What We Did To Commit Jonathan And Buhari To Peace Ahead Of Polls By Ben Obi

Ben Obi:

Special Adviser to the President on Inter-Party relations, Senator Ben Obi, in this interview, speaks on the defeat of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP by the All Progressives Party, APC, in the presidential election, President Goodluck Jonathan conceding defeat among other national issues.

He also speaks on the place of the Igbos in the emerging Nigeria, the statement credited to  the Oba of Lagos on yesterday's gubernatorial election and what PDP did wrong.
Excerpts:

The Peace Committee on the presidential election played a very pivotal role in ensuring the peaceful conduct of the election. What was the source of inspiration for this committee?

Well, I will start by first and foremost congratulate President Goodluck Jonathan for understanding what modern day politics is all about.

If you recall, starting from 2011 when he made that prophetic statement, that nobody should rig elections, for him and that if he loses he will go back to his Otuoke home and no Nigerian blood is worth his political ambition, that caught my attention. Being in politics for nearly  40 years, I have hardly found a leader in such a sensitive and powerful position make such a statement.

And when I came on board as his Adviser on inter-party affairs, I applied to him in writing, as a follow up to that statement, the need for us to organize workshops in states that would have elections as we went on because there are some states that now enjoy staggered elections different from the general elections.

I wrote to him and the first was Edo and he approved and told me to go ahead and we went to the state and did the workshop and issued a communiqué which all the participants, the governorship candidates and the chairmen of the political parties contesting election, appended their signatures. When I got back to Abuja, I did some executive memo to him and I got his approval that once there was any election, my office should go ahead and organize a workshop on free, fair, transparent and credible elections there.

And we did that in Edo, Ondo, Anambra, Ekiti and Osun states. And we would come out with a communiqué where all the candidates would sign and commit themselves to free, fair, transparent and credible elections and non-violence and that helped a lot to douse tension because most of them, having seen their signatures, called me at a point and said, 'Senator, if not that you made me to sign this document that is now public knowledge, I would not have accepted this'.

But you know what was striking was that as soon as a winner was declared by INEC in less than two hours of such declarations' those winners got congratulated by President Jonathan. And of all the places we went to, it was only in Ekiti that was PDP.

In some places, PDP was even racing to the courts but they found the leader of the party, the President of the country, congratulating the winner. So that became, for me, a stepping stone to going about the issue of peace in our elections.

Now, you recall, last year, when the temperature was extremely high and Boko Haram was on the ascendency and everybody was worried and politicians now took the issue of Boko Haram more as a political issue than what it really was.

I had a meeting with the National Security Adviser (NSA) who said, 'Senator, why not organize an all-party summit so that we could address this matter since you have been doing this in all the states. 'I said it was possible. We were worried about the utterances of political leaders.

So we organized an all-party summit on the 12th of June, 2014, that was the first time Gen. Buhari was in attendance with the President and the President declared it open.

When I wrote to APC, it was discussed at their National Executive Council and it was unanimously adopted as an event that APC will attend officially and they did. And at the end of it, we put out a communiqué that was signed by all the parties.

Again, towards the end of last year, I met the President. I said, 'Now, we are going for the general elections, we did for some states, now for the general elections, we are going to have an all-party summit' and he said 'yes, go ahead, I am all for it'.

And then I started discussing with the NSA and we agreed. And I told him that what we wanted to do in order not to bring people that maybe considered partisan or that have interest here and there, let us search for international figures to participate in the summit. And that was how we were able to bring in Emeka Anyaoku, who chaired the event, and Kofi Annan, who was the special guest of honour. And we brought in Professor Gambari from United Nations, Obiako from United Nations. The only person that we brought in locally was Professor Atahirru Jega, the Chairman of INEC. All other speakers, resource persons were from outside.

When I met with the PDP National Chairman and the APC National Chairman, at different times, they agreed and endorsed it. And all the candidates attended and signed what is now referred to worldwide as the Abuja Peace Accord.

Now the Abuja Peace Accord also talked about creating a National Peace Committee to see through the elections and after the elections. And as soon as that was done, we had a meeting. The meeting was between Bishop Hassan Kuka, John Cardinal Onaiyekan and myself, at the residence of John Cardinal Onaiyekan. That was how we were able to assemble those great Nigerians that you see as members of the National Peace Committee.

And it was done deliberately to look for men and women of integrity who, when they speak, all sides will listen to them and that was exactly what we did and set up the first meeting. But, unfortunately, the Chairman of the committee was out of the country and that is Gen Abdulsalami Abubakar. But he now directed that his deputy, Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe, should sit in for him. And the second meeting, he arrived, he cut short his trip, he came straight from the airport to the meeting and that is what you have today.

Were you surprised when the President conceded defeat?

If you hear the story I have given to you, from his statement in 2011 and from the approvals that I got to hold all the summits that I talked about and how he participated… don't forget, on Wednesday or Thursday morning, two days to the elections actually, the National Peace Committee got them both to reaffirm their position on the Abuja Peace Accord and they did.

So, I see the President as a man who is quite conscious of his words. When he says a thing, his word remains his bond. He didn't think twice about the position that he took. And when I look back, like I told you, his congratulatory messages to Gov. Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State, to Mimiko of Ondo State, to Peter Obi of Anambra State, and to Aregbesola of Osun State, I am not surprised.

Not that the party was in sync with him on that, he was just being himself, which is very striking for a political leader at that level  and caliber and I think that what I do see is that, in due course, politicians will be going to Otuoke to study the politics of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.

This is the first time that an incumbent is losing, not just losing but accepting defeat. Some people have argued that the defeat, as it were of the PDP, is not so much as a result of the lack of performance of the Jonathan administration but the internal failings of the members of the party. As a party man, do you think that members of the party worked as much as they should have done for the re-election of President Jonathan?

The truth is that when the party went into primaries, they sent a negative signal amongst themselves. The party went into primaries and virtually every state came out with one problem after another.

And, for me who have, over the years, founded and managed political parties, I did not, in all of this time, experienced, in an election year, movement of members of a ruling party into the opposition party. In most cases, it was the reverse. You saw people from the opposition party jumping and moving into the ruling party in an election year.

So when this was happening, I said to myself and my friends in the party that we had a problem, 'we really have a problem and until and unless we address these problems, a lot of things would go wrong'. So, for me, somehow to a large extent, we did not help ourselves as a party. And it is important that in order for the party to get back its bearing, we have to go back to the drawing board and put a lot of things right that went wrong in the last 18months so to speak.

And in saying this, I also want to put on record, though the APC won the elections on the 28th of March, the PDP, for all intent and purposes, is not a push over at all. I have absolute confidence that the PDP will spring back into reckoning very soon; in fact, sooner rather than later, take my word for it.

How would you juxtapose this confidence with the fact that there seems to be movement in droves of PDP members to APC?

Look, these movements are what you can easily classify as opportunism. Some of them would have moved long ago but most of them decided to wait and vote for President Jonathan. Their interest was to remain in the PDP since the first elections were going to be the presidential and National Assembly polls; their interest was to vote Mr President and then go and continue the battle of discord that had been sown in their various states.

So I believe what we are experiencing is some opportunist in nature, some want to pay back people in their own coin. So it is not a thing that will last for too long and I mean every word of it. The PDP is certainly not a push over and the PDP will spring back.

What the outcome of this election has shown is the fact that the tripod that we used to know of Nigeria, the North, the South West and the South East, seems to be broken now with the alliance of the North West and the South West, which seems to have excluded the South East in the new arrangement. What does this portend for the South East?

Let me seize this opportunity to express, in no small measure, my satisfaction, contentment for the politics of the Igbo man. We took a decision to stand by President Jonathan as one of us and we stood by that decision, it says a lot.

Even when people are saying no, how can you put all your eggs in one basket, we said no. And we decided to mobilize in full force our people in Lagos in particular to show the population and strength, numerical strength of the Igbo man in Lagos and you have seen that.

So I am very proud of the Igbo man, for taking a stand and remaining steadfast on that stand. I join all those who have spoken that we have no regrets whatsoever in the steps and actions taken in support of Goodluck Jonathan as far as the Igbo nation is concerned.

Yes, we may not have been seen to have played a major role in installing Gen Buhari, but, at the same time, you still have some of our people, some of our brothers and sisters who are part and parcel of the APC, who are founding members of the APC. They are also, in their own rights, highly respected Igbos, you cannot wish them away. There is Ugbonnaya  Onu, Rochas Okorocha, Chris Ngige, these are highly respected Igbos in their own right.

So I don't see a situation whereby any group of people or any zone or zones will want to lead this country and will ignore the Igbos. We have shown a serious signal in Lagos. You saw how many seats we won in the Lagos National Assembly elections. That is a warning shot that we know where we are going, we know where our strengths are and it is not only in Lagos.

We are now going to galvanize our members, first of all to know their rights and to defend their rights. Anywhere and everywhere they are, they should be accorded their due respects as people who contribute to the economy.

For any economy, across the length and breadth of this country, you cannot ignore the local strength of the Igbo man and the economic growth of those areas and that is what we want to say, that, as Nigerians we want to live in peace with our brothers and sisters all over the country.

Anywhere we find ourselves we turn it into our homes, we help to develop the local economy there and, if we can do that then, we believe that other people should accord us that recognition.

People would be talking of the President being from the North West, the Vice President being from the South West. From the analysis on ground now, it appears that the Igbos will lose out in the parliament. Are you not worried that in such critical area, an Igbo man would not be a head of one of those places?

Well, the APC as a party will have to work out a modality through which the party will stretch a hand of friendship and fellowship to the Igbo man. I am not worried as an Igbo man that we have that dilemma.

I am not going to be in the PDP and help create a solution for the APC, I am not a party to that. But they have to organize themselves, they have to know that they have a block that must be protected, it is very simple. Like I said, I have just mentioned to you a few names of Igbo leaders who are foundation members of APC, they too know what it means.

You were the vice presidential candidate to former Vice President Abubakar Atiku in al election, you have been seen as an Atiku man for a very long time now and then suddenly you parted ways. Was it the difference in terms of politics as it affects your person or as it affects your region? Are you still an associate of Atiku?

First of all, all politics, they say, is local. I have tremendous respect for the former Vice President as my boss, as my friend and my brother. As a matter of principle, I don't lose friends.

All my friends who are even members of the APC, I walk up to them any day and say 'do this and do that'. Like I talked about the summit on the 12th of June, as soon as I got the clearance from Mr President to get all the parties involved, I went to Gen Buhari and said, 'Sir, I would want you to attend personally this event, in your right apart from APC as a party and he accepted and he came.

When they now told him that he has to speak, he said no, his friend, Ben Obi, didn't tell him he would speak, except if Ben Obi said \'speak'. Then I went to him and said, 'Sir, you cannot come to a function like this without speaking, you will speak'.

On the 14th of January, this last Peace Accord, I also made sure I spoke to him personally. So I keep friends, I don't lose friends because of politics; I mean all those I have worked with.

If I go to Dr Tunji Braithwaite, my leader who we all started politics together, if I go to him now in his Victoria Island residence, his wife would say, 'Ben, daddy is upstairs in his bedroom, go and meet him there'.

I try to make sure that I do not allow politics to come in-between my friendship with people. Even though I have not spoken to the former Vice President for some time now, if I pick up the phone and call him now; 'Ocheidigbo, where are you? What is happening, I haven't seen you, I haven't spoken to you, I haven't seen you,  I want to see you,' what is the way we relate.

We didn't leave PDP in 2006 because we wanted to leave PDP. Obasanjo de-registered us and a lot of people should put these facts in proper perspective. Obasanjo de-registered us as PDP members. And since we did not retire ourselves because of Obasanjo then, we decided that we have to give a fight and, in giving a fight, we needed a platform and that was how the issue of AC came about and all of that journey started.

And when that one ended up and Yar'Adua became President, he set up the Ekwueme Committee and they started talking to members and calling us back, we came back. I am not used to jumping from party to party.

As one of those who founded the APP in 1998, which later metamorphosed into ANPP, I was the one who gave APP the name on the 27th of August, 1998 at Sheraton Hotel, that name All People's Party and I became the foundation Secretary.

It was at a meeting where they changed the name of APP to ANPP in Lokoja and they directed Mamud Waziri, the foundation Chairman of APP, and myself who were in government to resign. The late Mamud Waziri and I met, I mean there should be some decorum in this business called politics.

You did not invite us to the meeting, you did not call us to any meeting, you did not say anything to us, you just issued a statement and we said we were going to ignore them. That was how we ignored the directive of the ANPP at that time because we felt due process was not followed.

I am just saying that I am not used to moving from party to party. I believe in a party, I stick with a party and we would move on. So that is it.

Atiku Abubakar, felt his rights in the PDP were not respected as the former Vice President and all of that and he had to move on. But, unfortunately, I couldn't be of help at that point.

Looking back now, do you think that the PDP treated former President Obasanjo right or rather, did Obasanjo treat PDP rightly?

Well, you see, I find it difficult to discuss Obasanjo because a good number of people know that I have some issues over time with him and I never liked to discuss leaders.

If a platform was made available for you to be made President for eight years, a platform was made available for you to be BOT Chairman and that platform was made available for you to decide so many things that happened within that platform.

I don't agree that the position that Obasanjo has attained locally and internationally would be a position where some local chieftains of one party or the other would be tearing membership card before the print and electronic media; what was he trying to prove?

To me, that's no longer a PDP matter, there is no question about it. Obasanjo is an international figure. There are certain things people at that level must never do and I think that is one of them. So, too bad, he has done that. Let history be the judge of that action. But that is my own personal view. I don't want to comment about President Obasanjo.

I had reason to go and visit him in Abeokuta and he received me very well. People thought I had this difference with him and I said it is political. If I come to ask his opinion on certain things, I served him. Well, all of that is history.

What do you think Nigerians should expect in the next four years? Do you think that Nigeria will look back at the PDP with nostalgia or you think that the change being preached by the APC will come to pass?

I want to believe that the stakes are pretty high. And the in-coming administration will have to work extremely very hard to meet the demands of the Nigerian people. Everybody has now come to realize the power of the ballot box.

I can assure you, they are going to wait for eight years to pass a verdict. They will even be hoping that it is going to be done within two to three years. That is the way I see the Nigerian people now, on a very fast lane, to get Nigeria to its full potentials, locally and internationally. So they are going to be in a hurry to arrive at destination. So the in-coming administration must have to work 20times over, sleepless nights.

Do you have confidence in the in-coming leadership?

I believe we are all Nigerians, I believe Nigerians abound in every nook and cranny that you can involve in your government to help build the country.

I keep reminding people that there was a gentleman called Ronald Reagan. People never had any true recognition for what he stood for apart from being a Hollywood star. But when he came in, he was quite sure of his limitations. But he never made the mistake of not getting the right team around him that shielded him, that helped him and, today, when you are talking about great of great American Presidents, they now call Ronal Reagan because he put square pegs in square holes.

Go and look at the achievements of President Jonathan, he did quite a lot. Now whether those achievements were rightly put out to the public is a different kettle of fish.

To me, as somebody, who suffered electoral manipulation and was in court for two years, to see how President Jonathan sanitized the electoral process to where we are today, I cannot but continue to thank him.

If you went to court for two years with hard earned money, from courts that have jurisdiction over your matter to courts that do not have jurisdiction over your matter, you will understand my dilemma.

Look at our airports, once you get to the airports in those days, in five minutes you are sweating like a Christmas goat, and you will complaining that you are back again to this country, things have been turned around.

Look at the railway; look at the road sector; the infrastructure put in place by this man. Now to come and cap all of these with the icing of the cake on what he did on Tuesday, to me, like I said to some people, the Nobel Peace Prize that some people, some heads of states have been hackling and running for, wanting to get it all cost, I won't be surprised if that Nobel Peace Prize does not go to President Jonathan.

As we speak today in the continent of Africa, he is  the most important political leader, for that singular action of his. And I would be against anybody that would want to bring him down from that high pedestal. He must live on that high pedestal, he has something to give and he has to give those things that God has given to him to give to the people of this country.

What is your reaction to the threat by the Oba of Lagos that the Igbos should vote for a particular candidate or get thrown into the lagoon?

This is a very unfortunate one coming from the highly placed royal father of his standing coupled with the fact that if you look back into his back ground, a retired Assistant inspector General, one is bound to be worried and disturbed.

For a royal father like Oba Akiolu who is not in any doubt about the contribution of the Igbo people in all aspects of development of Lagos to be the one to issue such a threat leaves so much to be desired. The truth is that I happen to have known his predecessor in office at very close quarters and I know he would never have made such a statement. I believe that Oba Akiolu made that statement because those were the same words he used against the person of Senator Musuliu Obanikoro, some five months ago, when we went to his palace on a courtesy visit, led by Mr President, the vice president and the national chairman of our party. When I heard him thundering in that manner, it reminded me of that courtesy visit. But we need to remind Oba Akiolu that he is not the only royal father in this country and i am very proud of how my Igbo brothers reacted to him.