The loud disquiet generated in the polity by
the perceived lopsidedness in the
appointments of President Muhammadu
Buhari administration remains unabated,
despite the assurance of possible redress in
the subsequent selection of other key
government functionaries.
In this interview, a
former governor of the old Anambra State and
a respected leader of thought in the
Southeast, Dr Chukwuemeka Ezeife,
categorically declares that there is nothing
Buhari can do to remedy the denial of the Igbo
position of Secretary to the Government of the
Federation. “What motivated Buhari ‘s
attitude to the Southeast, I don’t know. What
did we do to deserve comprehensive hatred
of the Southeast people”, he asks
rhetorically.
Excerpts:
The Buhari government is already 100 days
old in office. What is your
assessment of the performance of the
administration so far?
First of all, there is no government in place.
Where are the ministers? If there is a
government, there will be ministers. The
Federal Executive Council is composed of
people from various parts of the country
according to the constitution.
And from what they said, the president
derives his authority to announce decisions,
policies and budget et cetera from the
council. But now, there are no ministers. So
far, so bad! The president is bent on
scattering a nation that has been built over so
many years. We cannot clap for him. What
am I saying? The constitution provides for
what we call federal character. The
convention has always been respect for
federal character. In one of the interviews
conducted before the election, an Aljazeera
woman who was the interviewer pointed out
to Buhari that there is a suspicion that he
does not fully understand or respect the
diversity of Nigeria he is intending to rule. Of
course, he denied it. But right now, we see.
His government is not even Northern
government, it is Northwest government. We
have six geo-political zones.
Appointments;; announced and unannounced,
are dominated by the Northwest. South east
has no appointments at all. If SGF position
has been denied the people of Southeast, then
there can be no remedy at all. What is our
President telling people from Southeast?
What is our President telling the South as a
whole? Sometimes ago, he was accused of
having Northern agenda, he denied it.
Today, no soul can have sympathy for
Buhari’s denial of Northern agenda because
it is all over the place. He promised to fight
corruption and we support him for saying so.
Meanwhile, we are not fighting it yet, we are
just talking about it, and randomly picking up
people. Already a committee has been set up
for that, we are yet to see the war being
fought.
Power is the main thing in this country. I
don’t see what is going on in the power
sector. Nigeria has a problem of high cost of
production. We cannot compete in the global
economy with
China. What we need to do is to use what we
have petroleum- to increase our competitive
position in the world economy. We as a
people need to look at economic development
as the grund norm;; the real objective of
governance in Nigeria. To wipe off the shame
of slavery from the faces of every black, we
must focus on economic development. We
cannot see it. Instead, we are focusing on
ethnicity, we are focusing on religion. To
focus on the economy, in addition to using
petroleum products to encourage
development, we also have to look away from
one trade centre organization and look at how
we can protect our economy from
unreasonable competition. There should be a
protection duty on anything imported.
For various sectors, we must develop
sectoral and product protection duties. Fly
over Nigeria, you Will find massive land lying
fallow, while millions of youths are lying
unemployed. Agriculture can partly transform
our problem. Brazilian people are looking for
land in Enugu to produce pineapple which
they intend to fly to Europe because when
them six hours to get to Europe. I am told
they already got land. Why can’t we copy
from them?
We have potentials in agricultural
development and we have processing
agricultural inputs. We need a vocal point;;
we need somebody who will be deciding on
economic activities of national development.
Buhari said some nice things at the
beginning, but we haven’t seen them in
action. He said: “I belong to everybody, I
belong to nobody.”
He belongs to Northwest.
You spoke about the renewed anticorruption
war of the administration. Are you saying that
the war is selective war or that it is against a
particular ethnic group?
No, I am not implying any ethnicity in the war
against corruption. I am saying that we are
hearing of war but we are not seeing it being
fought.
We hear of the war on the pages of
newspapers, we have not seen it being
fought. Some people say government should
get stolen money from anybody found
wanting and throw him to prison.
For me, we only need to get the money back
and use it for welfare. And we can sustain
welfare for ever. We can also use part of it
for power. Some people who deserve state
support will be given state support. This is a
humane country. So, I am not saying the war
is against any particular individual but the
war is not being fought. We hear of the war on
the pages of newspapers, we have not seen it
being fought.
Then, what do you expect the government to
do to strengthen the anticorruption war?
First of all, I think there is a need for
structural change. EFCC is there, ICPC is
there. There are also others. Some personnel
of these bodies are accused of corruption
even worse than the ones
they accuse the people they are policing.
There is a need for a new beginning in the
anti-corruption war, first from the president.
In doing so, he will say to everybody he is
employing, ‘do as you see me do. How much
money did I collect from you in employing
you? If I did not collect money from you,
don’t collect from anybody or else I deal with
you ruthlessly. Then, he must clean himself
up. It is not just enough to say that Buhari is
not corrupt; he must ensure that people
around him are also not corrupt. That way, he
can easily get support of people. When I was
governor, I asked people who became
commissioners: If you know how much
money I collected from you to make you
commissioner, go ahead and collect money
from people. But if you know I didn’t collect
any money from you, and you are collecting
from people, if I catch you, I deal with you
ruthlessly. And that helped me a lot. I don’t
know how much I can say about the
personality of Buhari because if you delegate
and you don’t supervise, whatever is wrong
will be attributed to you. We all support him
on the corruption issue. But we are saying,
corruption has no time limit. Stolen money
has no time limit. Anybody who has abused
his office, we should approach him, leave
five percent of the loot for his survival and
take the rest. And he doesn’t have to go to
prison. Anything happening from this warning
will then be treated differently.
Anybody caught from now on can be
imprisoned. He can even pass a law saying
that corruption is anti-developmental and all
anti-developmental issues will be treated by
death penalty. He can do that for future
activities. But for the past, get the money
back to the nation and leave the person. He
needs people who can do it. How many
people can do it? When you ask some people
to go and fight corruption and they see
somebody who stole N5 billion, they will take
N1 billion from him and give him a clean bill
of health. This is the tough assignment he
has, but he hasn’t started it.
The most damnable thing is that there is no
government in place. A dictatorship is being
run and it is an impeachable offence. How
can an elected president be a dictator running
government for three months and decide
things alone. That is a military dictator.
There is even no minister of finance.
He said he is buying time to study
individuals who are going to make his
cabinet so that nobody will be found wanting
in any way at the end of the day. Is anything
wrong in that?
It is a lie fabricated by the government. You
can sit here and look for whom to engage in
Sokoto. It is not difficult to get competent
people from any part of Nigeria. But if you
want to decide everything alone, and in the
way you like, you can go ahead and do it.
You said not constituting cabinet is an
impeachable offence. Is there any timeline
in the constitution for the composition of
cabinet?
There may be no timeline to anything in the
constitution but there are conventions. The
day you become president, you name your
ministers within one month, not within two
months even. Is there any government which
did not form cabinet within three months in
the past? Are you saying that one man alone
can do it? If one man is doing it and we are
not seeing the result, don’t we have right to
complain?
What is the fate of the South-east in this
government?
Junaid Muhammed, the topmost irredentist
Northern politician, said to the Southeast: You
may secede again, if you like and face the
consequence. Buhari told him nothing. This
man is one of the top politicians in the
Northern hierarchy. He is leading the group
that says Buhari is totally correct. They see
nothing wrong in his appointments. These are
the people whom Iblis is using to spoil
Nigeria.
Then, what is the action plan of the
Southeast to checkmate this trend?
We are a people of destiny. We do not
believe everything is in human hand. God is
in heaven looking at affairs of men. We
believe in God. We develop every part of
Nigeria. Let anybody deny it. The Hausa man
said: If you look am place and you no find an
Ibo, go away, it is not good for human
habitation. Where else have we not
developed? We have a saying: You make
where you live. That is why you see us
developing every part of Nigeria as homes.
By doing so, the local people who see us
begin to get jealous. From jealousy, they
begin their hatred, and even get to shedding
of blood. Some of them say, ‘Let these people
go and leave their property for us.’ There are
lots and lots more from where we got what
we did. It is from God and no man born of a
woman can stop us. It is not possible for a
man born of a woman to stop us.
We are a people of destiny and nobody;
whether that person is called Buhari or
Junaid Muhammed can stop us. And we don’t
want to stop anybody.
We have started the idea of making our host
communities happy with us. This is
something we have been promoting for more
than two years. We even accused ourselves
of not doing well enough with regards to
Almajiri. We said; our people when they were
sending their children to school should have
taken the Almajiris along.
What I am saying is that this country is
destined by God and we have the best of
everything. You can go out every morning or
afternoon. Go and try that in another place;
you will die in 30 minutes. We have every
resource in Nigeria both human and material
to make this country great. God blessed us so
much, but short sightedness and lack of
proper education is making us think
negatively towards each other instead of
thinking positively towards each other and
positively grow Nigeria. I love Nigerians
where ever they come from. Somebody came
to me from Katsina State looking for money to
pay his school fees at the Ahmadu Bello
University. Nobody knows me with money. I
made some calls to some of my friends to
make contributions to make him go back to
school. He has nothing to do with the
Southeast. This is what Nigeria should be
like.
Every Nigerian gains more from proper
development of Nigeria, after all, the
amalgamation of North and South
protectorates was meant to use resources of
the South to cover the deficit of the North.
Today, the deficits of the North compared
with deficits of the south are wider than in
1914.
Those who know should know that
complementality of the people of Nigeria will
make for a greater country. The largest
concentration of blacks in the world is in
Nigeria, and it is God’s purpose that it should
be so in order that Nigeria provides the black
man with a rallying point. The original sons
and daughters of God are blacks. They have
nothing inferior to any human race in this
world. Most of sciences and technologies
came from here. Because we are favourably
treated by God, we didn’t have to fight for
continuous improvement of the environment
we live, that is why we are lagging behind.
We are the original sons and daughters of
God, and very soon you will see it happen.
Nigeria is beautiful, Nigeria is great. It is
ordained of God to be so. Let no man, let not
Buhari, let not Junaid Muhammed, let not
Northern irredentists kill the design of God.
And they can’t, because God is Almighty.
What would you suggest as a way to reunite
the already discontented people of this
country as a result of the lopsidedness in the
appointments of Buhari?
You cannot deny the Southeast Secretary to
the Government and you think you can
propose a remedy. It is not possible. He’s
already crossed the line and going back is
impossible.
As it is, no amendment, no remedy is
feasible. Of course, human beings can
rethink what they are doing. What motivated
Buhari ‘s attitude to the Southeast I don’t
know. What did we do to deserve
comprehensive hatred of the Southeast
people? We all must know the importance of
Nigeria. Time is of consequence in the
comity of nations. Let nobody think of the
Islamisation or Christianization of Nigeria
because it will not work. We, the Southeast
people, have our direction and nobody can
change it. They will come to us and say
sorry for what we did to you. Let’s be
together again. And, of course, we will be
together.
SunNews
