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| * Abaribe |
By Tony Icheku
Senator Enyi Abaribe, Chairman, South-East Caucus in the National Assembly fielded questions from Theledgerng.com team on various issues.
Abaribe, 3rd term senator representing Abia South Senatorial District argues that President Muhammadu Buhari does not need to look farther than himself to trace the cause of the Country’s present political challenges.
Excerpts:
Q: 57 years after independence, rather than Nigeria unity being
consolidated, there appears to be plethora of agitations for
self-determination, why is this so?
Well they are two contra-indications of what is going on today, one is
that there are genuine agitations by people who feel they are not
getting what they should get from the state of Nigeria and therefore
feel they will do better if they were on their own. But I have my
suspicions that the latest round of agitations coming from everywhere,
from all manners of people that we have never heard of before is
nothing but a calculated attempt to set the stage for something else
to happen. And what we suspect is that part of this raising of
tensions in the country and all manners of tendencies going
on, is nothing but somebody trying to set the stage for some people to
say: oh the place is being destabilized, the president is not
around and the whole country seem to be on the verge of splitting and
so on, therefore, we are coming as a saviours to keep the country
one.
When the former Governor of Lagos state and National Leader of APC,
Ahmed Bola Tinubu warned that the West will not agree to some people
coming in as saviours, he actually know what he was saying and that
is why I say there are two things going on at the same time
Now, let me address the first one which has to do with genuine
agitation. What I think is going on is that this feeling of
alienation, these feelings, for want of a better word,
marginalisation, you know is not just peculiar to certain section
like the South-East. We also have the marginalisation of the haves
versus the have-nots; Of the children of the rich versus the
children of the poor. There are all manners of things going on today.
There is also this thing going on politically of certain areas being
ignored inspite of their agitations, of certain things being done to
favour certain groups. You recall when this government came into
place, President Buhari, I think went to New York of United State or
Washington and made a statement that was widely condemned at that
time, and said that he doesn’t need to bother about the 5% that didn’t
vote for him and he will be concerned about the 97% or whatever that
voted for him and we warned that that was not statesmanly.
I remember, I issued a statement. I said that President Buhari should
realize one thing: ‘that you are a president of everybody and when you
made a statement that intend to discriminate to say some people
didn’t vote for me or whatever, what you are telling everybody else is
that am going to be partial in my reactions, that am going to be
partial in making my decision and that is not what you see a leader
who has been elected as a president do’. Unfortunately, it seems
also that the people who are in and around the president did not
advise him properly, they left him to make appointments, make all
those things, giving the impression that there are some part of the
country that are not supposed to be part of this country. And I
remember at the South-East caucus, we went to engage the president
sometime 2016 when we saw the way things were going. And when we went
in there, we told him clearly that this is what we have noticed, this
is what we have seen and we think this is not right. ‘How can a nation
like the Igbo nation within Nigeria not have one single person in the
security arms of Government?’, we asked. How do you deal with it? And
we felt there was need for him to look again at the way they have done
most things, if you give us one or two minsters, that is statutory
because every State is supposed to have a minister. But if you tell
me that every head of the security arm of government has to come from
a particular religion, you know it gives a very, very wrong
impression of what this country is all about. The country is supposed
to be for inclusion, for making sure everybody puts his own input into
the country and make us a bigger and better nation and for our union
to be far more fruitful, that didn’t happen; And of cause when the
economic crunch which now came with the drastic fall in oil prices
and all that now happened, so the government was now faced with even
far more economic problems, but because they have compounded the
economic problems with the political problems that were self-created,
so it now led to other things.
If you are a young Igbo person, first of all you are discredited
against in terms of going into the university. If you are going into
the university somebody will have 30% and be able to get admission
into the university, and you being an Igbo person have to make 80%
and still you are unable to get admission into the university. First,
you will now have to ask yourself why am I here?
Then secondly, you now come out and you are looking for a job, and
then they are giving a few jobs in the DSS for instance, and rather
than spread it across the whole States of the nation so everybody gets
a bit, which is what it is supposed to be, only one state, Katsina
State where the president comes from, and where the Director-Genetral
of DSS also comes from, will now have far more candidates than the
whole of South Eastern States put together. So if you are also a
younger person, what you will do is to ask yourself is ‘what manner of
union do we have’? And so on and so forth. And so after seeing all
this things, the question you then ask yourself, why do I have to be
in this situation? That is why I said all this things were
self-created, we warned against it, we told everybody, and that is why
we came together as the South East caucus to say no, this is not
right.
We were sure when they said don’t worry, we are going to look into it,
but off cause nothing happened. And if you are a younger person, the
first thing you will conclude is okay, maybe there are some people
who feel that they own this place - it’s that feeling that people are
rising up against with all this agitations that you see everywhere.
Of cause, the one for the Niger-Delta has been age old, and they are
saying no, the resources come from us and if we suffer the
degradation, have all the problems, and yet it is our resources and
yet we are still been treated as second class citizen, why should we
not agitate? So when people create the condition for agitations, you
cannot turn around again and say people are just asking for nothing.
So that is the situation but then like I said there are another part
and the insidious part which is somebody trying to use this whole
thing and deliberating spooking it up, like this question of Arewa
youths saying they are giving Igbo’s three month to leave the North.
So let me ask a simple question, the talakawa who lives in Sokoto and
you are tell him the Igbos must go in three months and when the three
months deadline is up, how does he know who is an Igbo and who is
Yoruba? Everybody from the South is the same, how does he know who is
Igbo and who is Ibibio? How does he know who is Igbo and who is an
Efik? Of cause he can’t differentiate them, oh yes!
In other words it’s something that was been propel so that some people
will have an advantage and use it to come and impose military rule on
this country, which we are going to say no to.
Q: Let me quickly add this sir, what the Arewa Youths and infact some
of their elders are saying is that when the IPOB was making this
demand for Biafra, the Igbo political elite kept silent as if they
were in support, of course covertly, and the North needed
to react, which they have done by this quite notice.
Anybody who is saying that about the Igbo political elite is been
very, very mischievous. The response of the Igbo political elite was
very simple: we don’t want a break-up of Nigeria, what we want is a
restructuring of Nigeria, and we want somebody to look at this
complaints. We made it very clear, and I told you that we, the
South-East Senate caucus led by my humble self, we went and saw
President Buhari, and we told him clearly this is what is going on,
and you need to respond to it. Anybody who was wise would have seen
that this is coming at a time which didn’t need this type of
distraction, and would have made even if it is a symbolic
appointment, would have done something. You don’t just ignore
everybody and say it doesn’t matter.
Anybody who now comes and says the Igbo political didn’t respond,
yes of course, are they going to respond and say they support or are
they going to respond and say they are not part of it? I remember
both Ohanaeze Ndigbo, everybody, said they are not part of this
agitation for Biafra, but we think there are issues which must be
addressed in this problem.
Even up till now what the Igbo political elte, Ohanaeze, what
everybody is saying we don’t want the entity called Nigeria to break
up. All that people are saying is that the terms of this our
marriage is stifling to everybody and therefore, there is need to
have another look at it.
I will say this in Igbo language, an idiom in Igbo language goes thus
that if the first son does not make a lot of noise, they won’t go and
find a wife for him, do you understand? Which goes to show that what
our people are saying is that this thing is stifling, and we are
making a lot noise about it, so that we can find a solution. But when
somebody sits down and doesn’t even want to even think or respond or
see that as a genuine demand, to say, there is something going on that
is wrong here, and just think it’s okay, don’t worry we will gun you
down and all that; Nobody can do that! And how many people are you
going to kill?
Q: Distinguished, of course Nigeria is moving towards a consensus that
some of these issues should be discussed again. I believe such
pressure as this forced former President Goodluck Jonathan to convene
the National Conference, whose report he failed to act on till he left
office. My question: Whose responsibility is it to convene a forum to
discuss these issues, the legislature?, or the executive?
The reason why we have a National Assembly is that we discuss these
matters, do you understand? And the reason why we have a National
Assembly is that we articulate the views of everybody seeking an
amendment of the constitution. And I can tell you in the 2014
Constitution amendment, there was an articulation of these views - the
report is still there - and it was sent to President Jonathan, he
signed it and then was advice by the former Attorney-General and
Minister for Justice to withdraw his signature.
That was why there was a drama that happened within that time, when we
were now told in the National Assembly then that President Jonathan
was not going to sign the Constitutional Amendment, and we demanded
for a return of the original draft that was sent to him. The original
was never returned, because what was returned was a photocopy where
they have tippexed off his signature. It was going to be a
constitutional crisis because the President had already signed the
paper, but you see this are things that happen in Nigeria and when
people are taking those decisions they don’t know the import of what
the decision that are making today will be for the future, maybe if
Jonathon had signed those recommendations and all that, part of the
agitations we are seeing today will not be there, because he has
talking care of certain part of those things including the vexatious
question of referendum in the constitution, it was put there. The
question of local government autonomy, all those things were there,
they had all been passed, yet they were now sent back, and it was
like the clock was wound back.
Q: Why didn’t the National Assembly use their veto power?
Because at that time we were heading towards the elections, and then
National Assembly decided that rather than heat up the polity because
it will now mean that you are going to, there and then. Don’t forget
that we couldn’t use veto power for a very, very critical part of
the constitution amendment, that part was the part that now said that
the question of bringing an amendment of the constitution into law
will no longer be on the basis of one person signing his signature, do
you understand?
That amendment had said that once there was the agreement of the
National Assembly following the constitution, and also 24 States,
that is two-thirds of the States doing their own, that it should
now be deemed to have been passed because the States Houses of
Assembly are of the people.
And I remember it was Olisa Agbakoba that went to court to insist
that it was only the President that had the right to sign the
Constitution Amendment because the amendment of the constitution was a
bill, and of course at the point he went to court, they did not
understand where this whole thing was going to. So of course when the other
day, I read of Olisa Agbakoba going to court talking about the
marginalisation of the Igbo’s and all that, he forgot that he
initiated part of the problems now unfolding, he forgot that if the
President had signed the amendment, we probably would not be having
the problems we are having today constitutionally speaking.
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