Chief Agu Ojukwu is a development expert. In this chat, he examined some political happenings in the state, especially the planned the Abia North Senatorial District rerun. Although Ojukwu campaigned for the candidate of All Progressives Grand Alliance in the last election, he is rallying support for a former Governor of the state and the candidate of Peoples Progressive Alliance, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu. He hinged his support for the former governor on his vast experience in governance, political contacts and love for the people. According to him, only Kalu would muster enough courage to discuss and debate issues that would uplift the zone and the state generally. Excerpts:
Where do you stand in the campaign on who represents Abia North in the Senate?
There comes a time in the life of a strategic management consultant when he becomes an activist, even if it is just to raise people’s consciousness to what is to be done. And when he becomes that activist, he is now forced to push people to certain directions. Though he may not continue in that direction eventually, but he will force people to understand things and go in that direction. And when things start going too bad, they are even forced to go out and help to choose people to come to government, because if they do not do that they will be failing in their duty which is to develop.
What duty are you talking about? Have you decided to go into politics?
No ! Our social responsibility is to cause development. We can cause that development by enlightening people to understand what needs to happen or by pushing people we know, who have strength in certain things to go to that place where they have strength and use it. For example, Nigerian elections have come and gone, and before now, we kept telling people how bad the past government ran the economy down, but because PDP was in power, they kept covering the failings in the economy, using the media, their own propaganda machinery etc. They kept telling us that the economy is working which is not really so, and we keep telling people that only when PDP leaves the power that people will see the mess they left behind. Now the election has come and gone and we know that many people fought hard in certain areas. I am from Abia North. We struggled so hard to get PDP out of Abia North, if nothing else, especially in the senatorial elections. When the Senatorial election came, there was a lot of mago-mago, the people we wanted could not make it to the office because of the rigging involved, we could not get PDP out of office. Then I campaigned and voted APGA, for senatorial and other elections except in the House of Reps because we wanted a change, but rigging did not allow it. We now laid back, but suddenly and surprisingly, all the candidates went to court, former Governor Orji Uzor Kalu was able to recover another opportunity for us to throw PDP out of the way through the court judgment he got, asking for a rerun election. So when I heard that, because I am really interested in getting PDP out of the way, because if you didn’t get them out of the way, they will continue to be a distraction to Buhari even in the Senate. This is because rather than look at the change that has occurred in Nigeria and find a way to go forward, they will be busy defending their party, claiming that their party did well. And that will now distort certain truth in the system. On account of that I now decided that I will go to the East, mobilize people and take this second opportunity to get PDP out of the way. I decided to choose a candidate that has muscle that we can put in the Senate to get things done for us. And the one simple reason for which I decided to campaign for Orji Uzor Kalu is that he went and recovered this second opportunity for us , so it will not be nice to reject the man who fought so hard to get back this opportunity for re-election and follow other people who didn’t fight that hard.
You are known as one who never had a very smooth relationship with him. Not that you are enemies. What has converted you to him?
For conscience, that is number one. Two, my father was a Senator during Shagari’s regime, he was in the Federal House of Reps before the war and a Senator in Shagari’s regime. And I know that Senate is a matter of influence, it is a place where people with influence can actually get things to happen. I have looked at Abia state, the only man running for election to go to the Senate, who has influence, and who is a friend to almost everybody in the presidency, in the Executive, in the National Assembly is Dr Orji Uzor Kalu. He is the only one I know that can go to anybody and they will have rapport. He is the only one from Igbo land who has been associating with Buhari, even in the past. Since Senate is a matter of influence, when my father was in the senate Shagari even allowed him because of his influence to nominate a Minister. If he was not a man of influence, that opportunity would not have come. Some things that Shagari did in the oil palm industry was because of my father’s influence. When he talked to him and explained a couple of things, Shagari went and built palm oil factory in different locations in the whole of South East to help local people to go away from manual pounding of palm fruits. Some of these factories are still there while some have gone obsolete due to passage of time etc. This time around, we need a man of influence, add him to the people we have in the senate so that Abia state would have a strong team. Right now our team is not strong, that is my point. And that is what I want to explain to people, no matter my differences with Orji Uzor Kalu in the past, people know it, even up till now, I have not visited him, I don’t go to him, I do intellectual things and I leave politics by the side.
As a Development Consultant, not a politician, how do you want to actualize this?
For a fact, development consultants must become activists at times to cause certain changes to happen or they will never happen, I have decided to canvas for this. I have been telling my colleagues, somebody like Orji Uzor Kalu is courageous, there is nothing he cannot say. I want a situation where we will pin him down, put knowledge behind him, design proposals, bills by the professional means, and give him to present, because he has the courage to talk . He cannot be in the Assembly and not say anything, not somebody like Orji Uzor Kalu. And that is the kind of person we need right now in our system, otherwise, other states will be heard, they will use the friendship they have with other people to attract things and we will not get anything.
Where did the past administration get it wrong?
In the past, a lot of people in Abia state claimed that they had connection with Jonathan, but they cannot show one single thing they used that connection they had to draw to this place. We were told that Jonathan’s wife was our sister, and that Jonathan was our in-law. Nobody can show what this relationship brought to Abia state. Because of that I am throwing certain things to the corner and I am fighting for Orji Uzor Kalu. Whatever it is , my concern is that I will put together professionals and we have agreed that we would package intellectual things and give to him to present. When it comes to the technical issues of those things , we would now come and defend them. People fail to understand that a politician doesn’t necessarily need to be the most learned person but one who understands what his community needs and he talks about it . When it is to be done, experts would be consulted to show the right way. So I don’t necessarily need to go out and find when a government would leave, for me to find the kind of people we want. At this particular time, we need to look at those who are already in the race, because we cannot go and start supporting somebody who is not in the race. I can only pick somebody who is in the race and of all the people who are in the race from Abia North, Orji is the only one of influence and we must put that influence to the benefit of Abia state in particular and Igbo land in general. We need that influence seriously, I know that in the past Orji brought Babangida and Buharri and tried to make peace for them. He already has connection with these people. Now that Buhari is in power, people who know him, it will be easier for them to call him to solve a problem than those who do not know him. I must tell you that development is rather urgent in Nigeria especially in Abia state. Because if you look at Abia state, it has been shrinking. This is why this is particularly necessary for me. That is why it looks as if somebody who is suppose to be a neutral person in development has become an activist. No, it is the job of development consultants at certain points when society is losing direction to become activist and get certain things to happen. For me campaigning for Orji or supporting him, it is because he has influence, courage to talk and we have decided that we would package knowledge and put it behind him and get him to go and say certain things. When it comes to technical analysis , we can be invited to go and defend it.
Do you see the PDP government in power, using everything within its reach to try to stop Orji?
I can assure you that those fears are no more in place, because Jonathan of PDP is no more in power. They were able to use the military and so on to confuse people, and scuttle certain efforts that people made because Jonathan was in power. This time around it is not going to be like that, they cannot do it. And because of the uprising now, because people have seen real damage in the economy this short period that Jonathan is out of office. When you tell people then that the economy was bad, they said , don’t mind those people , they speak English. But now that Jonathan has left, I can assure you that all the problems we are witnessing now, are problems that had already arisen waiting for a time like this to show. If you read my newspaper interviews from 2007, I keep warning about the economy, you will understand what I am talking about. Remember the naira was already sliding before the election, that was because the damage level had become so bad that the consequences of that damage had started showing. It is now nose-diving which is the consequence of the bad shape of the economy. I f Jonathan had done well, all this manifestations of bad economy would not have started showing now. It is now up to Buhari to bring intelligent people around to reverse that trend. Whatever you see today is a consequence of bad governance. Coming back to Abia State, I want to tell you that it will not be in the best interest of Governor Okezie Ikpeazu to fight Orji Uzor Kalu, it will be in his own best interest to go and see the work that he will do so that people will accept him as governor, recognize him and give him cooperation. If he goes ahead to fight Orji Uzor Kalu, he will be compounding his problems, because you need some bit of neutrality to get things going in certain places and when you focus on fighting somebody, you miss out of what you need to do yourself in your own job, that is where people derail. If you just keep fighting people , you derail in your own duty, let the people go and decide who they want.
What is your impression of the last elections?
I have the impression that Abia is yearning for change. With what happened in the last election, nobody knew that APGA would have such outing. Even when some of us were campaigning for APGA, because we are not politicians, politicians were laughing at us saying, look at the people campaigning for APGA, but when the result started coming in, they saw how hot it was. And I can tell you that the same thing will happen in this Abia North Senatorial election. The people who were not in Orji’s side before are now by his side. Many people, including those in PDP, who were not on Orji’s side are going to vote for Orji this time around. Many PDP card carrying members would vote for Orji Uzor Kalu this time because some of them are remembering how accessible he was when he was governor. They are remembering that under him, there was this relationship they had with him as individuals , which they never got from any other person after him. Forget that people want to follow who is in charge, in authority etc, but when the chips are down, people know who is accessible, who is not accessible, who is a grass root person and who is not. And a lot of them benefited from Orji. And I know this time around, they will reward him for those benefits they got from him by giving him votes or campaigning for him, even though they might do it secretly, it does not matter. But the thing is that this is the time for Orji. I have looked at the indices and all the signals. I ,being a development person , who is so sad that the only factory existing in my Senatorial zone is my factory. Item Agric has been there since 1963, the factory that I built in 1991, to join to the facility that my father had already created, generates its own electricity. It does not use power from the National grid as it is working, it is generating its own electricity and this are the things we can replicate in different places. For the youths to have a direction, we must bring industries back home to Abia North. There are many people in Abia North , who should not even say anything because they don’t have investments in Abia North. Those of us who have investments in Abia North are the people who have the capacity and the rights to say things. Almost everything my family owns is in Item, We have the largest private oil palm estate. It is because of our factory that there is economic activity in the whole of that area. It was because of our factory that a bank was brought to Item, these are the things we are looking at and we say , let us join forces. I am calling for a coalition, I have spoken to many APGA candidates, who ran under APGA and I can assure you that all of them are campaigning for Orji. Most of them I wrote their campaign speeche , agenda etc, I push and advice them and I know this time around how they are going to turn around and work for Orji. At least Orji is not against them they know that one.
What do you think will be the effect of PDP going back to National Assembly?
Voting in PDP into the National Assembly means increasing the number of voices that will be busy saying that there is nothing wrong with the economy under Jonathan, that it was good. And anytime you fail to see the effects, you cannot cause correction. If you allow too many PDP people in the National Assembly, they will keep creating the screen that will block people from seeing the damage that Nigeria’s economy is in so that we can face what needs to be done because if you don’t see the damage, you think it is Eldorado. When Jonathan was in power, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala would keep announcing that the economy was doing well, but you have seen all these things that I have showed you here, even before Ngozi came into power, we had been talking about how bad Nigerian economy is even when she was saying it. I am happy when she said that the economy is doing so well and that whoever said it is not so, should come and debate her. I am happy to say that am the only one in Nigeria that accepted to debate her but she didn’t debate me. I was the only one that made bold to say that the economy doesn’t have a foundation and that I was ready to debate Ngozi because we are on down wards spiral. That is it about this election thing. It is Governor Orji Uzor Kalu’s time. Besides, there are many reasons to vote for Orji this time around. One, other senatorial zones in Abia State sent their former governors or former deputy governor. We in Abia North will also send our own former governor so that it will be a strong team of former governors and former deputy governors. Any how you look at it , it is Orji’s time, it is either you vote for him because other Senatorial zones voted former governors for him to go and compliment them or you vote for him because he is a man of influence, or you vote for him because he is courageous to talk and that anything you tell him to say, if it makes sense, he will say it.