APC should reconcile aggrieved chieftains, says Nwosu

The Imo State governorship candidate of the Action Alliance (AA) in last year’s general election, Uche Nwosu, has returned to the All Progressives Congress (APC). In this interview with Correspondents Okodili Ndidi and Nicholas Kalu, give reasons why President Muhammadu Buhari will not rely on the power of incumbency to produce a successor. Excerpts:

 

By 2023, President Muhammadu Buhari will be leaving office. Do you think APC will produce his successor?

With what Nigerians have seen, I mean President Muhammadu Buhari’s achievements in every sector of the national life, the APC will not have to rely on the so-called power of incumbency to win the 2023 Presidential polls.

The party will rather leverage on the achievements of President Buhari, which are more than to continue in power beyond 2023. APC should benefit from the work we have done.

If President Muhammadu Buhari has made rice available to Nigerians, if he has made our name so dear to other nations, then, we should leverage on that.

President Muhammadu Buhari cannot say because he belongs to the APC, therefore APC must win. That is not the nature of the man.

What you provide and you give to the people is the power of incumbency and if you don’t do anything and you think it is because you are a governor or a member of APC, because of that you will win election, you will certainly lose.

Do you think the party has faith in these achievements to win it the goodwill of Nigerians?

The party has not done well in marketing President Buhari’s achievements and this calls for serious concern. Instead of standing the gap between the President and the people and showcase what the APC-led administration has done, the leaders of the party are busy fighting for pecuniary interests.

It is not the place of the President to sound his trumpet; it is the duty of the foot soldiers, the party, but this has not been so.

But, if the party starts on time to curry the goodwill of Nigerians, based on what we have achieved in the last five years, then, we would have done more than 70 percent of the 2023 campaigns.

The rice revolution, economic reforms, anti-corruption battle, power sector reforms, defeating terrorism, among other programmes of the government, should form the basis for the party’s aspiration to launch beyond 2023.

The party should be prepared to do the right thing if it hopes to continue in power because hoping that President Buhari is manipulate the system to favour the APC is a pipe dream because the man we have as President will not bend the rules to get advantage.

So, if APC is interested in power after 2023, it should start now to plan on how to leverage on President Buhari’s achievements, instead of hoping to wield the power of incumbency?

At the last APC NEC meeting, the President appealed to stakeholders not to allow the party to die after the end of his tenure. How committed are the stakeholders to the reengineering of the party, particularly in the Southeast?

In the Southeast, remember in 2015 we played a very wrong politics and in 2019, we did the same thing. Whether you like it or not, an Imo man would be the governor of Imo State, an Anambra man would be governor of Anambra state, same with Ebonyi and other southeast states.

But what do we have to get from the federal? We all went into PDP, thinking that we were doing ourselves good.

The Yoruba that were for ACN, opened their doors and went to the centre, but we did not look at the future, not for us directly, but for our children yet unborn.

Now, we are complaining about so many things. No appointments, no this and that. Let me tell you, it is politics. You cannot reap where you did not sow.

I commend President Buahri for making that appeal that the stakeholders should not allow the party to die after 2023. It is commendable. This is what we expected. This is the step the leadership of the party should have been taken after the general elections.

You can imagine that, if the leadership of the APC had taken this step, they would not have bothered Mr. President coming to beg the stakeholders to keep the party alive.

The way the party is fighting  each other calls for serious concern. You go to Edo, Zamfara, Ogun, Imo and so many other states, the story is the same.

It is crisis everywhere. It does not talk good about our party. Election is over and this is the time to reconcile, and the only way this can happen is where there is true reconciliation with an open heart. What matters in a party is the people, not even you as a national chairman, secretary or governor.

What matters are the people. If the people are not happy, then, of what use is your position as the National chairman, Secretary or Governor.

For me I welcome it and I pray that the Southeast will have a rethink in the manner they vote. 2023 will soon be here but are we prepared to be in the centre? So, that the 2023 election we don’t start complaining that we don’t have a Secretary to the Government of the federation, we don’t have a Vice President, we don’t have Head of Service and so on. Are we ready to be in the centre, so we can work for the centre and benefit from the centre?

You are talking about reconciliation and the National Chairman of the party seems to be fighting for his life within the party. Don’t you think this development will defeat the appeal by Mr. President for the party to continue after him?

For me, I have forgiven Adams Oshiomhole for what he has done to me during the 2019 election. I don’t want to come back to what happened during and after the election.

For Uche Nwosu, I have forgiven him, I have left him to God to judge. All those that partook in the destruction of APC in Imo State, I have left them to God. What matters is the future of the party.  I am bothered about the development because up till now, the leadership has not shown that remorse to to refocus this party.

You don’t give yourself so much power over the people you are leading. When you do that, you are not showing good leadership.

By the time they abuse you and you don’t reply, they would say to themselves, oh this man is a good leader. We are abusing him and he is not even replying. So, the party must come up with a system where it is not all about fight.

There is a difference between a chairman of a party and being a member of the party. The members of the party are the children of the party.

So, if you are a father and one of your sons disobeys you and you get angry and punish that child, what you do next is to draw the child close with your left hand. When you flog the child, you come back and hug the child.

They have to move on. They should know when to apologise. There is no shame in it. Zamfara, Imo, Enugu, we want to apologise for what happened.

For the sake of the party, let us come back together and work. A lot of people would say, oh, just for this thing they did by apologising to members of the party in Imo State, in  Zamfara or in other places, we forgive you. But, they are not ready to do that, it has been all about fighting and cursing.

They just have to take a decision on what to do, because they don’t have all the time, before you know what is happening we are in 2023.

And if this fight continues it will be a serious problem. So, we must solve these problems in these states like the President has said.

This is a father; his statement shows that he is a father. He says I don’t want this party to die before 2023, go back and ensure that everyone comes together and build the party. That is the statement from a father.

We learnt you have returned to APC…

I have decided to forgo all that transpired before and after the primary. Remember before the primary the APC we had in the Southeast was the APC headed by our leader, Owelle Rochas Okorcha.

And this was because of the love we had for President Muhammadu Buhari. Being a man who understands the need to have a change of government, he deployed all his people that we all must give total support to Buhari, even when the persecution, being the only state that was in the Southeast then, was very difficult trying to sell APC in the Southeast.

We damned all the consequences and we did our best and APC won the 2015 election and we remained in APC because of President Buhari and his programmes from 2015 till date.

For me, I count myself as being privileged to be in a party where the leadership under President Buhari has done well in the areas of anti-corruption, agriculture and Nigerian integrity abroad.

These are some of the reasons we joined APC from APGA, just because of President Muhammadu Buhari.

I won the primary, but the chairman of the party, Adams Oshiomhole, brought another committee. I still won. It was unfortunate that, that ticket was given to another person and in trying to make sure that our mandates and the people’s choice were not destroyed, we went to APGA and we went to Action Alliance (AA).

Read Also: APC urges Akande to reconcile aggrieved members

 

I was in AA and still won. I joined AA two months to the election and I still won that election. You know, I don’t want to go deep into that. The Supreme Court gave a judgment that I had a dual candidature, that I am a candidate of the APC, that I should not have gone to have AA ticket.

Based on that, that I am not fit to run for the election, I have taken that judgment in good faith and I actually want to appreciate the President, who before and after the election, saw the injustice and I remember his words in Imo State and he said, vote for the candidate of your choice.

It takes a President, who is  democratic to take that decision because normally another person would have said, no I don’t care. But, he knew that, there was a challenge there and there was a problem at that particular point in time.

I also want to thank him for the opportunity given to us, the young people, because if not for the ‘Not Too Young to Run bill. I would not have said I am coming out to run for governor. It was because of the bill that made some of us stick our necks to run for the governorship of our states.

I want to thank him, I want to thank my supporters, I want to thank His Excellency, Owelle Rochas Okorocha, who I see as my mentor and role model. Who brought me from being the Deputy Chief of Staff to Commissioner for Land and then, Chief of Staff, and even entrusting me to run for the office of governor.

It takes someone with total trust in you. After all, there are many people who are governor’s in-laws and governor’s brother, who didn’t get the opportunity.

 

After returning to APC, what next?

You know when those that brought these problems to Imo State came, they told the leadership of the party that Okorocha’s in-law was not popular and if we use him, the party will lose and that everybody hated us and would not even win one House of Assembly.

But, let me tell you one shocking thing that happened to them, those people that came and took my ticket could not win a single House of Assembly seat, but I won 10 House of Assembly seats, four Federal Constituencies and this was the person you say cannot win one House of Assembly.

We went out because of the injustice done to us. But, all of them, including the ones in House of Reps and House of Assembly, their spirit is in APC. So, if Ugwumba Uche Nwosu is going back to my family, then all of them would come back.

What are your suggestions for electoral reforms?

INEC needs a lot of reforms. You can imagine INEC came to the primary and from INEC report, I won the primary, but their powers are limited. They say party has the final decision. From INEC reports submitted at the INEC office, Ugwumba Uche Nwosu won the primary.

The second election, the INEC report, Ugwumba Uche Nwosu won the primary. If that power should be given to INEC, that once you are there to monitor and this person wins, nobody or political party can change it. It makes life easier.

Somebody wins primary and for you to come to Abuja, the name has been changed. Most of the people that they submitted their names did not contest the election.

So, the issue of party nominating their candidates for election should be reviewed. INEC must be given a lot of power to insist that whoever wins on the field must be the party’s candidate.

Again, the issue of election proper. There are so many places where people would disappear with the result sheets and write and submit. It is not fair.

And someone would just write a result. And some cases where results on INEC result sheets does not reflect the actual result on the polling units is so wrong and should be checked; a situation where a candidate has 20, 000 votes on ground, but what you are going to see on the result sheet will be 50, 000. So, they need a lot of reforms and the bad eggs among them need to be fished out from INEC.

Another one is the issue Returning Officers. I want to say that one of the greatest problems we had during the 2019 elections, were the professors who were the returning officers. You can imagine a Professor, claiming he wrote result under duress.

You had the Police there, the Army, the SSS, the Civil Defence, and observers and you are still saying that you wrote result under duress. Is it the police or army that put the gun to your head to write under duress? You see a Professor lying to the country.

A vice chancellor, I am talking about my returning officer, who returned my result. A VC from of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, from the University of Agriculture, Umudike, Abia State, who took an oath to defend the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and you saw that the man in question did not meet the two-third, he did not meet the  criteria because you have the highest number of votes, and you still need the spread to be declared winner and you saw that this man did not meet the spread and you went ahead and declared him winner, what on earth would that man still be doing as a Vice Chancellor.

His integrity is gone. That man is not worth being a Vice Chancellor because the oath of office he took to be a VC he has destroyed it and should be in jail now. So, these are the things, the issue of bringing in these Professors to be collation officers, I think we should jettison it and pick core INEC staff who understand that if this happens their job is at risk.