Special Adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan on Inter-Party relations, Senator Ben Obi, speaks on a wide range of issues, including the recent defeat of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) by the All Progressives Congress (APC) at the presidential poll, the president’s concession of defeat and other national issues. He also speaks on the place of the Igbo in the emerging Nigeria, the statement credited to the Oba of Lagos, Rilwan Akiolu, and what the PDP did wrong: Excerpts:
THE peace committee on the presidential election played a very pivotal role in ensuring the peaceful conduct of the election. What was the source of inspiration for this committee?
I will start by first and foremost congratulating President Goodluck Jonathan for understanding what modern day politics is all about. If you recall, starting from 2011, he made that prophetic statement that nobody should rig election for him and that if he lost, he would go back to his Otuoke home and no Nigerian blood was worth his political ambition. That caught my attention. Having been in politics for nearly 40 years, I have hardly found a leader in such a sensitive and powerful position make such a statement.
And when I came on board as his adviser on inter-party affairs, I appealed to him in writing as a follow-up to that statement on the need for us to organise workshops in states that would have elections as we went on, because there are some states that now enjoy staggered elections, different from the general election.
I wrote to him. And the first was Edo State and he approved and told me to go ahead and we went to Edo State and did the needful. We issued a communiqué which all the participants, all the governorship candidates and the chairmen of the political parties contesting election appended their signatures to.
When I got back to Abuja, I did some executive memo to him and I got his approval that once there was any election, my office should go ahead and organise a workshop on free, fair, transparent and credible election before the exercise. And that was the case.
And we did that in Edo, Ondo, Anambra, Ekiti and Osun states and it was the same applications. And we would come out with a communiqué where all the candidates would sign and commit themselves to free, fair, transparent and credible elections and there would be no violence. That helped a lot to douse tension because most of them, having seen their signatures, called me at a point and said ‘Senator, if not that you made me to sign this document that is now public knowledge, I would not have accepted this.’
But you know what was striking was that as soon as a winner was declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), in less than two hours of such declaration, those winners got congratulated by President Jonathan. And of all the places we went to, it was only in Ekiti that it was PDP that became victorious.
In some places, PDP was even racing to the courts, but it found its leader; the president of the country congratulating the winner. So, that became, for me, a stepping stone to going about the issue of peace in our elections.
Now, you recall that last year, when the temperature was extremely high and the Boko Haram was on its ascendency and everybody was worried, politicians took its issue more as a political one than what it really was.
I had a meeting with the National Security Adviser (NSA) and he said ‘Senator, why not organise an all-party summit so that we can address this matter, since you have been doing this in all the states. And all parties can meet to do something big; a national thing.’ I said ‘why not? It is possible?’
So, he said ‘please let’s look into it because we are worried about the utterances of political leaders.’
So, we set about that and organised an all-party summit on 12 June, 2014. That was the first time General Muhammadu Buhari was in attendance with the president and the president declared it open.
When I wrote to APC, it was discussed at their National Executive Council and it was unanimously adopted as an event that APC would attend officially and it did. And at the end of it, we put out a communiqué that was signed by all the parties.
So again, towards the end of last year, I met the president. I said ‘now, we are going for the general election. We did for other states. Now, for the general election, we are going to have an all-party summit. And he said ‘yes, go ahead, I am all for it.’
And then, I started discussing with the NSA and we agreed. And I told him that what we wanted to do in order not to bring people that might be considered partisan or that had interest here and there was that ‘let us search for international figures that would participate in this summit.’ And that was how we were able to bring in Emeka Anyaoku, who chaired the event and Kofi Annan who was the special guest of honour. And we brought in Professor Gambari from United Nations and Obiako from United Nations. The only person that we brought in locally was Professor Atahirru Jega. the chairman of INEC. All the other speakers or resource persons were from outside.
When I met with the PDP national chairman and the APC national chairman, at different times, they all agreed and endorsed it. And all the candidates attended and signed what is now referred to worldwide as the Abuja Peace Accord.
Now, the Abuja Peace Accord also talked about creating a National Peace Committee to see through the elections and after the elections. And as soon as that was done, we had a meeting. The meeting was between Bishop Hassan Kuka, John Cardinal Onaiyekan and myself at the residence of Onaiyekan. That was how we were able to assemble those great Nigerians that you see as members of the National Peace Committee.
And it was done deliberately to look for men and women of integrity who, when they speak, all sides will listen to and that was exactly what we did and set up the first meeting. But unfortunately, the chairman of the committee was out of the country and that was General Abdulsalami Abubakar. But he now directed that his deputy, Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe, should stand in for him. And for the second meeting, he arrived; he cut short his trip. He came straight from the airport to the meeting.
Were you surprised when the president conceded defeat?
You hear the story I have given to you, from his statement in 2011 and from the approvals that I got to hold all the summits that I talked about and how he participated. Don’t forget, on Wednesday or Thursday morning, two days to the elections actually, the National Peace Committee got them both to again reaffirm their position on the Abuja Peace Accord and they did.
So, for me, I see him as a man who is quite conscious of his words. When he says a thing, his word remains his bond. And so, he didn’t think twice about the position that he took. And when I look back, as I told you, his congratulatory messages to Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State; to Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State; to Peter Obi of Anambra State; and to Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State, I am not surprised.
Not that the party was in sync with him on that, but he was just playing his typical self, which is very striking for a political leader at that level and caliber and what I do see is that in due course, politicians will be going to Otuoke to study the politics of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.
This is the first time that an incumbent is losing, not only losing but also accepting defeat. Some people have argued that the defeat, as it were of the PDP, is not so much as a result of the lack of performance of the Jonathan-led administration, but the internal failings of the members of the party. As a party man, do you think that members of the party worked as much as they should have done for the re-election of President Jonathan?
The truth is that when the party went into primaries, it sent a negative signal amongst its members. The party went into primaries and virtually every state came out with one problem after another.
And for me, who have over the years, founded and managed political parties, I did not in all of this time, experience in an election year movement of members of a ruling party into the opposition party. In most cases, it was the reverse. You saw people from the opposition party jumping and moving into the ruling party in an election year.
So, when this was happening, I said to myself and to my friends in the party that we had a problem; we really had a problem and until and unless we addressed these problems, a lot of things would go wrong.
So, for me, somehow to a large extent, we did not help ourselves as a party. And it is important that in order for the party to get back its bearing, we had to go back to the drawing board and put a lot of things right that went wrong in the last 18 months so to speak.
And in saying this, I also want to put it on record that though the APC won the elections on 28 March, the PDP is not a pushover at all. I have absolute confidence that the PDP will spring back into reckoning very soon. In fact, sooner than later; take my word for it.
How would you juxtapose this confidence with the fact that there seems to be movement, in droves, of PDP members to the APC Now?
Look, these movements are what you can easily classify as opportunism. Some of them would have moved long ago, but most of them decided to wait and vote for President Jonathan. Their interest was to remain in the PDP, since the first election was going to be the presidential election and National Assembly. Their interest was to vote Mr President and then go and continue the battle of discord that had been sown in their various states.
So, I believe what we are experiencing is opportunistic in nature; some want to pay back people in their own coin. So, it is not a thing that will last for too long and I mean every word of it. The PDP is certainly not a pushover and the PDP will spring back.
What the outcome of this election has shown is the fact that the tripod that we used to know of Nigeria; the North, the South-West and the South-East seems to be broken now with the alliance of the North-West and the South-West, which seems to have excluded the South-East in the new arrangement. What does this portend for the South-East?
Let me seize this opportunity to express in no small measure my satisfaction, contentment for the politics of the Igbo man. We took a decision to stand by President Jonathan as one of us and we stood by that decision; it says a lot.
Even when people are saying ‘no, how can you put all your eggs in one basket?’ we said no. And we decided to mobilise in full force our people in Lagos in particular to show the population and numerical strength of the Igbo man in Lagos and you have seen that.
So, I am very proud of the Igbo man for taking a stand and remaining steadfast on that stand. I join all those who have spoken that we have no regrets whatsoever in the steps and actions taken in support of Goodluck Jonathan as far as the Igbo nation is concerned.
Yes, we may not have been seen to have played a major role in installing General Buhari, at the same time, you still have some of our people; some of our brothers and sisters who are part and parcel of the APC; who are founding members of the APC. They are also in their own rights highly respected Igbo people. You cannot wish them away. There are Ogbonnaya Onu, Rochas Okorocha, Chris Ngige. These are highly respected Igbo people in their own right.
So, I don’t see a situation whereby any group of people or any zone or zones will want to lead this country and will ignore the Igbo. We have shown a serious signal in Lagos. You saw how many seats we won in the Lagos National Assembly elections. That is a warning shot that we know where we are going. We know where our strengths are and it is not only in Lagos.
We are now going to galvanise our members, first of all, to know their rights and to defend them. Anywhere and everywhere they are, they should be accorded their due respects as people who contribute to the economy.
For any economy in this country, across the length and breadth of this country, you cannot ignore the local strength of the Igbo man and the economic growth of those areas and that is what we want to say; that as Nigerians, we want to live in peace with our brothers and sisters all over the country.
Anywhere we find ourselves, we turn it into our homes. We help to develop the local economy there and if we can do that, then, we believe that other people should accord us that recognition.
People would be talking of the president being from the North-West, the vice-president being from the South-West. From the analysis on ground now, it appears that the Igbo will lose out in the parliament. Are you not worried that in such critical area, an Igbo man would not be a head of one of those places?
Well, the APC as a party will have to work out a modality to stretch a hand of friendship and fellowship to the Igbo man, which is what the party is supposed to work out. I am not worried as an Igbo man that we have that dilemma.
I am not going to be in the PDP and help create a solution for the APC. I am not a party to that. But they have to organise themselves. They have to know that they have a bloc that must be protected. It is very simple. As I said, I have just mentioned to you a few names of Igbo leaders who are foundation members of APC. They too know what it means.
You were the vice-presidential candidate to Atiku. You have been seen as an Atiku man for a very long time now and then, suddenly, you parted ways. Was it the difference in terms of politics as it affects your person or as it affects your region? Are you still an associate of Atiku?
First of all, all politics, they say, is local. I have tremendous respect for the former vice-president as my boss, as my friend and my brother. As a matter of principle, I don’t lose my friends.
All my friends who are even members of the APC, I walk up to them any day and say ‘do this and do that.’
As I talked about the summit on 12 June, as soon as I got the clearance from Mr President to get all the parties involved, I went to General Buhari and said ‘sir, I would want you to attend personally this event, in your right, apart from for APC as a party.’ And he accepted; he came.
When they now told him that he had to speak, he said no, his friend, Ben Obi, didn’t tell him he would speak; except Ben Obi said speak. Then, I went to him and said ‘sir, you cannot come to a function like this without speaking, you will speak.’
On 14 January, at the last Peace Accord, I also made sure I spoke to him personally. So, I keep my friends. I don’t lose my friends because of politics; I mean all those I have worked with.
If I go to Dr Tunji Braithwaite, my leader, whom we all started politics together, if I go to him now in his Victoria Island residence, his wife would say Ben, daddy is upstairs in his bedroom, go and meet him there.
I try to make sure that I do not allow politics to come in-between my friendship with people. Even though I have not spoken to the former vice-president for some time now, if I pick up the phone and call him now and say ‘Ocheidigbo, where are you? What is happening? I haven’t seen you; I haven’t spoken to you. I want to see you,’ that is the way we relate.
We didn’t leave PDP in 2006 because we wanted to leave PDP. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo de-registered us and a lot of people should put these facts in proper perspective. Obasanjo de-registered us as PDP members. And since we had not retired ourselves because of Obasanjo then, we decided that we had to give a fight and in giving a fight, we needed a platform and that was how the issue of Action Congress (AC) came about and that journey started.
And when that one ended up and Umaru Yar’Adua became president, he set up the Ekwueme-led committee and it started talking to members and calling us back. We came back. I am not used to jumping from party to another.
As one of those who founded the All Peoples Party (APP) in 1998, which later on metamorphosed into the All Nigeria Peoples party (ANPP), I was the one who gave APP the name on 27 August 1998 at Sheraton Hotel. And I became the foundation secretary.
It was at a meeting when they changed the name of APP to ANPP in Lokoja and they directed Mamud Waziri, the foundation chairman of APP, and myself who were in government, to resign. The late Waziri and I met. I mean there should be some decorum in this business called politics.
You did not invite us to the meeting. You did not call us to any meeting. You did not say anything to us. You just issued a statement and we said we were going to ignore it. That was how we ignored the directive of the ANPP at that time, because we felt due process was not followed.
I am just saying that I am used to moving from party to party. I believe in a party. I stick with a party and we would move on. So, that is it.
Former Vice-President Abubakar felt his rights in the PDP were not respected and all of that and he had to move on. But unfortunately, I couldn’t be of help at that point.
Looking back now, do you think that the PDP treated Obasanjo right or rather, did Obasanjo treat PDP right?
Well, you see, I find it difficult to discuss Obasanjo because a good number of people know that I have some issues, over time, with him and I never liked to discuss leaders with a bias. That is to be honest with you.
A platform was made available for you to be made president for eight years; it was made available for you to be Board of Trustees (BOT) chairman and it was made available for you to decide so many things that happened within that platform. I don’t agree that the position that Obasanjo has attained locally and internationally would be a position where some local chieftains of one party or the other would be tearing membership card before print and electronic media. What was he trying to prove?
For me, that’s no longer a PDP matter. There is no question about it. Obasanjo is an international figure. There are certain things people at that level must never do and I think that is one of them. So, too bad, he has done that. Let history be the judge of that action. But that is my own personal view and opinion. I don’t want to comment about President Obasanjo.
I had reason to go and visit him in Abeokuta and he received me very well. People felt, ‘we thought you people had this difference’ and I said ‘well yes, it is political.’ If I come to ask his opinion on certain things, I served him. Well, all of that is history.
What do you think Nigerians should expect in the next four years? Do you think that Nigeria will look back at the PDP with nostalgia or you think that the change being preached by the APC will come to pass?
I want to believe that the stakes are pretty high. And the in-coming administration will have to work extremely very hard to meet the demands of the Nigerian people. Everybody has now come to realise the power of the ballot box.
I can assure you, they are not going to wait for eight years to pass a verdict. They will even be hoping that it is going to be done within two to three years. That is the way I see the Nigerian people now; on a very fast lane; to get Nigeria to its full potentials, locally and internationally. So, they are going to be in a hurry to arrive at destination. The in-coming administration must work 20 times over; sleepless nights.
Do you have confidence in the in-coming leadership?
I believe we are all Nigerians. I believe Nigerians abound in every nook and cranny that you can involve in your government to help build the country.
I keep reminding people that there was a gentleman called Ronald Reagan. People never had any true recognition for what he stood for apart from being a Hollywood star. But when he came in, he was quite sure of his limitations. But he never made the mistake of not getting the right team around him that shielded him. That helped him and today, when you are talking about great of greats of American presidents, you call Ronal Reagan because he put square pegs in square holes.
Go and look at the achievements of President Jonathan. He did quite a lot. Now, whether those achievements were rightly put out to the public is a different kettle of fish.
For me, as somebody who suffered electoral manipulation and was in court for two years, to see how President Jonathan sanitised the electoral process to where we are today, I cannot but continue to thank him.
If you went to court for two years with hard-earned money, from courts that have jurisdiction over your matter to courts that do not have jurisdiction over your matter, you will understand my dilemma.
Look at our airports; once you get to the airports in those days, in five minutes, you are sweating like a Christmas goat. And you will complain that you are back again to this country. Things have been turned around.
Look at the railways; look at the road sector; the infrastructure put in place by this man. Now, to come and cap all of these with the icing on the cake on what he did on Tuesday. For me, as I said to some people, the Nobel Peace Prize that some people; some heads of states have been gunning for, wanting to get it all cost, I won’t be surprised if that prize does not go to Mr President Jonathan.
As we speak today, on the continent of Africa, he is the most important political leader for that singular action of his. And I would be against anybody that would want to bring him down from that high pedestal. He must live on that high pedestal. He has something to give and he has to give those things that God has given to him to give to the people of this country.
What is your reaction to the recent threat by the Oba of Lagos that the Igbo should vote for a particular candidate or get thrown into the lagoon?
This is a very unfortunate one coming from the highly placed royal father of his standing coupled with the fact that if you look back into his back ground as a retired Assistant Inspector General of Police, one is bound to be worried and disturbed.
For a royal father like Oba Akiolu who is not in any doubt of the contribution of the Igbo people in all aspects of development of Lagos to be the one to issue such a threat leaves so much to be desired. The truth is that I happen to have known his predecessor in office at very close quarters and I know he would never have made such a statement. I believe that Oba Akiolu made that statement because those were the same words he used against the person of Senator Musiliu Obanikoro some five months ago when we went to his palace on a courtesy visit, led by Mr President, the vice-president and the national chairman of our party.
When I heard him thundering in that manner, it reminded me of that courtesy visit. But we need to remind Oba Akiolu that he is not the only royal father in this country and I am very proud of how my Igbo brothers reacted to him.
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