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From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
Peter Ameh is an emerging politician who has transversed the entire Nigeria’s political structures and administration.
He has been an aspirant, a candidate and a national officer/chairman of a political party and a leader of Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC).
Speaking to Sunday Sun in Abuja, Ameh bared his minds on a wide range of issues ahead of the 2023 general elections, including the possible outcome of the presidential poll, the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates, the pretenders and contenders, the voting permutations, and more importantly his greatest fears for the poll. Excerpt:
What will the presidential election next year be like?
For me, the beauty of next year’s presidential election is that people are now developing more confidence in our electoral process because of the obvious perception by the electorate at large that the election will be free, fair and the result will be transmitted from the polling units with the use of BVAS and IReV. That has given so much confidence to the Nigerian populace that they are willing to go out and take decisions based on their own convictions. And for that, there are new parties making headway seriously in the election. As it is today, 
nobody can say that the old horse owns the election as it is. For me, if I say that Peter Obi will win, people will say that I am biased. But, I can give you statistics. As I speak, the PDP which usually has a predominant effect in the Southeast no longer has that. For the first time, the Igbo that have always supported other people from other regions, like the Hausa, Fulani, Yoruba and every other tribe, are now having confidence in their own. The Igbo are the only unique people in Nigeria that will never support their son because he is their son. In 1999, when Ikemba Ojukwu contested the presidential election, he was not supported despite being a freedom fighter. It was so because they are looking for a genuine and credible representation and those qualities are in Obi. It is not because I belong to the same political party, but because over the years, I supported him as a politician of a very special virtue. These are the reasons. In the North today, the PDP and APC cannot claim that they will control the vote; they can’t, the minorities, for the first time, also want their voice to be heard. They want to also prove that the Southeasters they want to look like enemies are their friends. They are in their communities selling markets. If you watch the Middle Belt dangling towards Obi, it is because if a major tribe in Nigeria is not allowed to be president, then what is the fate of the minority tribe? These are factors that are going to play out in the election.
How will the presidential election play out in the North?
In the far North, Kwankwaso is there to divide the traditional votes APC and PDP would have won. He will take them, but they would probably not amount to anything. He doesn’t have a strong showing in the Southeast, South-south, Southwest and North-central. The problem he is creating to the APC and PDP will be an advantage to Obi. Nobody is going to come from Kano with a two million votes because Kwankwaso is going to demystify that myth. He is going to take his own votes in thousands, just as the APC and the PDP will take their own. The LP will also benefit from the traditional votes in Kano. If you go to Jigawa, LP has strong candidates contesting. It is the same thing in Kano. Those votes that APC would have taken are no longer there and nobody should say anything to the contrary. The reason people are concentrating more on Obi is that he is the only front-runner as it is, forget what the PDP and APC are saying that he cannot win. He is into the race with massive organic support, including the ones that are not talking, the ones sitting there and boasting that this is the time to show these people and to demystify the already established oligarch structure within that political system. The ones talking are already in millions and you don’t know the ones that are not talking. I created these statistics due to my long years in politics. They have shown clearly that the next president of Nigeria would be a person that is capable, credible and competent. And that person that Nigerians have seen, clamour and shout on the street for is Obi. His big rallies everywhere in Nigeria are conducted with people’s money. Where is such done in Nigerian politics since 1999? I was the national chairman of a party. I was the national chairman of IPAC, I was a member of the federal board and have played politics to know that Nigerians don’t give their money to politicians. They don’t trust them, they don’t believe in them. You can tell them everything, but they won’t support you with a dime. Today, people are organising press conferences, printing billboards, printing banners, printing t-shirts or face caps, Obi has not printed anything. He has not given anybody money to mobilise this organic crowd.
Why should the perception persist that Obi is a social media candidate?
The doubters still claiming they are social media supporters are ignorant of what we call in politics reverse psychology. It means trying to make the people supporting him feel that he cannot win. So, if Obi cannot win, why are they interested in him? There are 18 presidential candidates contesting this election, but why are they not concentrating on the other candidates that cannot win? They are concentrating on Obi to make the people feel that he cannot win. This is just psychological, reversed political psychology. But, the people have come to a point where they know the truth. Look at the unemployment rate; look at 130 million poor Nigerians that are on the streets. Look at the people without day-to-day means to survive. The poverty index has gotten to a point where Nigerians can no longer take it. You go to the rural communities; people don’t even have money, and many do not have basic things. The poverty level and bad economic mismanagement by the APC government have even gingered the people more. Look at the kind of people supporting Obi. They are people that have put their lives at stake, claiming that it is the only way to save the country. Nigeria has borrowed 8.4 trillion to augment our budget. There are times Nigeria used more than 99.9 per cent of its generated revenue for a particular month to service debt. Nigeria is in a very bad situation. And for me, if we are going to take Nigeria, we must go beyond tribe, ethnicity and religion. I have seen some candidates trying to play them. It will not work this time. It will not work because they cannot use religion to play on our intelligence. We go to the same market. There is no market where Muslims are buying rice cheaper, or Christians buying it much cheaper. There is nowhere Christians are buying beans cheaper than Muslims. It is a big problem. Our problem is beyond economic mismanagement. People very ostentatious in their attitude, and very bogus in spending are still in government. What we need now is somebody to save Nigeria by cutting down the cost of governance. It is not about the retrenchment of workers, but about cutting down budgetary allocations on food in the Villa. We just need to cut down the cost of governance and Obi has shown from history of managing Anambra and the public institutions that he has run. How he left money behind, and how he was able to invest money for the future generation. Forget what people are talking about the money he invested, Governor Soludo criticised. It is childish criticism unless he is encouraging people not to save money. From time immemorial even when we are in the state of nature like Thomas Hobbes said, when life was brutish, nasty or short, people were still interested in saving for tomorrow. Are we now saying that people should not save regardless of whether the previous government mismanaged it? We must encourage the culture of saving money for future generations. If you properly enumerate everything, you know why people always talk about Lagos. Lagos is a cosmopolitan society where no single tribe controls. As we speak, the Igbo are the second largest tribe in Lagos. You have Igalas and Idomas coming fourth and fifth and the Binis. So, people are generally no longer looking at the tribe. They are saying let us vote for a candidate who can turn Nigeria around from consumption to production. I am contesting an election and I can tell you that poverty in the rural area is massive. Forget what we see in the urban areas, and how we are able to survive with what we have. We understand the effect of inflation. They have never suffered like this in their life. People are actually suffering. People are, therefore, united in their suffering and united in the intention to rescue themselves from this down spiral fall so that they can take Nigeria up the slope.
Where do you then place the power of incumbency in ensuring that the forthcoming election goes in favour of the APC?
Don’t forget that even the PDP said that during the 2015 presidential election, but they were defeated by the people. In the Osun governorship election, there was the power of incumbency. Their Commissioners, LGA Chairmen, Councillors and SIEC were all APC members, but they were defeated by the people. If elections are free, if elections are credible, these structures, the old structures used to manipulate our electoral system through all manners of electoral frauds to muscle out the opposition to announce results have all collapsed. This was what the structure meant. But now that structure is no longer useful as technology has ensured that results are tabulated on the Internet by the INEC on its portal. That structure is no longer in existence because it was a whole structure of rigging elections. That is why when people solicit to give me data of the 1999 to 2019 elections and how they worked, I will reject it because they are not reliable. They are not reliable because they are not true. If they are true, you can’t tell me that in Kano in 2015 out of the two million votes from there, there were no void or cancelled votes. Every vote was valid. So, the data are not true. We have had a situation where people pointed guns at the head of the electoral officer to announce the results. We must sit down, analyse all these things and then understand that Nigerians have decided to take their future in their own hands. They have decided that it is one man, one vote, and that is what INEC has done. You must thumbprint to vote. If you are not there you cannot vote. When the thumb printing system was not there, there was multiple ballot box stuffing, there were multiple thumb printing systems that ensured that one person can thumbprint more than 30,000 ballot papers. It is no longer possible this time. What we are telling the people is that they must be vigilant, and committed to saving their country. All of us must sacrifice ourselves to save the few that are remaining and I don’t think we have done anything bad. What is the essence of living for more than 100 years in a country that is so blessed with natural resources, with crude oil in both North and South now, coal, gold, limestone, everything, only to suddenly find ourselves in the worst state and suffering? It is for the Nigerian people to save themselves not about the reigning structure of any government. There is no structure anywhere greater than the people. When the people are united, they will determine their future. Obi became governor in Anambra without any structure. He even defeated the structures to become governor. Mimiko became governor in Ondo under LP without any structure. There are one million reasons, from constituencies to senatorial districts and governorship that Nigerians have always decided their own future. So, the power of incumbency will not work.
What are your biggest fears for next year’s elections?
My biggest fear is that the powers that be, used to manipulating elections, oppressive regimes and the Nigerian police seeing the election as regime protection rather than the protection of the rights of the citizens. My biggest fear is that they will deploy a level of violence to make sure that people don’t come out to vote or to intimidate voters. Next year’s election might be a bit more violent than the previous ones. Those are my biggest fears. I think that the prosecuting agencies must know that they are being paid with taxpayers’ money and must wake up to protect the interests of the Nigerian taxpayers, which by and large are the electorate. My fear is just the violence. I believe next year’s election might be very difficult to rig because there are too many interests. As we speak, there are four candidates since Kwankwaso cannot be ruled out because he is going to do major damage to the PDP and APC in the North.
It is so because there will not be any bloc vote coming from anywhere. Anybody who thinks Kwankwaso is not a force in the North; the person is a political illiterate. He is going to be a blessing to Obi in this election. I was one of the few people who didn’t want Kwankwaso to be Obi’s running mate. I contested it and spoke to the relevant stakeholders. We want Obi to run on a clean slate and run with a fresh brain like Ahmed Datti, a first-class brain. We want Kwankwaso to be the tiebreaker in the North. For the first time, Nigerians will break all the barriers, stereotypes and fault lines created by greedy politicians to always determine who can become what. Nigerians will take over power; make somebody president by their own will and their decision. That president will know that when he messes up, Nigerians will remove it.
Do you see President Buhari standing by his words to ensure a free and fair election as the legacy he will leave behind?
It would be bad if he did not do so. At his age, I don’t think we should be looking for anything other than posterity to remember him for setting the basis and foundation upon which Nigeria became a greater nation. He will leave a legacy that almost all Nigerians have a say on how their government is formed because even in pre-colonial, post-colonial and Independence, Nigerians are never involved in all the decisions. Colonial masters put together, gave a name, and wrote our constitution they tagged ‘we the people of Nigeria’, even when the people of Nigeria never decided. This is the first time Nigerians will decide their own future if Buhari truly stands by his words. Nigerians will be taking their faith in their own hands. Posterity will remember Buhari for signing the Electoral Act and standing by what he has signed. It is a sign of integrity, for saying one thing and actualising it to achieve its purpose. If he does anything in contrast, he will join the category of previous presidents in shaming and naming.
Why did you settle for the House of Reps after contesting for president in 2019?
I grew up in Lagos and later returned to my rural community. I found out that there is no balance in Nigeria. I am an Igala man from Kogi State. If they want to give president in Nigeria, they will never consider a Kogi man. They always think of weaker and stronger parts of the North in terms of majority and minority. I have been worried about it and I didn’t want to have children that think, from the day they were born; they cannot be president of this country. That actually worried me. It was for that reason that I put myself on the ballot when I had the opportunity. I know elections cost a lot of money and I was not as popular as Obi, enjoying almost everything for free. I knew winning was not going to happen, but I also knew it was going to make a statement for my own children, for children that are going to grow up in their own rank and for Nigerians who see the presidential election as a class thing. I wanted to just break that jinx. Friends were surprised I contested for president, but I told them I want them to believe it is possible. That was what I have done and today that my belief has given me more courage and encouraged young people to participate in politics. It has also shown that what I was dreaming of is possibly in Peter Obi. He will be the first president from the Southeastern region that will be representing the people that have not been given the opportunity to govern. The Igbo deserve a trophy for supporting Yoruba, Hausa and any other tribe every time against their own. If today the Igbo said they have found a worthy son to represent Nigeria, I think all Nigerians should support him. That is why we must commend Pa Ayo Adebanjo. He is a nationalist who stands for the truth and works for the truth that it is time to support the Igbo. Nigerians are not supporting Obi because he is an Igbo man, but because they are fed up. We are in a very bad economic and political situation. It is time to rewrite the history of Nigeria and make Nigeria work for everybody.
What are the factors that will count against Obi for next year’s poll?
The factors are the ones that they have been listing. One is that he has no structure, which is not true. Every political party, on the day of formation, from Section 221 to 10, requires submitting to INEC the list of ward, local government, state and national executives. The second factor is that of funds. Finance is a major player in our election. But I am not afraid because Nigerian people, interested in this project will contribute to make sure that it works.
