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Written by Sam Nwaoko Friday, 30 August 2013 00:00 font size decrease font size increase font size Print Email
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NgigeDr Chris Ngige, former Anambra State governor and current Senator representing Anambra Central, is a major governorship aspirant in the All Progressives Congress (APC). He speaks on a number of issues relating to the coming election in Anambra State. SAM NWAOKO brings the excerpts:

YOU faulted completely everything the administra-tion of Governor Peter Obi, has done. Is it possible that he hadn’t done anything for the state in eight years?
No, I didn’t fault everything he has done. There are positive things. I said in the area of education, he has done some of the things in my blueprint and I am happy; things like the hand-over of schools to the missions. He has done that and I like the way it’s done because it had existed earlier, because during the First Republic, schools that are mission schools were given government grants and it was called ‘grant-in-aide. These grants came in form of having teachers in those mission schools paid by government and salaries and emoluments were sent to the schools for the teachers. Even sometimes, the grant can come as capital supplementation. The Obi administration is doing them and I’m happy because it’s in my blueprint. You cannot fault that but I said when I come, I will even refine it the more because I know the certain areas which he has not touched which I will touch.
Also in health, he has gone to mission hospitals and has given them grants in aid. The method he is doing that is different from my own. But the important thing is that personnel cost and running cost are some of those things that the hospitals should be supplemented by the state government because those that are being treated there are people of the state. I don’t know what the charges are, but I know that the charges are not welfarist charges because they still operate like private hospitals. So, when I bring my own grant when I come in, we will sit down and agree on a kind of charge reintroduction, which means that we will subsidise it.
So, I didn’t castigate everything. They have done that and it’s good.
But you did not say that the government had done well with the level of security in the state?
No. I am not satisfied with the level of security in the state because I’m right not to be satisfied. When I came in 2003, the level of insecurity was high. You could hardly sleep in the Governor’s Lodge because by 9 pm, you would have started hearing the sound of small weapons. But three months after, I sanitised Awka and from the town, we moved out. People could them go to banks in Onitsha and Nnewi and come out with money in their bags and count them on the bonnet of their vehicles and nobody will attack them. We want to bring those glorious days back in Anambra State. There was no kidnapping during my time in the state because we created the milieu for stability, for security ambience in the state. A lot of youths were employed when I was in government. I did massive employment, the recruitment of teachers and I think that my government was the last that did that because whatever was done since then was cosmetic. But I will create more jobs if I’m given the mandate by the people to come back. I know how to do that and I won’t say what I won’t do.
Who is likely to succeed you if you leave the Senate?
I do not know but the person who would succeed me definitely would be from my party. He will be of the APC stock to which I belong. If God allows me to come back here and I’m sworn-in as governor next year, the seat of Senate [here] becomes automatically vacant on March 17, 2014 and the INEC would conduct a bye-election for somebody to fill in the space. The bye-election would be like a new election because new applicants would come in. it would not be the gladiators that fought with me the last time like Professor Dora Akunyili; Senator Annie Okonkwo, and one Engineer Okoye. More parties can decide to field more persons and it will be the more, the merrier but I can only assure that I work for my party to refill the seat and I’m sure God would do it.
The eight-point agenda reeled out by the leadership of your party, APC, has been seen as a copy or direct adaptation of what Dr. Kayode Fayemi, is doing in Ekiti State. People are saying ‘we have seen this before,’ What exactly does your party want to do differently?
Fayemi is from my party and so there is nothing wrong if there is harmony and symphony with the programme there. If you remember, we are from the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) stock before we went in to fuse with the others to form APC. So, Fayemi’s agenda was an ACN agenda and the agenda reeled out by our national chairman, Chief Bisi Akande, at the last leaders’ meeting was an amalgam (again) of the agenda from the different political parties and that is what we have in our manifesto. It is an agenda that will uplift the common people, a welfarist agenda.
Statements credited to leaders of Congress for Progressive Change [CPC] are almost always at variance. Is there a decipherable line of division between CPC and ACN interests in APC?
No, the lines have disappeared. That is why the agenda was reeled out. It was ratified by major committees before it was sent to INEC as our party’s manifesto and the document is supreme, just as our party’s constitution is supreme and binding on any member of the party. There are no ACN or CPC anymore and there is no ANPP anymore. There is only one APC and all of us belong to APC.
CPC seems to come with bags. For instance, there is what many people have referred to as the General Muhammadu Buhari, factor?
Well. For you, it could be a bag. For some other people, it will be a delight. General Buhari has a lot of fans just like the Igbo man has Nnamdi Azikiwe, as a hero; had Odumegwu Ojukwu, as a hero; some people had late Dr. Chuba Okadigbo, as their idol. So, it depends on you. It’s different strokes for different folks.
Governor Rochas Okorocha, of Imo State said late Chief Ojukwu would have been the first to join APC. Don’t you see that as taking a step too far in the quest to sell APC to the people of the South-East?
Definitely!, the Ikemba Nnewi we knew would have been the first to lead us into APC because he was the one who propounded the theory of handshake across the Niger between the East and the West. So, if the ACN that is dominant in the South-West can shed their toga and say let us go into this amalgam and the ANPP that is dominant in the North, especially the North-East and CPC dominant in the North-West can say we are shedding all these, let’s go into the amalgamation, why not the South-East? That is what we the leaders of the South-East have done with Governor Okorocha, with Dr Ogbonnaya Onu; Chief Achike Udenwa; with Dr Ezekiel Izuogu, with Chris Ngige, Senator Annie Okonkwo, Senator Osita Izunaso, and numerous other notable leaders of the South-East. We have seen the future; we know what is coming on. We know that we cannot cocoon ourselves as a tribe and say we are doing a tribal party called the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), which is now a PDP component. We can’t do that; we can’t subscribe Ndigbo to be an appendage. In APGA, you hear of Victor Umeh, and Peter Obi. It is the Agulu Peoples Grand Alliance, that is why they are a PDP appendage, and that is why we cannot allow the Igbo to be hoodwinked. We tell the Igbo the truth. The destiny of the Igbo now can only be realised in APC. This is a party in which the Igbo have the deputy national chairman (South); national organising secretary; national women leader; national welfare officer; deputy national youth leader; deputy national financial secretary; deputy national welfare officer and so, we cannot get a better deal anywhere. Nine officer positions out of 20, you can’t have it better anywhere else.
The so-called ‘deportation’ of the Igbo from Lagos has been rife in the social media. It is already colouring what is being said about APC in the South-East and in Anambra State in particular. What is your take on this issue?
If they allow it to affect what is happening in APC, it then means that Governor Obi has succeeded in his political gimmickry with the issue.
So, you also see it as politics?
It is politics, heavy politics. I say this because I have the names of those 14 persons. There is an Okon there; there is an Audu there. The Okon gave the name of his town as one in Akwa Ibom State, while the Audu gave his town as one in Kogi State. There is another man among them who gave his town as Obudu in Cross River State. How can they be from Anambra? That is why Lagos State wrote and said come and identify these people physically. They claim to be Anambra but they can’t speak Igbo. Come and verify if they are Igbo, but the liaison officer in Lagos, who is like our ambassador refused to go, claiming that they had no money in their office with which they could ferry the people home and that the Lagos State should help them transport them home and that they would take them over at the Niger Bridge Head. There, they could not be seen.
On the other hand, it was the junior officers of the Lagos State Kick Against Indiscipline (KIA) that brought them to Anambra and they were the ones who dumped them at an office they saw at the bridge head and returned to Lagos. If I am the governor of Lagos State, I will punish those people; I’ve told them that he must punish those KIA people. But if I am the governor of Anambra State, starting from my liaison officer, who is the governor’s representative, to the people who did not come to the Niger Bridge, who did not come to take their kinsmen, I will punish all of them. That is how to run government. I moved destitute back to their various states as governor in 2005. I relocated people to Borno, to Yobe, to Kano and to even Lagos State. Former Governor Bola Tinubu, relocated people and I accepted them. These people are mostly beggars and other forms of destitute. So, it was not only Anambra State that was written to come and take their people. Imo was written and they went for their people; Katsina was written and they went and took their people. Osun and Oyo also went for theirs; why do we play politics with this because government officials of Anambra State failed in their duties? The governor should not play politics with it because we know what transpired among governors and Governor Fashola was complaining that his father was not well then and that he would look into the matter but his father died and he couldn’t handle the mater. But now, he has promised that he would look into the matter and know those that ferried the destitute to the Niger Bridge and that they must be adequately sanctioned. So, the governor of Anambra State has no right to be saying all that he has been saying that had heightened tension between the Igbo and Yoruba. It is wrong because we have too much investment in Lagos and Yoruba states to warrant this kind of friction. So, my advice to Governor Obi is to play it cool and do what he is supposed to do. Let the liaison office be funded because other governments took their people.