Senator Chris Ngige, former governor of Anambra State, and senator representing Anambra Central Zone in this interview with reporters in Awka speaks on the governorship election in Osun, 2015 General Elections and Igbo presidency, pointing out that All Progressive Congress (APC) will give Ndigbo the platform they have craved for in the country. Nwanosike Onu was there.
In the last governorship election in Osun State, your party, APC, won. What is your impression of the election?
My party won the election convincingly. We defeated our major opponent, who is the candidate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with a wide margin. He scored about 292,000 votes while our candidate scored 394,000 and won overwhelmingly in 23 local governments. Therefore, one would say that because we won, we would not say that that election had pitfalls. Two important things there are that, first and foremost, the state was over militarised and secondly, our strong supporters, the key people who anchored our elections in their local governments were hounded. If you go to Ede North, Senator Adeleke, who was former governor, was hounded.
They arrested our spokesperson, Alhaji Lai and arrested one other technical person working with us who is an Assistant to former governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Mr. Sunday Dare.
They arrested them for no just cause and without reason. So, even though Osun people rose up in defence of their votes, in defence of their sovereignty, one would not say that there wasn’t intimidation in Osun State.
There was a mighty and gargantuan show of force aimed at cowing and intimidating the people because in the main, the people of Osun State were ACN supporters and sympathizers. So, I am telling you on good authority that if we remove those elements of intimidation, our candidate would have gotten double the votes that he got, especially in his area; Ijesha, Ilesha and even in Ebe. And these are the populous areas – Osogbo, Ijesha, Ife and Ede. But if you go to Ife, the PDP candidate had a field day. They allowed his people to come. They allowed them to mix freely with the polling clerks and everybody and you can see the result that they produced from there. So, that result from Ife is a rigged result. It is a rigged result. I mean the result of Ife, the three local governments of Ife.
How would you assess the logistics for the election in Osun compared to what happened in Anambra?
In terms of logistics planning, INEC did better than they did in Anambra. Anambra was a colossal failure for INEC in terms of logistics. In terms of staff deployment, personnel deployment for the Anambra election, INEC did not even get pass mark. And in terms of corruption of the electoral process in the Anambra elections, which means colluding with one political party against the others, which means the Resident Electoral Commissioner deploying APGA people as ad-hoc staff, which also means and connotes and entails disenfranchisement of voters in areas where my party in particular, All Progressives Congress, was strong, in areas of Idemili North, Idemili South, parts of Ogbaru, especially Okpoko, parts of Awka South, especially areas where previous results show that the former ACN had been able to do wonderfully well like Government House area, GRA, St Thomas Aquinas, Esther Obiakor booths, all those areas were starved of electoral materials, such that voting could not take place in those places. And then I had to score zero and for them also to score zero. But in the final analysis, our party was the biggest loser. So, compared side by side with what we saw in Osun, where the people were very resolute and were ready to die and confront any security men, I will say that INEC had been pressurized to improve. This improvement, I don’t know whether they can carry it on to 2015.
We will watch and see what they will do in the bye-election of Adamawa which is coming up in the next two months because Adamawa, as you all know, is an APC -friendly state.
Why did you say so?
It is our stronghold. It is an APC state. So, I use this opportunity to congratulate our brother, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola.
You talked about militarisation in Osun. Would you say this may have contributed to the loss of Ekiti because APC didn’t envision the large presence of security men and therefore lost as a result?
Yes, partly, it was one of the major reasons. We were prepared for this over militarisation. I am a member of the National Election Committee of APC and we visited Osun State twice before the election to assess the situation on ground. And in our last visit, the militarisation has started. So, we did indoctrination and sensitisation of our party members, to the extent that we had a leadership structure in every booth that had alternates. If you arrest one person, there is another person to take over. If you arrest that person that has taken over, there is another person to take over. We did that structure, expecting what had happened and they played that game. And you know that in military warfare, if you know the strength of your enemy, and know the war tactics that he uses, you can be able to confront him, to stop him on his track. So, Osun people were not afraid of all the guns and the hooded and masked people that they saw because we told them that they were coming. But my take again on this is that in the general election, it will not be solitary election. Election will be taking place in all the states of the federation at the same time.
So, where do you get this number of soldiers or number of police and State Security operatives to pump into one state? May be they can earmark some few states and do the over militarisation there but then, we will again apply our Osun strategy in dealing with such situation. My worry about 2015 is that INEC will not then be in a position to dispense with Resident Electoral Commissioners. Jega will not be able to dispense with them-the commissioners that are corrupt or deemed corrupt or who have compromised themselves with politicians. In Osun, PDP wrote a petition and did press conference and the man was transferred, Akeju and a new person was brought. In Anambra State, the man there had been there before the last general election, conducted general elections, conducted governorship election and conducted bye-elections and everything and he is angling to stay there again and do the next general elections. We are saying no to that. Resident Electoral Commissioner in Anambra, Onukaogu should leave.
We know you are now in the Supreme Court, challenging what happened in Anambra. Irrespective of that, what is your assessment of Governor Willie Obiano’s administration so far?
Well, I won’t be able to do a good assessment for you for two reasons: First, the man who is on the saddle is about 130 days in office. 100 days is about three months. It is not enough for anybody to settle down and do something tangible as such, more so when the person has not been in government. For now, he says the major thing he is doing is security. I won’t also assess him by the number of various Hilux pickups donated to the Nigerian police or given to vigilante services in the state. I will assess him when the results start coming out. For now, kidnapping is still going on. For now, armed robbery is still going on. So, I will be unfair if I start assessing him now. May be I will do that after his one year in office. And I am in court. If I also start doing anything now, I will be a jaundiced assessor. Any assessment that I make, will be jaundiced. And I am jaundiced in my view because I think that he didn’t get in there the proper way. I have nothing against his person. He is an amiable person. And those who dealt with him know him and say he is an honest person. They also say he is frank like me. He talks straight. I don’t do double speak. I don’t do double talk. So, I don’t want to be unfair to him now.
2015 general election is fast approaching, are you contesting for any office?
2015 is February/March election and your question is good but if you calculate now, you can see it is about seven months away. And six/seven months away is a lot of time in politics. A lot of things can change. But we learnt party primaries will hold in October. Primaries start in October. My party will do their presidential primaries first. We are starting with presidential and from there we move to other primaries. Positions that are there to be contested are many. President-I am qualified to be President. I can contest it. It doesn’t then make it an Anambra election. There is also Senate or National Assembly. Well, National Assembly, but I cannot be a Senator and then go back to House of Representatives.
That again is a seat that is available to be contested for. But more importantly, I am in the court challenging the last governorship election of November 16. We have just finished at the Court of Appeal. This week, our lawyers have submitted their papers to the Supreme Court and if you look here, you will see my own copy. They just delivered them today. If the Supreme Court says that the election in Anambra State was not right and agrees with APC and PDP that there were electoral flaws that made for non substantial compliance by INEC with the Electoral laws in declaring Governor Willie Obiano as the Governor of the State, and ordering a re-run, then we will go for a re-run to repeat election. If they also finds that Mr. Willie Obiano did multiple registration in two places and also did a transfer of his old registration in Lagos State which is third registration, and they concur with us and agree with us that he placed two voters cards which to all intents and purposes are voting certificates, voters ID certificates, and extrapolates from there to affidavit he swore in CF001, that we are not presenting any forged certificates because that is what we asked, if they extrapolates into that and agree with our counsels that these voters cards are voters certificates, voters identification certificates, it then means that one of them was forged. And if it is forged, it has contravened information given in form CF001 because people mistake that area of forged certificate to mean only academic certificates from institutions whereas a certificate is anything that certifies you as Mr. A or Mr. B. of this particular identity. And that is what also we have. It is a voter’s card because it has a VIN number. It identifies you with a voter’s identification number called VIN number. It identifies you with an address. It identifies you with your trade or business. It identifies you with your photographs, everything.
So, it is a certificate. So, if they agree with us, they will disqualify Willie Obiano as prayed and then order for fresh election. But if they don’t do that, we leave them to God. We leave the whole matter to God for final judgment and in which case if they agree with us like I said, we will re-run the election. And I will be qualified to run. If it were a question of whether I choose to run or I don’t choose to run. It depends on my party.
From the grapevine, we learnt the Vice Presidential candidate of APC has been reserved for you. Is this true?
Where did this grape come from and where did the vine come from? In which vineyard is this vine coming from?
But we thought it has been zoned?
We have not zoned any position of our party to any zone. We have not. As a matter of fact, organs of our party are now being put in place. After our last convention, what we now have is state, local government and ward executive. But we are going to put in place, our booth executives in the respective states. At the national, what we put in place at the Eagle Square Convention of 12 and 13 June is our working committee. By next week hopefully, according to the timetable drawn up by our National Chairman, we will inaugurate our full NEC, which encompasses all officers in the working committee, their deputies, two Senators per zone, three House of Representatives members per zone, zonal officers of the cadre of youth leaders, women leaders, even the zonal chairman who is also a member of the working committee, zonal secretary and zonal treasurer. These are members of the full NEC and our governors who are sovereign in their respective states. After these, we are also putting our Board of Trustees. Nominations are ongoing now as we speak and members of the national caucus. Luckily, I am a member of all these organs of our party by my being the only Senator from the South-East. I am automatically a member of the NEC of our party.
I am a former governor. I am automatically a member of the national caucus and the Board of Trustees of our party. So, there will be no decision taken in all these places that I will not be privy to. So, as far as I know, we have not zoned any office. The only zoning that we did was for party offices. In the next few weeks, we will meet as elders of the party and fashion out what we are going to do about our presidential candidate because we don’t have time anymore.
There is no time. As we sit here, my very good friend, President Jonathan is campaigning every day. In all the media, you will see various groups, transformation agenda, gift, Jonathan for President, over our dead body, if Jonathan doesn’t become President, we shall die, etc. These organisations are there and campaigning. You can’t also stop them because they have not said vote for Jonathan. They are only showing that he did this work, he did that work. But luckily enough our brother in Imo State is also showing his own work now. And when Mandela’s photograph and Obama’s own come out, his own comes out too. So, we as a party, we have realised that we don’t have time. In the next few weeks, it will be run, run, run for us.
There are speculations that President Jonathan, who is your very good friend, has been prevailing on you to join PDP to run for Senate in 2015. Is this true?
There is no law that for two persons to be friends forever or continue to maintain their mutuality, they must belong to the same political party. As a matter of fact, you can lose your friend when you go into the same political party. So, to me, our different political parties don’t matter. What matters to me is good governance.
What is your opinion about the impeachments going on in the country now, especially the ones affecting your party the APC in Nasawara and Adamawa?
Well, the impeachments have gone down now. As you can see, the impeachment in Nasarawa has fallen like pack of cards. The panel has dismissed the allegations. When the House of Assembly reconvenes, they will get their report and the constitution is clear. When you get such a report, the whole processes have died. You cannot do anything about it anymore. In Adamawa, yes, that one was successful. But the good thing about Adamawa is that we are going for a new election, brand new election and we have put in place, processes for our primaries, to get a solid candidate that will win back the state for us. Do not forget that that state was won by us under ACN when Nyako was PDP. So that our ACN structure that delivered that state to Gundiri is still there. So, we are raving up that structure and we rave that structure, with Atiku Abubakar as the anchor man there, and then we will take over that state in an election. We will go there just like we went to Osun and make sure that our people are not intimidated again and we shall win the election and get back that state.
In the country, especially in the South East here, we see people calling APC all kinds of names. Some people call it a northern party, others call it Yoruba party. How are you going to convince Ndigbo to vote for APC with all these name tags?
Some people call it northern party, some people call it Yoruba party, so why is it that the third leg of the tripod in Nigeria, in terms of major tribes in the nation, is not finding that party attractive to go and put their leg there? It then means that the political strategists in that region are not thinking. But some of us who are empirical and analytical, in whatever we do, in line with my principle of not deceiving myself, we decided to go and form that third leg for our people. Nobody knows tomorrow. We are not soothsayers but I know that we have a leg in PDP, therefore why should we not have a leg in the main opposition, because as the Igbo would say it, “tomorrow is pregnant.” Nobody knows tomorrow. So, we are going to work very hard in the South-East, to convince a lot of our people that we should not put all our eggs in one basket because for us to do that would amount to political suicide.
