As the debate on whether President Muhammadu Buhari should seek re-election continues, Imo State Chief of Staff and chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Ugwumba Uche Nwosu, spoke with reporters in Lagos on the importance of a second term for the president, the succession battle in the Southeast state and why Asiwaju Bola Tinubu is the best party leader to reconcile aggrieved APC members. PAUL UKPABIO was there.
Are you of the opinion that the President should run again?
I think that most people tend to forget that one’s destiny is not in another’s hand. Your destiny depends on what God says you will become. President Muhammadu Buhari is qualified, very much ready and eager to continue to be the president of Nigeria in 2019. So, I don’t see the reason why somebody will make a remark and it will be binding on the person the remark was made about. I don’t see any reason President Buhari should not contest election in 2019. As I had said in previous interviews, there is no president in the history of the Federal Republic of Nigeria that has fought corruption to bring back the image and integrity of the country. Most people might say that they are not seeing physically what the President is doing; these people should know that it took the PDP 15 years to destroy this nation and only four years will not be enough for President Buhari to do so.
The president has begun the process of putting things in order. But it will take him some time. It is like pouring a cup of sand into a bag of rice; it will take time to sieve the rice from the sand. So, for those of us who are ardent supporters of President Buhari, we don’t see any reason he should not contest the 2019 election. For me, I will support President Buhari. And my governor, Owelle Rochas Okorocha, also believes in him. President Buhari, at this time in the country, is the man we need to strengthen this platform so that the man that will be coming after him in 2023 as president will stand on a solid foundation and this country will continue to move forward.
Buhari is eminently qualified to run again, and his destiny is in the hand of God, not any man. He is still the best that the country and our great party, the APC, needs in 2019. The president should run again and we will support him.
But, considering that many Nigerians are hungry and angry, do you think Nigerians will still come out to support the President and your party like they did in 2015?
You see when someone makes a remark and you generalise it to mean the whole of Nigeria, I don’t think it is right. When you say hunger, who brought us to this point? Who brought hunger to Nigeria? Was it President Muhammadu Buhari? No, it was the PDP. I don’t know if you have forgotten that a single individual in this country was caught with billions of naira, dollar and pounds. Was it President Buhari that took these monies outside the country? Was it President Buhari that hid these monies inside his house? No. These are the people that destroyed this country before President Buhari came in.
Today, many things are changing for the better. For instance, we were not producing rice before, but today, we are producing rice in so many states of the federation. The other time, people were crying about recession; do we still have recession now? No. Recession is over. So, it will take some little time for President Buhari to stabilise the country. I have no fear that this country will be better again, because it took 15 years for the party called PDP to destroy it, and Buhari is working tirelessly to fix it back. So, I can bet you that President Buhari will again win convincingly in the 2019 presidential election. You can see this from some of the places he has visited recently in the North and the mammoth crowd that came out to receive him. So, Buhari is not somebody you can just make a remark about in the newspaper on the radio or the TV and think that is the way to go. Nigerian politics has changed. The people want somebody who will remember that they are there, and not somebody who will just be busy on the radio and TV blowing grammar.
When you look at President Buhari, you will see that Buharism is running in him. So, it takes a man of integrity like the president for people to believe in him. He has high integrity because he is not corrupt. So, let us wait till 2019. But I can tell you straight away that President Buhari is winning in a landslide in 2019. There is no doubt about that.
President Buhari recently appointed Asiwaju Bola Tinubu as the chairman of the APC Reconciliatory Committee. But many Nigerians believe it is a difficult task, going by the number of feuds in your party. Do you think that Tinubu can deliver on this assignment?
I have no doubt that His Excellency Senator Bola Tinubu will handle this assignment very well. You know he is one of the leaders of our party, and he is widely respected in the country. He is a man that knows how to settle problems, especially when it comes to issues of political parties. I have no doubt in my mind that President Buhari made the right choice in choosing Asiwaju Tinubu for this very important assignment. He has the capacity to bring together again the different factions in states like Kano and Rivers, among others. So I don’t have any problem in His Excellency, the former governor of Lagos State, Bola Tinubu handling the assignment. In fact, this is what our party needs at this point in time. It is what is needed in any political party, particularly when the political party is in power.
It is normal for parties to have internal quarrels, but the good thing is to settle them and move ahead. Asiwaju (Tinubu) will do the job very well, and we believe that his team will at the end of the day bring back every member to one family, the APC.
Some people believe that Tinubu will have a difficult task when he comes to Imo trying to reconcile the state’s Abuja politicians who are not in good terms with those that are based the state and who have the backing of Governor Okorocha…
I don’t think that we have any faction in Imo State. We have one political family and that is the APC, which Owelle Rochas Okorocha is the leader. So, if there is any other Abuja APC or whatever, I don’t know about that. Remember that you don’t win an election in Abuja; you win an election in the state. If you are an APC leader in Abuja, then you better vie for election there. There is no faction in APC in Imo State. We have one family. So, Imo State is not one of the states that Senator Bola Tinubu will come to, because we don’t have any problem in the state.
Recently, Governor Okorocha announced that he would support the Commissioner for Information, Prof Nnamdi Obiaraeri, for the Okigwe Senatorial seat instead of the incumbent Senator Benjamin Uwajumogu, and this is raising some dust. Is this not a part of the feuds Senator Tinubu will have to settle?
No, nobody has driven Senator Uwajumogu away from the party. He is the senator representing the Okigwe zone, but the governor has the right to say, ‘this is the person I want to support.’ But that does not mean that any other person from that zone will not choose who he or she will support. It is a democracy. Everyone has the right to support a candidate of his choice like the governor did. Of course, if there are 600,000 persons in Okigwe zone and 400,000 say it is Ben Uwajumogu, the governor will not change it. And if they say it is this particular person, nobody will change it. So, the governor has the right to say this is the person I want to support, like other people would also do.
But all of us in the APC, when we get to the party’s primary, whoever wins the primary will represent the party. The governor has only said this is the person I think can represent this senatorial zone very well. There may be other people too who may think that Ben will represent them very well. So, when they get to the field, whoever wins will take the day. I don’t think this is a problem. You will discover that apart from the person the governor said he would support, at the end of the day, you may see up to 20 to 30 other persons running for the same position in the zone.
The Rescue Mission programme of the governor will be coming to an end by next year. Do you think that the budget presented by Governor Okorocha for this year would effectively complete this programme?
Very well. We believe that by May 2019, His Excellency will be handing over to the next governor completed projects which he started in 2011 to 2019. So we don’t have any doubt in our mind that His Excellency will finish the projects he has started. He will be handing over clean, completed projects to anybody that will come in as the next governor of Imo State.
What is your next political destination in the state? Is it the governorship?
Many people have asked me this question and I have seen a lot of endorsements coming from the APC, from the youths, from women, from different groups. I want to appreciate and thank each and every one of them for indicating their interests and urging me to come out to run for the 2019 governorship election in Imo State. I want to believe that this is coming from their hearts and because of the love they have for me. Year 2019 is fast approaching, but for now, we have a governor. By 2019, I will know where God will take me to. But for now, His Excellency Owelle Rochas Okorocha is still our governor, and I have also told him that in a short time, I will come out and make my intention known to everybody.
Meanwhile, I have to give it to the youths of Imo State. Left for them, they would have opened my mouth and make the declaration on my behalf. But I want to assure them that I will not disappoint or let them down. At the right time and very soon, I will make it known to everybody. It is not something to fear or worry about. Where we are going to, God has already destined it and I don’t think that any man can change it. What God has made, nobody can unmake it. So, 2019 will be 2019.
But, if the APC gives you its ticket, many in Imo think this will run against the Imo Charter of Equity, particularly as the Orlu zone has held power already for 16 years through Achike Udenwa and Rochas Okorocha. Do you think the Okigwe and Owerri zones will allow another eight years of the Orlu zone through your candidacy?
When you say zone, I wonder what zone you are talking about. And when you say equity, I wonder also what you mean by equity. You know the greatest problem in this country is this issue of zoning. And when you talk about zoning, my own federal constituency, my own local government area has never produced the governor of this state. Have we produced the governor of the state? Has the governorship been zoned to my local government area? Has it been zoned to my federal constituency? Has it been zoned to the other federal constituencies like Ngor Okpalla, Okigwe, Ihitte Uboma and others? This is the question we should be asking ourselves.
