Igbos shouldn’t be treated like second-class citizens in their country

Television, speaks on the 2023 presidential election, controversy over zoning, position of the ruling party, All Progressives Congress (APC) and major opposition party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)

Now that it is becoming obvious that the two major political parties may jettison zoning of the presidency to the South-East; what is your thought on the development?

My idea about zoning the presidency to the South-East is original and I have been saying it. In 1967, the civil war broke out and I’m one of those who suffered. I had my house in Warri burnt and I have to run to my village. At the end of the war, I came back. There were agitations by Mid- Westerners that there should be a Berlin Wall-kind to separate the Igbo speaking areas because there were senior military officers, who led Chukwuemeka Ojukwu’s troops into the Mid-West without a shot and the people said they don’t want anything to do with them.

But when the federal troops entered Benin City and Samuel Ogbemudia, who was then a major, was appointed military administrator, there was a theory that one Major Okonkwo from one of the Igbo speaking Mid-Westerners, was appointed by Ojukwu as the administrator of the Republic of Benin. When Ogbemudia came in he saw on his table two telegram messages from one Chief Edafe, former minister of Finance in Mid-West, congratulating Okonkwo. On the same table, he saw another telegram sent to him by Edafe, congratulating him and condemning the rebels.

So, you can see what human beings can do at that time. That Mid- West was taken over without a gunshot was amazing. But after the war in 1970, we thought it was proper having regard to our suffering to go to Dodan Barracks to congratulate the Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon. We got there and he asked us: ‘What are you doing here?’ We said we have come to congratulate him. He told us to go back that ‘we just fought a family war and there is No Victor, No Vanquish, why did you come to congratulate me, is it because your state was invaded.’ We laughed and he insisted that we should go back and carry out the rehabilitation, reconstruction and reconciliation in order to bring the Igbos back to Nigeria fully. Based on that, a meeting was called and every public officer was to pay a percentage of his salary, which they did.

The Head of State said I should take charge of Dodan Barracks even as a commissioner for Education. I collected 100 girls from various secondary schools in Mid-West State and headed to the East. I was told to pass through Abagana, which was badly destroyed by the federal troops and we did. My children broke into tears, saying: ‘Daddy, this people suffered more than us.’ When we got to Queens College, Enugu, the place was devastated. To cut the long story short, in the morning I said that the children coming from Biafra has to sing the Nigerian Anthem with my children. That was the first time these children after the war will sing the National Anthem with my children. And my permanent secretary who refused to pay because his house was also burnt wept, I looked back and he said I’m sorry, I’m going to pay.

So, we went back then we came with three trailers of tables, desks and other materials and supplies to Queens School Enugu. We went back and the governor of Benue/Plateau was visiting us, he said ‘supply one school for me also even though I know I will not pay you and we supplied Awkunanaw Grammar School. We went o Nsukka, the University of Nigeria and refurbished 10 quarters and from there, Ogbemudia earned an honourary doctorate degree. When I came back, I told some of our parents to allow their children to go and stay with some of these girls in order to reintegrate them into Nigeria and they said why not start with your child.

They challenged me, I went to St Theresa’s College Uhuru and my eldest daughter was in class 2, so I told the Reverend Sister that this girl is my daughter and I’m taking her to Queens School Enugu. She said why, but I said no that she is going.

I put her inside my car and drove her straight to Enugu and put her in the hands of the commissioner for Education. And I became a member of the parent association and we contributed money to buy a bus for Queens School Enugu. I remember that when new two houses were to be created in the school after the rebuilding, the girls were asked to vote and they said one house should be named after me. Today, there is a house in Enugu Queens School named after Clark and the other one was named after the first governor of the Eastern Region. About six months ago, they celebrated their anniversary in Enugu, where over 125 former girls of Queens School attended. The executive later attended a dinner at my house. So, we employed teachers when there was no money and I paid them.

What is your view on the warning by Southern and Middle Belt leaders that burying zoning would bury Nigeria?

No Nigeria would like to live in Nigeria whereby certain people believe that unless they are in power, there is no Nigeria. The All Progressives Congress (APC) believes that unless it has a northerner as a candidate, it will not succeed because of the belief that the 12 million votes left by Buhari would be taken over by that candidate. So, they have been watching the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that has been existing because of the support of the South- East.

So, they are waiting, and the moment it is thrown open by PDP, they will change. I have overheard the APC National Chairman, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, I know him very well because we were together in the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in 1979. He was the secretary of Plateau NPN and later chairman. The minority Fulani in Plateau took over power from the indigenes which led to the trouble later. What I’m saying is that when Lugard created Nigeria in 1914, he did not say some people are superior to others.

When the war ended, Nigeria was a three-legged pot. One leg belongs to the North, the other leg belongs to the West and the other leg belongs to the East. These were the three legs on which Nigeria stood. Since we destroyed one during the war, Nigeria has never been stable. They never allowed General Yakubu Gowon to complete the rebuilding of Nigeria after the civil war in the name of a coup. I’m writing a book and the title of that book is ‘Brutally Frank’ and the foreward was written by my boss, General Yakubu Gowon. The coup that threw Gowon out of office was not due to inefficiency of Gowon or so; it was because of the civil war.

I will say this in my book. It was the fear of some people to allow the Igbo to be appointed general manager of the Nigerian National Oil Corporation, which is now Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Because an Igbo man was appointed, there was a coup. I have the story and I will say it in my book. I don’t want to say it publicly now. So, I believe that if we have to come back together and Igbo are now part of us, we should not do anything to remind them why they surrendered during the war. Some of us have asked that question, if you want the Igbo to be a second-class citizen in their country, Gowon should have allowed them to go.

You have no moral justification for keeping second-class citizens in your country. What I’m saying is this: If zoning, which is what will heal the Igbo wound is not done, then we should allow them to go. If you say that zoning or rotation is dead and buried, there will be no Nigeria because nobody will remain in this country as a second class citizen.

Would you say that people with the same mindset against Igbo integration in Nigeria are those advocating that zoning is dead and buried?

Exactly, some of them are still in politics. They were with us and I know their views. There are many good northerners but a few of these Fulani oriented ones believe that there must be Jihad everywhere in Nigeria. Could you imagine a statement made by Lai Mohammed the other day that we Nigerians should thank President Muhammadu Buhari for not allowing Jihad to spread across the country? What was his reason; that it was Buhari’s government that drove Boko Haram from Borno State, which Jonathan said no to in his book? Jonathan said in his book that he was the one during the suspension of the 2015 elections, who within six weeks, was able to invite mercenaries to join the Nigerian Army to drive away Boko Haram from Nigeria before the elections. So, those people are still around and believe and I remember one of them said the other day that for 200 years, the Hausas were fumbling in Kano until their leader came and there was sanity and that if we in the south do not mind ourselves, they will take care of us. And I told him to try it. So, what are we saying? The military has brought us to where we are today. The three-legged pot is now 36.

They have now given us 36 states and 774 local government areas. Could you imagine a situation whereby policemen have to be employed in Nigeria and they say it is on local government basis but the chairman of the Police Service Commission said it must be on state basis? But President Buhari supported local government basis, so if Kano is to employ policemen today, which is now in the Supreme Court, Kano would have 444 and Bayelsa, which is producing some of the wealth of this country would have only 80, Jigawa would have 270 or more.

The whole of the East would have less than the number of Jigawa and Kano put together. What type of country is that? The Igbos are the only people who have five states in this country. The North- West has seven. So, what are we saying? It is better we give them a sense of belonging in this country since we did not allow them to go. If they are useless, we should have allowed them to go at that time but you feel that they are part of this country, you fought and kept them. You didn’t keep them as your slaves; you kept them as your equals. The next president, therefore, should come from the South-East.

If you said that the man who went to school yesterday is not educated, is it the man who went to school today that is more educated? So, all we are saying is let’s live together in peace in this country. Allow the Igbo to produce the president of Nigeria because they have competent people. When I hear people like Mamman Daura talking about competency, what type of competency is he talking about? I know him because he was a deputy editor to Adamu Ciroma. So, people should not deceive us. That you are from the North and because of your population, you now believe that you are superior to others. What is the argument they are making? A man called Prof. Ango Abdullahi, who is the leader of the Northern Peoples Forum, joined us in 2019 to screen 12 northerners and Atiku Abubakar was there; Bukola Saraki was there and 12 of them were screened in my place before we went to Port Harcourt for the primary election, which Atiku won. They have now forgotten.

What is now making them to say that it should be thrown open? Is it because of the incompetence of Buhari, is it because Buhari is not performing, is it because of the insecurity in the country that they now want to jettison rotation? When APC was formed in 2014, only northerners contested the primary, Buhari number one, Rabiu Kwankwaso number two and Atiku number three. What makes Atiku think that he would win the election in 2023? He has been trying and very soon he would surpass Buhari. Perhaps, he would be thinking that he will win the next one like Buhari but it is God that gives power.

What surprises me is that young men like Saraki in 2011, when Jonathan wanted to contest the presidential election, and Ibrahim Babangida, Atiku, General Aliyu Gusau and Saraki wanted to contest, and they set up a small committee to prune down their number to fight Jonathan at the primary. The meeting was held under Adamu Ciroma’s chairmanship and Atiku won.

Raymond Dokpesi who was the campaign manager of Babangida went to work for Atiku but he lost at the primary. Even in 2015, they said Jonathan must go which made PDP men contribute money towards Buhari’s election. I know them and I have their list; I will publish it when the time comes. So, you want to have a country where you alone will rule me and others would be like black South Africans before Nelson Mandela? So, if rotation is jettisoned, there will be no Nigeria.

In the event that the two major political parties decide to choose northern presidential candidates, what option would be available to the south?

September last year, I fell ill and I almost died. I was conscious in the intensive care unit for seven days and I didn’t know I was in this world. I woke up one Saturday morning at 4:00 am and I fell ill. I sent for my doctor and when I woke up; they said I have been in the hospital for seven days and I didn’t know.

When I woke up I asked myself, this Almighty God still has a job for me to perform and I must complete that job before I go. I have said it before that when you are 70 and above, you already have your boarding pass. At this juncture, I may have to inform you that after saying that God has saved me to carry out this fight, I’m also the leader of the Southern and Middle Belt Forum as I was during the 2014 National Conference in Abuja. Nobody will take us for a ride and we are not threatening anybody.

We also have our own plan because Nigeria belongs to all of us. What would an Igbo man tell his son; that after the war, he cannot become the president, after the war they still have five states, five ministers and the lowest revenue coming to them.

If you are blaming Nnamdi Kanu, but in a country where all of us belong, we have different laws for different people, some people without committing any offence or alleged offence, you call terrorists. But the terrorists in the North-East, who have been killing our people over the years, you capture them, dress them and say that you have forgiven them. Who are you deceiving? I do not think that there are so many people in the country, who are senior to me by age, so I’m appealing to my fellow northerners, please let’s build a country where all of us are equal, where our children can aspire for any position, otherwise, they will be asking questions. And they wouldn’t allow it to die even after me because there will be problems in Nigeria. People in the North are not more educated than those in the South.

If you are thinking that you will use your population to oppress the South, the South will say no because that era has gone. Atiku is parading himself; that Fulani people should vote for him, how many Fulani people voted for him in the last election? About five million people voted for him in the North and another five million people voted for him in the South. How many times has he contested the presidential election? He wants to be president, what makes him more qualified than any other Nigerian? We are not threatening anybody because the country belongs to all of us.

For over 30 years, you ruled this country militarily, you said you don’t know what is called restructuring yet your soldiers who were heads of states carried out restructuring in this country, created more states and created more local governments. Yet, you are behaving as if Nigeria came into existence in 1999. Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa was president of Nigeria but because we were practising a parliamentary system of government, he was the prime minister. So, it is not proper to mislead this country.

There are educated people in this country. There are people who would not allow themselves to be tossed around. I saw the treatment given to Jonathan. I’m writing a book on that; ‘The Making of a President.’ when I see a man like Prof. Attahiru Jega talking today; it is a shame. Ask him the question, in 2011, the man who is a senator from Niger State and I don’t want to mention his name, was printing voters cards in Abuja here.

We saw them and they ran away and contracted it to a Chinese firm that was why in 2011 some elections could not be held because they couldn’t print the papers and they were blacklisted by INEC. Who cancelled the blacklist and gave him the same contract in 2015? He was detained by the Department of State Services during the 2015 general election and I know the conspiracy they had against Jonathan. They were even ready to kidnap him.

What are the plans if the major parties decide to nominate northerners as their candidates?

Let me say this, I issued a statement recently that any southern governor, any southern former governor, any southern politician, who agrees to make himself a running mate to a northerner in this election, is very unpatriotic and not a true southerner and God will take care of him. Listen, we have tried to negotiate with these people, this Ango Abdullahi, we have had series of meetings with him in Abuja in 2018 and 2019, trying to agree among ourselves but being a Fulani, immediately you talk about restructuring, he would back out. Now I hear he supports it. Can you imagine a situation whereby the 2014 Conference was not adopted by Buhari? Governor Nasir el-Rufai was appointed by the APC to head the party’s restructuring committee, and he wrote a report after travelling through the whole country, submitted the report to the party’s National Executive Committee.

President Buhari was present because Odigie Oyegun, who was their chairman when they did that report, confirmed it. Nigerians are now ready for el-Rufai’s report, let Mr. President surmount a town hall meeting, we will be there, let’s discuss el-Rufai’s report on restructuring. (Daily Independent)