdom in what His Excellency is doing.
Governor Okorocha is servicing out his tenure in 2019, but rumour has it that he is preparing you to take over from him. How true is this?
People will always say that he is preparing one person or the other. As far as I am concerned, Owelle Rochas Okorocha is the governor of Imo State until His Excellency makes known who he wants to support. And as you know, he is a man that is full of wisdom, so he is not going to handpick somebody by saying you come and be governor. It is going to be a democratic process where his own people will say, ‘Your Excellency, this is the person we want to replace you.’
So, many people don’t know him very well. They think that he is that kind of person that will just handpick somebody and impose him on the people. That is not the Owelle. My governor will first of all seek the opinion of the people, especially the party members and Imolites to know who they want to be their next governor. When this is done, we will now know whether it is me or any other person. For now, I don’t think the governor has made his mind known to anybody on this. We are still working for Governor Rochas Okorocha and Imo State.
