Rivers State Governor and Chairman of Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF), Chibuike Amaechi in this interview with journalists in Port Harcourt bares his mind on the state of the nation; his party, All Progressives Congress (APC) preparation for the 2015 elections, recent governorship election in Ekiti State, among other issues. TEMITOPE OGUNBANKE brings the excerpts
Was there any agreement between you and the Federal Government that led to the release of your aircraft?
There was nothing like that. I didn’t even see anybody in the Federal Government; I just called one person. It was not this plane they were interested in releasing but the helicopters. I said I wanted to sell the helicopters and the person I called offered to talk to the president to seek the approval of the helicopters and they got the approval. And in the course of getting approval for the helicopters, they got approval for the plane to be released. There was no negotiation, no interface or whatsoever other than the telephone conversation. So, what is all this rumour that I am going to the PDP (Peoples Democratic Party)? I have finished with the PDP.
The position of your party on the Ekiti governorship election is a bit confusing. While the incumbent governor conceded defeat and congratulated his opponent, days later, some APC leaders said they will go to court.
They didn’t say they will go to court on the election. It was Alhaji Lai Mohammed who said the election is beyond just the voting; that the process of election is part of an election.
So, the military intervention, which is what the PDP intends to use for the 2015 elections – to employ military men as part of the electioneering process.
So, you will be having an unfair election, where APC supporters would be chased away by the military. That is why I said what we have is a diarchy not a democracy – government by both the military and civilians.
Was there military intervention?
They stopped APC governors from coming in; they stopped members of APC from Ekiti, leaders of APC were arrested. A Senator’s father was beaten up and other things. That is military intervention; people would be scared to come out because they don’t know what the military would do.
But there was heavy military presence in Edo State during the last governorship election in the state.
I wasn’t in Edo State, PDP and APC didn’t complain. But this one, I was there.
Initially during the Edo governorship election, Governor Adams Oshiomhole complained of heavy military presence but when the election went in his way, the story changed.
I am not in the position to answer that question because in this case, it was very glaring that APC members were arrested. Why are people pretending? There was one instance where Channels Television showed live about 20 persons who were carried away.
And Channels said they didn’t know the reason why the military took them away when they came to vote. The station showed it live and I watched it.
There was an online news portal that quoted you extensively on how bitter you were after the APC national convention, alleging betrayal by Asiwaju Bola Tinubu?
That is total fabrication. The convention ended around 5.am and by 6.am I was at the airport looking for ticket to go to the UK. So, when was the interview? I played a prominent role at the APC convention. I was part of the process by which the man (John Odigie-Oyegun) emerged.
I was among those making peace, going to people and begging them that we should allow peace because we want to make sure that we have a platform to confront the PDP. So, how did this interview take place? I was in the UK.
So, you are not bitter that your candidate did not emerge national chairman at the convention?
No, I asked my candidate to step down. We were in a meeting from Thursday night till 5.am on Friday and I woke up by 6.am to continue my appeal to people not to confront the party; that we should listen to the party and get a structure. Even Asiwaju was resting in his place when I was going round.
Does it mean you were pushing for Sam Jaja?
I never campaigned one day for Jaja because I told him to wait for us to see what was going on. When we saw what was going on in the party and we needed to beat down the crisis, I told him to step down and he did.
Why do political parties in Nigeria usually abhor internal democracy and why do they usually force people to step down for others without giving others chance?
Who did we force to step down?
Why did you ask your candidate at the convention to step down?
Why I asked my candidate to step down was because I had given my commitment to Asiwaju that I would support whichever candidate he supported.
And the reason I gave him my commitment was because I had said to him that we needed to look at this issue of being a Muslim party.
So, first we need to get a new chairman and he has to be a Christian. So, he said to me: ‘Okay, I have brought a Christian and according to what you said the day we were negotiating things.
Then why are you now asking somebody to run against the person based on the promise you made to me?’ And I like to keep promises.
So, you made your promise to Tinubu and not the party?
Asiwaju is not the party. Asiwaju may have an interest in supporting a particular candidate just like other people will have their own candidates. There was Timipre Sylva supported by other persons.
Don’t forget that Sylva ran up till the convention ground but when Asiwaju had convinced some governors and other people, he saw what was going on and said I hereby step down.
Maybe, he didn’t want his name to be announced at the podium to have been beaten. But for me, don’t forget that I said I didn’t campaign to anybody about Sam Jaja or anybody.
I only said if my promise was not called to question, which had to do with my integrity, probably I would have supported openly.
In October, the number of APC governors would have decreased by one and another election will hold in Osun in a few weeks, what is your party doing to avert another disaster?
You will help us to tell the President to keep the soldiers in his house. All of us are part of the problem of Nigeria. The President impounded newspapers and journalists did not do anything. In other countries, they would have protested on the streets. We are talking to him that there is need for him to stop using soldiers to conduct elections.
Does it mean that your party is afraid it may lose Osun?
How can we lose Osun? Say something else.
Given the allegation of the militarisation of the Ekiti election, what do you think is the proper security measure for elections?
The law says police and let us see the consequences. Are you saying there are no soldiers in Borno?
But there is Boko Haram in Borno?
That is the point I am making. So, it is not necessarily the presence of soldiers that will stop violence. After all, if the presence of soldiers could stop violence, by now Borno should be the citadel of joy and happiness where people would be dancing.
There are so many soldiers in Borno – so many military equipment and hardware, yet there are still bombings in Maiduguri. There are many soldiers in Abuja and of all places that we have thought would be very secure is the plaza, which was bombed recently. So, police are enough.
Are you saying police would be enough in Nigeria’s circumstance?
Are you going to war? I think in the current security situation, police are enough for security measure during elections.
What is your take on the issue with the National Judicial Council (NJC) over appointment of Chief Judge of Rivers State?
The quarrel we have with the NJC is that the constitution says 10 years at the bar and that is the only qualification for a Chief Judge. It didn’t say whether you should be from Rivers State judiciary or most senior Judge.
But there are recommendations by the NJC?
Yes, I agree. You send your names to the NJC. You send three names; they pick up one and send it to you. In our own case, they sent a name to us and said the reason why they didn’t take the person we preferred was because he was a Judge of the Customary Court of Appeal and that was what disqualified him.
Then we wrote back and said you are wrong, the law says 10 years. It doesn’t matter where he comes from. So, I didn’t see where you see the most senior judge from, and the court said so.
What prompted you to move out from the normal because that has been the tradition?
It is not true. Was Teslim Elias a judge? He was a professor of Law. There are so many abnormalities if you call that one normal. The law says 10 years.
Won’t people read that as interference in the judiciary?
No. It is not me, they are the people interfering.
They are in the judiciary.
NJC has no power. Like somebody told me in America, that there is nothing like true federalism. It is the abnormality here that makes Nigerians coin the word true federalism. Federalism is federalism. If we want to pursue federalism, we should pursue federalism.
Don’t come here and say today you are a federalist and tomorrow you are a republican, next day you are practising unitary system of government.
In pursuing federalism, the states have the right to choose who will be their Chief Judge. That is one. The same law says the governor has the right to accept your recommendation or reject. If he rejects, he writes to you that I have rejected.
I rejected in writing and re-forwarded the name of the person I felt by law is qualified to be the Chief Judge. They said I have no right to reject. So, you see, I am fighting on the side of the people and I thought journalists would join me.
You sent three names…
Yes, including hers (Justice Okocha) but we said in this order and to help NJC, we attached all the report on all of them – the SSS report. They said it doesn’t matter because it is not part of the requirement.
We sent the report by NBA; they all rejected her nomination. All their comments on the three judges were sent to them and we didn’t favour anybody. We said these were the three judges you said we should send and all that informed our choice.
If they are rejecting number one for instance, can’t you take the second option?
The second option is what I said I won’t take.
Then go for the third and why did you put the names there in the first instance?
It is not me. Don’t forget that there is State Judicial Council. I didn’t mind any of the three, the only reason why I reacted was the reasons they gave for rejecting the first person.
Don’t forget that when they sent it, I was aware and I said fine, I don’t mind working with anyone of them. But when they wrote to me to say we reject the number one sent by the State Judicial Council because he is not qualified since he was the President of the Customary Court. I said that is not what the law says. The law simply says 10 years at the bar.
It didn’t say it must be a judge or from Rivers State. It didn’t say it must come from Rivers State. We once had a Chief Judge, Justice Douglas. He was already in Court of Appeal in Enugu when they brought him back to Port Harcourt to be Chief Judge.
What plans do you have after office? Is it true you have your eyes on the Senate?
I will go and love my wife because she is harassing me every day. I have not shown her enough love and attention, so I need to do that for six months to one year. I will spend one or two years with my children since they lost the chances of staying with their father.
Then I will be 53 years old. I will go to the university to do another first degree either in History or Law. I will do a Masters and a PhD and then I will be 60 plus. Then the remaining years, I will teach as I get closer to the grave.
Are you exiting the political scene?
It was Channels Television that asked me whether I wanted to run for presidency and I said I won’t answer that question. They asked why? I said because in Nigeria nobody runs for president.
You just sit and you become president; you just see yourself one day wake up and become president prepared or unprepared. There were only two persons who have emerged president by wanting to be president of Nigeria.
They were Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha. So, the rest, especially the civilian presidents have always sat down in their house and they have been appointed president. So, why not allow me to sit down and see if I would be president.
It would be unfair to ask me such question since providence has always produced the president of Nigeria. If you go to the civilian presidents alone, Alhaji Shehu Shagari went to the convention as a senatorial candidate, he ended up becoming president.
Tafawa Balewa was in his house; somebody won an election and told Balewa to go and be the prime minister. After Tafawa Balewa, it was Shagari. Ernest Shonekan was appointed as president. He was not looking forward to be president but he became one.
Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was in prison and they called him out to come and be president, he became president. After Obasanjo, Alhaji Umar Yar’Adua had packed his luggage to go to teach in Zaria, they brought him back, he became president.
Our dear president wanted to become the governor of Bayelsa; he was begging them: ‘Please sir, I don’t want to be vice-president, keep me as governor of Bayelsa.’
They said no, come and be the vice-president. From come and be vice-president, what is he now? So, why do people ask me whether I want to be president after this kind of intervention by God? Why not ask me whether I am fasting?
What are the chances of the APC in Rivers State in 2015?
Wait and see. Just tell them to keep their soldiers in the barracks and allow us to go and cast our votes
What if they bring in the soldiers?
I won’t tell them what I will do. Didn’t you hear Osun State saying carry your charms? Did you read the story of Ombatse? Did you hear that people were handing their guns on their own volition?
But you are said to be calling on the name of God?
How do you know I won’t call the name of God that day and all the soldiers would be handing over their weapons?
You fasted and fasted in Ghana, didn’t you?
How do you know I won’t be fasting by now, so that soldiers will hand over their weapons to pastors? We will appoint a pastor who they would hand over their weapons to.
How will the APC presidential candidate and his running mate emerge?
Leave that assignment for God. Why are you bothering yourself about that?
Is it going to be by consensus?
No. We have a process in place. We have a process whereby there would be a primary election.
Is it the same process you aborted at your convention?
We didn’t abort it.
But the Muslim tag is still on your party?
Am I a Muslim? Is Chief Oyegun a Muslim? Is Timipre Sylva a Muslim?
There are indications that the APC may be moving towards a Muslim/Muslim ticket?
Why don’t you wait? Do you want to be a prophet?
At what point do you think there would be total reconciliation on the ethnic and religious politics as well as the division in the country?
It is not a thing that I can answer; it is the President that you should ask that question. Why is CAN (Christian Association of Nigeria) moving from one place to other saying that they have been shown a document? Why do you pit hatred against Christians or against Muslims if you are a president or a governor? Then, when it is time for fasting, you’ll say you are fasting with Muslims or fasting with Christians? A leader must be ready to sacrifice his life for his country.
And if I am the president of Nigeria, I would not because I want to win election, split this country into two religious lines because one of the consequences of that would be that one day you would wake up and there is a religious war, which is worse than a civil war.
So, because religion has that capacity to avoid reasoning, a president or a public officer like me should just keep away from inciting hate and preach love. When you seek reconciliation, the President must first take the first step to reconcile the country because the level of division now is very high.
What is the assurance that you would complete your projects before leaving office, especially the monorail?
Monorail would be completed. The reason the monorail must be completed at all cost is political. I want to ride in the monorail and call the Amaechi haters to come and see that I am riding on the monorail. Even if it is May 29, 2015, people will ride on the monorail.
What is delaying the monorail is just the terminal where they would maintain it. That is what they are fixing now, once they fix that, it will be ready.
What about the secondary schools?
It is huge and that is the problem we had with that. We have completed at least seven out of the 23 that we want to build. The cost is N4.5 billion per school.
It is huge and basically the financial diversion at the national level – the oil sector has crippled the states.
All the states are being denied money. The stealing in the oil industry is so bad.
I used to get between N20 billion and N25 billion, but now I get N13 billion to N14 billion.
Surprisingly, I got N17 billion this month and I was celebrating and my commissioners told me that the extra we got came from the non-oil sector and it is not a thing we get regularly; we usually get it once a year.
If you are doing N13 billion and your wage bill has risen from N2.5 billion to N9 billion.
Why?
There were no teachers. There were primary and secondary schools with two teachers; one teaching English Language and all arts subjects and another teacher teaching Mathematics and all science subjects.
Tell me what he knows about Physics or Chemistry? Now, we have employed about 13,900 teachers and that increased our wage bill by N1billion.
We took over primary education from local government council, and that cost N2 billion. So, if you add that to N2.5 billion, that is N5.5 billion.
Then the increase in the minimum wage shot up our minimum wage to about N18.7million and that increased our wage bill. If you add that to our pension, which is about N1.9 billion every month we are now doing about N9 billion.
Can you compare your first and second terms?
First term we had money and the problem we had in the second term is the fact that the wife of the President is here.
Anytime she is town, you will see the heavy presence of police and army and she used to block many roads and the governor won’t even be able to pass until The News Magazine wrote a story titled: “Her Imperial Majesty.”
They now opened the roads but with little presence of soldiers. We have a situation whereby she is in direct control of the police, SSS, Air Force. I didn’t say she controlled it through her husband; she is in direct control.
Kidnapping is back in Port Harcourt and how do I stop it when the forces I used to stop them with have been removed and they put their own person? Now, people cannot move freely in the state because of kidnappers.
A friend of mine, Sam Onyema, was buried last recently. What happened to him was that he was going for a burial in Imo State with his friend and they wanted to kidnap his friend and shot him dead.
So, how do you account for that in a situation where the wife of the President takes over the security? This is not the first time I am saying it; I have said it severally and they have never denied it.
The army has not denied it, the President has not denied it, his wife has not denied it, and the police also have not denied it.
Since the exit of Mbu as Rivers State Commissioner of Police, have there been any changes?
No. The only different is that one police commissioner is more civilised than the other but, it is still the same. Whether he is working for PDP, ask anybody on the street.
You run a government whereby the police are not working with you at all, so you can’t even say you want to go on demolition and the police will follow you.
What if the helicopters come in now?
Before we had a wonderful security system, so it was the security system that gave us the control of the state that made us to introduce helicopters where we would have camera in the helicopters and they can fly round the state and whatever we see we act on it.
Now, how do you manage it? You have a system where if you go to arrest anybody; if the person says he is PDP or working for the President with AK47 in his hand, they would let him go.
The army arrested seven people with AK47 and people are not asking,where are they?When they were arrested, I called the brigade commander that I heard that seven people had been arrested. He told me that he has handed them over to the police.
Where are they?
They have been released. The police have confirmed that they have been released and they were seen with seven AK47! They were released by Mbu not the current man and that is why I said the current man is more civilised than Mbu.
The National Conference has called for the scrapping of state independent electoral commissions (SIECs), what is your take?
First thing, when the confab finishes, they should come and pass their constitution. Why are you bothered? You didn’t hear when we said it is a waste of time, waste of Nigeria’s resources and total diversion of attention.
But don’t you consider the call for the scraping of SIECs, given the outcome of the Kano local government election?
Even at that, there is no evidence that you have to show that PDP or any party would have won anything. Kano State is predominantly APC.
Are you talking of the Kwakwansiyya factor?
Not only Kwakwanso, there is the Buhari factor. Why are we pretending? Let Kwakwanso repeat that election 500 times, let the Federal Government go and stand there with soldiers, APC will win even to the last ward.
I saw for myself when Kwakwanso took us on a tour of his project and people were falling over themselves just to see the governor.
So, how would the PDP win there? They went there for campaign and I hope you saw that video they put on the social media.
The other side of the rally in Kano that the President didn’t want people to see, when they were calling PDP thieves. It happened inside Kano. Was it sponsored?
With the experience you have had in your state, would you advocate for state police?
It can’t be worse, they will checkmate each other. If you are not in the party of the president, he will stop using the police or army against you because there would be balance of forces in the country.
Nobody wants a state police if the national police would be fair to everybody.
There are two reasons for state police. First is that the national police is not properly equipped to check crime. So, if you equip them properly and make them independent, then you don’t need the state police.
The reason for the state police is the failure of the national police. And with the personalisation of national police, it becomes the private army of the president.
It is worse in this period where it is not only the private army of the president; it is the private army of the PDP.
So, when people criticise others, they should institutionalise the police and the military.
If they are not answerable and they would not obey illegal orders, then we would support everybody. If we have a statesman president, who will not use the police, they would be in support of everybody.
Are you impressed with your second term because you seem to have been distracted by politics?
A lot of people need to wait. What you bought into is the PDP propaganda machine and if you know me very well, I hate propaganda. I could actually put about N100 million to N300 million to the press to start propaganda and meanwhile I am doing nothing on the ground.
There was a time we were responding but it got to a point that we stopped. The reason I stopped was because we started commissioning primary schools.
In my first tenure, we had only 75 primary schools. We are trying to get children into 300 but it is expensive to furnish.
ICT alone is N34 million per school, so 100 schools is N3.4 billion. So, we say let us raise about N10 billion plus to fund 300 and it is not easy.
What about the sustenance of the projects?
Sustenance is to follow the process that we put in place in terms of maintenance.
In each village, we hired villagers to form themselves into a company, registered the company and run the maintenance of the schools. They clean, mop and if you break any of the facilities, they replace.
We pay every month. If another governor comes and says I don’t like this, it is left to him. I am no longer a governor and I can’t come back and revert that.
Some states have huge debt profile, what is the position Rivers State?
You should ask bankers why they are still pursuing us to give us money. It is because we are paying every day. We have borrowed close to N300 billion and not owing up to N80 billion.
That is why I said you should ask banks why they are pursuing us. It is because at the end of the month, once they get our money, they quickly take their money.
We are paying N7 billion every month to service the debt. You can ask any of the banks. We would not leave debt behind. We are different from others; you can go and ask them, how much they owe.
How about your savings for the state?
Some of it is still there but it is not like before.
You have depleted it?
Yes. Depleting it was because when we saw that the financial diversion has started and we are not getting as much what we use to get, we knew that we were running into problem.
We began to owe children overseas. We have about 1,000 medical, engineering and other students studying overseas and from N1 billion, the thing go to N6 billion. And with the pressure to pay those bills and fund our projects, we broke into it.
I didn’t want to break into it but my cabinet member made a lot of sense, saying: ‘Governor, you know when you were Speaker you saved N500 million in the House of Assembly account. For saving it, the EFCC arrested you first that you opened a deposit account to make money.’
I said yes, and they added; ‘One month after you left and went to Ghana, what happened to the money? The members just withdrew the money and shared it among themselves.
So, what will happen to this money you are keeping? One month after you leave office, they will just withdraw it.
Now that you are here, take some and pay for your projects and leave some.’ I think we still left about N17 billion or N18 billion out of N53 billion. But it is growing again, maybe before we leave; it will grow to over N20 billion. Not from our savings alone but interest accruing on it.
Do you think the NGF is still effective?
What are we doing before that we are not doing again? The only thing we were doing before that we were not doing again is controlling the stealing of oil money. Now, it has gone bad that nobody can control it. Before when we see the stealing, we come together and tell the President that we don’t like the stealing.
They were more careful then. So, if you say, it is politics, it is more to stop us from shouting against the stealing because that was what was annoying the President that every day we were shouting about the stealing in the oil industry.
The stealing was controlled by then, but now the stealing has no control at all. Beyond that, has the President stopped me from what I want to say? The answer is no because I can still say what I want to say.
Before if I needed to speak as the chairman of NGF, I would call a meeting, we would agree on what I would say and I will issue out a statement. If I went to a public function, I never made a national statement until I sought the approval of the governors.
Not now anymore. I say my mind. Which was better for the President? If it was before, I may not have granted this interview the way it is now because one of them would have called and said; “Your Excellency, the chair, we didn’t say that. I am not supporting that. I would take a press statement and said we didn’t say that.”
You know Oshiomhole did one, saying that he was not part of it until we called him and say you are wrong, you were overseas when we had our meeting and I said what I said based on that. And he apologised that he didn’t know that we agreed.
Akpabio would also say ‘Look, I wasn’t at the meeting,’ but he has also come to public once to say there was no time we discussed. So, then we were very careful because we needed to carry everybody along.
The only statements that I issued without consultation were condolence messages. The rest I must call. That was why I asked the president that Bayelsa State governor is always at the meeting where this statements are agreed on, what has he done to stop me if he didn’t agree with it because we vote. In fact we even correct grammar before we issue a statement.
And when we are issuing it, everybody is around including the President’s home state governor. So, why am I suffering for a group’s sake? In fact, Sokoto governor said when he was called not to support me, he said: ‘I would be the last man to back away from Amaechi.
Reason is that there is nothing he said that we did not all agreed that he should say.’ I now speak my mind. Then I was speaking the mind of a group. I am writing a memoir and I am taking one governor after the other.
What is your succession plan and why are you insisting the next governor should not come from Ikwere?
I have said that severally because as an Ikwere man, I have served for eight years and there is no law that states that Ikwere has the best to become governor.
Politically, you have the upland and riverine areas in Rivers State?
You can’t do upland and riverine politics in Rivers State. If you do that, it would be unfair to the riverine people. And I have been telling my friends who are in riverine area not to pursue that politics. Fifteen local government areas are upland, eight are riverine: who will win? Politics is a game of number.
So, it is not in the interest of anybody to do riverine/upland. All you can say for now is that it would be unfair for an Ikwere man to come back as governor, no matter the numbers.
Yes, Ikwere people can claim that we have 1.1 million votes out of the 2.3million votes. What it means is that if you are a patriot, allow others, give the 1.1 million votes to anybody of your choice, not to appropriate those votes because the number exist.
We are saying that Ikwere fought political injustice when Bayelsa was here and by then we used to hear about one million from Bayelsa, we didn’t know that they are only about 600,000 people. And then the Ikwere people fought and fought until they created the new Rivers State.
Having created the new Rivers State and you have the highest number, the right thing to do, having served it is for an Ikwere man to have served eight years and we ship out since there are other groups.
There is no group that does not have qualified candidates to govern Rivers State. When Ikwere people visited me in my first two months as governor, I asked them to go to Dr. Peter Odili with gifts to thank him because he was an instrument to the realisation of an Ikwere man as governor. They did it and I know he was shocked because he didn’t know I sent them.
He was shocked to receive them and they thanked him. They thanked him because he pursued it and that was why when I was dropped, he took my cousin (Omehia), who is also an Ikwere man in fulfilment of that agreement. Now, my own dream is to leave office and not supporting an Ikwere candidate because the reason for which Dr. Odili supported an Ikwere candidate was to make ensure that power rotates among the ethnic groups in Rivers State.
Traditionally, Rivers has always harvested 2.1 million votes for the PDP. In 2015, do you think the votes in place would be up to two million?
I am not God. We should even surpass the two million but what I don’t know is where it will go to, whether PDP or APC. Let us wait and see.