Chief Uchenna Okoli, an International businessman, is a chieftain of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), from Aguata Local Government in Anambra State. In earlier interviews, he had advised the leadership of the party that only the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Professor CharlesChukuma Soludo could win the governorship election if given the party’s ticket. And when the election came, he said Soludo would win. The rest I now history.
So, when he was cornered in his Lagos office last week, he set a kind of agenda for the governor-elect. He spoke with Razaq Bamidele:
What is your impression about the Governorship election in your state, Anambra?
The election went as expected. It went exactly the way we thought it should go. The election was free, fair and credible. So, I commend President Muhammadu Buhari over that. He had the capacity to interfere in favour of his ruling party but he didn’t. The same commendation also goes to the electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), for a job well done. The election was so clean so much that I, from the word go, knew nobody would go to court or tribunal to challenge it and that whoever ventured to go to court to challenge it would be wasting his time, money and energy. And that was how things turned out to be.
We, I mean, the All Progressive Grand Alliance, won the election clean and clear. And our candidate, Charles Soludo showed other contestants that they were no match to him. We envisaged that, it was only Soludo, who could put other contestants where they rightly belonged, the reason the party decided to give him the party ticket. Well, the rest is history now. He did not disappoint us. Or rather, we were not disappointed by the outcome of the exercise. I knew from the initial stage that, the election was going to be a mere formality and a walk-over for the APGA.
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What advice can you now offer the Governor-elect?
I think Soludo is prepared to govern and give the people of Anambra the desired good governance from day one. The victory did not come to him as a surprise because of his trust in his people in the state. And he has started doing the right thing. He has constituted a well packaged Transition Committee as the first step towards inauguration. Expectedly however, some people are not happy because their names were not included. But my advice to them is that those selected were to be there temporarily till inauguration day. They are not members of his cabinet yet.
As the name implies, they are for transition from Obiano to Soludo. Their major duty is to prepare the ground for proper and smooth take over from the outgoing by the incoming. Although, some of them may be given appointments, not all of them.
What agenda will you want to set for him?
I know Soludo as a party man. I don’t doubt his ability to govern and govern well. But, he should be told in clear terms that the expectations of his people are very high. As I have said earlier, I don’t doubt his intellectual capability to govern and surpass the performance of his predecessor in office. My problem however is that, eight years in office might not be sufficient for him to do that, going by the people’s expectations and his own gargantuan programme for the state. Soludo that we know will be in a hurry to move Anambra State to the enviable height of world standard.
But our people are impatient! They should know that in government, it takes time to see result. They should be told that, to eat rice, it must go through the process of cooking to be enjoyed. Against this background, we need to be patient with the incoming governor and there is no doubt that he will perform beyond our expectations. The expectations of the people would take Soludo more than eight years to accomplish. However, he is just to do his bit and lay further foundation for others coming after him to continue.
What about the security situation in the state?
Yeah, thank you for that question. The number one issue I will want him to give priority is Security. The issue of security should be taken seriously by the governor. I don’t know why the Nigerian government is playing hanky-panky with the people’s lives! I don’t know the reason members of the National Assembly-Senate and House of Representatives are not taking the issue of security with seriousness.
My brother, if you ask me, I will say with all the emphasis within my disposal that we need State and Local Police now without further delay. And I can assure you without sounding like someone raising an alarm that, if we don’t have it now, the security situation in the country would become worse in the next two years. Right now, the Nigerian Government is committing security blunder. Our Police Force is no longer capable of securing our lives and properties. They are not capable of handling the criminals.
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I want to assume that they don’t have the wherewithal to checkmate criminals. And if they are capable, the way and manner they go about checkmating criminals is wrong. There is supposed to be an element of surprise in the way of fighting crimes and criminals. The system of Police Road Block/Checkpoints is wrong. The check points cause the country more than N3billion every year. And the system breeds corruption. Right now, we don’t have Police who are willing to do their job properly in Nigeria. We only have a Police Force, whose personnel are only willing to go and extort people. Do you know how much they are making from the road blocks?! It is better imagined.
And with the road blocks, they are committing security blunders. More alarming now is that the military is also buying into the system. Under no circumstance should the army venture out except for defence during tribal conflicts like the civil war. Now, the Army have their own road block and with time, Navy would have their own and the Air force would also have theirs, custom will have the Nigeria Security and Defence Corps (NSDC) will have. Every security agency will also soon have road block. And with that, army would be corrupt, Navy would be corrupt and all the Nigerian security architecture would be corrupt.
And that would be a problem for the country because common Ghana or Cameroon could fight Nigeria and destroy Nigeria within one hour because of corruption. So, we need a State Police right now. And if we have State Police, we should make sure that no current police officers or retired Nigerian security personnel train them. We should source for neutral professionals and experts to train them. The reason is that if the state police are also compromised, we are gone!
Let me tell you why I said that we are committing security blunders. Instead of State Police we are organizing Vigilante. They are the same thing. If the Federal Government allows the states to have vigilante, why can’t it allow them to have State Police? And those vigilante personnel are putting their lives in danger, because they are not well equipped. They cannot handle sophisticated weapons. The people that secure our people where I come from are the Vigilante. Police will never respond if they call them. There was a robbery going on sometimes in Nnaka for almost one hour undisturbed, and the army checkpoint was not more than one kilometre away from the scene of the robbery the DPO’s office is not more than a mile away. None of them responded. The only people that tried to do something were the Vigilante, but they were no match to the robbers. I cannot understand why we don’t want to have State Police!
And mark my words; the Vigilante would constitute a big problem when we have State Police. If you ask me are we going to have State Police? I will say yes, definitely, we are going to have state Police. It is a must. The authorities are just buying time to achieve what they want to achieve at the detriment of the people. People are dying and they are there collecting money. Apart from extortion, if you take note of where road blocks are erected, the road at the spot would get damaged within six months or one year. If you want to fight insecurity, there should be some elements of surprise. People would say, I don’t know who is watching me. But with road block, you have told the criminals here we are and so they can operate somewhere else with reckless abandon. The lives of the Nigerians are in the hand of the politicians who care less about our safety.
What other thing….?
(Cuts in)…Security is number one. Number two is how to get the right people to work with him. Right now, in the pool of the people from where he would choose, the good ones among them are very few. His problem would be how to fish out the few good ones to work with him. Again, his house is full now and his phones are busy, people who want appointments and jobs are calling him 24/7. If he wants to listen to the litany of those who would be telling him how they sacrificed before he became the governor-elect, Soludo will be in trouble. His concern must be on how to fish out the genuine ones that are ready to serve the people.
Myself I believe in working before expecting rewards. But some of our people in Nigeria today are corrupt. Some people I know in Anambra, some of them believe in eating before working. That is the problem. And that is why I served the party since 2020 till date. I am the only politician that has spent millions of naira on the party and for the people of the community without appointment or government patronage. I have never asked or sought for anything and I have not been given anything.
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Have you briefed Soludo about the antics of the people?
Yes. But you know, Soludo is experienced. I spoke to him and I intimated him with some of what he should expect from some of those I mentioned to him. But I believe he must have been seeing some of the things I told him to watch out for. As I have said earlier, he will perform. I don’t doubt his capacity to meet people’s expectations. However, I don’t know if our people would get that patience for him to work. And then the problem is how to get the right hands to work with him. He is right now on the right track.
What is your take bout the IPOB’s Sit at home orders on Mondays in the South-East?
From the first day they started it I have been against it. I called, I wrote and spent time talking to them. It is not in the best interest of the Ibos. Why should you be punishing the very people you should protect? The very people you say you have their interest in mind? I told them clearly that, if this is the kind of Biafra they are yearning for, they should count me out! Dividing the country is not the option; we would not be able to survive it. With the level of technology now, no new country here can survive secession. It would be blocked out and rendered irrelevant. Look at Southern Sudan, they have not found it easy since its creation. I know they are working towards survival but after about seven or eight years.
The Biafra I would support is the one within Nigeria that would cater for the interest of all Nigerians because one cannot do without the other. Biafra cannot do without the northerners and the westerners. What we need to do is to have a system that is fair and democracy that takes care of the people’s interest. We should work together to build a stronger Nigeria that all of us will be proud of.
Are you comfortable with the coming 2023 general elections?
I am very uncomfortable. I think what is going on needs drastic measures from the government to protect the interest of the Nigerians before, during and after the 2023 election. Otherwise it would be bloody, violent and at the end we would end up electing somebody that would finally destroy the country. The government is trying but their efforts are not good enough to curtail the security challenges facing the country and its people. The ball is in their court. They call themselves leaders. Let them prove to the world that they are capable of ruling the country successfully.
Buhari is a good man and he means well for the country. His problem is those working for him who is not telling him the truth, because he cannot see everything. So, he should look inwards and do the right thing by overhauling his cabinet. Even the whole country is due for total overhauling not the only the security outfits alone. Or else the country may go down.
