Jerry Ugokwe has predicted a sweeping victory for the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu. He said the APC candidate will defeat Peter Obi, the Labour Party candidate.
Ambassador Jerry Ugokwe, a chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) from Anambra State, is a former member of the House of Representatives and later Nigeria’s ambassador to Austria. In this interview, he spoke to Akani Alaka about the chances of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the presidential candidate of his party in the 2023 election, the politics of the South-east, the demand for Igbo presidency among other issues.
We’ve not seen your candidate, Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu, speaking on his plans for Nigeria, unlike the other candidates. Many Nigerians are saying it is because your party, the All Progressives Congress, APC has performed so poorly in the over seven years it has been in power that he has nothing to campaign with? What’s your reaction to this and what will APC be telling Nigerians if the campaign kicks off in the next few days?
I think the most important thing is that you are looking for a president who will lead your country and not a party. You and I know that political parties have not led since the time of NPN.
I was a special assistant to Senator Uba Ahmed. As his special assistant, the late Uba Ahmed would give me his phone and say call ‘President Shagari and tell him that we are coming to Dodan Barracks.’
And I will call the President. The President will walk to the gate of Dodan Barracks, wait for us and walk us into his office to have a meeting. Now, the leaders of the party will go to the Villa to hold meetings whereas in those days, our office off Awolowo Road in Lagos – the President will leave Dodan Barracks, come there and sit down and will be waiting for the party members to come to start a meeting. Will that happen today? No. So, if that is the case, then, you are looking for somebody and not a party.
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And all the parties that you have seen pushing around – doing a 10-million-man march, one-billion march or if you have 1000 people, you call them one million whatever. What you should understand is that if you have old wine in a new bottle and you go and print a new label on it and you tell me that it is now a great wine, will that be true? No. All the people that have been running around, we have their records, what they have done. Now, juxtapose that with the fact that it is the persons that we are looking for and not the party. Now, you are working for a newspaper and you go to look for work in another newspaper, it is on the basis of the work that you have done in the newspaper you are now that you will be employed.
They will go back to The Nigerian Xpress and say, ‘what has this guy done?’ Give us what he has done. So, if that is the case, let’s talk about Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He was a governor. What did he do as a governor? I lived in Lagos, went to the University of Lagos, I worked in the Ministry of Works and Housing, Defence in Lagos. So, I know what Lagos was before Tinubu came and I still have a home in Lagos. Now, this is somebody who went around the whole country to put his cabinet together.
There was an Igbo man in his cabinet, people from Kogi, North, Ogun, and Ondo, name it. But these other people who are now pushing to be President, let them tell you how many people outside their caucus, not even outside of their states, they appointed as commissioners.
But who would you talk about in the South-west today without mentioning Asiwaju? Is it the Vice President? Fashola, Lai Mohammed, Ben Akabueze – were they not in his cabinet? That was why Lagos leapfrogged from what it was to where it is now. He looked at people and got the best brains and he said ‘come and sit down, let’s make Lagos a great state.’ Those people don’t even come from Lagos. But they have made Lagos a great state.
Some people are saying ‘this man is old, this man is not old.’ But all the leading aspirants are above 60. So, what are we talking about? It’s not about me, myself and I – ‘I’m the only one that knows it all,’ – what would you know? Unless you don’t know what the presidency is all about. If you know what the presidency is all about, you will know that you don’t know anything. So, you need to look at Nigeria and pick the best brains, it doesn’t matter where they come from.
They will sit together and rework Nigeria, just like Lagos was reworked by Asiwaju. If Lagos was not reworked by Asiwaju, you could imagine what would be happening now. It was even because Lagos was not reworked that Abuja emerged. If Asiwaju had been governor of Lagos before then, maybe we would not have Abuja.
From what you are saying now, Tinubu will run away from the over seven years record of his party when the campaign starts?
To start with, Asiwaju is not Buhari.
But it is his party, the APC that has been in power?
That would have been relevant when Buhari was running for a second term, not when a new person is coming in. And it would be relevant when Asiwaju is running for a second term in the next four years.
But some people will argue that Asiwaju played a big role in bringing Buhari to power and even, the tradition all over the world is that if a party wants to return to power, the achievements of the party will be considered alongside the pedigree of the candidate…
I have no problem with that. You are talking of other parts of the world; you are not talking of Nigeria. If that is the case, do you know that you will not vote for any party in Nigeria? Call a candidate, I will tell you the party they were in before and you will tell me what they have done. Name any of them, I will tell you where they were and what they did. And you will see whether we need to vote for him. So, in the condition where we found ourselves now, what we will do is find the best hands that can turn things around. And that best hand is Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.
But some people have said Asiwaju may not be able to get the support he needed to win the presidency all over the country. For example, a recent poll by NOI gave Tinubu zero in the South-east and South-south.
I’m from the South-east; does it mean he is not going to get my vote? Is that what you are saying?
The argument is that he is going to get very small votes from the two areas, well below 25 per cent of the total votes…
That is very wrong. Which South-east? Is it in Imo that the governor is a member of APC? Or in Ebonyi that the governor is also a member of APC? Or Abia where the Orji Kalus, the former minister of mines and power, are from there or is it Enugu?
Minister of Foreign Affairs and all other APC bigwigs are that he won’t get 25 per cent? Or is it my own Anambra? Because the other parties are just splitting their own votes, not that of APC. APC in most states that you are talking about in the South-east is intact.
I don’t want to call the names of the parties. But the new party that you are talking about is taking from the other old party, not from the APC. Anybody who is in APC in Anambra, we are tight, and I know that we will have about 30 per cent of the votes. Anambra is divided basically into PDP, APC, APGA and Labour. And we have our 30 per cent intact. So, talking about he may not get the 25 per cent, I will agree with you. He will get a minimum of 30 per cent in all the South-east states. And that’s what he needs. He doesn’t need to win in all the Southeast states.
But there are crises in most chapters of APC in South-east states as we saw during the primaries…
Are there any of those parties that don’t have internal problems? Tell me one.
A party like Labour Party is new and is gathering momentum through its presidential candidate, Peter Obi. Will the crises in APC not be an added advantage for the Labour Party, especially in South-east?
When you talk of Labour Party in South-east, you are talking about PDP. Labour Party is an arm of PDP, it doesn’t have anything to do with APC.
But they have their own presidential candidate, Peter Obi, who is generating momentum across the Southeast and even, across the whole country.
All those people you are seeing are from PDP, not APC. Tell me any of them who is from APC? So, he is dividing PDP, not APC. APC is intact, even when we have issues just like any other party. It does not in any way say those people are going to vote for another party when it comes to the presidential election. That is the key thing that you need to understand. As I said, Peter Obi’s Labour Party people are taken from PDP not APC. All those crowds that you are seeing are PDP people that they are sourcing and then, labelling. I told you of old bottles with new labels. Are you going to buy that as a new wine?
But the argument is that Peter Obi is different…
A new label? I don’t know where they are getting their own brand of politics from, where one person knows it all. I don’t know where that one has worked for any country.
But Obi’s candidacy is gathering momentum across the country…
There is no problem. That momentum is from people in the PDP that they are taking. They can go ahead and split PDP, it helps us. PDP is divided into two – one is PDP, one is Labour and we will move away and get to where we are going to.
Are you saying Labour Party will aid APC victory in 2023?
Yes.
What would you say to those who will say people from the South-east like you supporting politicians from other zones for the presidency in 2023 are saboteurs of the demand that the next president of Nigeria should be Igbo?
If you wanted to be the President of Nigeria and you didn’t have the muscle to compete with others in the party that you belong to, what does that say of you? Are you looking for an easy way out to become a candidate? Is that what you are looking for?
If you competed and you lost, then, you can say ‘this person didn’t do this thing well. I am out.’ This is the same route he went through in Anambra. He was a member of PDP. He didn’t compete with us. I was a key contestant for the governorship. He didn’t compete with us, he went away and took the ticket from APGA. It is the same model. So, it shows me that, one, you are always looking for where you will be the only person who knows it all – me, myself and I. If not for that, he would have competed.
If I have what it takes to be President of Nigeria and I remain in PDP, I would have competed effectively. And those of us who are around would support us effectively. But you don’t just walk away. Are you going to tell us that you are not a member of PDP? Or that you are not a member of APGA?
If APGA didn’t rule Anambra well under you, are you now going to rule Anambra well because of your new label? We have to look at your antecedents – what you have done. Do you know that if a leader that has foresight like Asiwaju was governor of Anambra at that time, the state would be competing with Lagos today? Let’s be honest with ourselves.
Anambra, with all the people, all the monies that we have should be competing with Lagos for God’s sake. It makes me angry when I think about it. You governed Anambra, there is nothing to show for it and you are talking to me about Nigeria.
But some people said Peter Obi performed very well as the governor of Anambra and that the state does not have some of the advantages of Lagos…
That is semantics. He did what? It is what he did that you should talk to me about.
He saved money for the state, improved the education sector and so on…
As a businessman, I will rather invest my money than put it in the bank. You put money in bank, the value is going down every day. But if you built one or two industries in Anambra with that money, what you left as one billion will be producing N20 billion today.
But he also invested the state money in a brewery
Check the ownership of that brewery, you are a journalist. First of all, a garment factory was knocked down for that brewery. You sack people who are working there for a brewery in which your company owns a certain percentage. Journalists should investigate the ownership of that company- whether they are a surrogate company or not. Is that what you should be investing in Anambra? Is it to get our youths drunk?
Aside from talking about Peter Obi specifically, why is it difficult for all politicians in the South-east to insist on the Nigerian presidency of Igbo extraction in 2023?
That’s what I am saying; Obi and co walked away from the party they belonged, the party that has a base of support to achieve that. What they should have done is to stay there and mobilise the Igbo people there. And other people, when they need something like that, they begin early to have conversations among themselves. But before this presidential campaign started, do you ever know that Peter Obi is going to contest for the presidency?
So, if that conversation was not made and people took positions – if I had committed to Asiwaju, I will walk out and now become a tribalist, because I’m an Igbo man?
But if you have done it in such a way that those of us who are ‘political elites’ begin to have conversations, you tell us, this is what you are doing and we said ‘based on this, we are going to support three of you, whoever wins’. But you waited until we take positions and you now accuse us of not supporting our own. That is not how politics is done. How will people trust me again tomorrow?
But the conversations started early enough, especially on the platform of Ohanaeze Ndigbo- saying the two major parties should zone their presidential ticket to the South-east…
Again, that is one of the things that Ohanaeze and all those our people who are interested should have done – call some of us and let us pursue it – that is the way it should be done. In politics, nobody calls you to give you anything. It is not ‘dashed.’ You will start those activities, you battle it and at some point, people will see that you have the key stakeholders with you, they will back down. But if you don’t do that and you just go out and take any party that you like and you are telling me to leave where I am to come and join you, No. It’s not the way it is done.
How do you think the controversies over the Muslim-Muslim ticket will affect the party?
Obviously, in states that are Christian states, it will affect the party. But one thing that I said to the people is that you did not decide where you are going to be born. I am sure that with what we have seen, with Asiwaju married to a Christian wife, not just a Christian, but a pastor, with some of his children also Christians, that should tell you that this man, religion is not an issue as long as you are worshipping the same God. I will also challenge anybody to show me somebody who is at the level of Asiwaju who is a Christian, married to a Muslim cleric and allow his children to go to the mosque. I need at least one example of that. So, that tells you that for Asiwaju, the issue is not religion. Politics is not about sentiments, it is about winning votes.
But some members of your party are saying even with a Christian running mate, Tinubu can still win. After all, Buhari resisted the Muslim-Muslim ticket in 2015…
Why would Buhari do Muslim-Muslim? He was looking for Southern votes. Are Muslims in majority in the South? Asiwaju is looking for Northern votes. Asiwaju will clear the South-west. He will come to the South-east and clear the required percentage. He will go to South-south and even win some states if care is not taken. So, he is looking for the Northern votes. Buhari at that time was looking for Southern votes. It’s because of the number.
But some people are saying that Tinubu is not doing enough to court the South-south and South-east. Even, when he was campaigning for the presidential ticket of APC, he didn’t go to the South-east...
A campaign for the primary is different from the campaign for the election. What happened was that many in APC in the South-east had other candidates they were backing and it is not Asiwaju. So, they tried and do everything to prevent Asiwaju from going to the South-east. It was not as if Asiwaju didn’t want to come. I was with him. He said to me, ‘any minute, is it not entering plane and coming?’ He said even if it is 4 a.m. that the South-easterners give me permission to come, I will be there. That’s the truth of the matter.
The campaign will start in a few days. How will APC and supporters of Tinubu defend some of the different questions being asked about him, let’s say on the issue of his certificate, for instance?
He will be robustly defended. One, if you talk about Tinubu’s certificate, are you aware that Tinubu worked for Mobil?
But the question is about his primary and secondary school certificates…
Go and ask anyone who worked for Mobil how thorough they are about their employees – not to talk about their employees that manage their money. Do an external investigation. Mobil, how do you hire your staff, what and what do you people check, especially for somebody who is coming to work in your finance department? So, if you get the answer, you can answer the question yourself.
But generally, how would you describe the performance of your party in the seven years it has been in power?
I think you may be asking the wrong person because if you are from Anambra and you see the second Niger Bridge coming, you better keep your mouth shut and let that bridge be finished. So, let me keep my mouth shut until that bridge is done. After that, you can ask me again.
Are you sure that Tinubu will also do like Buhari by distancing himself from what people like you who are campaigning for him are promising now?
Tinubu was a governor and we have seen what he did, there and we are saying he should repeat what he did in Lagos. Let him just do what he did in Lagos in Nigeria. So, the issue of reneging and all that, you cannot put him in the same basket with Buhari. We have seen what he did in Lagos and if only he will copy and do what he did in Lagos at the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the country will be millions of miles ahead. Copy and paste, not to talk of when people like us digitalise it.