One of Nigeria’s foremost nationalists and the only surviving minister of the First Republic, Chief Mbazulike Amechi (The boy is good) has declared that he holds the secret to the realisation of Igbo Presidency in 2023. In the same vein, the elder statesman cautioned that the nation’s topmost public office would remain elusive to the Igbo if they make political enemies and fail to win support and friends from other ethnic groups in the country.
Chief Amechi also bared his mind in this interview with The Nigerian Xpress Onitsha correspondent, AFAM AMINU CHIMEZIE, in his home in Ukpor, Nnewi South Local Government Area of Anambra State, on the occasion of Nigeria’s 59th Independence anniversary, expressing sadness at the situation of the country almost six decades after colonial rule. He went down memory lane, recalling the patriotism exhibited by the country’s early politicians and the infection of the system by military rulers from which Nigeria is still to recover.
Nigeria just celebrated her 59 years anniversary of as an independent country. How has the journey been so far?
For me, the Independence celebration is an occasion of happiness and sorrow. I feel happy because my country is free. It is because I took part in the struggle to make the country free by driving away the White colonial masters. I happen to be one of the remaining figures that took part in the struggle for Nigeria’s Independence.
I also happen to be one of the ministers that controlled the affairs of this country from the period of Independence from 1960 to 1966. Just six years. Seeing what we brought to the country and the level of devastation that has taken place after us, I feel very sad. We had a programme for the country, but unfortunately, barely six years after Independence, an unpatriotic military used the weapons we gave to them for the defence of the country against any external aggression against the founding fathers of this country.
They turned the weapons on us, the founders of the country. They killed many of us. They killed the Prime Minister, Tafawa Balewa. They killed Okotie-Eboh, the Minister of Finance; killed Premier of Western Nigeria, Samuel Akintola; they killed the Premier of Northern Nigeria, the Sardauna, Ahmadu Bello.
And even some very senior army officers were engulfed by the killings that characterised the bloody military coup of January 16, 1966. People like Brigadier Maimalari from the North, Colonel Arthur Unegbe from the East. They were all murdered in that senseless coup that led the country into the madness of the Civil War that claimed nearly three million lives.
So, when I recall these, I feel sad. Since the end of military rule in the country, what is remaining? Everything we established was destroyed. Every foundation we made for smooth economic take-off was destroyed. All that we established for peace, security and stability of the country were destroyed.
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Today, we have no running water from the taps, no constant electricity supply. In our own time there was nothing like power failure. We never saw it. It was never experienced where a place would not have light for a long period of time without prior notice from the Electricity Company of Nigeria (ECN), as it was then called, which later transformed to NEPA, PHCN and so on.
If the electricity company wanted to carry out a maintenance or repair work, consumers of the particular area that would be affected by the power distribution must be notified. That was the type of Nigeria we had then.
Water was running everywhere. Schools were operating without unnecessary interruption. After graduation, there were places to absorb the young graduates. Politicians earned very moderate salaries in order to keep the economy growing because we came to serve.
But what do we experience today other than massive looting? In our own time, there was nothing like oil. We depended on local produce. We depended on palm oil, which was the main stay of the economy. In the Northern Region was groundnut, while in the West was the cocoa.
In the Midwest Region, which was created thereafter, they depended on rubber and timber, which strongly sustained the economy and infrastructural development of the regions. In 1958, Malaysia sent a team of her agricultural experts to understudy the economic potentiality of palm oil. The multinational company, Lever Brothers, was importing palm oil from Malaysia, which they used in soap production.
Today, Nigeria no longer has enough palm oil, let alone having the much to export. The military came and destroyed all these. Later, the politicians came and continued the massive looting and destruction of the nation’s economy.
Today, when we talk of Independence, people like us feel sad. The Federal Government no longer remembers us and the struggle we put in to liberate the country from colonialism. I have never been invited officially to any Independence celebration. Our efforts to liberate the country from the clutches of colonialism have been forgotten. The present crop of politicians in Nigeria don’t care how the Independence came about. They are only engulfed in selfish leadership.
It was the military that abolished History in schools. They didn’t want people to know that there were honest leaders, who once occupied sensitive political positions in this country.
The military criminals abolished History in schools just to cover up their kleptocracy and all manners of criminality that they engaged in. So, the present generation hardly knows about Nigeria and who and who that played which role because it suited the military to continue keeping the people in perpetual bondage.
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I happen to be the only minister to be alive today, having served as the first minister of aviation at the age of 32. Then three of us that were remaining have all departed. Maitama Sule and Shehu Shagari, including me. Only God knows why He is still keeping me alive. I am only one among all the ministers of the First Republic that is still alive.
At what age were you appointed a minister?
At that time you must be elected as a member of Parliament before you would be appointed a minister. In December 1959, I was elected a member of Parliament at the age of 30. January 1960, I was appointed Parliamentary Secretary. In 1962 I was appointed a minister.
We have often blamed the military for basic underdevelopment of the country, but sir, in Ghana they and few other countries, it was the military that set the pace for political and economic advancement of their various countries. Why is Nigeria’s case different?
I have not heard of any country where the military built up the country.
The case of Jerry Rawlings of Ghana?
When Jerry Rawlings came up in Ghana there was a military coup, he lined up all the former military rulers and killed them. So, he was not necessarily a military man, but a nationalist, who wanted his country, Ghana, to move forward. Jerry Rawlings did what no African leader could do.
He arrested all the former military heads of state in that country, including the big men in the military and killed them, having discovered in his own wisdom that Ghana could not survive with the bad and corrupt military leaders around. He did not do that because he was a military man, but because he was a great nationalist.
Sir, if such treatment like that of Ghana should be meted out to Nigeria’s leaders, who have consistently held the country down, do you think it would solve some numerous problems facing the country?
These military officers are fantastically corrupt, both former and serving officers. Today, they only talk of Sani Abacha because he’s dead. Tell me one of these military officers, who does not have mansion abroad or other business interests procured with public funds? The military has often taken power in Nigeria not to correct the mistakes of the civilian government, but to continuously enrich themselves through forceful take-over of government.
It is as if it was designed among themselves, ‘let me stay for two years and another group of officers would take power and spend another period of years’. (laughter) One group probably having failed to keep to the terms of agreement to relinquish power after the agreed period could pay with his blood after a forceful take-over. So, any sacrifice that could make Nigeria great must not be turned down by any reasonable and patriotic Nigerian.
When the late Premier of the defunct Eastern Region, Dr. Michael Okpara, and first President of Nigeria, the late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, whom you worked very closely with were in power, there was no outright show of opulence compared to what we have today among our leaders…
I was a very close and an inner party man in our party, the NCNC. I was the principal organising secretary of the party from 1953 to 1960. After 1960 I held other positions in the party. At the time the military took over power in 1966, I was the national organising secretary of the NCNC.
So, at all the time, I was involved in the machinery of the party. So, my closeness to the leaders was an added advantage to me. They must have seen something in me that they started building me up. It continued after the military take-over because when Zik was very sick, a few hours before he died, he called me and gave me a key and told me a word. That was the last word he spoke to me. He gave me a key.
Was it a physical key?
It wasn’t a physical key. But it was a kind of golden key. It was in trance. It was about a speech I wrote that was to be delivered when he was lying in state at Abuja under Abacha’s government then. I took my lunch while waiting for my secretary to reproduce the speech.
Zik came to me while I was still resting and told me in a trance, saying, ‘that was a very beautiful speech from you, but you must add something. He told me to go to page 71 of one of the books he wrote and pick a statement to add in that speech. I woke up and went straight to my library to extract the verse. It was something he wrote down himself in 1952, which states: ‘When I die, I want those who will bury me to do so so and so things’, and I quoted it during his funeral.
During the commissioning of Zik’s Mausoleum in Onitsha, I called the Obi of Onitsha, Igwe Alfred Achebe, and told him what Zik had instructed him to do at his burial site. I also told him that ‘if Zik’s wish was not honoured, you people were in for trouble’ and it was obeyed.
One of the verses in Zik’s quotation was ‘when I die, I would want you to engrave it on my grave that I came into Nigeria, as I saw a country in darkness and I gave it light. I saw the hungry and gave them food…’ It was a very long verse.
Many of your contemporaries, frontline nationalists served the country with their might and sincerity.
All of them, not many served this country with sincerity. They were not involved in the massive looting that we experience today. There is a legalised looting that they enacted a law that a minister is entitled to many allowances apart from the fat salary and unabated looting of the nation’s treasury while millions of Nigerians go to bed hungry.
As a Minister, we were on a salary of £300 a month. As a minister, you only had one official car. You were only given allowance to buy another unofficial car. The money was deducted from your salary for four years.
Today, a minister is entitled to his official car. He’s entitled to a second car – all these cars must be bullet-proof. When he is travelling, he is considered for escort cars and others with pressmen, DSS and other security cars.
In our time, we only had one car. Nothing like SSS car. We had only one policeman attached to a minister. Today, policemen, who should protect a whole village are now cornered by one minister. Going about with a retinue of security personnel simply means that you are not popular.
A minister today who is going home on a weekend to his family or parents is costing the government the sum of N10 million for a stay of two days outside Abuja because of the fueling of vehicles and allowances that are paid to his security details and others.
These politicians are ripping off both the states and the Federal Government economically. Imagine a situation where a governor of a state has many special advisers; senior special advisers, senior special assistants, special assistants on this and that, all aimed to enrich a few individuals in government and impoverish the majority of Nigerians with the nation’s resources.
All these people go on allowances. By the time these allowances are summed up, only meagre resources will be left for the development of the state and the country. A country that cannot employ her youths after leaving school, what type of country is that because all the available opportunities are being shared among the children of the political elite, their family members and associates.
Are you not disturbed that all the industries and social infrastructure left behind by Dr. M.I. Okpara has disappeared due to mismanagement, misplacement of priorities and corruption among the South-East governors?
When I was building my house (pointing out one of the structures in the compound) in 1972/73, I had N200.00 and 200 bags of cement would be delivered anywhere you were within Nigeria from Nkalagu. The successive governments in this country have continued to destroy the value of our currency to the detriment of the economy.
At the time Shagari was president, it was one dollar to 68k. In 1982/83, Babangida came and killed the naira. Today, it is N360 to a dollar.
Sir, could you tell us more about the late Dr. M.I. Okpara, a man who believed in the economic and industrial revolution of the defunct Eastern Region. Were there other sides of him not worthy of emulation?
Okpara was one of the leaders of NCNC. When there was crisis in the party in 1962 and ministers were asked to resign. He was one of the very few ministers, who resigned in obedience to the party. When the House was dissolved, he was re-elected and Zik became the leader of the party and Okpara became the Minister for Economic Planning when Zik was Premier.
It was only when Zik was appointed the Governor-General that Dr. Okpara became the Premier. Okpara introduced the revolution in agriculture, the revolution in industries, although most of the policies and programmes introduced by his government were not only his, but a combination of that of Zik and Okpara.
As nationalists, we were thinking of agriculture and how to improve on what we had. We were all thinking about building of industries and how to make them work like those we see abroad. Here in my village, I had a poultry that consisted of about 6,000 pigs and all sorts of protein. I had a cold store in Lagos and Port Harcourt that could provide meat for greater number of people in the locality and many more.
What has happened to all that now?
The war consumed all. In my compound here, I had a large number of pigs that could feed a whole community, Ukpor and beyond. It was consumed by the war. When war broke out between Nigeria and then Republic of Biafra, federal forces, realising that the poultry was a major source of animal protein to Biafrans bombed the whole place and there was nothing left again.
At a time during the war my poultry became the only source of meat to Biafra. They massively bombed the poultry. By the time the war ended, we had about 5,000 pigs in the farm until such a time Awolowo made things more difficult for people who were on the side of Biafra.
I lost my cold room in Lagos, Port Harcourt, Onitsha and Nsukka. Okpara was not a greedy politician. That was why he never built a house for himself at Umuahia his hometown. Towards the time of his return from exile, his wife started building a house for him at his hometown, Ohuhu, Umuahia.
His wife told us that he wouldn’t want Okpara to come back and continue living in his father’s house. She pleaded with Okpara to remain in exile until she completed the new house for him. When we visited Okpara’s wife (Adanma) at Umuahia, I came back and summoned a meeting with Dr. Mbanugo, Dr. Walter Eze and C.C. Onoh. It was four of us that raised the money and procured cement with which to build Okpara’s house at Umuahia.
What happened was that we asked Okpara’s wife to raise an application for the Manager of Nkalagu Cement for procurement of bags of cement. When I took the letter to Nkalagu, the General Manager, one Mr. Eneli, said, ‘look at the world, look at Dr. Okpara, who established this factory, his wife is now applying for purchase of cement.’
He said, ‘Mr. Amechi, where she wrote 400 bags, go and put ‘1’ behind to make it 1,400 bags. But later, 1,200 bags of cement were approved and driven down to Ohuhu, Umuahia, for the building of Okpara’s house.
Look at the level of patriotism and incorruptible nature of the former leaders like Dr. M.I. Okpara. Not like today, a councillor or House of Assembly member has houses and business interests all over the place. Not to talk of our governors, who own houses not only in Nigeria, but everywhere in the world. When I met C.C. Onoh at Enugu, I told him about our experience at Nkalagu, he merely said, ‘don’t worry, I will go to Nkalagu and pay.’ He later went and paid the money at Nkalagu Cement Factory in the present Ebonyi State.
The following day, I went to Umuahia to inform Dr. Okpara’s wife the arrangement we were making to procure bags of cement for her and I saw six lorry-loads of cement already waiting to offload in front of the gate. The lorries wasted no time in delivering the goods. The general manager had given order that the bags of cement should be delivered immediately and they drove all night to deliver the bags of cement at Okpara’s house.
The funny thing was that when the trucks arrived Umuahia, more so Okpara’s wife ordered that the gates should be locked, stressing that she didn’t order for six truck-loads of cement much more paying for them. It was when I told her the arrangement we had made at Nkalagu that the trucks were later driven to where they would be offloaded. That is to tell you the kind of man Okpara was. Could you still find this attitude among today’s political leaders?
Okpara was a minister for six years; a Premier for six years, yet he did not own one plot in Enugu. Zik was Premier for six years, he did not own one plot in Enugu. The kind of nationalism and patriotism constituted by politicians of those days was inspiring. As the only remaining nationalist seeing the devastation of our legacies, it worries me a great deal.
The 2019 presidential election was held early this year. Our politicians are yet to settle down for governance but 2023 Presidency is now the issue on ground. The Yoruba have had a shot at the Presidency in the present dispensation, likewise the North where the incumbent comes from. The easterners have not been given an opportunity to produce president. What do you say about the whole scenario?
Ideally, anybody who is qualified should be elected President of Nigeria from whatever tribe, but the situation in Nigeria is not ideal for that kind of thing because for Nigeria not having the people’s constitution, it is a mockery to democracy and process of democratic set-up. The present constitution is military imposed constitution and this military constitution is northern military. The military ruled Nigeria for 38 years and out of these years only two years was ruled by Olusegun Obasanjo. All the other long period was by the northern military men.
So, the northern military enacted a constitution to guarantee self-succession of the North in power. What I tell the Igbo, a great majority of people that were marked out for enslavement in their own country despite all their contributions to Nigeria, is that if they want to be president of this country, if they are serious, they can’t be elected by Igbo alone. Even if all Igbo home and abroad vote for one Igbo man, that cannot make you a president.
The Igbo should form alliances with other ethnic groups from the North, South-South, Middle-Belt, West in order to come out stronger politically. You don’t produce a president by mere wishful thinking or mere pronouncement of ambition. All sections of human habitation and tribes must be carried along in that ambition.
You don’t become a president just by saying it is my turn to be president. You have to work for it. The Igbo should not make political enemies. Make friends and win the support of people from other tribes. That’s the only way to become Nigeria’s president of Igbo extraction.
Now, I tell the Igbo, if actually they want to be president, to meet me. I have the secret. I have the key for Igbo President. It doesn’t matter to me on the political platform he will emerge. It doesn’t matter to me whether it is APGA, PDP or whatever. If they don’t want to meet me, let them continue making noise about Igbo Presidency. God has kept me alive for a purpose. If they don’t believe that I have the key, then good luck to them.
Does it have to do with the key that was given to you by Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe?
(Cuts in) Yes! It has to do with it.
In every democratic setting, a bad and incompetent government is removed through the ballot box. But what we experienced during the last elections this year, it seems it will be almost difficult to change a non-performing government. What is the way forward?
One journalist came to interview me to predict the tribunal judgment of the last presidential election. I responded that the outcome of the tribunal had already been given the day the former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen, was removed. Did you see what happened? Even at the Supreme Court, what do you expect would be the outcome?
The presidential election of 2019 was not an election, but there is a brighter chance this time because the incumbent president is not going to contest again. So, it would be an open field even though he may have a political party interest. It is not going to be easy for any political party.
Is it not unfortunate that Nigeria, which contributed immensely towards the collapse of the dreaded apartheid regime in South Africa would have her nationals killed and their businesses destroyed by the South African Blacks under the watchful eyes of that government?
It is indeed unfortunate that blacks of that country have lost their sense of history despite all the contributions made by this country to end apartheid regime of South Africa. When the country was hot for the Black freedom fighters; Nigeria was one of the African countries that harboured some members of the African National Congress.
For example, when Nelson Mandela’s life was in danger in the 1960’s, he escaped South Africa for Tanzania before finally settling down in Nigeria. I was the person that housed Nelson Mandela for six months in my official residence at No. 5, Okotie-eboh Street, Ikoyi, Lagos, through the instrumentality of the late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe.
One day, Zik called me and said, “The Boy is Good”, which is the name he gave me because of my loyalty to him and our party, the NCNC. Zik told me that Mandela was being sought to be assassinated by the South African Government because of the pressure he was mounting against the White minority government to abandon apartheid and that he (Mandela) was being expected on exile in Nigeria. He pleaded with me to see a way of accommodating him. I immediately obliged. When Mandela arrived Nigeria, we had a meeting with Zik and few other prominent people at that time.
We used to attend dances together with Nelson Mandela in Lagos. Of course, we were very young men at that time. Everybody knew that Mandela was living with me at No. 5, Okotie-Eboh Street, Ikoyi. It was not a secret.
Even the British Secret Service knew. South Africa closely worked with the British Government, which was working for South Africa through her High Commission because South Africa had not opened an Embassy in Nigeria because of Nigeria’s role against apartheid. If Mandela were to be alive today, such nonsense would not have taken place.
What baffled me is that Thabo Mbeki, Jacob Zuma and even the current President of South Africa, Cyril Raphamosa, are all members of the ANC and knew about my relationship with their late leader, Nelson Mandela, and Nigeria’s big brother role in South Africa. Why did they allow the attack on Nigerian nationals and other fellow Black African brothers to take place. That is a slap and insult on Nigeria!
To tell you about my closeness with Mandela and the early nationalists of that country, after six months of stay in my house at Ikoyi, Nelson Mandela called me in an unusual tone and said, ‘I am going back to South Africa’. When I demanded to know why, he said, ‘my absence is costing my people a lot. I have to go back to boost their morale in the struggle for liberation, either dead or alive’. I was touched by Mandela’s humility and sense of patriotism towards his people. At that point there was nothing else I could do.
I accompanied Mandela to Ikeja Airport with other Nigerians whom I cannot quickly recall their names. Zik was among the people. Within one month of his arrival in South Africa, it was reported on the BBC that he had been arrested by the government of that country, dragged to court and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Unfortunately, when Mandela died I approached former President Goodluck Jonathan and former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Pius Anyim, to sponsor my trip to attend Mandela’s burial in South Africa under the government auspices, but they bluntly refused. It was only when the former Governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi, heard about that and called me on phone that he decided to sponsor my trip to attend my friend’s burial alongside two of my sons.
I heard that our president, Buhari, travelled to South Africa a few days ago to hold a meeting with South African President. For what? That is diplomatic blunder! Buhari should have waited for the dust raised by the xenophobic attack on Nigerians to settle before travelling to that country. Why do we bring ourselves down before the world? Did he go to beg the president and his citizens, who killed our people and destroyed our businesses? It’s quite unfortunate.
The issue of continued detention of Omoyele Sowore, Convener of RevolutionNow, and presidential candidate of AAC, has been lingering despite a bail granted him by an Abuja High Court, what is your reaction to this?
A democracy that does not believe in the rule of law is quite unfortunate. The continued detention of this young man is unacceptable to Nigerians and people who believe in the rule of law. What has happened to the former National Security Adviser (Sambo Dasuki), who has since been granted bail by several courts in the land? This is what we are saying, democracy only thrives where there is complete and not partial obedience to the rule of law.
Both Dasuki and Sowore are being detained unjustly, even when competent courts of the land had severally ruled against their continued detention.
