Political profiteers fuelling Wike, Fubara crisis — APC chairman
Chief Tony Okocha is the Chairman of the Caretaker Committee of the All Progressives Congress in Rivers State. In this interview with DENNIS NAKU, he speaks on the political crisis in the state, including the defection of 27 lawmakers from the Peoples Democratic Party to the APC.
The APC in Rivers State, despite being the party in power at the centre, ought to be growing. This is not happening t in Rivers State. What is responsible for this?
Well, the reverse seems to be the case in Rivers State hitherto. I’m the new helmsman of the APC in Rivers State. By the authority of the National Executive Committee, as senior to the National Working Committee, of the APC; I was appointed to head the seven-man caretaker committee of the APC, Rivers State. And the reason you adduced is the reason why we were appointed, because the APC in Rivers State went into a coma, and nothing was happening here. It took the grace of God and the support of the former governor of Rivers State, Nyesome Wike, who though he is a member of the Peoples Democratic Party, had grouses to grind with his party, the PDP. So we wooed him and his group into our fold and they threw in their support, which explains why we, (APC) won the presidential election in Rivers State.
You also know that from 1999 when this democratic dispensation started, the PDP has won all presidential and governorship elections in Rivers State, back to back. So it can be said in any quarter and rightly too, that Rivers State has been betrothed to the PDP since 1999 till we speak.
Remember that we lost 33 over 33 House of Assembly members. We lost the three senatorial seats in Rivers State. We only managed to win one House of Representatives seat. That too was based on negotiations. The rest were won by the PDP. But in the presidential election, the APC won.
As a party that was built on a very solid foundation; we cannot boast of one councillor in 319 wards in Rivers State. I mean, I’m talking about councillors, can you even imagine chairmanship when you haven’t even won a councillorship seat? So they set up a caretaker committee to go and re-jig the situation and re-jig the system.
How far have you gone with the process?
Well, we are a few weeks old and I can tell you that we have done quite a lot. We have commenced a stakeholders’ engagement and interactions. We met people in their houses and talked to them.
It is yielding results, a whole lot. Of course, one of our major advantages as we speak now is that a party that has not even one member of the Assembly now has 27. It is our advocacy, it is our counsel, our approach. So we have 27 members of the state House of Assembly out of 31 in less than three weeks.
A member of the party in the state accused the President of deliberating snuffing life out of the APC because of one person. How would you react to this accusation?
What will the President gain from snuffing life out of his party? Was the President happy that the party performed abysmally low, if not for the help of somebody else from another political party …? Is the President happy that the APC in Rivers State is in a coma? So why will he snuff life out of the APC? You know when you don’t have facts, people relapse to reductionist arguments. Wike is not a member of the APC. Wike has said it time and again and I know so because when he was local government chairman in 1999/2000, I was his executive assistant. Wike has been one of the beneficiaries of the PDP from its inception till today. And he has said that the party has done him well and that he is not in a hurry to leave.
When they say so tell them that the President’s business is to re-jig the party and bring life, not to snuff life, bring life to the APC in Rivers State. That is where we are headed and we will achieve it because immediately after our announcement, the majority of our party members are happy.
The governor presented his budget to four members of the State House of Assembly and then the Assembly complex was demolished. What is your take on all of these?
Is it not absurd that in a House of 31 members, a governor presented the budget to only four members of the House? I don’t know why people test the will of Nigerians and citizens.
They are testing our will. That is what I feel the governor is doing, testing our will. I would have thought that he would use other means to solve these problems. The one-third of 31 should be about 11 or 10. But he presented the budget to four, can’t you see how they managed the crisis?
They just showed us where he was reading something, to whom? They refused to show the proper setting, but you are only showing the governor reading something. Who is he reading … to and what is he reading? So will that stand the test of time?
It is not that the other 27 members are dead. The truth is that they have defected from his party because of inactivity. The governor rose on the plank of consolidation and continuity.
For six months, you need to see what the governor has done. One or two projects that he seems to have completed were 99 per cent completed by former Governor Wike. Wike deliberately allowed him, to come and commission those projects. So what the governor is doing is affronting democracy, and we will not watch him (Fubara) suffocate our members. Those Assemblymen, who have defected to the APC are now our property and I’m their chairman.
The only problem I have is that in this part of the world, sometimes we allow illegality to fester. It is crass illegality, for crying out loud. It is not done anywhere to present the budget to four members, without the other 27 Assemblymen and then you demolish the Assembly complex. Yes, he has the right, but the first question is as the governor after he visited the Assembly complex to see the fire incident, did he set up a committee or panel to find out the reason why that place was bombed? Did they report to him that it was an electrical fault? They orchestrated the burning of the Assembly through their cronies because it was said that they were going to remove Edison Ehie as Majority Leader and then impeach the governor.
So they bombed the Assembly so that the Assembly members would not sit. That is the reason Rivers people are not aware, nobody has told them how the Assembly got burnt.
And if you are demolishing a place for instance, shouldn’t you tell the people who reside there, ‘Please come and take your things?’ It was all done in bad faith.
Do you agree with Darlington Nwauju who said the defection of the 27 lawmakers did not follow due process, and therefore null and void?
Does he know the law? Darlington Uwauju is one of those crying that he was removed from office. He used to pride himself as the spokesperson. So he is one of those who were relieved of their offices. So what do you expect? He has turned an enemy to the party. On the Assembly members who ‘cross-carpeted’, note that ‘cross-carpeting’ is not a word that you and I invented. You and I did not invent defection. It is not in the Ikwerre language. What it means is that it is a universal concept.
The law allows you to do that, and the reason the law allows you to do that is that you can spot irreconcilable crises in your party and you are no longer comfortable with the entire thing.
The governor is giving support to four members over and above 27 lawmakers. So that is enough confusion and enough to say we are done with this and we are heading to another place. What other process do want? Would they have gone to their constituents? Is that the law?
The issue is establishing the fact that there is a crisis in the party. The law in section 109 (1) sub-section G, you look at the constitution. That is what the Assembly members are latching on and that is what anybody who cross-carpets from one political party to the other latch on. Irreconcilable crisis.
You said one of the reasons for Justice Danagogo’s judgment which favours the pro-Fubara lawmakers is that he is the younger brother of the Secretary to the State Government. But the SSG is also an ally of the FCT Minister and he also served in the same capacity under Wike. How do you reconcile that?
He was an ally of the Minister. Who was in alliance with the Minister now more than Fubara, the governor? Who? If there was a primary election for the PDP, if there were 10 aspirants, and if Fubara emerged number nine I will clap for him. He was the odd one out of all the people who were aspiring to be the governorship candidate of the PDP. He was the odd one out. The rest were politicians.
Are you not aware that one of the issues that the other political parties were attacking at the tribunal was that he did not properly resign from where he was working? So he was just not a politician. But the system threw him up over and above the former Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, and others. And in doing that Wike, then stepped on sensitive toes.
This is somebody that he (Wike) brought from nowhere, who had never held any political position in life; he has never been a councillor, he has never been supervisor of council, neither has he been chairman of local government. This is his first stint in politics to be a governor. Now if that kind of person can betray the man who brought him in, even during campaigns, are you not aware that the man seldom spoke?
If that kind of person could betray, why won’t Dr Danagogo, do the same to save his job?
Don’t you think the scenario playing out now is the reason the people should be allowed to elect their leaders as we see that godfatherism and imposition are now having a backlash?
Well, I agree with you intoto. But you can’t also take it away from politics in our clime. So I agree that this is one of the negative turnouts of somebody being handpicked, especially when you are not prepared. As far as I’m concerned, even till tomorrow, go and interview him, you will find out that he was ill-prepared. He is still not prepared till tomorrow. What the governor does is to open his ears to crisis entrepreneurs, and political merchants merchandising with him for their pockets.
They are the ones telling him ‘You have powers, do you know your powers are elastic …?’
My friend, the moment your head becomes bigger than your pillow, you will fail, you know that you’re in trouble.
So that is what they have gone to tell the governor to incite him. They have given ethnic colouration to the entire business. Meanwhile, on the way to this stardom, the Ijaw nation that he now proclaims and projects was never there.
Wike was the know-all and do-all. He could have given it to Austin Okpara. He could have given it to Celestine Omehia or anybody from Ikwerre, heavens will not fall. But how he sorted this one out and said take the ticket. But in six months, in fact, from the information I got from both sides.
As a statesman, part of my business is to see how we can make peace and I moved. I visited the governor in his office. He called me. I went to his office and we discussed it and I told him the naked truth because we supported him, and my group voted for him.
I’m qualified to do so, I don’t go to him sycophanting. I don’t go to him for profiteering. I went to talk to him as a friend. I reminded him of his past and he confided in me that yes, he made mistakes, but for him, the mistakes he made were not enough and his predecessor took it too far.
He said he blew it out of proportion. But he acknowledged that he made mistakes. There were decisions you people had, and there were agreements that you reached in the bedroom together. So those agreements are you still in sync with them?’
He agreed that he had left, he had abandoned the agreements. I said to him the man said to me that I should tell you that you are making attempts to destroy his structure, and no politician will just sit akimbo and watch you destroy his structure. Except he doesn’t want to be a politician anymore.
This issue of godfather-godson fallout has become a recurring decimal in Nigerian politics – godfather, and godson having a chummy cordial relationship at the beginning, and shortly after it becomes something else. Examples abound – Kwakwanso and Ganduje, Akpabio and Udom, and so on. What do you think is responsible for this?
Well, on both sides, I can tell you one reason could be that the godfather overbears on the godson and then wants to lord it over the godson, who is, of course, standing on the rostrum. On the other side is the fact that there could be a betrayal of trust and confidence from the godson, who now, like I said, thinks I’m the governor. I’m in charge. I have all the powers in this world. I can make or mar. I can call by snap of the finger the Commissioner of Police will be here, the Army Commander will be here now. So who else should I obey? The other thing is communication gaps.
