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• APC with 30 govs can’t guarantee Tinubu’s victory in 2027
• Why Igbo travel home en masse for Christmas
The President of the Credibility Group, Ide Goddy Uwazurike, has adduced reasons Peter Obi’s defection to the African Democratic Congress (ADC) was generating ripples.
In an interview with VINCENT KALU, the former president of Aka Ikenga, the Igbo intelligentsia group, noted that Tinubu’s reforms haven’t been palatable to citizens.
Despite the prevailing economic hardship in the country and the fears of insecurity in the South-East, the Igbo returned home en masse during the last yuletide season. What could be attributed to this?
There is something in the DNA of a real Igbo man. I say this with all sense of responsibility. The DNA in a real Igbo man tells him east or west; north or south, home is the best. That is what drives him. If you go to any airport during this time of Christmas, three quarters of the people you see in Nigeria traveling are Igbo people. No matter the cost. You go by air, looking at N1 million as the fare, they may complain, but they will still go.
You go by roads, you are looking at N120, 000, to and fro, and they will still travel. It is that man must return home mentality of the Igbo man, especially after the war.
Remember, in 1970, we had nothing; many of the homes were destroyed, no work, no income, but they started trekking to go and do menial jobs; and any other jobs they needed to do, and within two years, they came back to show their people that they are alive and at home.
So, for the Igbo man, he does not forget where he came from; that is one unique quality.
He goes home, and on Christmas Day, he moves around to his church. And by the way, the religion of the Igbo man is actually known when you follow him to a village. Yes, he’s a Christian, but he has a denomination, every family has a denomination. Forget whatever you see in the cities.
So, he shows up, and if he does not show up, there must be a valid reason he didn’t come back. And his people become apprehensive, and he makes effort to reach and reassure them that it’s still okay. If you see an Igbo man, who doesn’t go home during Christmas, Easter, August meeting or burial, something is definitely wrong with him. I say it without any fear of contradiction; he should go and check: his Igbo DNA has gone.
People were saying that the Igbo land was insecure; that there were killings everywhere. If you read the non-Igbo platforms, all you’ll be reading is: Igbo killed, Igbo are killing Igbo, but the Igbo people went home.
Notwithstanding all these stories, the Igbo went home and people have now realised that it was an exaggeration. Exaggeration must end at a certain time. It has expiration dates, and Igbo just established it.
But people are attributing it to the President Tinubu’s reforms that are paying dividends, which made the Igbo people to have money to travel. And also the Defence Ministry said that the jailing of Nnamdi Kanu has brought peace to the region. What is your position on this?
Anybody who thinks that buying petrol at nearly N1,000 is better than buying it at about N100 under Jonathan or less than N200 under Buhari that person should go and think again; anybody who thinks that paying school fees10 times where it was under Jonathan is better for the Igbo man, tell the person to go back to school. Anybody who thinks that we are happy to pay far more for medication, tell the person he should go and think again.
Where is the income, has it decreased? No, but the cost of living is extremely high. The Igbo man travelled because he wanted to see where he came from.
When an Igbo man dies, what happens? We carry the person home. As the person is dying, before his last breath, he says, please, bury me among my people.
That is the Igbo man; it is the Igbo man you see on every first Sunday of the month spending N 5,000 on transport fare going for a village meeting. Meanwhile, the penalty for not attending the village meeting is only N1, 000, but he spends 5,000 to attend the meeting.
So, there is something called Onye ahala nwanne ya (don’t forget your brother; be your brother’s keeper)
Actually, in Igbo land, Christmas is a week celebration; in some communities, it’s three months. You have an open kitchen. In other words, all the doors are open; food is cooked waiting for visitors. People go from house to house. As you are sitting down, your host won’t ask you whether you want to eat, they just bring food and drinks. If you don’t eat, it’s an offence because it would be interpreted that you are afraid of the host. So, with all the negative stories about the Igbo man, he has to travel simply because of the love of the Igbo land.
On whether the incarceration of Nnamdi Kalu has any effect on their return home, you should remember that Buhari grabbed him, and he was granted bail. They brought him back and did their abracadabra, and jailed him.
If they tell you that it is because of his incarceration that Igbo travelled en mass last Xmas tell the person to stop telling lies, and to bend down and learn the truth.
Simon Ekpa never really had impact on the true Igbo man; his impact was on the outlaws, and not the Igbo man. The outlaws are built from different parts of the country and even beyond; they live inside the forest.
Those who travelled, travelled day and night without any fear of harm. You will see them travel during Easter and during August meetings
What is your view on the defection of Peter Obi to the ADC?
As people moved to the ADC, there was little noise. When Amaechi moved, there was little noise. Others moved and had all their meetings leading to David Mark becoming the chairman, there was little noise.
But as soon as Peter Obi, accompanied by prominent Igbo people joined the party or made known their joining of the party, all hell was let loose.
The Head of the Presidential media team, Bayo Onanuga, fired his salvo, and suddenly the entire APC media team descended on him using various social media handles. They forgot that Obi contested elections in 2020 without any Kobo from any government –local, state or federal, whereas APC enjoyed monetary support. When Obi was contesting election, even in some states they didn’t even allow him to campaign. He was supposed to go to Yobe States; his aircraft was already airborne when he was told he shouldn’t land that he should go back; that he didn’t have clearance to enter Yobe. Yet, with all those intimidations, he stood tall, taller than all of them and up till now. The APC government is trying to adopt some of the Obi’s statements, colour them and change them to its own. There is nothing they have not said against Obi; there is no probing they have not done. Obi remains the model politician, you won’t find all these looters hanging around him and if you make him the president, believe in me, he will rule this country 25 hours in a day, and he will not be going out to stay in one country or the other for weeks, that’s not Peter Obi. They are afraid that he has come out.
The APC has 30 out of 36 governors, and those that are yet to join are more or less sympathetic to the party. It controls far majority in the National Assembly, as well as state assemblies. Against this, political analysts say that Tinubu has won the election even before the day of the election. What’s your view?
In 2015, Jonathan had more governors than any other person, yet he lost the election. Jonathan appointed the police chief, army chiefs and meetings everybody, and with all the paraphernalia of office, he still lost. The fact that Tinubu has all these people around him cannot be a guarantee.
Police chief, security chiefs all owe loyalty to him and not to Nigeria. In Nigeria today, if you demonstrate against Tinubu, you will be arrested for treason. Even a 10-year old child can be arrested for treason and for demonstrating against Tinubu. Nobody has arrested those who carry guns in the northeast, northwest and north central for treason. This morning, we have heard of more killings and kidnapping in Niger State. So, there’s no guarantee that he will win. The only thing people like me are afraid of is how independent is our judiciary. We say that the judiciary is the last hope of the common man if they stand firm because a judge lives forever. How does a judge live forever? It is because all those judgments he spent weeks and days writing, they stay there even more than 100 years. Some judges died many decades ago, but we are still quoting them.
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If judges can be upright then there will be a free and fair election provided the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is really independent.
There are still discordant tunes over the American airstrike in Sokoto on the eve of Christmas Day, and also the issue of Christian genocide in Nigeria. What’s your take on that?
Genocide is when you kill somebody for his tribe or for his belief or his race. All those churches they set on fire with the members; all those killings targeted at Christians, are called Christian genocide. ECWA, in Kwara State is the most prominent denomination in the state. Go and see what is happening there. You see people targeting them because they are Christians.
That’s why we say Christian genocide. Now, take Plateau States, where the governor has adopted a survival mode; the type of survival mode his predecessor, Lalong adopted – see no evil, hear no evil, but just console people. Benue governor, Alia has adopted the same mode different from what Governor Ortom had before. Ortom said the truth for what it was and the powers that be made sure that he was not elected to the Senate, they are still suppressing him.
Governor Alia, who originally was a reverend father, but has been suspended as he’s no longer in practice, is hiding the truth. One day, when he steps down he would come back and say he was misled. When you say the truth, it stands forever. There is genocide in Nigeria; people are being killed because of their religion. From time to time, Boko Haram in the Northeast will go and kill people. Why? They will tell you that it is their brand of Islam that you should practise, and the government of Nigeria looks the other way.
Remember Buhari went to Benue during the massacre, and told the victims to accommodate their neighbours. Tinubu rushed to Makurdi, the state capital three days later after the Pope complained about the killings. He was given a red carpet reception, and didn’t go to the scene of the massacre. He told the victims to go and negotiate with their killers. They are to negotiate with a man who is carrying AK-47, and that’s the end of the story.
What happened to the Christian girls? You said, oh we have rescued them, what of the kidnappers? As we speak, more people have been killed and others taken hostage and you say that’s not genocide? It is genocide
What’s your view on the Tinubu tax reforms?
One quality every government must have is credibility. If a government lacks credibility then its sovereignty becomes suspect. One of the things you must do as a president is to be open. A complaint came up that this tax, which has been gazetted as a law, was not what they produced at the National Assembly, and it was not addressed. What is expected of a reasonable government is to say to the National aAsembly that when you come back from your Christmas vacation show us what you produced. What is the thing they’re saying? That the tax law or the tax act signed into law by Mr. President gives the power to the tax authorities to come to my door and break open the place and arrest me. That’s one of the key issues.
It was not there and nobody has ever come out to say the National Assembly passed such a provision. It’s like when a child is telling you something, and you keep telling him to shut up. If you are smart, you say okay, talk and let’s hear you. The government of Tinubu is not living up to expectation; he is just toeing the line of Buhari. In any case, Tinubu said he would continue from where Buhari stopped, and that he is building on the foundation laid by his immediate predecessor. In other words, we are in for a hell. His reforms are all disasters.
What agenda will you set for President Tinubu in 2026?
He should look at all those reforms that he has been bandying about, I can name them. When he came, he announced the removal of subsidy; that we are going to get more money, and that it was in our interests. So, we have jumped from N175 to N1, 000 for a litre of fuel and now to under Dangote’s direction to around N800 now. It is the outcome of the reform that we are now paying more.
And remember that in this country, if you touch petrol, everything goes up. Mr President should look at his foreign exchange reforms. He destroyed the economy with the reforms. Customs followed it. Remember that all customs duties are now paid in dollars. When you touch exchange rates and mess it up, that car you are planning to buy at N1 million becomes N20 million. And if you are a paid employee, where do you get such money? Right now, those in the middle class have no hope of buying a new car. Now you look at electricity, we were still enjoying before Mr President brought his reforms.
Suddenly, we found ourselves in Band A. You are living in a house where you pay N200, 000, and you are looking at N50, 000 to pay electricity bill. For what? Very few homes now use AC.
Look at education. I still remember a fuel attendant at the Shaga Road, Lagos, from Abeokuta, crying that his daughter is about to enter final year, and asking from where would she get the money to go and pay? That she has been enjoying all this time, asking if her daughter will drop out. ‘Who helped me’? It was a painful cry from her heart, yet all those in power do not have their children in our schools; they all study abroad. At whose expense? You and I should know that.
When you look at the road construction, you ask yourself, which roads are actually under construction? Those who travel to the East, they saw hell; they saw hell from Lagos, and from Abuja they suffered. The Second Niger Bridge, which Buhari commissioned, was not even completed.
You talk of the president going around the world, looking for foreign investors, meanwhile, Dangote, the local investor, is facing all kinds of forces and obstacles.
Our president needs to sit up and review the things. Peter Obi kept on saying during the campaigns that we should not borrow for consumption. This government has borrowed fantastically.
Peter Obi said if you must borrow, let it be for production, and make sure you export it. That way you can earn dollars. But, the government said he is talking rubbish. Today, is he still talking rubbish?
Mr. President, be humble enough to learn from Peter Obi’s blueprint on how to govern Nigeria.
President Bola Tinubu has presented a budget of about 58 trillion Naira for 2026. Out of this amount, about N15 trillion representing about 27 per cent is for debt servicing. So what do you say to this?
What has happened is that this is a government of jamborees. Remember, we were talking of reducing the cost of governance. That was part of what Tinubu kept on saying that Jonathan must reduce the cost of governance. When Buhari came, he did not reduce it.
Now, Tinubu the man championing restructuring increased the cost of governance.
So, when you hear of the budget and servicing of debts and cost of living, know that that is an abracadabra economy, which so far is Christian Tinubunomics.
Once in a while, you have people in government and they think government is jamboree, forgetting that whatever policy they have today will affect us negatively for years to come yes.
All the major industries have left, all the major factories, and none, not even one has come in.
So, if none has come in, how then can we survive economically? America has made it difficult for people to migrate. Most parts of Europe are saying stay in their country and suffer. So, we are going to suffer in Nigeria, but we don’t think we should suffer. We think the government should sit up.
If the government does not know what to do, the government should talk to those who know.
The beauty of a government is dependent on the kitchen cabinet and the official cabinet. If you bring intelligent people, they will talk intelligently. If you bring Owambi people, they will talk out Owambi style. If you bring those who are into religion, they will talk religion style. If you talk to those who are into trading and profits, they will talk.
There are people who are experienced in words and deeds and they will direct you.
