Hon Chike Okafor is the member representing Ehime Mbano/Ihitte Uboma/Obowo Federal Constituency of Imo State. In this interview with KEMI YESUFU, Okafor, the former chairman of the House Committee on Healthcare Services speaks on the recent move to impeach President Muhammadu Buhari by senators, the Muslim-Muslin ticket of the All Progressives Congress, the performance of Gov Hope Uzodinma and how the South East will vote in 2023.
The minority caucus in the senate recently staged a walkout over the security situation in the country and they gave an eight -week ultimatum to the President to address the security situation or face impeachment. In quick succession, the opposition caucus joined in the threat. So much fund had been approved by the National Assembly for security but has it made much impact?
Everybody is concerned and bothered about the spate of insecurity in the country and we are no longer talking about back in the years when it was only consistent with the Niger Delta. I can tell you that in the 90’s up until 2002, 2003, 2004 you could back in Abuja here and in Owerri I was living and hear about kidnapping and banditry in the south-south part of Nigeria and later years it became boko haram insurgency in the northeast. I think we have gone past that stage now to say that no part of this country is safe; from the northeast to the northwest to the north central to southwest to south-south and southeast, it is as if Nigeria has been engulfed, nobody is safe and nowhere is safe.
But this is not time for us to play politics with it because look at the attack on the Abuja-Kaduna train, nobody was sure who the bandits were going to meet in that train, it could have been anybody. So, I say that to say that insecurity and banditry, insecurity generally doesn’t know political party, doesn’t know any religion, it doesn’t know whether you are Igbo, Yoruba, it doesn’t know any tribe, anybody and everybody can be engulfed as a matter of fact. We are concerned, we are all bothered, we should look beyond partisanship, we also look beyond the government because it wasn’t any better in the previous PDP led administration. What I mean by that is that I believe that the government is worried, I believe the government is not overwhelmed, I believe that the government is making very honest and sincere efforts to arrest the situation.
So, bring you home to what happened in the senate, I said that and I want to repeat that just like everybody is bothered, whether you are a minority caucus or majority caucus but raising up to grandstand and to use the word, when people say you want to trend, you want to catch cruise, I can tell you that is what they did. Is that how you start an impeachment proceeding against a sitting president in advanced democracy even in our democracy? You must sit down and put together articles of impeachment and now begin the process, you don’t just get up because you are on national TV, you want to catch cruise, you want to let your constituents know that you are talking, that is playing to the gallery, that is not it, that is not what will bring the solution we are looking for. The solution that we want is to sit down and engage the security forces. So I want to see a conscious effort by everybody, it is not only the government, to tackle the issues of poverty which of course is a function of unemployment and also youth restiveness; if you can deal with that, while that is being handled, government also has to step up the issues of providing security because one of the cardinal functions of a government is to safeguard life and properties of the citizenry.
The minority caucus said will join the senate counterpart in the Impeachment process at the expiration of 8- week ultimatum to the President. If that happens, what will your reaction be from the majority?
We will not join forces with them. We will not support them, we have the numbers. You know what they say, “the minority will have its say but the majority will always have its way,” at the end of the day it will come down to numbers. We, the APC members of the House are convinced that the government is honest and sincere about the decision or the output to keep Nigeria safe and make life better for us. We will not wake up or keep our eyes open and allow them, we have the numbers, we outnumber them, if it is about speaking grammar we will speak grammar, if it is about quoting laws, we will quote laws.
You secured the ticket of your party to return to the House a few weeks back and you will be running on the platform of the APC and you are from the southeast. The APC is not a very popular party in the southeast. What are your chances in the forth coming election? On the national scale, your party the APC 7years ago promised to much to the country and they are judged to have delivered so little, what will you be telling Nigerians in 2023.
On the popularity of the APC in the southeast where I come from and I will tell you that the APC was a no-no party in 2015 when I ran and I won. APC was barely a year old having been formed in 2014; the legacy parties of ANPP, APGA faction of Rochas Okorocha, the CPC and then the ACN in the southwest, all came together and formed APC. So, the first election APC ever stood in this country was the election in 2015 and I got on the ballot in 2015 and I was voted for. That is to tell you that in the part of the country where I come from they don’t really look at party, they look at individuals. That is the truth but of course, the party is a vehicle because our brand of democracy doesn’t give room for independent candidacy or candidature, so you must have a party platform. Our people are that political savvy that they profile every individual the party notwithstanding, and then they will come in and also vote for individual’s party. For us as a people in the southeast, APC has not done so badly for us. We come from the southeast, five states of Anambra, Enugu, Imo, Abia and Ebonyi, today you can easily drive from Onitsha to Enugu, that road was impassable, for the how many years the PDP was in power, they didn’t give attention that road. You can now close your eyes and drive from Enugu to Poet Harcourt today as we speak. Look at the Second Niger Bridge that is about 85% completed. So, I say that to say that when we want to look and assess the performance of APC for every geopolitical zones including where I come from, we will first of all look at between the two parties, who had done so much or much more for us. Today in Imo state, the APC government, if you know Owerri very well, the APC government from Owerri to Orlu completely dualised. Owerri to Okigwe 65% done, work is still ongoing. Just few days ago the governor flagged off Owerri to Umuahia, we’ve never had it this good, it was given to three contractors. So you have from Egbu to Afugo, one contractor, from there to Obowu one contractor, there to Umuahia another contractor, so that work will be going on simultaneously along that axis and you think that our people are ungrateful, we are not ingrates. No government, not even when we had the deputy speaker and his home is along that axis, that road never got attention. You cannot go to his village without passing through that road; and if you look at the excitement in our place, it is not because the road was flagged off, the excitement in our place is that the governor in 2 years delivered on Owerri to Orlu and he started Owerri to Okigwe in January, if you know that axis, they are already at a place called Anara which is about 21km from Owerri, so that means before the end of this year, they will hit Okigwe road, Okigwe express. So, when the chips are down, our people are going to sit down and they are already sitting down to look at what the two parties, while PDP was in power and now that APC is in power, what they have been able to do for us; so it is about the deliverables as it concerns you, who has done what and for you, that is what matters. So to answer your question, APC will give PDP a run for its money in the southeast.
As a Southern-Christian aren’t you bothered about APC’s Muslim-Muslim ticket?
Yes, I am bothered about it, but if those who are attacking it didn’t think it could give APC the victory, why are they attacking it? Why not just go home and sleep and say APC has driven the vehicle into a ditch, it cannot come out, let us think about it. Muslim-Muslim ticket, we are from the south, it is not appealing to us but APC is looking at winning the election, you want to lose the power, you want to lose Aso Rock to the opposition? So, to me what the party has done is to look at the environment, Tinubu has emerged from the south. Ok, fine, he is from the south but minority religion in the south. This country is divided along two major religions, Christianity and Islam and this country is divided into north and south, statutorily. And these two religions have their dominance in the two divides so much so that, statistically the whole of the north is about 80% Muslim and less than 20% Christian. Then ditto for south, over 85% Christians and 15% Muslim. And then it is the turn of the south after 8 years of Buhari’s presidency and then it comes to the south and a well grown, matured, exposed, prepared politician showed interest. Do you think either religion or something, is he disenfranchised? Is he not qualified to run? He ran. Did he stop anybody else from running, no, including from the south-south, southwest, southeast, including from the northeast. So, everybody went out for it but the better prepared candidate won. And we now started looking at that. He is from the south but he is a Muslim, that was not a mistake. It is divine orchestration. Now the only one that you can now say that one or two or three or more persons have to sit down to determine and decide, is who becomes his running mate, nobody sat down to negotiate who gets the ticket because a day or two the ticket could have gone to anybody. But this man, Jagaban having prepared himself, picked the ticket against all odds. So that was not part of the discussions and negotiations and the thing that can be for discussion is who becomes his running mate and the number one thing the APC has to look at the possibility of winning the election.
Many feel that your party, the APC has not treated the southeast well in terms of federal appointments. Now, you are going to 2023, what should the people from the southeast be expecting from the APC by way of a position in the federal government?
Well, we want to say this, we have not been fairly treated since the APC government, I agree with you. I am from the southeast. I speak for a constituency in Imo state, in the southeast of Nigeria and you don’t want me to remember in 2015 what happened in the national assembly where all the leadership positions in the two chambers, not even one was held in the southeast. But let me also explain that to you; in that election APC threw up only two elected members, I and Austin Chukwukele we were first timers and you know what the rules says, we were first timers in 2015 and the president also explained it in one interview he granted somewhere, he had elections, he won elections, I wish the southeast did things differently. If you were the president of this country and you ran elections and you probably also got so much support from here and there and you have things to share and you don’t have enough, you will naturally look at those who gave you the more support. So the least that southeast has had to manage within the last 7 years is those ones are statutory which is to say that every state must have a member in the FEC, so that is what it is.
Now 2023 is around the corner and we are allowing some distraction to also make it impossible for us to do a lot more because I see APC retaining power at the centre that is the truth. So what we are telling people back home now that elections are still 7 months away, is that avoid these distractions and come out clearly so that what happened in 2015 and 2019 will not happen again.
How well or bad will you say that your governor, Sen. Hope Uzodinma is governing the state since coming on board?
I will tell you without sentiments that having been a part of the politics in that state even while I was in the organised private sector, I came back to Imo state in 2002 started in the banks and I was doing business with public sector, government officers, directly dealing with the government, managing treasuries, managing accounts of business of government, so I have followed activities and events in Imo from 2002 while I was in the private sector, until 2011 when I got in and became commissioner of finance and I have been in active politics till now. And I will tell you that, we’ve passed through Udenwa, Ohakim, Rochas, Ihedioha, though short lived and now Hope Uzodinma, I will tell you that there are factors that define the performance or otherwise of a leader at that level; one, how much are you not interested in your own issues of interest? How much are you interested in delivering to the larger society? We have a governor today who is not interested in acquisition of assets, we have a governor today who has not built one house since he became governor, since January 2020, we have a governor who has not acquired one single land for him or any of his cronies directly. As a matter of fact, this governor has not signed one C of O in Imo. He has placed embargo on allocation of lands in Imo because he wants to sanitize that part of our enterprise that was an avenue for enrichment of those in government. For that first part, which is for a governor who is not interested in acquisition of wealth, he has scored for me 90% and the other part of also being responsible and responsive; I just mentioned to you, these are federal roads but he is not waiting for the federal government to come and do it, what he did was to get some approval from the federal ministry of works, do it and then put in for refund, maybe that refund may not come under his watch but what is important to him is that these roads are critical. He has invested infrastructure in Imo state in the last 3 years much more than the governments in the past.
What about the insecurity in Imo state?
The insecurity thing at a point it was overwhelming but then we had a discussion here, you and I and we did agree that no part of this country is safe; so it is not peculiar to Imo alone.
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