• Ugochukwu: Nigeria has adjusted Federalism, Presidential system out of order •
Well, if I go into a news room today, I will need training, what you people have is like magic. The computer has changed everything. In our time when I started in Daily Times, we have a better press definitely. I don’t think that is working now. But, what we used to have, you write your story and they type it and then, they proof read for you and you make correction and anything you correct there mean they have to take out and make another one after that, they take it to the forming room and make it into a plate and so on and so forth. It was a very laborious system and of course, there was the problem of communication for journalism, that is absolutely important. The telephones system were pretty not developed and I think up to the 70s, were looking at something like 130, 000 lines in the whole country. So, telephones were not what they are now and communication was not like what it takes and that makes a big difference. Even much later on in the 80s, we thought we have a situation, we had to modernise the process when Daily Times moved to Agidingbi with the urbanised press, which was top end at the time, we still have a system where we send stories by radio, somebody will sit down and copy, somebody will be reading from the other end and somebody will be writing with a long hand.
If you look at the South-east geo-political zone, the Igbo extraction in the Nigeria entity, do you think the Igbo currently have their place in the nation’s polity?
No! I don’t think so. The Igbos have not managed their politics well. The Igbos have not learnt how to manage Nigeria. I think that is a problem that we will continue to have. We have not found the ideal way to promote our interest within this multi-ethnic country we are living. It all leads to our being seen as the problem often rather than been seen as the solution quite often in most things. You know, let me give an example, in 1991, that was in the Babangida’s time. You see, they have been creating states and the Igbos were not asking for anything under military rule mainly because we were under-represented anyway under the military establishment. It took a hint from the Head of State, Gen. Babangida, to now get some of us Igbos to begin to petition for creation of additional states. That was how the New Anambra and Abia were created. He had to give us the hint, you know, we weren’t asking. We tend to be docile, we rejoice quickly, we don’t make demands like other people and that affected the way things are done in the South-east. If you look at all the things, and I’m quite definite about it, the South-east is not getting a fair share in anything really in this country. If you look at the Federal Government budget, the South-east has the smallest allocation. This year, last year and the year before if you go and do comparison, you find that we have the smallest and we have not been complaining. But, then, we don’t seem to complain, we are not managing it well.
Nigeria was a promising nation with much prospect and potentials to be great, we have adopted the American Federal and Presidential system. At what critical point do you think we got it wrong in terms of this system of government and our approach to governance itself?
Okay, I will like to talk about my period as a journalist, if you like, because that is one aspect of my life that I cherish most and I will like to talk about it. We adopted the America system without adopting the full traditions that go with this system. That is where we started off wrongly because, if you recall when we got this system, you see everybody said the parliamentary system was the cause of the problem when there was a coup and then, after a very long period, 1979, we adopted the America system that has a President. Now, our people started by testing the wrong thing in the system, impeachment, I think a governor was quickly impeached, a speaker or something. You know, we were always testing the wrong end of the system we were operating. We didn’t operate it the way the Americans were operating it. And then, we kept adjusting it till we seem to have adjusted it out of order. This was how it happened. We revised the old constitution for 1999 and that is what we are operating now. We thought we have been taking care of those things that were not working. But, we didn’t.
For me, I think the fundamental problem is that, we are not giving ourselves enough room to be ourselves. This country was organised in regions before these regions were able to run their own administration, education, most things. The regions were purely independent but, they were also the regions that made up of people with same kind of cultural histories and traditions and people felt that they could grow there instead of a system that could make us all to grow the same. We came to Abuja, Abuja is involved in primary education, Abuja is involved in agriculture, secondary education. The needs of the different areas are not the same. So, there are not enough rooms for the individual different groups to actually develop themselves.
Let’s talk about your career as a journalist, what interesting role do you think you played all through the years and what was so exciting then?
Yeah! I came to work on the Business Times stable, which was just starting in 1975 and the great Alhaji Jose was still the chairman of the company even though, government had become involved in the company. That was when government took over Daily Times. In fact, I want to talk about Alhaji Jose as a great newspaper manager and a proprietor and the kind of inspiration that he gave to us when I came in there.
You’ve talked about journalism and the great role you played. So, what makes a good journalist, what makes a great story, what kind of story will you consider as a great story or a journalist?
A journalist must be humble and one who is interested to be a journalist must take journalism serious. He must take the job serious and not being in journalism for the sake of money. Journalism shouldn’t be determined by how much money you get. It must be something you have flare for and an interest and a good journalist is someone who sees the news in everything that is happening around him. There are people who have gift for that and very simple thing turn out into a great story. There is a general thing to be a hiring and take a page to the printer change the face and write a paragraph and say you have a story. Well that is not a great story. Looking at the things around you, there are people who can see even as we talking now look at a story angle that comes out, put it as simple as you can for the reader and it comes out a great story. Like the economic news, you have to regulate the story and explain it to your reader and he will see the relevance there in themselves. He will read your story and understand the economics side of it. Politics is where all of us congregate and it has a widespread interest and so on and so forth.
On your years with the former President Olusegun Obasanjo, how did you get into working with him? And what was the task for your team then to repackage the politics of Gen. Obasanjo? Given that the G-34 had already supported Chief Alex Ekwueme, what was the magic wand that your team was able to come up with that gave Obasanjo the mandate?
It wasn’t a magic wand. First of all, also, you have to look at that, Obasanjo asked me to work for him at a time Ekwueme was a front runner definitely, Obasanjo asked me to work for him. And that came through my friend, Gen Aliyu Muhammed Gusau, who said to me, look you have to join this and I said, fine. But, Gen. Obasanjo accepted that I should work for him. The Igbos, were calling me a traitor for not working for Ekwueme and the Yorubas were telling Obasanjo how can you trust that Kobokobo, he was with his brother then. So, you have to give it to him that he gave me the trust and he believes and he gave me the free hands to work, that is the truth of it.
Let’s go back to the period you work in the political campaign for the then Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo. How should Nigerians really see him? A lot of people demonise him and others hail him, you have seen him maybe closer than most of us has, what is his place in our history?
You mean Gen. Obasanjo, for me, he is the one of the greatest Nigerian. The history of this country will remember him favourably. Why did I work for him or did I agreed to work for him? To go back to your earlier question, you see, when the campaign started, you know people in the Obasanjo group wanted to get Obasanjo to come out and I said to them, leave me out of it and I said to them, Ekwueme is the front runner, he has to go until my friend said to me look, you have to come do this for us and let me take the part of Obasanjo. His first coming in 1976-79, Obasanjo was the first Africa Head of State to hand over power. He could have refused. From the experience we had before and after, he handed over power to Civilian, secondly, at the time he was Head of State, I was the Editor of the Times and I was a very free minded Editor of the
Times and I was frequently having clashes with the government. I think it was for instance, my second month of been Editor of Business Times that the government ordered all lorries carrying
Times paper to be seized. Then, they took out Business Times. You see, that was calculated to inflict maximum damage on the company so that the company will then call its Editor to order. They stop Business Times and that affected the whole publication.
But when you look at it, Obasanjo’s first time was a great time for Nigerians, it wasn’t because there was money, he was forthright, he was doing well and made all of us proud. That was when the Americans began to take us serious. I think the period and then, if you look at a whole lot of things were done in his period and they were built. I think it was in 1975, the country was choking up from what we called Port congestion which was increasing the inflation rate at a rapid rate and so on. A whole lot of things which we now take for granted were not there. Tin Can Island port was conceived and built between 1976-79, Apapa port, Calabar port, Warri port, Sapele port. I think there was also something they called Ikorodu lighter wharf. It was built so that vessel can dispatch in batches which will then float the goods in batches to Ikorodu. It was later discovered later as something we didn’t need. If you look at the Airport, when we did Festac in 1977, I don’t know if you remember the Lagos Airport before it burnt where you have Murtala Muhammed II now, it was a bungalow, a spread of bungalow part of it built with carbon paper things like that. That was our International Airport. What we called Murtala Muhammed Airport, the main airport, opened in 1978 as well as the other airport you see. All this have the same design and where all built in that period of extreme activities.
Then, talk about our foreign policy, Nigeria spoke for Africa to the point that, we were adopted as honorary frontline state. We stood up against apartheid everywhere and made the world to listen because Nigeria was there. So, in every sense, Obasanjo was a very successful head of state in the military.
We didn’t have an office when we started the Obasanjo’s campaign, Tunde and I were in my sitting room in my house in Ikeja, when we came up with the pay off line, The Man You Can Trust. We didn’t have an office. We came up with the man you can trust then later, The Leader You Can Trust. So, we looked at the things he has done and said he will do it again. He came the second time, let not forget where the economy was as at 1999. You know. The price of oil then was 10 dollars and about 10-12 dollars when Obasanjo started you were aware that there wasn’t a lot of money. But he tried to do things as quickly as he could.
Let me give you a perspective of the kind of deterioration that took place when he went away. He himself has been talking about power, the last power plant in Nigeria was built when Obasanjo was the Military head of state, some of them like the Egbin Plant were completed under Shagari, the Egbin plant, Shiroro, and there is the one in Sokoto were completed under Shagari but they were started under Obasanjo as Military head of state. When he came back 20 years later, there had been no known new plant built in Nigeria, not one and what was there has already been deteriorated. The total power distribution in 1999 was 1500-1600 megawatts. That was how it was.
Since the return to democracy, you have always wanted to govern Abia State and that never came into fruition, so right now as it is, how do you see the politics of Abia state, your role and that of other stakeholders?
I won’t say since we returned to democracy, I wanted to govern Abia State. I wasn’t, in fact, a politician and I didn’t see myself a politician and it wasn’t until 2006 I felt that I should run, unfortunately, I didn’t become the governor. But we left that behind and were working with our governor, giving him support and encouraging in what he is doing. And I think our Governor, Theodor Orji has done very well. He has, if you consider where we are coming from, you will give him a lot of credits.
You know, PDP politics in Abia used to be a war between the then Governor Orji Kalu and the rest of us right from the year 2000. What stated the war? Our state was the first in all the wrong things, the first to impeach our speaker after three months. I think we impeached our speaker by October and after then, we were trying to impeach our deputy governor that was where all these things started.
Some of us say, we do things differently, and it was a struggle within the government or the governor himself on the party soul with started the struggle with the governor and then, there was the struggle within us, the opposition. The three of us are usually blamed for the problem of PDP. There is Ojo Maduekwe and Ogbulafor and myself. There was a common struggle and inter-struggle.
There is so much harmony in the party at least so far. Until now we have been working together. No problem hoping this election we are going into will come and go and we maintain the unanimity we have had.
What is your take about the in-fighting between Governor Theodore Orji and former Governor Orji Kalu? The Orji Kalu group has been accusing the current governor of maladministration, a lot of people have specifically said that Abia lack good governance these past years. What is your take on the in –fighting going on?
I don’t know about what the in-fighting is about. The former governor is trying to run down Governor Theodor Orji. He has newspaper and he is using the newspaper to run him down. That is what is happening. Theodor Orji is not even fighting back. There is no comparison between Abia now and when Orji Kalu was in power. We have to say that clearly. People went about fearing for their lives. There were so many people that died mysteriously in political offices. People were killed. There is no comparison you know. Though, we can’t call it in-fighting, the former governor left PDP, formed his own party called PPA, then at some point, he left his own party which still exist and said he has returned to the PDP. All what the PDP people are saying is that, follow the rules to return to the party and he hasn’t follow the rules and when he said he is a member of the party, the rest of us said, you are not a member of the party until you follow these rules. There is a talk about the freedom of association but, freedom goes with responsibilities. Where one man’s freedom stopped, is where another man’s freedom begins. If I had the freedom to associate, the people I want to associate with had the freedom to say whether they want to associate with me or not. If I respect that, then, there will be peace in the association.