Former Senate President Ameh Ebute spoke with reporters in Lagos on the Jonathan Administration, the North’s agitation for power shift, Rivers State crisis and other issues. EMMANUEL OLADESU was there.
You have been silent in the polity for a while, but a lot of people expect to hear from you as a statesman. What has been happening?
I am part of an organisation called the Congress for Equality and Change and I was participating in the argument about zoning before the 2011 elections. I am a legal practitioner by profession and I have devoted time to legal practice. In 2010, I was on the pages of the newspapers. So it is not true that I have been quiet all along.
You supported President Goodluck Jonathan in 2011. Are you disappointed with his performance, now that a lot of people are disgruntled with the administration?
As a lawyer, I need evidence from you that a lot of people are disgruntled with the administration. The government has just being in office for just two years. If at the end of the third year nothing happens, then, you can
What is the evidence that President Jonathan has performed?
Well, let me argue that President Goodluck Jonathan has introduced a new era of democracy in Nigerian politics; the era of unlimited tolerance, which we have never witnessed before. You can insult him, you can say whatever you want to say and I think that is democracy and that is why we have not gotten so many people, especially members of your profession in detention.
Secondly, most of the projects that the administration has embarked upon are still at the infancy stage and I will take them one after the other. You go to electricity supply. Just like the way Obasanjo succeeded in the communication industry, Jonathan is succeeding in the electricity supply industry. He is bent on privatizing the electricity industry so that, in a year or two, it will become as efficient as any industry in the developed countries of the world.
Thirdly, the physical infrastructure. You must have noticed the face lift at most of our airports in the country. Go to Abuja, come to Lagos and go to other airports in the country, you will see that there is great change.
Four, the road construction that are going on are fantastic, for example the Lagos –Ibadan Express Way, the contracts have been given out, move to the South –East between Enugu and Port Harcourt is almost completed, then the East-West Road, from Port Harcourt to Warri is almost completed and then, there are quite a number of them the Minister for Works pointed er time.
You raised the issue of unlimited tolerance as one of the things President Jonathan has achieved. What about the face- off between him and Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi?
You will agree with me that the Presidency has denied over and over again that the President is not a party to the crisis in Rivers. Some people say he is behind what is happening in Rivers State but even then he has tolerated enough because ,if he is not a tolerant person, Ameachi will not be doing what he is doing today. He will not have the audacity to confront the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, if President Goodluck Jonathan is not the person that tolerates everything. If I were the President, Amaechi cannot go to the far that he has gone.
What is your reaction to the North’s agitation for power shift in 2015?
My advice to them is that they should wait, until President Goodluck Jonathan completes his second term. By divine providence, the zoning has automatically fallen on the Southsouth. God zoned the Presidency to the Southsouth. It is as a result of the unfortunate death of Alhaji Umaru Yar’ Adua that Goodluck Jonathan became the President. He contested again and won the Presidency.
So, the North, whose definition I am not too sure includes the Middle Belt, should wait, until the person whom God has given the Presidency completes his tenure and, as soon as he completes his second term, one can now argue that it should now come to the North and that North, should include all the zones in the North, not only the Northwest. We have other zones in the North, but some people are now arguing or defining the North as if it means only the Northwest.
Are you now saying that Prof. Ango Abdullahi is not speaking for North?
I am not a member of the Arewa Consultative Forum or Northern Elders’ Forum. Whether he is speaking for the members of the Arewa Consultative Forum or Arewa Elders Forum, it is left for Ango Abdullahi. I don’t know anything that is happening in those organisations. But I assure you that, apart from the members of the Arewa Consultative Forum and Northern Elder’s Forum, there are millions of Northerners that believe in the administration of Goodluck Jonathan. So, when one person representing a few people being funded by the governors and holding press conferences virtually every day; he is putting up his own ideas. You cannot say that the ideas are the thoughts of everybody within the North. So, I don’t know whether Ango Abdullahi is speaking on behalf of the people he has been speaking for I am not in the position to say that. He must be speaking for some people. I must agree that he is speaking for some people, but they are not the majority in that zone.
So, you don’t agree that the North is disenchanted?
But why should the North be disenchanted? We started in 1979 when President Shehu Shagari was the President for four years; he entered the second term when the military took over from him. The head of the military that took over from him was from the North, Buhari. Then, almost one year into the office, another Northerner, Ibrahim Babangida took over from Buhari and he was in office for eight years. That is about ten years, with Buhar’s tenure and then Abacha came.
What of Shonekan?
Shonekan was just an interim leader for a few months, but the person that had control, who took over from us was Abacha and Abacha was in office for five years; five plus ten is 15 years. Then ,Abacha died and the person who came to office as President was Abdulsalami Abubakar. He was in office for one year and nobody complained. Although that was military system of government, but nevertheless, the people that were the heads of the administration were all from the North. Then, there was no Boko Haram; nobody organised anything to destabilise this country. So, should the North be bitter now for the eight years President Goodluck Jonathan is trying to do? They should be patient enough. Nigerians were patient when these officials I mentioned to you were in office. Why shouldn’t they be patient when other persons are in office for only just four, five years now. Does that mean that the Presidency belongs to them?
You mentioned that there was no Boko Haram then. Are you saying it is part of the agitation for power shift?
You want to hear that from my mouth? Were you not in Nigeria when some people said they will make the country ungovernable for President Jonathan? Were you not in the country when some people said that, if President Jonathan won the election, they will make the country ungovernable if? Are you saying that Boko Haram is not an off shoot of the election that took place in 2011?
But the main argument in the North is that President Jonathan obstructed the zoning arrangement of the PDP by contesting in 2011
In 2010, when some people were trying to frighten Mr. President not to contest the 2011 election, my organization, the Congress for Equality and Change, argued in favour of the zoning policy of the party (PDP) and that the Presidency could go to any zone. You will agree with me that there is no clear definition of the word zoning that we have in the party between the South and North that we have six geo-political zones in this country.
And as far as I am concerned, once the Presidency goes to any of these zones, it is zoning and it is in complete compliance with the zoning policy of the PDP as contained in the PDP constitution. It doesn’t have to necessarily be between the South and North. So, the Southsouth is a geo-political zone and, once the Presidency goes there and the zone has not produced the President before, I think it is only fair and just we agree that it has complied with the zoning policy of the PDP. So, I still believe in the zoning policy of the PDP. Since I am a member of the PDP, I cannot disagree with the zoning policy. The only disagreement is that zoning must have a human face so that any zone that has not had it before should be allowed to produce the president.
Do you see Gen. Buhari as a leader of the North?
From the way the 2011 election votes were cast, I now agree that Gen. Buhari is a leader of his zone, that is, the Northwest zone. He is in full control of his Northwest zone politically.
What of your own area, the Northcentral?
No, no, he is not in control of the North Central?
You don’t see him championing the cause of your people?
Some of us in the Northcentral are now saying we do not fall within that definition of the North.
Your party, the PDP has been jumping from one crisis to the other. Don’t you see the agitation of the G5 governors breaking up the party?
I read recently that they have made 10 demands and one of them was that the national chairman should be removed. Their demands go contrary to the law, the Nigerian constitution, the Electoral Act and the party’s constitution. The national chairman was elected for four years under the PDP and you cannot remove him. If you remove him, he can go to court before the end of four years and he will be restored, thereby embarrassing the Presidency. So, I cannot imagine the five governors calling on the President to remove the national chairman. The President does not have the power to remove Bamanga Tukur. He can only be removed before the end of his fourth year in office, if he is guilty of any gross misconduct and he can only be removed by the national convention of the party, like the one that is coming up now; anybody can raise a motion of vote of no confidence on the chairman and, if it sails through, the chairman becomes automatically removed. But to say that the President should remove Tukur, who was elected for a four-year tenure according to the constitution of the party, is wrong. The constitution is enforceable in the court of law. Their call on the President beats my imagination. I believe they are just calling on the President to give him a bad name. How can the President remove a chairman that was legally elected for a fixed period?
The demand that they want to be leaders of the party at the state level; they are already leaders at the state level. They call the shots, but there is nowhere in the constitution of the party that the governor should be the leader of the party at the state level. It is the state chairman that should be the leader of the party at the state level. They are calling for this leadership so that they can continue to commit the atrocities that they have been committing, dividing the local government money into two, making sure that everybody that gets elected into the National Assembly and state assembly is their nominee.
So, I think that the problem we have in this country is mostly caused by the governors ganging up together in order to reduce the powers of the President. That is their intention.
