Chief Ndukwe Iko, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), is a fomer governorship aspirant on the platform of the Progressives Peoples Alliance (PPA) in Abia State in the 2015 elections. He spoke with Oziegbe Okoeki on the gale of defections in the Southeast and other issues.
What is your assessment of the APC government after two years?
It is a potpourri; a picture of the good and also the bad. I won’t sincerely score them a mark because every thing to me is still a work in progress at the moment. Yes, corruption, which is a very serious agenda of the government at the time they were coming, is being fought. Unfortunately, a lot of people are disappointed, including myself, that up till now, there has been no major prosecution. It appears to me that the government is only bent on recovery and not prosecuting those who are offenders, or the legal process is skewed in such a way that is quite easy for offences that borders on corruption to be swept under the carpet immediately you run to the court. So, lack of prosecution or lack of definite conclusion on the prosecution processes has been the very low point of the fight against corruption. I think that we should do more to bring people to book to serve as deterrent to others that would want to be involved in similar offences in future. That is when the fight against corruption would be seen as having been fought properly as it is done in civilized societies where you hear a minister, governor or a legislator or high profile offenders brought to shame because of what he or she has done to the system or the society. That is the type of thing I look forward to.
In security, yes, the government is doing well because it has seriously down scaled the threat level of the Boko Haram insurgency in the country. You hadly hear of villages being taken over by the day like we had in the previous administration of Goodluck Jonathan. Insurgency is highly downgraded at the moment. The Chibok girls are being recovered, and the fight against terrorism is quite on course and the other vices that has to do with government at all levels including the state and the local government, that I wouldn’t push to the federal government.
Economy, that is the place we are still struggling at the moment and I am optimistic that with the sincerity and integrity of this government, we would in no long time be brought to the track of full economic recovery. This government remains a project in progress that we are still watching. The other issue that has been a very bad one for me each time I remember is the state of health of the president.
You talk of lack of proper prosecution in cases of corruption. what do you think is responsible for this?
I am not blaming the judiciary, neither am I blaming the prosecutors. This fight we are in, we know how corruption is in this country. Some say it is systemic and I believe it is systemic. And our institutions have also been seriously hurt by this systemic virus called corruption to the extent that our judicial system, the agencies that are watch dogs against corruption like the EFCC, ICPC have been seriously distorted by the same system of corruption whereby you see how often we have changed heads of these agencies. If you are not playing the ball of an administration or if you are not in the good books of people in power then, you, are removed, like what you can find in what is happening with the confirmation of the present EFCC chairman. Corruption is fighting back at all levels and all institutions and that is one of the challenges we are facing. But, to people looking from outside, they would assume that we could do more. Some Nigerians assume also that we could do more, but frankly speaking, there is a very big fight between corruption and the people wanting to chase down corruption. Unlike other civilised societies where institutions are rooted strongly that infiltration from external powers is very difficult, here, it is not so because all appointments are done by some of these people that are also being investigated or their cronies. So, it is difficult. What I mean by not going through it fully, one of the reasons why Nigerians voted Buhari is that we knew from time immemorial that he is a no nonsense person. He can cross the line to do certain things that others wouldn’t want to do; like the case of the arrest of judges, which many Nigerians ctitised but to me, there is nothing you could have done if you don’t have to break the ice. he did it, because it was necessary and it opened up a lot of things. Some would say he is autocratic or he applies military style of governance, but in a peculiar situation like we have here you also have to go extra ordinary to get things done. And that is what I mean we have to do the extraordinary to fight down the corruption thing.
A lot of Nigerians are calling for the president to resign because of his health because President Muhammadu Buhari made the same demand on the late Yar”Adua when he was sick as president. Do you share the same sentiment?
I don’t share the same sentiment….
A lot of this civil society groups have been heavily compromised. I mean the leadership. Some of them worked with the past president, became card carrying members of political parties. Some of them are covertly working with this present government and that has silenced their voices. So, if you ask me about civil society groups in Nigeria today I will tell you non of them is existing. There is no dispassionate civil society group that you can find around today, except individuals who air their views like I do. They have been compromised, that is the truth.
Then, the president’s health. Those who compare Yar’Adua’s time with the present situation are not being fair. the reason is simple. Yar’Adua left this country without any formal notice. he went out, spent months, there was no news coming. Nobody could answer any single question concerning his health status and how he was doing. Then, in that situation, if you were Muhammadu Buhari of 2007/2008, you will make similar call for him to resign and handover to the next person. He wasn’t doing it because he was fronting for president Jonathan. Remember Yar’Adua was his kinsman, even though his election was very acrimonious, but he did because he wanted things to be done rightly. But, here is Buhari. every visit he has gone since he became sick, he made it official to the National Assembly by handing over officially to the vice president. it is constitutional. Yar’Adua left. no body saw him leave, but we all see Buhari entering the plane and waving to his aids, we see him coming back, even while abroad he still speaks. So, I don’t know why we should compare Yar’ Adua situation with President Muhammadu Buhari’s situation, they are not comparable at this stage. If it gets worse that Buhari becomes so sick that we find him in that situation ofcourse there will be justification for him to leave and hand over to the next person because the leadership is a joint ticket, Osinbajo is as good as the president and the president is as good as Osinbajo. He is the vice president and I am sure if there is any eventuality he is prepared to be the president. So the situation has not gotten to that extent yet, if it gets there we will come out and shout it out.
Many political leaders in the East have gravitated towards the APC for the Igbos to remain relevant at the federal level. What is the significance of the defections to the Igbos?
I looked at the situation then as a politician that has been around before I made that prediction and I know how the pendulum swings. And I know also that the Ibos will gravitate towards the APC. I also know that there would be issues, like you have pointed out, of leadership. who will lead who, which has always been our issue in the East. Yes, we are moving. A lot will still move. But, blame it on two factors. one, the opposition political party is just at half, that is the PDP. The PDP is not existing in full today and it has made it very very easy for people to say. since you are not there let me go to the next party, and it is not a good signal to Nigeria, the crisis in the PDP. And let me use this opportunity again to beg all the people in charge in the PDP to come together and resolve their problems as soon as possible otherwise we will be left with only one option and when we are left with only one option that is no option in 2019. So PDP should put their house in order as fast as possibles to go back to track of progressive political party, one big umbrella that will cover everybody and learn from their mistakes and change things to give us an alternative platform as soon as possible. The crisis in the PDP has seriously benefited the APC whether you like it or not. There are people who are moving to the APC not because there is anything to gain there but they are afraid that the PDP would not come out of their crisis before 2019, that is the situation. It is not necessarily because there is anything very fantastic on ideology concerning the APC, but it is because if you have one you have nothing and you can’t operate with the party the way it is now. So, they have to either come together or break totally and reform themselves or push themselves back to a political party that is going to contest against the APC. The APC on its own, I use to tell a lot of people, you see from my own angle i look at APC as a very big balloon that you are holding with a tiny string, that tiny string is called Muhammad Buhari and that is why we are praying nothing happens to the president, if anything happens to him the APC will go into splinters, that is the truth. Some people will make political statements, Buhari or no Buhari, the APC will stand, that is a big lie. Many people are in the APC simply because of Buhari and, despite the illness, the image, influence of Buhari does a lot of things to the Nigerian politics today and that is why we should exercise some level of humanity to pray for the president always. Buhari is the man holding us together at the moment. If anything happens to him, we would have a lot of issues, both constitutional, social, economic, political. A lot of things will happen.
The Nation