Contrary to the claim that Ndigbo put all their eggs in one basket by voting for President Goodluck Jonathan en masse in the just concluded presidential election, the Okwadike Ndi’gbo, Dr. Chukwuemeka Ezeife, a former governor of Anambra State, and a delegate at the 2014 National Conference, in this encounter, stresses the need for the North to win the confidence of Ndigbo to move Nigeria forward. He adds the need for the President-elect, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (rtd), to implement the report of the 2014 National Conference in the interest of a peaceful Nigeria. Excerpts:

You hoped for an Igbo president after Jonathan. What happened?

We Igbo believe totally in God. By the just concluded 2015 general elections result, what is God saying to us? He said: “I only used the instrumentality of British colonialism to create Nigeria. I don’t want Nigeria to disintegrate. I created Nigeria for the benefit of the Black-race and it should continue to exist for the benefit of mankind”. That is how I see the result of the just concluded 2015 general elections. For instance, If you have a relation that is sick, and you took that relation to every conceivable place you believe he or she ailment will be cured, yet, he died, you don’t go sobering like a person that has no hope. I campaigned for President Jonathan, but God chose Gen. Buhari to win the presidential election. All of us: Yoruba, Igbo, Fulani and Hausa should cooperate with the will of God. I had a pre-conception of a nation ruled by an executive Igbo President because we are people of destiny. We believe in what we are doing. When it becomes necessary, we act like one person and one voice. You saw how the election was in the East. Nigerians can now know who they are dealing with, when they look towards Igbo people. We are a united people acting like one person. As you can see, we are not divided even by religion. Therefore when something becomes necessary, we focus and act as one.Some otherwise wise people said we packed all our eggs in one basket, but for most of us who are not so wise, we are so happy with the result of the elections, where we demonstrated oneness, trust and comradeship with the South-South.

There are people who say the Igbo, unlike other tribes, didn’t negotiate with President Jonathan, rather they voted for him on compassionate ground because he is from the minority. How do you react to that?

You don’t negotiate in the market place. People will always find excuses. The South-West that negotiated with Jonathan, did they vote for him? We, in South-East who did not negotiate with him, came out en masse to vote for him. Let us be truthful to ourselves; the fact is that President Jonathan is from the a minority tribe, an area where the economic power of Nigeria comes from. And we believe, it is not right to treat the minority as if they are inferior to the rest of the country. If any person, deserves a second term, we, Igbo, believed President Goodluck Jonathan deserved it. We saw the difficulty he went through from those who vowed to make the country ungovernable for him. Emotion is a natural thing. If your neighbour’s home is on fire, it is not just emotion that will propel you to help put out the fire, but the fear of not allowing fire to consume your own house. But we negotiated with President Jonathan in his first term. At first, we negotiated with the North, but majority of the Igbo that decided to support the North wrote a communiqué and said they supported the Northern candidate for 2011 election, and in return the northerners will support Igbo for 2015 election. Some people were boasting that they got a major achievement by that. In fact, one of them said if the devil gives you scholarship, take it. Because they saw it as a scholarship. But to me, as a person, I saw it differently. I didn’t see how anybody, be it Gen. Babangida, Atiku or whoever is from the North will serve one term, then in 2015 will handover to Igbo. So I disagreed. But the majority carried the vote. Fortunately, when the document got to the media, I found my name on it just the next day and I kicked against it violently. It was on a Tuesday that we met with the North, the same week, Friday, there was an Ohanaeze Ndigbo meeting in Enugu. I rushed to Ohanaeze to fight against the communique. Uwazurike Amaechi had wanted to head the summit. I stopped him, because when the adoption of the Northern candidate came, I told him to go ahead with his plan. Then Jonathan was adopted. Coming back to Abuja again, I got a message that Chief Edwin Clark is waiting for me in Warri to assure his people that they are not alone. So, I left for Warri. So, eventually, we all agreed to support Jonathan. We negotiated with Jonathan and we demanded something apart from positions in government like secretary to the government, Chief of Army Staff, Chief of Naval Staff, then Minister of Finance, Power and Aviation. We also requested for the construction of the second Niger Bridge. We also demanded for an International Airport in the East and many other things. Of course, we got most of what we asked for. However, the most important, in terms of movement is that all federal roads in the East are very bad. That is the one thing you can say Jonathan did not do for our people. But he did more by far for the North. One of the things we asked from him, was an access to the sea. I went to identify the spot where the seaport would be built, so Igbo will have access to the sea. I even negotiated Finance for it. So it not a matter of government spending too much on the project, what we wanted from the government is an approval of the project by dredging 21 nautical miles to reach the Atlantic. So it is not true that we voted Jonathan based on emotion, but emotion is reasonable at that circumstance.

There is the view that Ndigbo are disunited and are short changing themselves to the detriment of the Igbo agenda. What do you make of the view?

Either we are united in mouth or not, our action shows a solid unity. Is there any state in core Igbo land where Gen.Buhari scored 25% vote? Absolutely none. Not even in Imo State where Governor Rochas Okorocha is from APC. So I see it as a meaningful unity but that is just the beginning. The 2015 elections is a wake up call for all Igbos, it is time to show whom we are, by planning for it. We are people to emulate but our unity must be real not only in action, even in words. However, you cannot remove selfishness from any group be it Hausa,Yoruba or Igbo. But some people are prepared to dance to any music played not to be in power. There is a new president and some people must dance to be favoured. Doing so, they don’t mind the insult they are bringing on their own people. We do accept that there is a job to be done by bringing our people together to plan ahead as a destined people for the realisation of that destiny. The rest of Nigeria should know who they are dealing with. If any person does not see the solidity of our vote as telling a story, then that person has a problem.

Do the Igbos have any formidable party or a platform that can bring to the realisation an elected Igbo president?

We are at a stage at which we should be consulting. And it will not be done in isolation. The result of the 2015 presidential election has posed a problem for Ndigbo and it is also a wake-up call for Ndigbo. A new planning has to be undertaken, a new goal has to be set, a better understanding of the relationship between Igbos and the rest of Nigeria is required. And we are not shying away from it. Those of us that think creatively have been calling each other and there is arrangement in this regard. But I don’t expect it to manifest in the first two years of the new government, we will be fully organised and integrated. We had a party which was APGA but from among our people we scattered it. But it can be rebuilt. The present governor of Anambra State, Willy Obiano, who is not just doing well on security and investment, he is also doing well on leadership for APGA and I think alliances can be built with APGA, with SDP and other elements that favour our ideological stand. So I see problem but not one that is beyond human organising. For instance, ACN was known as a Yoruba party but, eventually, Asiwaju Tinubu and Gen.Buhari’s CPC merged and formed APC and they became a major factor. It was designed to frustrate President Jonathan, to make Nigeria ungovernable for him. Jonathan was the main foe in all that happened.

So our people are not happy with the state of things but you can see concrete evidences of our chosen line through our vote.

What are the tactics being employed to achieve this aim?

Nobody, as an Igbo man, can say that, presently, but there is need for consultation. We don’t have any person that dictates this way and everybody follows. We believe in being convinced about issues; that is the reason some people keep saying (Igbo faweran Eze) Igbos have no leaders but they work together to achieve a goal. Nobody can single himself out that what he says, is what Igbos will do!

Since the Ndigbo did not vote for Buhari, what is the plan of the Igbos to negotiate power sharing in Buhari’s led administration?

We have listened to Gen. Buhari a bit, he said wisely that he intends to move Nigeria to a higher level. And anything that is truly good done by Gen. Buhari for the advancement of Nigeria, is indirectly for the good of Igbos. We have always stand on our feet for one Nigeria, and anywhere you reach in Nigeria, apart from the indegenes, the next high population you find are the Igbo people. If he (Buhari) decides to build roads in Kaduna, we the Igbos will definitely benefit from it. If he generates regular power supply in Lagos, we will also benefit. Fundamentally, anything that is clearly good for Nigeria is definitely good for Igbo people. So we believe him when he promised to work for the betterment of Nigeria. And the Igbos are the only Nigerians that have nowhere to go. Because we don’t have Igbos outside the borders of this country, except business men moving around. Lest you forget, we leave everywhere but our home is Nigeria.

What do you make of the lingering distrust between the Igbos and Northerners due to the civil war. How do the Igbos win back the confidence of northerners?

It ought to be the other way round, whereby northerners ought to strive to win back our confidence. Remember, after the pandemonium in the North, we decided to build the world of our own (Biafra), eventually, when they realised the consequences of it, they came fighting again, and we half willingly came back to Nigeria. We adopted Nigeria as a country, started building everywhere again. Abuja was not there before the civil war. In terms of structures built, money invested, and labour, who owns it? Igbos are God’s gift to Nigeria, and until Nigeria realises it, they will keep wasting time and lagging behind in a developed global world. The Igbos had been carrying brief cases for the northerners since inception. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe was among the compatriots who fought for the independence of Nigeria, In order to maintain one Nigeria, he gave up being head of the government for the peace of the country. Since then, Igbos had never had any elected executive power in Nigeria. I believe in one Nigeria and the core Hausa, Fulani Muslims should also believe in one Nigeria, because they are the reason for the amalgamation. The colonial administration needed the resources of the South, to cover the deficit of the North. The Americans and Britons appear to be supporting Buhari. What I noticed is that these people want us to break up. It is not because they hate us, but they are afraid and cannot resist Islamisation. An Islamic Nigeria with this magnitude will have a staggering effect on the world.

Therefore, they chose to split us for a better Nigeria. Imagine what would have happened if Jonathan was declared the winner of the election. Even the celebration of Buhari’s victory led to some deaths. So God knows everything. We don’t feel left alone, we believe God is on our side. Some people are saying we have properties worth trillions of dollars everywhere, from where that came, more can still come because it is ingrained in the psychic of an Igbo man which is God’s gift and some people are envious of it.

What is your message to Gen. Buhari on the Ndigbo race?

He has made two major points that I find striking: one is anti-corruption which if achieved, will go a long way to lift Nigeria. To fight corruption is not just a matter of fighting current corruption, it is necessary to take concrete action on corruption in order to warn everybody that it is a wrong road to take. That even after decades, what you earn from corrupt practices may come to haunt you, if you live long enough.We need an anti-corruption agency that will look into public records of all public officers, even the ones that are dead to some extent. Their assets, can they account for them? The money in banks, how did they get? You create such a commission with people you know their integrity, not just people with bad records in the public domain.

I will urge him to employ the ‘Do as I do’ strategy. Some public officers, when they are asked to declare their present assets, they will be declaring what they will have at the end of their tenure. When I was the governor of Anambra State, I appointed commissioners and other people. I told them collectively, if you know I collected money from you before appointing you, then go ahead to collect money from people, but if I did not collect money and you are caught doing so, then you are gone. There are so many graduates that have no job. Government must create a welfare package for all people that have struggled through education but have nothing to show for it in terms of employment. The money recovered from corrupt people, should be used to maintain what can be considered as a national welfare scheme that will assure most Nigerians three square meal a day. The uneducated should not be left alone as well. More so, all federal roads should be in good condition. He should implement the resolution of the 2014 National Conference. It is beyond one person or tribe ruling for four or eight years, what we need is permanence of one Nigeria.

The report of the CONFAB guarantees the permanence of Nigeria. If Gen.Buhari can achieve that, it will be for the good of all Nigerians, tongue and tribe notwithstanding.

*Culled from Vanguard. Photo shows Ezeife

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