Photo: Vanguard

Conflict, governance, Nigeria

AS the clamour for an Igbo man to succeed Jonathan come 2015 thickens, Chief Sylvester Ojukwu, son of the late Igbo leader, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, has lent his voice to the debate, calling on Ndigbo to put their house in order. He spoke with Peterclaver Egbochue. Excerpts:

Chief Sylvester Ojukwu, the son of late Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojuwu has called on Ndigbo not to relax over the prospect of an Igbo man becoming the president come 2015 as long as they put their house in order.

Speaking in an exclusive interview at his residence in Lagos, Ojukwu maintained that nobody would give Ndigbo power without themselves contesting for it; 'You have to contest and take it by force. But our most damning factor is our lack of unity.

There was a time Ndigbo prospered in Nigeria during the pre-independence and post-independence, but sadly we have lost all that and have not been able to recover. We should go back and ensure that those sterling qualities are restored.'

He further said: 'It is not that we do not have the capacity to provide quality leadership; I will rather align myself with the wise writing of Professor Chinua Achebe in one of his books that the enemy has put a knife into the thing that held us together.

So what is this thing that held us together, love? We have lost that natural gravitation towards loving one another. 'Now rather than love one another, we suspect one another. The leadership of this country is delicate and it cannot be given to you in an atmosphere of perverse distrust and suspicion. When you don't trust yourself, how can you expect someone to trust you? So that is the problem.

'We lost it during the war and after the war, we allowed ourselves to feel defeated. There was nothing like defeat in that war. So it is this defeatist attitude that has eroded that amity we have for one another. Now they are calling for the declaration of Biafra, if you check there are about 15 organisations claiming to have the magic wand, so who will take you serious? It is only when you speak with one voice that one can take you serious.

On the fight against corruption in Nigeria, Sylvester Ojukwu noted that for such fight to be effective, it should start from the head, adding that Nigeria's corruption needs a surgical operation.

Using a simple illustration to justify his position, Ojukwu recalled how an uneducated, rustic fish seller taught him how to determine the state of a fish in order to avoid a bad one. 'She told me that if I want to determine the condition of a fish, I should touch the fin on the head of the fish and not the tail and when I did that, I was able to discover something.'

His words: 'So if nature could play itself out using a simple example, why can we not apply that? If the government is serious with the fight against corruption, then it must start with itself, except and until this is done nothing will change. President Jonathan is fighting corruption but sadly he is not well equipped because I perceive that certain elements in his government are very corrupt.

'One of the problems of his administration is that of hostage taking. Power in this country has always been a hostage. Most people who get into power end up being prisoners with the effect that they are left with little or no latitude to put into practice their noble ideal, and that is why our search should be a necessary but painful one to get a true leader who will be able to go into that office and lead us properly, not to get to that seat and allow himself to be taken hostage.'

On the seeming reluctance of the present administration to yield to the growing clamour for a national conference, Ojukwu, who is also a lawyer, noted that the position of government might have been engendered from the fact that power is a very fragile thing, which no responsible government would do anything that could throw the polity into confusion.

He said: 'So against that background, I quite sympathise with the Federal Government. If from the feeler we are getting from all corners, don't forget that from their epical position, they have a wider and longer vista because you see farther from the top. They are on top, so it could be that information garnered from this vista, it could be that if devolution towards a national conference is allowed, it would likely threaten the unity of Nigeria which they had sworn to protect.

'But from my own perspective as one who feels the purse of the ordinary man, I think that convoking a national conference will be the best thing to do now. It may not necessarily be a Sovereign National Conference but a National Conference. It is the duty of the Federal Government to convoke it; allow all shades of opinion, interplay of ideas towards evolving a workable and near perfect document for the people of this country because the more you postpone it, the more you allow disquiet and dissent to pervade towards a revolution.

'But if you convoke a National Conference, you have not given them sovereignty. You still retain your sovereignty. You allow them to discuss, from there you will be able to perceive their discontent as it were and see how you can synergise.'

The son of the late Igbo leader remarked that the resentment and condemnation that had trailed the position of the National Assembly on the clamour for a national conference was traceable to the pockets of allegations of corruption and the genuineness of their mandate.

'As far as we can remember, no election in this country has ever been free and fair. If elections were to be free and fair, the resentment and the condemnation from the populace would not have been there if actually they are the true representatives of the people,' he asserted.

According to him, the people have woken up and naturally discovered that these people did not have their mandate to be there, stressing that as long as that is the situation, the people will always resist whatever move they are making or view it with serious suspicion.

Continuing, Ojukwu said, 'If my representative is actually the man I chose like I did based on his previous antecedents, if he tells me that he wants to legislate over my future, I will not protest because I have given him that mandate. It will be out of place for me to now begin to question his moves. But if I felt that his mandate to be there was stolen or garnered through a fraudulent means, at each point, l will resist him.'

Responding to the issue of Ohaneze leadership of Ndigbo, the first son of the late Eze Igbo gburugburu expressed concern that the Ohaneze has not been fully accepted as the full authority to Ndigbo despite the genial and fatherly leadership style of its current president, Ambassador Ralph Uwechie, to accommodate everybody.

He reasoned that Ndigbo have not really seen the Igboness in Ohaneze platform.

His words: 'You see there are certain things you do in Igbo land that actually entrust you with leadership. If when Ndigbo are being maltreated somewhere and you don't say or do anything only for you to now come out to assume leadership when they are out of that problem, nobody will listen to you. There are certain things you can do to make them see you as the champion of their rights who can be trusted as a leader.

'But when you are a shadowy or ceremonial person, nobody can trust you. If there is bombing of Ndigbo in the North, I expect that there should be some croaky voice with some action from the Ohaneze platform, which shows that these people are serious. When you don't do this, how will you now emerge from somewhere to assume leadership of Ndigbo?

'When my father was alive, he shunned all forms of government contract and people thought he was not serious. He knew virtually everybody in government and could have asked to be given contracts but he did not do that. This was to enable him retain that thing which he held sacrosanct even unto death. He did not want to speak and, may be, a gun is put on his head or may be a certain file is shown to him to intimidate him. He needed his voice and that is what leadership is all about.

'We need that person who is not dependent on any government patronage. One of the problems this government must tackle is that of over-blotted salaries and allowances. For instance membership of the National Assembly should be made a part-time thing. They should not be paid salaries; they should not be given accommodation. This will produce only true representatives of the people.'

On the growing clamour for a state police, Ojukwu said Nigeria is ripe for that, contrary to insinuations in some quarters that Nigeria is not politically developed for such.

'Yes I support introduction of state police. Today Nigeria is an independent nation but you will remember that when the move was made in 1956 by late Chief Anthony Enahoro, it was resisted by the North. If any part of the country wants to introduce state police, I think they should be allowed. The United States of America has state police as well as the FBI which acts as a check. I support it because they know where the criminals are,' he submitted.