Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, is a fighter. After the powers-that-be in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) muscled him out of the gubernatorial ticket he had won fair and square, he battled through the courts to reclaim his prize. Now he’s engaged in the fight of his life battling foes who have thrown federal might at him. Head unbowed, he inveighs against unprecedented corruption, his differences with President Goodluck Jonathan, his wife and sundry matters in this interview with Festus Eriye and Femi Macaulay.
Do you have the powers to suspend local government chairmen?
Yes, the law. The law empowers me to suspend/dissolve a council. I was a speaker when that law was made. It is there in the local government law; I passed it as a speaker. Peter Odili had used it before as a governor. Two council chairmen were suspended under Peter Odili. You can even dissolve if he so desire. As a former speaker, one of the ways I instilled discipline to be able to get the control of the house. I got the house to pass a rule: if you came late, you pay us N1500, if you are absent you pay N3000. Magnus (Abe) was the first, by the time he looked at his salary we had taken away 90, 000, he was bitter and said from today henceforth I would be here, anybody that comes late we must implement this law. Again, it is to instill discipline because what we used to see that time is that you come to the house, there won’t be more than 10 to 15 members. Or if they come before 12 they had disappeared. But once that rule was in place and peoples salaries were being tampered with, you see members would sit from 8’o clock till we close. I felt that is another way to discipline and control this inter-government. So I said gentlemen, what do we do to control latecomers and absentees? I don’t see anything wrong in that. The only thing that I see wrong is that now that I am governor it is the law. I have been asking myself that question; should a governor possess the power to dissolve a democratic institution? Shouldn’t you as a governor go and amend that law and take away the power of the governor to suspend and to dissolve a democratically elected…because it took people pain to go and chose who they will elect as chairman then one man sits in his office and dissolves the council or suspends. Even if you don’t want to do that, why not make it more stringent for the governor to dissolve or to suspend. Those were personal questions I asked myself, not the law. The law simply empowers the governor to dissolve or to suspend.
Tied to what you have just said, as part of federalism, how would you…
(Cuts in) Do you have federalism here? Do you have federalism where you don’t have state police? Where the president can order the police to go after a governor? We don’t have federalism in Nigeria.
So how do you describe what we are running?
It looks more like a unitary government and very authoritarian. The governors are like commissioner or ministers.
But it is informed by a so-called federal constitution?
Are they practicing the federal constitution? Even if we assume the constitution is federal? First, the constitution is not federal enough, even if it is, are they practicing that?
The way you are painting the governors, it’s like they are victims. But a couple of months ago, people were saying that the governors were running the country, dictating to the president. Don’t you agree that the governors were becoming too powerful?
What power is that? Have we ever interfered in the affairs of the governance of the country? We have a meeting in Sokoto for Friday and Saturday, we would look at the ills of the country and go public. When we go public then E. K. Clark will say we are too powerful. What power is that? We are a mere pressure group. The difference between we and you people… okay not the press because press has been wonderful to the country. I am sure if they annihilate you then country will go completely. I am not sure the governors are as strong as the press. (General laughter)
I’m sure that was meant as a joke.
No. It’s true. Most governors don’t want to see in their names in the paper in the negative manner. So even amongst us, a governor can yab his fellow governor and nothing will happen, but once you see in the paper ‘Amaechi steals 2 trillion’, me I will go for my lawyer. I don’t know how other people will react. In fact there is one my lawyer has been….one magazine in Abuja published ‘How governor Amaechi looted 3. something trillion.’ I gave it to my lawyer and he said ‘abeg leave me. It’s not everything you take up.’ I wanted to go to court; my lawyer said it’s a waste of time to after that kind of man. I am just giving you examples to show how powerful the press can be. In comparison to what the governors do, it’s a matter of explaining what is going on in the country and saying we don’t agree. You won’t believe when the oil subsidy started, when we saw that it was 1.7 trillion naira we said we won’t collect out monthly allocation until the president stops the collection of the oil subsidy. For 3-4 months we refused to collect our monthly allocation. We are saving the country. Don’t forget that the current governors are patriotic. I am sure if we did not start the protests, if we had exceeded the 2.3 trillion, the stealing would have possibly exploded. What has happened? Nothing! Those who stole it said nothing will happen that the reason is that they didn’t steal it, that those who are in government stole it – that they are just conduits by which the money was taken from the country. So we are just like an NGO.
You have been governor for six years now, what are the enduring lessons you have learnt in personal terms and in terms of Nigeria and its challenges?
We are looking for a leader. The different leaders who have led the country have made their own contribution and if you ask me who I admire most among them: Obasanjo and Babangida, then Abdusalami as a gentleman. Don’t forget he had few months in office. I think if God had let Yar’Adua spend some time on earth, he probably would have been one of the wonderful presidents we would have had but he had health challenges. So you look at them they made their own contribution but we are still looking for a Nigerian leader. Not one whose his decisions would be coloured by extraneous factors; somebody who would come out and say ‘I want to change the country.’ So it starts with: do we need a federation, a confederation or unitary system of government? And you ask and they have to discuss. Just like this national conference… have you heard me doing something about it? For me it is a waste of time.
You dismissed it?
Of course I did. I said if they are serious about national conference, let’s do a sovereign one. Let’s surrender our sovereignty; I am ready to surrender my tomorrow.
Some people would be shocked to hear you say that among Nigeria’s past leaders you admire Obasanjo…
Of course I do. He has a God complex. What I mean by God complex is the Messianic complex. He thinks he wants to save the country.
And you are interpreting that in positive terms?
Yes. He has both his positive and negative sides. Because of that God complex he may go to the extreme. Look, ‘this country is going bad, I want to save it so he has that Messianic tendencies. He is patriotic to the extent but that he wants to save the country. I have not stayed close to President Obasanjo to interpret him very well but I want to assume that in a bid to save the country, there are times he would not want to take in as many opinions as possible. He would go by his own position which is good but it has also its own negativity … but he has that messianic tendency. He wants to do all he can do to save the country. I have bought a lot of books about him that I am yet to read. That’s why I am hoping that I will leave government quickly so I can read all I want to read. But reading him, you see him believing that he is in a position to change things, to make things progress. He doesn’t want to divide the country, he wants a country that is united, but one which economy is growing. So he has that God complex. Then Babangida: very suave, very intelligent, a true politician that ordinarily he shouldn’t be a military head of state. You can attribute the developments in Abuja to Babangida. Just like Obasanjo’s first tenure as head of state, you saw the kind of developments he put in place as head of state. More progressive when he was the head of state than when he was the president, maybe he encountered more challenges as president because by then the country wasn’t as bad as it is now so you can see that he is grappling with more things than he would have grappled as head of state. But there was a lot of development when he was there. He is a man that you admire his strength of decision making. I poked that joke when I saw him in Abeokuta ‘like your anticipatory approval.’ (General laughter) That’s how he built that stadium; maybe he felt ‘look if I go to the National Assembly.’As far as he is concerned, he had made up his mind he wants to build a stadium for the country and he goes for it. So he went ahead and when the national assembly discovered it he says anticipatory approval. How did you know they were going to approve? (Laughter).
When the APC came to Port Harcourt to woo you, you said you were going to consult President Jonathan. Are you going to ask him for permission to defect?
No, not permission.
Then what consultation when you are clearly…
If I go to the president, I am going to start going round people in River State and say see the situation of things in Rivers State and the country. In PDP the pressure is on to move on to APC, what is your view? I will get those views and go to the president. Don’t forget, you will say president is South-south but he grew up in Port Harcourt. ‘Mr President this is the Port Harcourt you grew up in, this is the opinion of our leaders’. And I will call them one after the other and say to him this leader this, this leader said that. There is a leader who have said my friend I have no business seeing you, after all I have already met a leader who had told me that. There is a leader who have told me, ‘have you thought it through.’ There is leader who has told me ‘how does it affect the South-South presidency?’ There are questions to ask. When you do that, you aggregate the views and put it before the president let him put his opinion.
Why do you need that process?
Because you can’t go without your people. Have you ever seen a governor that governs himself?
If he says don’t go, will you stay?
No he has to look at the majority of the opinion.
You know how vicious this political environment is and what has happened in the course of the new PDP fight. If in 2015, President Jonathan and the PDP win reelection and you are no longer in power, are you afraid of what will happen to you?
Well that’s a possibility but am not more afraid for myself than I will be afraid for the country. I’m more worried for the country than myself. For instance, if I leave the country and I will go and study. What will President Goodluck Jonathan do if I’m studying?
Would that be exile?
Which exile? I can come home and face the police. I have my lawyers waiting. For me, I fear for the country because if the stealing in the first tenure is like this, the stealing in the second tenure will quadruple to such a point that there will be nothing to steal anymore. I tell people that the way the country is going, we may end up impoverishing the poor in such a way that there would not even be food at the refuse dump and they will begin to eat human beings. And guess who they will eat? The rich! The poor man’s body will become very skeletal.
What are the chances of success with the PDP fence mending? Where does your heart truly belong?
My heart belongs to everywhere. I don’t know about the fence mending in PDP. We are still waiting for the president but I don’t know how far it would go because the issues are complex, the issues of good governance. These G7 governors, people must praise us… we can actually keep quiet and enrich ourselves and go in 2015. I will go with my children and my wife quietly to the US. The president won’t look for me because I have been a good boy. Or we make the trouble to save the country. Once we are good boys to the president is anybody going to fight us? You can make as much noise as you want to make after we have left office so bloody what? But at least we are good boys to the president who will not allow us to be prosecuted when we leave office. But the G7 governors in particular are patriotic enough that they are asking questions. When we go to that meeting, we could have said okay Mr. President we agree with you, give us minister for oil, minister for finance, etc and they say go and give names. We give you names and we’ll be like ‘this is my own share of whatever they give you in Abuja’ and they would bring. We could have done that and this meeting would have been…. You know everybody has always said in PDP, there is no time we did not pass through this kind of crises, we have always reconciled and things would move on. They were not expecting it to last for more than one month; it lasted for nearly a year. It started from January this year, before two or three months PDP would have reconciled. It depends on the president, for every day we have refused to reconcile, it becomes more complex. The president spoke with Niger governor, the next day they suspended Oyinlola and all that so it has worsened and made these issues more complex. So when will this reconciliation take place? I have a friend who used to tell me ‘Amaechi keep quiet! The president will make another mistake very soon’ and then when you wake up, another mistake has been made.
