''All I received from PDP is humiliation and neglect '', says Ekwueme, explodes on why Jonathan won’t get block votes in South-East

Though it was not a Sunday, Dr Alex Ekwueme, former Vice President, who had a scheduled interview appointment, took The Sun team to his chapel, a sanctuary in the upper chamber of the right wing of his house.

He had led the way from his living room to climb the staircase to the chapel, explain­ing that it was the only place the interview could be held without much distraction from visitors.

After we had ascended the ‘holy’ up­per chamber, we began the business of the day that lasted for about two hours, with the octogenarian looking at the country, remembering what had happened as if they occurred just yesterday, appraising power equations from independence in 1960 till now.

Dr Ekwueme, who co-founded the Peo­ples Democratic Party (PDP) with some other illustrious Nigerians, also looked at the current state of the party, saying that things have fallen apart in the PDP envi­sioned to be a mass movement that would rule the country for 60 years.

He also told the story of how the party has derailed from the original vision of the founders, and how the leadership has aban­doned him.

Looking at the crises rocking the PDP across the country, he said that he was not sure if the successes of the past would be the same during the February elections.

He pointedly said that President Good­luck Jonathan may not be fortunate again to have overwhelming support like he had in the past in the South-East, saying that he had taken the zone for granted.

Dr Ekwueme spoke just as there are vo­ciferous voices from the South-East, alleg­ing unfair treatment by the Jonathan admin­istration. It would be recalled that when Dr Ekwueme turned 80, the president did not attend the ceremony, but he was in Lagos to attend the birthday of Dr Tunji Braithwaite. Former Abia State governor, Dr Orji Uzor Kalu, had written President Jonathan then, pointing out the possible oversight, but the president reportedly minuted the letter to Chief Anyim Pius Anyim, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, who merely laughed the matter off.

Just on New Year eve, Catholic priest, Father Ejike Mbaka, had also delivered a sermon, which was very critical of the Jona­than administration. In fact, the priest asked the president to step out of general elections coming up next month, as he would not get a second term in office.

Excerpts of the interview with Dr Ek­wueme:

Your Excellency, how has life been with you?

Well, I cannot thank God enough for all He has done for me. At 83, I’m fit and lively. This morning, I’ve played two sets of tennis, there are many people at my age who can’t walk unsupported and some are bedridden, but by the grace of God, am still very fit and moving about. So, life has been good to me, and I cannot thank God enough for all these benefits bestowed on me within these 83 years plus.

What is the secret of your good health?

I don’t really know, but I think the main factor is that everything should be done with moderation. I drink, but I don’t drink to a point where I start misbehaving. I eat, but I’m not a glutton, I just eat enough to satisfy my appetite. I smoke, not cigarette anymore, I smoke cigars once or twice a week and I try to exercise to keep fit. I think these are basically what I can refer to, if you want to call them the secret of my good health.

Okay, let’s look at Nigeria. In 1960, you were a youth. What was the Ni­geria you saw at independence, up to the time you became the Vice President in 1979 and to the period you left in 1983?

In 1960, I was at the Race Course, as it was called then, on October 1, when the Union Jack was lowered and Nigerian flag, the Green-White-Green was hoisted and Prince Alexandra handed over the in­strument of office to Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the first Prime Minister of Nige­ria. At that time, we had very lofty expec­tations of what Nigeria would become. In fact, those of us then, we felt Nigeria would be the pride of the African continent, and that it would be a model of the ex-British colony because the journey to independ­ence was very tortuous.

There were many conferences, start­ing from the Ibadan Conference of 1950, so many conferences in Nigeria, so many in UK until arrangement was fashioned, which was acceptable to the leaders at that time. So, we were very optimistic and hopeful that with this detailed work at inde­pendence, that Nigeria would be a success story of British colonialism. Now, as you know, that has not been because within five years and six months of that exercise, the political terrain had become so rough to a point that those of us who lived in Lagos could not travel to Ibadan in safety without fear that you would be stopped on the way and your car burnt, and there was almost a state of anarchy. In that confusion, some young soldiers thought the best thing to do was to get rid of the leadership, not just the leadership, but their own leadership, the military leadership, which was what hap­pened in 1966 and which triggered a chain of reactions and counter reactions.

In July, the same year, there was counter reaction which resulted in the elimination of most of the military officers in Eastern Nigeria and after that it got to a situation where we had to scamper from the North to the Eastern Nigeria in search of safety, the rest is now history. There was seces­sion and there was civil war and after three years, we came back in January, 1970, un­til 1979, the military decided to hand over to the civilians. That’s how we came on board. But three months in the second term, they came up again; they put us aside and took over. On December 31, 1983 they had a palace coup within the military, which changed the leadership that lasted almost eight years, the Babangida regime, until he stepped aside and then brought in an inter­im government. From interim government to Abacha, from Abacha to Abdulsalami and Abdulsalami decided to hand over to the civilians. In 1999, ‘civilians’ (in quota­tion marks) came back on the scene but the civilian who came back was the military civilian.

At independence, you had lofty expectations and in 1979 you were given an opportunity to become the Number Two citizen. What efforts did you make to ensure that those lofty dreams were realised?

First and foremost, anybody who has a sense of history will know that for about 34 years we were enslaved, until on De­cember 31, 1983, which can be regarded as the golden age of Nigerian politics, because there was democratic freedom in the real sense of it. The party at the centre then, NPN, (National Party of Nigeria), the chairman of the party came from the South- West, the President from the North-West, I, Vice President from the South-East, the President of the Senate from the South- South and eventually Speaker of the House first, from the South-East and later from the North-Central.

So, every part of Nigeria had a sense of belonging, you cannot buy that cheaply in the market. That is the main thrust of our contribution. But unfortunately, the mili­tary was impatient to let that experiment grow and three months in the second term they came again; otherwise, if we had con­tinued, Nigeria would have become a mod­ern democratic state in which every Nige­rian will have a sense of belonging, which is the most important thing and everybody will have a sense of citizenship and nobody will feel he or she is a second class citizen and we would have provided security and a mass oriented programme like housing, Green Revolution, that’s agriculture. So, these are the contributions we had.

You said that the return of civilian rule, the first one by Obasanjo, was a kind of military civilian administra­tion. We remember that you were at the head of the G34 that metamor­phosed into the PDP that drafted Obasanjo into that election; so why did you say so?

It is not G34 that drafted Obasanjo. He was in jail in Yola when we organised the party and the first election under the new civilian dispensation was the local govern­ment election in December 1998, which was to be a litmus test for deciding which political parties would be registered, and as you will recall, PDP swept the votes throughout the country. It was a very popu­lar party, so we made the party at the risk of our own lives. If you go back to 8th May 1998, one of the magazines had a shouting headline: ‘Ekwueme takes on Abacha.’ It wasn’t a pleasant thing for Abacha to hear.

If I do not have friends who warned me, I won’t be alive talking to you now because he didn’t like what we were doing at all. And of the 34 who were represented in the G34, I was actually the one that was sign­ing the memorandum, it is my signature that was on it and in other documents be­cause I was chairman of the group, and he didn’t like it. And Directors of the SSS in Enugu where I stay, in Anambra here, my home state and in Owerri, Imo State where I have business interest, were told to keep 24-hour watch on me so that anytime it pleases Abacha, I would be picked up.

But somebody, a friend who didn’t like what probably was to happen, came and told me, and said I must get out of here very quickly and I did. I drove from here to Cotonou to Ghana and from Accra I fled to London and I was in London planning how to strategize to come back, and then Abacha died. Then Abdulsalami invited us, the United Nations, Kofi Annan came and spoke to us, the G34 group, the Secretary General of the Commonwealth came and spoke to us, then we moved on until the ac­tual return of civilian politics. But don’t for­get the background that led to the popularity of the PDP in the December 1998 elections, that is local government elections, House of Assembly elections, state governorship, National Assembly and presidential elec­tions, which our party swept across the whole country and the idea of the party was not that it would be an ordinary party, it was intended to be a mass movement, that’s why I said everybody should come on board including people who were fraternizing with Abacha. I remembered in one meeting we held at the Federal Palace Hotel. That was the first day Barnabas Gemade came to our meeting and Jibril Aminu objected to his presence there, because he was the chairman of the Commit­tee for National Consensus, that is, the five parties that had adopted Abacha’s presidency. Jibril Aminu said he should not be allowed to stay and I was the one presiding over the meeting and I said he should be allowed, that we were starting on a clean slate and that we wanted this party to be a party for all Nigeri­ans to come together and it would be a mass movement, so that all things being well, we would follow the philosophy that inspired the organisation as a party that will rule Nigeria for 60 years. It wasn’t a bluff or a matter of bragging, it was the reality of the situation. I wouldn’t say that our original dream has been sustained because it’s no longer the mass movement that we envisaged.

So, what went wrong?

What went wrong in the first place was that they drafted Obasanjo. First and fore­most, Obasanjo was not qualified under our rules to run or be a candidate for the presi­dential election because the National Execu­tive Committee of the party had in Novem­ber 1998 decided that anybody who wanted to contest the presidency must win his local government during the local government elections because the qualification for being a party candidate is that you must win the lo­cal government elections. So, if you don’t win the local government elections, you won’t be registered. The party took that de­cision at the NEC meeting that everybody who wanted to contest for the presidency must win the local government elections of December, that was in November. As you all know, Obasanjo didn’t win his lo­cal government, he didn’t win his state, he didn’t win his ward, and he didn’t even win in the polling station in front of his house. So, by NEC’s guidelines, he wasn’t quali­fied to run at all. Don’t ask me how he came to run, that’s part of Nigerian machinations. The National Vice Chairman for the South- South, Dr. Patrick Dele Cole and the Na­tional Vice Chairman for the South-East, Dr. Sylvester Ugo wrote letters to the screening committee attaching the NEC resolution of November, which was confirmed at the meeting in December presided over by one of Obasanjo’s cohorts of blessed memory, Deputy Chairman South-West and because Obasanjo was not part of the group forming the party he did not know the philosophy.

So, how did he emerge in the first place?

Well, they said some military people went to his place; Babangida and General Gusau, went to Ota to beg him to come in and after that, the Shehu Yar’Adua element within our party, represented by Atiku took over; they said it was Obasanjo they want­ed, they were not happy about my prospect of becoming the president.

That was what happened because they had the coup in 1983, they thought I would come there and be vindictive. I assured them I wasn’t going to do a post-mortem, that I have plans for Nigeria, I wasn’t going to look backwards, they didn’t believe it; they wanted one of them they could speak esprit de corps with, that’s how he came on board. For him, PDP was just a vehicle he used for acquiring political power and hav­ing done that, he tried to convert it to a pri­vate property changing the chairman at will and within a space of two years we had four national chairmen of the party, Solomon Lar whom I handed over to, to Barnabas Gemade to Audu Ogbe, and then to Ah­madu Ali and so on and so forth.

This PDP you envisioned will be in power for 60 years, but from what you are telling us now it appears this dream is going to be a mirage. So, how can PDP bounce back, or is it shattered already?

The truth is that the PDP as it is today was not the PDP we founded in 1998; that is the truth, I won’t hide it from anybody. It is not the PDP I risked my life to found in 1998. Now, PDP has been hijacked by peo­ple who have no philosophical or spiritual attachment to the precepts that informed formation of the party in 1998. What I en­visaged for PDP in 1998 was that it would be a mass movement, satisfying the needs of the masses and having membership from all over the country.

But at a stage, the political party decided to do registration all over again and every­body lost his membership and had to apply again to register your name and those likely to dance to their tune were registered while the others found it difficult to register in a party they helped to found, so that is it. So, the problem started from day one, election of President of Senate, the first President of Senate was elected by votes of only 22 PDP Senators, all the other Senators who voted were not PDP Senators. Whereas PDP had 66 Senators out of 109, they refused to use their votes to elect the President of Senate and from there opposition started.

From the picture you have paint­ed, it appears that the foundation of the PDP is now shaky, do you think it will be able to stand the opposition of the APC that is strongly rooted in the North and in the West in the 2015 general elections?

Strongly rooted in the North and in the West. Until you get to the ballot box you don’t know where you are strongly rooted because what I can tell you is that the PDP will not have an easy walkover this year as it did few years ago, seven years ago, and 11 years ago; in 1999, 2003, 2007, 2011 be­cause the party is finding it difficult to man­age its successes. The person contesting for governorship in Sokoto is PDP elected Speaker, Tambuwal, the person contest­ing for APC governorship in Katsina is a former PDP elected Speaker, Masari, it’s like that everywhere. People who founded and worked for the party are alienated by poor management of success, and those who do not have the patience, some of us have decided to find new channels to ful­fill their political ambitions. I, for instance, the chairman of the party, first chairman of Board of Trustees, first chairman from the civil society to G34 and so on, if I was not myself, I’m not bragging, I am being mod­est, I have no reason to be in PDP today. All I have received throughout the years is humiliation and neglect.

When there is crisis, they remember that I’m around. The late Yar’Adua, when he came on board as the President, invit­ed me and said he knew our party was in a shambles and he felt that I was the only person, as the person who started it at first place, that could bring people around and together and he put up the reconciliation which I handled all over Nigeria, visited people, talked to those who are disgruntled, people who had issues resolved and made our recommendations. Unfortunately, those recommendations were not fully fulfilled, President Yar’Adua himself passed on.

For the fact that we do not have enough opposition is to my view a natural develop­ment. When IBB decreed two political par­ties, NRC and SDP, he called me and asked what I thought of that, I told him in princi­ple that I am in support of two party system where there are two strong parties. But I have reservations for the two party system being created by a decree. So, now in this dispensation we have the PDP, we have the APC which is the major opposition party which I think is healthy one provided we base our decision making on issues rather than abuses.

 Part of the interview by The Sun conducted by Chidi Nnadi and Geoffrey Anyanwu  but served in two segments because it was lengthy. The interview was conducted before Jonathan’s courtesy call to Ekwueme on 10^th January , 2015