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•We need to sit down and look at this country again
After appraising the just concluded presidential election, the Former Minister of Health, Prof ABC NWOSU, has expressed disappointment with the performance of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) during the general elections in the country.
In an interview with VINCENT KALU, Nwosu, a former member, Board of Trustee (BoT) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), also queried the security agencies and their performance during the polls. He also expressed worry about the ethnic tensions and the profiling of Igbo people by some individuals, adding that “we have to sit down and look at this country again.”
The 2023 general elections have ended. What are your views about the presidential and governorship polls?
The presidential was the main election; the election that would change Nigeria. It failed on all fronts, excuses and reasons are not. In those days, when a Roman’s general loses a war, he commits suicide. The INEC chief lost a war disgracefully; he should not have the courage to show his face anywhere. I’m not interested in who was announced the winner, but I’m interested in the fact that he promised so much and delivered nothing.
Where did he get it wrong?
He got it wrong at the point that we all went out to vote because his calm demeanour convinced us. At my polling unit, the people there respected my age and it didn’t take two minutes for the BVAS to recognise me and I was given ballot papers and I voted. Then the result was not transmitted to the IRev. Two results were transmitted, but the main presidential was not.
Why do you think there were problems? Could it be that INEC was not prepared?
He was prepared. If he was not prepared, all the results would not have been transmitted. He was prepared, his technology was prepared. He was asked, why the commission’s chief of technical services was transferred to Enugu six months ahead of the elections. Festus Okoye, answered that there were three of them. Why didn’t they transfer the INEC chief? They knew what they did. The disappointment for me is that the INEC chief went to the best schools. I used to be of the impression that the kind of education that you got can mould the kind of character you have.
In Nigeria, we always say that the last election was better. How do we break away from this cycle?
Jega was better. Jega got his card reader; his own you could say was glitches. But this one was a clear fraud. Jega gives lectures all over the place, and he is respected. Let Mahmood Yakubu come out and go and give lectures anywhere.
People showed great enthusiasm to vote. But from what transpired at the last election, would people be that enthusiastic in future?
A new government should really overhaul the entire INEC. There must be a complete financial probe of the enormous money; all the accounts and everything they owned must be probed, so that the money that came in the cause of the election will be known whether in or out of the country. Forensic people who can trace the money should be engaged.
Who should do the probing – the current president or his successor?
How can this president do it when it all happened under his watch? He cannot; it happened under his watch. You were keeping the gate and then robbery occurred, and someone is asking whether the gateman should probe the robbery. If he was sleeping and the robbers entered, is it what he would tell you?
Are you satisfied with the way the security agencies helped in the conduct of the elections?
No. I’m not satisfied.
Why?
How could you be there and people will be cut with cutlasses, hit with sticks, electoral materials destroyed? Look at Lagos. If you couldn’t do it, call for back up. How can I be satisfied and you tell me you arrested people. We will see now where those arrested in 2015, 2019 are. Your job is to stop it from happening, and not to sit and watch the spectacle, or you tell me they were not there when people were being macheted. I’m not satisfied. How can I be?
Some political pundits are of the view that the voting pattern in the last election was based on ethnicity and religion…
That is pedestrian reasoning or linear thinking. Only one thing was clear in this election, it was not religion, it wasn’t ethnicity. It was disconnect between the government and the governed. It was the disgust the young people felt at not having jobs and not having a future. It was the disappointment that everybody had about having no money and having nothing to look forward to. So they welded themselves into a movement that was going to topple this government just to show that government belonged to the governed, but then it was aborted. They kidnapped it and killed it when they saw it. What is the link? For the first time, we saw all of them – the activists, Tanko Yunusa, who I have known with his National Conscience Party; Aisha Yesufu and others, were they ethnic or religious lines? And then people want to trivialise it by calling it ethnic or religious line. It was religious and ethnic lines that made Darman Jos to sing, Obi kerenke Obi in Jos. It is those who cannot see that these their children they are piling wealth for, stealing our common patrimony for, sooner or later, like Chief Awolowo said, those children who they have ignored would be their nemesis. Those who have ears can hear. Other are saying that let it happen after I have stolen my own.
Hate speeches and ethnic profiling are ongoing in the country. We saw what hate speeches did in Rwanda. How do we arrest this?
I don’t know why you bring Rwanda to me. In real time, I don’t want to complicate matters by releasing the book. We wait until tempers cool, maybe one year or more. You will remember the Ojukwu’s manuscript, some of his writings he gave to some of us, we all were together onto the book, which is almost ready, and there is a chapter that says, ‘… B for Biafra: When there is genocide it becomes genocide.’ You know we’re quick to forget that it has happened before in Nigeria. That shows that we are irredeemable. I was in the University of Ibadan, and I know that I entered a vehicle with Ken Saro-Wiwa for us to flee. Saro-Wiwa didn’t go to Port Harcourt; we all went to Nsukka and he was in the English Department because he was a post graduate student, and I went to my Science Department. We were both government scholars. Why did we run? I’m not talking about Ahmadu Bello students because they had all gone. There is a book that says, ‘Biafra: Something they want to forget and wish it will never happen again.” You did something once and I must admit that 1966 didn’t happen in Yoruba land. The students were not hostile; Ibadan was not hostile, the Yoruba were not hostile. We have intermarried with Yoruba and some of the most prominent Igbo people you know are married to Yoruba. So what is the problem? Is it because somebody must win an election? Was there an Igbo man running election for governorship in Lagos? So, what is the ethnicity there? The Christians that were running election were they not Yoruba; the one that won is he not a Christian? I believe that Sanwo-Olu is a Christian. So what is ethnicity there and religion?
I think what is happening is that after this has settled down, we have to sit down and look at this country again, a country where an individual should not have problems expressing his citizenship right. I have a right as a citizen of Nigeria to vote who I like, where I like is the issue at stake. No more, no less. The Fulani man residing at Nnewi, my town has a right to vote for anybody he so desires. If the Nnewi people decided who will go and therefore the Fulani man whether he likes it or not, he cannot vote where his mind tells him to vote.
Ojukwu said this when he came back and we formed a news magazine, New Globe. I was one of the directors. He said the Igbo don’t want to dominate anybody; they are just wired for success. If they are trading wire, they will make it lucrative. Is there any one of them running for governorship of Lagos State? Thank God, just like in 1966, there were people like Tai Solarin and Wole Soyinka. We are thankful also that in 2023, there are people like Olusegun Obasanjo and Ayo Adebanjo.
After all this, how do you think reconciliation should begin?
I don’t know. We tried it with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission during Obasanjo. I was in the government as the political adviser to Obasanjo. He brought a very distinguished person, Justice Chukwudifu Oputa as the chairman and a very highly principled person, Bishop Mathew Kukah, as the secretary, but it didn’t work. Some people said if they were in a position to kill Igbo, they would do it again and that is the same thing we are hearing. The language, Igbophobia is there. Achebe wrote it in the Trouble with Nigeria, the Igbo problem. I don’t know how the reconciliation can be done. There is no Igbo person who will tell you that he is not scared and not worried that the slightest problem in Nigeria, he becomes the victims. I remember in one of the Scandinavian countries when there was a riot based on a cartoon on Islam. A riot erupted in Nigeria and the Igbo were the victims. Someday, it will cease.
You have resigned from partisan politics. Why?
Yes, I have nothing to do with partisan politics again in my life because no matter how much you try to do something for Nigeria, you are going to be seen as an Igbo man and that is a very sad thing for me to realise at almost 80. I don’t want to hear again anything about the PDP, APC, LP, etc. what I operate now is that if it is not good, it is not good.
Now that you have left partisan politics, can you still advise?
Of course, I’m still in politics. How can I not be in politics, but I’m not in partisan politics. The person I missed most was my friend, the late Ambassador, George Obiozor. He wasn’t in partisan politics. Now I have seen the sense in it. What pains me most in Nigeria is that wherever we are asked to serve, we give in our best. I didn’t serve Nigeria as an Igbo man; I served Nigeria as a patriotic Nigerian. I’m glad that Obasanjo affirmed that many Igbo with him served as patriotic Nigerians. It is very painful to us to have the feeling that you are not wanted and that you are not really wanted.
