By Chidiebere Onyemaizu
Chief Sidney Dike has been active in Nigeria’s political scene for over four decades. In the second republic, as an undergraduate, he was the leader of the student wing of the then ruling party, the National Party of Nigeria, NPN. During the late Head of State, General Sani Abacha’s transition programme, he was a chieftain of the Grassroots Democratic Movement, GDM under which platform he geared up to contest the Abia State governorship race before the maximum ruler’s death truncated the move.
With the return of democracy in 1999, Chief Dike again joined the Abia governorship fray on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Congress, PDC, losing to former Governor Orji Kalu. With PDC collapsing into the defunct APP, Chief Dike became a chieftain of the party and worked for the presidential aspiration of the late strongman of Kwara politics, Olusola Saraki (Oloye). He later teamed up with Chief Chekwas Okorie and others to found the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, and becoming the party’s pioneer National Organising Secretary. Chief Dike was equally a founding member of the now deregistered United Progressives Party, UPP, and now a chieftain of the opposition Peoples Democratic party, PDP.
In this interview, Chief Dike, an indigene of Item in Bende local government area of Abia State, spoke extensively on a wide range of political issues.
You have been around in Nigeria’s political scene for over four decades now, can you let us into your trajectory in the political arena these past years?
First of all, let me inform you that I’m from a politically aware family. During my student days, I was the leader of the National Party of Nigeria, NPN’s student wing. This resulted from the fact that my aunt-inlaw was the chairperson, women wing of NPN then; so a lot of political activities were centred in our house either in Owerri or in Awolowo Road, Ikoyi, Lagos. So from that young age, I became politically aware. Fast forward that, I showed interest in becoming the governor of Abia State during the General Sani Abacha era and I was a member of the GDM (Grassroots Democratic Movement), one of the five political parties Abacha created. On the platform of the party, I had campaigned three turns in all the 17 Local Government Areas in Abia State before the sudden demise of the then Head of State, Gen Sani Abacha. During the transition process of General Abdulsam Abubakar-1998/1999, I again showed interest in becoming Abia State governor.
Under which party’s platform did you run for the Abia governorship in 1998/1999?
Peoples Democratic Congress, PDC that later merged with APP. PDC was under the late Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu whom we worked with- myself, Chekwas Okorie and Ralph Uwazurike that later formed Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB. So, ever since then, I have been very politically active. Having lost the Abia governorshiop election to Orji Uzor Kalu, we remained in APP that later metamorphosed into ANPP. In APP, we were in the late Olusola Saraki’s (Oloye) line up. When he did not get the APP presidential ticket following the mysterious emergence of Dr Ogbonnaya Onu as the presidential flag bearer of the party, we remained in his( Saraki) political camp until we formed the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA. Let me just point out this correctly: It wasn’t Ojukwu that formed APGA. You know, it is difficult for one person to form a party. When we formed APGA led by Chekwas Okorie and many others including myself, Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu was not there. It was in the course of the search for a presidential flag bearer of the party that the former President-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Rtd Justice Eze Ozobu of blessed memory took us and went to convince Ojukwu, first to join the party and too to become the presidential flag bearer. APGA was registered very shortly before the election but the success that it achieved bewildered every person. Remember that APGA came third in the 2003 elections. I was the Organising Secretary of the party and the rest is history- the way Victor Umeh and co were engineered by very powerful forces to fight and diminish the success achieved by APGA following the travails of Peter Obi. The Nigige- Obi debacle were later to turn round to benefit APGA following Peter Obi’s court victory. However, APGA has not recovered from that initial challenge up till now. So, we later left APGA and formed the United Progressive Party, UPP. Following the abysmal performance of the UPP, Chekwas went back to APGA and I went to PDP.
Why did you describe as mysterious the emergence of Dr Ogbonnaya Onu as the Presidential candidate of the APP in 1999? Did his emergence not follow due process?
I wouldn’t say his emergence didn’t follow due process.Why I described his emergence as mysterious is because all along when we were running all over the country, Ogbonnaya Onu was not with us but all of a sudden, two weeks to the presidential primary, he approached Chekwas and myself to come and accompany him to purchase the nomination form at APP’s National headquarters in Abuja. And I remember Chekwas telling him, you have not been effectively with us, nobody even knows that you are in APP only for you to want to buy form. Ojukwu said to us, ah! You people can accompany him, where will he get N25m at that time believing that he wasn’t going to get it. Of course surprisingly to all of us, he brought a draft of N25m in favour of the party and we accompanied him, he bought the form, filled it and up and until the primary in Kano, up and until midnight of that fateful day, everybody was saying Oloye, Oloye, Oloye. You know, Saraki was the expected person, he was tipped to win the ticket but around 1 a.m we heard that the powers that be said it must be Ogbonnaya Onu. Of course the next day, we went for the primary and he won but only for him to resign before the election.
So, in other words, his emergence was orchestrated, enginnered…
That is your own word. I called it mysterious emergence because for somebody who didn’t have a line up, known line up in anywhere not to talk about travelling and consulting political stakeholders all over the country as opposed to Oloye as we called Saraki, who had a solid political structure, base, for Dr Ogbonnaya Onu to beat him (Saraki) hands down in Kano, that is politics in Nigeria for you.
You were in the nick of the politics of the Second Republic even if it was as a student leader of a party, how would you compare the politics of that era to what we have now?
When I tell you I was a student, I wasn’t a secondary school student; I was in the final year in the university. So, back to your question, nothing has changed and nothing will change. For instance, for you to say that something has changed, you have to go back to 1952. Recall that Nigeria would have got independence before Ghana but it was the North that said they were not ready, that they were disadvantaged educationally and career wise. And Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe asked them, how much time would you want for you to catch up? And that was why our independence came by 1960. Today, though it is not yet in the open, you journalists must have heard as we are hearing that there is a prospect of going back to regional government, the same North is again saying they are not prepared, that they are still backward educationally and career wise. So, from 1952, 1959 to 2034, one leg of the tripod kept saying we are not ready, we are not ready and when you ask them what do you want to get ready for, they say they want to catch up with the South educationally but instead of catching up, you know what the result is. So unless if we begin to design a democracy that will suit us, we will keep comparing, we will keep saying that yesterday seems to be better than today.
There is an ongoing clamour in some quarters for Nigeria to return to the Parliamentary system of government. We tried Parliamentary government in the First Republic and later discarded it and since 1979, we have been operating the presidential system, yet we seem not have got it right. In your view, is Nigeria’s problem a system of government or the operators of the system?
In my own opinion, the first is the system. The regional and parliamentary system of government in the First Republic were alright and Nigeria was on the track of becoming economically and politically viable until the coup. The coup gave rise to a military government and you know in a military government, they operate by chain of command. So, for General Aguiyi Ironsi to effectively run the country, he turned to what we are still witnessing today- Unitary government- which is following the military chain of command. The North revolted against it and that was why Ironsi died. At that time, they wanted the status to remain, that is, regional government. After Ironsi died, they now saw that the actors, the new actors are principally their own boys- Northern soldiers, so they now institutionalised the unitary government which the same North had revolted against and which we are in today. If we had been allowed to practise democracy as it was conceived in 1959 and 1963, maybe every region through competition and developing at their pace, Nigeria could have been better today. And then the operators following the same way, Unitary government which was introduced into the Nigerian politics by the military for convenience because they are trained to obey hierarchy, a chain of command because it was benefitting certain section of this country; they don’t want to get away from the unitary government anymore but it’s not taking us anywhere. So, both the operator and the system are the issue here. Look at it; everybody will make haste to compare the injustice between Kano and Lagos State. Lagos State has a population greater than Kano State, arguably, but Kano has 44 local government areas but Lagos has only 20. How can you progress this way? Dr M. I Okpara, Premier of the Eastern Region normally asked during his time, is democracy over landmass or over people? Nobody has been able to answer this question till today.
Nigerians have just celebrated 25 years of uninterrupted democracy in the country; what would you say have been the gains of democracy?
There is this argument as to whether it should be called return to democracy or whether it should be termed return to civilian rule. If you call it return to civilian rule, you won’t be wrong because members of the military-many of them- just removed their khaki uniform and put on agbada in order to qualify as civilians but they are the same people. Go to the National Assembly, go to those who have become Governors, go to those who still have influence in determining what goes on in this country, it is the same people. So, until we are able to define the difference between democracy and civilian rule, we may not be able to evaluate what we have done- whether we have done 25 years or 24 years. But generally and internationally too, it is accepted that the worst form of democratic rule is better than the best form of military rule. However, as far as I’m concerned I dont believe in that concept because it is the Military that gave us the first express road from Asaba to Lagos . I was already in secondary school, in federal government college, and I was coming from Aba to Lagos to go to school.The journey used to take us two- three days until that express road was finished by General Gowon.
Then you take off from Aba in the morning and you arrive Lagos at 4pm the same day. It was the military that gave us Eko bridge, it is the military that gave us Carter bridge, it is the military that had the cause for the development of Lekki phase 1 and 2 and that entire axis. It is the military that gave us the Murtala Muhammed International Airport. I remember, I have gone to overseas before all these infrastructures were founded and I remember what that Airport used to look like. If you keep counting what the military gave us in comparison to what we achieved during civilian rule or democratic rule as you may want to call it, you begin to ask whether is it about development, landmark development or is it just because as it suits us.
One of the debilitating ills bedevilling Nigeria today is insecurity. Some people have advocated state police, and even local government police to stem the tide. Do you think the creation of state police will end the spiraling insecurity across the country?
Because I have in my life time witnessed both of them, my view is that the state and local government police will help a great deal because the police we have now, to my mind and opinion, is not perfect and it’s one sided. If we revert to whatever you call it, either zonal police, regional police or state police where police men are very conversant and familiar with areas and the people they are supposed to police, in my own opinion, it will be better than this same unitary chain of command we have now; somebody in Abuja posting somebody to Asaba, somebody who does not know the terrains, who does not know anybody or understand the language and culture of the people. In fact, I’m told that when policemen are transferred like that, nobody makes arrangements for their accommodation, they sleep in the police stations where they are transferred to until they are able to find their feet. Along that line, who will be doing the work they are supposed to do? But if we revert to regional police or state police or county police which may now become local government police, it will be people from that area who will not have that challenge of where to reside if you transfer them and the distance of transfer will just be very minimal. We have tried both of them and anybody who witnessed the First Republic and the police that we inherited from the colonial masters can attest to this. We even had what we called Kotma which means court messengers and they had authority. If we revert to that, in my opinion, I think it can benefit the country the better. Talking about security, because your question is interwoven with security, the problem of this country is unhealthy rivalry. If policemen were not recruited based on where you come from or who you know, it will be call to national duty but here you recruit people who can’t even understand simple English; how will they be writing reports? And they are everywhere. And then the copycat syndrome, this insecurity started in the Northeast, it was treated with kid gloves until it spread like cancer all over the place. The same thing, at the end of the war, Gowon was advised to take over schools in East Central state, including the university of Nigeria Nsukka to forestall the influence of voluntary organisations, that’s the orthodox churches that founded the schools who in their minds( the Gowon led military government) were the ones that prolonged the war. Soon after the schools were taken over, in March of 1970, in the national budget, East Central state received budgetary allocation for the schools and immediately other regions that didnt experience the war clamoured for their schools and universities to be taken over too and that’s where we are today. Oh! You are giving East Central State £300,000 pounds for their schools, come and take over our schools and give us that £300,000 pounds too! Look at it, today we are complaining.That’s why I said unhealthy rivalry. Insecurity started as Boko Haram up North, now insecurity is all over the country. No police force whether regional, state, local government or county will solve that problem in less than 10 years.
It does appear that the political future of the Southeast is bleak because looking at the turn of events since 1999 when civilian rule returned, it has been a relay race between the Northwest and the Southwest. And at the end of President Tinubu’s second term, assuming he is re-elected in 2027, the presidency may naturally return to the North again. Where does this grim reality leave the Southeast? What is the cause of the decline of the Southeast in the national political calculus and what can be done to reverse the situation, to make the region grab power at the centre?
It is difficult because no region can win the presidency alone.The Southwest is sitting there now for the second time because Tinubu took the Southwest to support Buhari from the North with the understanding that after that, there will be a reverse case. Who has the Igboman been able to say, this is my ally, let me support you and in return, you will support me? It could have worked out in the second republic. Recall, people don’t know that when Azikiwe was making waves under NPP and the NPN was looking for a way to checkmate the rise of NPP and Azikiwe, that was what informed their bringing back Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu from exile in Ivory Coast with a caveat that he will join them in the NPN to check Jim Nwobodo and Azikiwe. They promised him he would go to the Senate but the rest is history. He came back, he kept his own bargain but the other side did not keep theirs. Ever since then, whether it is the former East Central state or the Southeast, we have been divided politically. This one will support A, the other one will support B. We don’t have a bloc; I’m not saying that there is any region that has a single bloc but our own is so divided and it didn’t start today. When Azikiwe was there, Mbonu Ojike was on his own, KO Mbadiwe was on his own, SG Ikoku was on his own. It was due to the enormous powers of Azikiwe that NCNC was able to emerge but even then, it has to go into alliance with the North. But alliance now? No region is confident enough to trust the Southeast vis avis the Igboman. So, the fear of the Igboman is what is keeping us like this. Once an Igboman is beginning to emerge, they find a way to truncate the alliance. Even in the military, was it not just yesterday that General Ihejirika Onyeabo managed to become the Chief of Army Staff? This fear of the Igboman is misguided because the Igboman will not do anything. Agreed that the Igbo says when snake bites you when you see rope you run but the Igboman is not wanting to do anything, they should stop holding them down for this country to progress.
So, in a nutshell, you are saying that it will be difficult for an Igboman to become the president of Nigeria?
It will be difficult. The nearest effort to that seat is what Peter Obi has been able to achieve but you can see that except for the youths, that same fear of the Igboman…judging from what Wole Soyinka said two weeks ago, is it the fear of Peter Obi or is it the fear of the Igboman but let’s watch and see because the youths of this country seem to have a direction. The fear of the Igboman didnt just start today. According to Harold Smith, the fear of the Igboman started from the colonial masters and they did everything they could to make sure that the Igboman didn’t emerge, be it at the prime ministerial level or the Executive President. Then you will recall that the NCNC, if not for the cross- carpeting of the NCNC members in the West to the Action Group which was also as a result of the fear of the Igboman, there was no way the NCNC was not going to win outright majority in the First Republic. You will recall also in the Second Republic following the alliance between the Igbo and the North, after Shagari has done eight years, the fear that Ekwueme was going to become the President is much speculated to have been responsible for the Buhari coup of 1983 that truncated the possibility of the Igboman becoming the President and the rest is history. They all know that they need the humble contributions that the Igbo man will make towards the stability and progress of this country but you ask yourself what is this fear all about; the Igboman is not going to carry Nigeria to any where, neither will an Igboman elected as the President of Nigeria wake up the next morning and decree he will let Biafra to go,the Igboman is everywhere. The Igboman is everywhere in the Southwest, they are not contesting for Obaship in anywhere, neither are they contesting even for the governorship seat. The same is applicable to all over the country. The people, no matter what you did to them are waxing strong in every aspect of human endeavour.
President Bola Tinubu has just clocked one year in office, one year down the line, how has his administration fared, in your view?
It is difficult to assess this government within one year because they are shy of coming public with the rot they inherited because they are from the same political party otherwise…you know they keep saying they are no magicians; the rot is so enormous that the first thing I will say they have achieved is the stability of the country, that we are all still in the same country called Nigeria. We will give them time. This issue of trial and error; you remove subsidy today, you find out that it’s not tenable, then you start from the backyard to reintroduce subsidy and you deny it; one year after you come public and say I’m still paying N5trillion. Nigeria is a tough place to manage but as far as I’m concerned, that there is still a stable one Nigeria is a great achievement of Tinubu and his government. Will they get it right? Yes, we have hope, even if it’s by trial and error because there is no principle of economics that works in Nigeria. The things that works in other countries, you bring them here, they don’t work but when people think and believe that this country is doomed, almost dead, it springs up. So, I believe we should all give them benefits of doubt, we voted them in and it’s still too soon to judge them.
At the beginning of the interview, you said when you left UPP, you joined PDP. We will like to know if you are right now a chieftain of the PDP, a card- carrying member of the party?
It is a very difficult question because in the part of the country where I come from, we have an attitude for election into the different offices. We know who we want to vote for position A, we know who we want to vote for position B, we know who we want to vote for position C and it has not failed us. That is all I will say.
Quote: “this fear of the Igboman is misguided because the Igboman will not do anything. Agreed that the Igbo says when snake bites you when you see rope you run but the Igboman is not wanting to do anything, they should stop holding them down for this country to progress”