Dr. Samuel O. Ogbemudia is a member of PDP Board of Trustees and a former governor of old Midwestern and Bendel states. The retired Army General spoke with Osemwengie Ben Ogbemudia on a number of issues. Excerpts
The PDP lost the presidential election and shortly after that there are calls for the NWC and the BOT to be dissolved, what is your view on that?
First of all, we have to look at the set up of the party. Today, the PDP is headed by a Board of Trustee that advises the National Working Committee or executive at each turn, when asked to do so. So, if in the process they lost an election, it is quite straight forward for the people responsible to take responsibility for their action and therefore they should give way to a new executive that will rebuild the party but the PDP case is not like that. I understand that the candidate had set up a team to campaign for him and for the party so the fault is not that of the executive or the NWC but the person who took the decision. So my view is that the PDP should set up a committee to find out what went wrong and how to rebuild the party because they are still the strongest organised party in the country and they need to work hard in order to win the next election if they have the appetite to win.
But the way the party is today, do you think there is still hope for it to take over power in four years’ time as some of the leaders are saying?
First and foremost, you must look at the PDP; they mismanaged their victory and haven mismanaged the victory, the outcome is defeat; so if they want to win future elections against a determined party like the APC, they must work twice as hard as they have done in the past.
Some people are attributing the failure of the PDP to the hate campaigns it indulged in, do you agree?
Well, a lot of people will say a lot of things, but what individuals find on the ground may be different, there is no doubt at all that there was a campaign of hatred, campaign of dislike, religious campaigns but all that put together may not have affected the PDP’s chances if they had put their home right but they didn’t. Quite a substantial percentage that make up APC today were formally PDP and each time a person left, they said let him go, we can do without him; so now, they have found that they couldn’t do without them. So, it is part and parcel of a sensible re-organisation, rehabilitation for the party to sit down and find out what went wrong. Once they have done that, which is not a job of three hours of two days, they must sit down and talk to everybody that is worth talking to in order to ascertain and identify what went wrong; a lot of things went wrong.
What are some of these things that went wrong being a leader of the South-South that supported Jonathan?
It will be unfair on Jonathan if I say I am disappointed at his activities but what I want to say is this, PDP is made up of responsible people in the country but these responsible people are people who do not welcome any type of challenge, any type of argument and any type of interference; so once they took their decisions, they didn’t want anyone else to find out what led to that decision, so nobody should challenge them, so because of that, they held Jonathan hostage.
Some Nigerians believe that Jonathan lost because of the way he handled the issues of insecurity, the economy and corruption. How will you assess his activities in these areas?
Nigerian politics has not developed to the stage where they recognise economy, unemployment and others; we are at the strategy where we look at the individual, where he comes from, what he can do for us and then support or don’t support him; so I believe that a few intellectuals may have looked at the economy and said yes it is good, it is not to good; they might have complained of unemployment but they were like lone voices in the wilderness.
What is your advice to Buhari?
You will excuse me if I say anything in favour of Buhari. We want it written by historians many years to come that the coming of the General saved the nation from total collapse. To achieve that all hands must be on deck, the hands of the old generals, the retired ones and those who are in office. But having said that, I know Buhari when he was commissioned into the Nigerian Army in the rank of 2nd Lieutenant. I also know that he served under a number of senior officers and every year they wrote confidential reports in respect of each officer, including me. And including the officer who is writing because what you write about other people also indicate what you look like. So, every one of the superior officer concluded that Buhari is a competent hand. But that was many years ago. Can we say that the energy of 1966, 1963, is still very much present? It may not but what is absolutely available is the lessons learnt from those intervening years. I know that Buhari will not want to fail because the expectation is so high that he will not want people to say we are disappointed.
We need to have people who are best in organizing the economy of the country. But you must admit one thing, since APC has not run a federal government, this is their first time, therefore like all first timers, like all new brooms, they must sweep well. Otherwise the song four years hence will be different.
Are you worried over Buhari’s certificate allegation?
When I joined the Army, the Army took my certificate, two reasons why they did that: Some people got trained by the Army and when they come back, they can no longer go along with the salaries that the army was paying, they will disappear so because of that, the army will keep your certificate. When I was retiring, the army gave me back my certificate and that was what I was looking for to show you, (Searching his cupboard for the certificate). So, I was surprised when I heard them say Buhari has no certificate. But even if he has no certificate, there is examination in the army. The time we started the examination they called it Royal West African Frontier Force Entrance Examination and you are not allowed to take it unless you present your certificate or your school writes that you have taken the exams and they believe you will pass. And if the results come and you fail, they will send you out. However, they were some military people if in the process they send you to school they call it remedial courses, so if you did not have school certificate by the time you finished the three years course you are better than the school certificate holder. So, I believe Buhari’s case was a situation where people try to call a dog a bad name in order to hang it. But that notwithstanding, Buhari has been elected. What Nigerians want is development; what Nigerians want is good governance; what Nigerians want is a man who will give credit to their representation.
You have also been blamed that you left the management of the party in Edo state to Chief Anenih alone, how will you react to that?
Those who are saying that have my sympathy, sympathy arising from ignorance. In 1999, the PDP won the election to Edo State Government House; the leaders, we were three of us; Chief Anenih and Chief Igbinedion and I. Two of us, I and Igbinedion decided to stay at home and help the governor to ensure he succeeded. Chief Anenih, a very brilliant and unassuming politician, was sent to Abuja to represent the state. And he did. But as time went on things fell apart and the center could not hold and that was it. Anenih is not the course of our problem, anybody who says he can fight election in Edo State without Anenih may not be telling you the truth. Everyone has its own job, my job was to stay at home and support the governor which I did to the best of my ability. Anenih was to stay in Abuja to draw the attention of the federal government to the activities of the governor of the state so that they can help him and he excelled.
If both of you worked together, how come the party was factionalized then, you led a faction while Anenih led the other faction?
I don’t know that but what I know was that Prof. Osunbor lost the election in the court of law; he is a Professor of Law so he cannot complain that he did not get justice because he knew what to do. The factionalization of the party was based on a different criterion. The party at the headquarters in Abuja was expected to intervene before things went out of hand but for reasons known best to them, they decided to leave things as they are. But I now know that the reason was that they were not much interest in Edo State because when we lost the election, the National Chairman of the PDP then was asked how he felt, he said well they are not supposed to control every state in Nigeria, so losing Edo State is not a serious matter. Before the court judgment, I telephoned Osunbor from London. I said I heard that the federal government has traded in Edo and Ondo, can you go and see the President and from his table, phone me so that I can speak to him. He came back and he told me that the President asked him what will he benefit if he trades Edo out? So, he believed that the President was not doing what they accused him of. But later, what I told him came to pass. All these are now history and they are essential development in the scene of democracy. So, what we should be looking forward to is not the man feeding the horse, but the man sitting on top of it. So, we look at the future, where are we going to? If the PDP wants to pack up then they must tell us. People have asked me if I am still in PDP? I said yes and I will remain. Many months back, PDP people accused me of belonging to APC, and that in the day time at Abuja I was in PDP and in the night in Benin I was APC. Now, yesterday I heard that the APC people are saying Ogbemudia is a PDP man, leave him alone, at least I have been vindicated.
