A top stalwart of the All Progressives Congress in Rivers State and Convener of the Unity House Foundation, Kingsley Wali, speaks to OLAJIDE OMOJOLOMOJU about the poor shape of the party in the state, among other related matters
The All Progressives Congress in Rivers State appears to be in limbo. What exactly is happening to the party in the state considering that it is the party in power at the centre?
I think I would like to look at it from a historical perspective and what I mean by this is that Nigeria has evolved from an era when people were in political parties because of what they believed in and what held them together in the party was the party’s ideology. People belonged to political parties because they believed that it was a vehicle for delivering ideology-based programmes, either as liberal parties, left-of-centre parties, or right-of-centre parties.
But what we have now is that political parties are vehicles for accessing political power, and I am sorry to say that most people involved in party politics in Nigeria care less about ideology; they want to be in office and that is why service delivery is almost next to nothing, because what was propelling them in the first place was power. They get into office, and they don’t even know what to do with the power acquired.
The party in the state is so weak, to the extent that the APC at the centre was acting like there was no APC in Rivers State. There was this interpretation of the disagreement among some ‘big men’ in the party, if you like, call it an after-effect or overflow of the primaries, and then elections came. There was this story that the leadership of the APC in Rivers State supported the PDP presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
Is that true?
There could be nothing further from the truth. I challenge anybody to come out and tell me where the meeting was held, and instruction passed that we should go and support one candidate or the other. That is the crazy part of Nigerian politics. Suppose that instruction was not given at the party level, at the leadership level, in that case, it does not remove the fact that some people feel aggrieved enough not to care about whether the party wins or not at the national level, but is that enough to punish every card-carrying member of the party in Rivers State?
I think it is irresponsible; sorry to say, let us even assume, without conceding that that kind of instruction was given, are you telling me that every member of the APC in Rivers State is a zombie, who followed and acted according to that instruction, to the extent that everybody in the APC in Rivers State is punished because of the leadership? That is to confirm my earlier postulation that people come into political parties, not because of ideology, not because of service to the people, but because of thirst for power, and not because of service to the people or governance, but just about access to power and control of that power. That is why you will have an APC government at the centre and the APC in Rivers State is in its present state.
I will not delude myself into believing that the former governor of Rivers State, now honourable Minister of the FCT, did not throw his weight behind President Bola Ahmed Tinubu one hundred per cent; he did, he campaigned for him, he threw his weight, both financial and the weight of incumbency in Rivers State behind Tinubu. It is only natural that he gets compensated, but in doing that, one would have thought that a reasonable government would bring equity to bear. Remember the 95 per cent – 5 per cent equation of former President Muhammadu Buhari; Nigerians went berserk and abused the hell out of the former President, but what we have on the ground now is a case of 100 per cent to zero per cent. Nobody in the APC in Rivers State has benefitted anything from the Federal Government today in Rivers State, all appointments from Rivers State are nominees of the honourable Minister of the FCT, yes, he is being compensated for his efforts at Tinubu’s emergence as President.
However, one would have expected that in the interest of the party, and to be fair to those party members who did not follow the ‘instruction,’ but worked for the party, let us do 95 per cent and 5 per cent of former President Buhari, rather than give everything to just one group. So, it is the APC-led Federal Government that is insistent on destroying the APC in Rivers State. I won’t lie to you; I don’t think that there is an APC in Rivers State, as it used to be. What we have now is a platform that is being prepared for PDP refugees – that is what I like to call them – to give them a home in Rivers State because as it were, the former governor and his supporters are not on the same page with the PDP at the national level. So, in all practical sense, we want to say that they are refugees in the PDP, and now, they have been given a platform in the APC in Rivers State, and everything is being done to hand over the party to the former governor.
But the Minister of the FCT, Nyesom Wike, has remained consistent, in maintaining that he would not leave the PDP. Why do you think he is interested in the state APC?
Did you listen to his interview the other day? The executive media chat with some journalists. I think it was are of the journalists who asked him a question if what he was doing – staying back to wreck the PDP – was not going to be counterproductive, and he responded: ‘Do you wreck what is dead already?’ He made that allusion, which means that he no longer cares about the PDP any longer. He is a smart politician, who stays where he is valued; that is the way I look at it. Again, it boils down to the fact that people don’t belong to parties based on ideology, they just move to wherever their interest is better served. Mind you, it is not a Wike problem, it is a national problem.
I can assure you that some members of the APC will move, and I can sit down here and speculatively say without fear that in another couple of months, a new political party will emerge; a new platform that will comprise members of PDP, APC, Labour Party, New Nigeria Peoples Party and many other smaller parties. Those who feel that they have lost out in their respective parties will come together, just the same way the APC was formed. Strange bedfellows will now congregate in a new political platform, not because of ideology, but for hunger for power – a political platform that says nothing about how to redeem this country, that says nothing about how to move Nigeria forward, that says nothing about governance, but all about how to access power and when they do access power, what do they do with it? Nothing, they just appropriate our commonwealth.
I made a couple of observations over the weekend. I was in Akwa Ibom State. And I was asking myself as a Rivers man if it would be nice to gather all the governors who have governed Rivers State since 1991, take them to Akwa Ibom State, and let them on their own make statements if they have been fair to Rivers State and Rivers people. I am not going to be judgmental about it; let people who have ruled Rivers State go to neighbouring Akwa Ibom State and then ask themselves if they had been fair to Rivers people. It is not about party now; it is so difficult for me to stick to the question you asked about party politics because our people have been misled into believing that it is okay for them to rule with malice.
What do you mean by ruling with malice?
Our people who ruled us don’t lead us. They rule us; get themselves involved in issues that in no way impact the well-being of the average Rivers man and woman, rather the people suffer. Take a practical example, in Rivers State, since 2007, Rivers State has been in a permanent state of political warfare. I will go back to Akwa Ibom again. Politicians disagree in Akwa Ibom, over succession; people who have ruled have disagreed with people who took over from them, but it has not in any way affected development in that state.
Obong Victor Attah was in a long-drawn battle towards the end of his tenure because he wanted somebody else to succeed him; Godswill Akpabio succeeded Attah, but that did not stop him from continuing with the projects Attah initiated; Akwa Ibom is better for it. We all are witnesses to the battle between Akpabio and Udom Emmanuel, whom Akpabio even handpicked, they fought hard, but Udom did not go out of his way to destroy Ikot Ekpene senatorial district or to abandon them because their son was fighting him.
What you now have is a trickledown effect of people who have ideas of what governance is. Akwa Ibom is completely linked. If you go to Ikot Ekpene for example, no town in River State is like Ikot Ekpene. In terms of structures, one might say Port Harcourt has more beautiful structures, but in terms of organisation, road network and security, sanitary situation, and all of that, even development, Port Harcourt cannot compete with Ikot Ekpene.
The last time the National Assembly had a retreat was at the Four Point in Ikot Ekpene. Consider the economic effect of that on the economy of that locality. Every golfer in Nigeria looks forward to a golf tournament at Ibom Resort; check the trickledown effect of that on Uyo. I just came back from Eket, you can sit down with your legs inside the drains in Eket and eat.
But no town in Rivers State is like Eket. Meanwhile, Eket, Abak, Ikot Ekpene, Oron, and others were at the same level as Ahoada, Bori, Bonny, Degema, Abua, Abonima, Buguma, Etche. These towns in Rivers State are still like slums. However, because there has been governance in Akwa Ibom, those places can effectively become what they are. Somebody can wake up tomorrow and create a state out of Akwa Ibom and name Ikot Ekpene the capital or Eket, or Abak or Oron. Where in Rivers State, apart from Port Harcourt? Can anybody name a state capital?
Almost all of the divisions in Nigeria by the 1960s have become states and mind you, Ahoada, Ogoni, Degema were all divisions then, but today, they all remain rural areas; why? It is because we play party politics that is devoid of people. Our politics in Rivers is not ‘people-centric’, but egocentric.
What in your opinion is the panacea to this identified problem?
Seriously, it is a tough call, because a lot of young people have come to accept what is happening now as normal. They never had the fortune of knowing what it takes to exist in a system that works. You know, several years ago, you had political parties in power, the opposition parties did business with them, and nobody was punished because you were in the other party. The point is that the younger generation doesn’t have an idea of what it is like to exist in a system that works, in a system where people have respect for the community.
Our problem goes beyond the status of the APC in Rivers State because truth be told, there is no such thing as the APC in Rivers State, because the President of the country has intentionally and deliberately because whatever disagreement he had with the leader of the party in the state, destroyed the party that he was part of, that he helped to form, but for selfish reasons, he wants to destroy the party in Rivers State.
But in destroying the APC in Rivers State, he was forgetting the people who died defending the cause of the APC in Rivers State, they are a legion. There was a particular family in Omok, the father, his wife, and the children were all executed. A lot of people were killed, but what the President is doing to the APC in Rivers State is simply spitting or peeing on the graves of those who died defending the party in the state. But again, it is Nigeria; that is the way Nigeria works.
In Ondo State, they had issues, the President listened to the leaders in Ondo, Olu Falae, and others, he summoned stakeholders and mandated them to stop the nonsense and maintain the peace – ‘Akeredolu, remain as governor, and deputy, continue to act, but don’t disturb the peace of the state.’ But in Rivers State, they might as well burn down the state; nobody cares, because we don’t have elders in the mould of the Falaes in Rivers State. In Rivers State, the Falaes that we have, rather than call a meeting or approach the President to intervene, they take sides in their interest with Wike or Siminalayi Fubara, or outside that system, take side with Rotimi Amaechi.
In all of these, what is the role of Rotimi Amaechi?
I wish I could get into his head and see how his head is functioning now.
As leader of the APC in Rivers, what is Amaechi’s doing to resuscitate the party?
Amaechi is said to be the leader of the APC in South-South, not only in Rivers State, but that is on the surface, and he should not sit down and allow the party to go into extinction in his home state. So, in the circumstance, we have an Amaechi, that had a running battle, after contesting the party ticket with the incumbent President, and was second in the race and they were never able to fix their relationship and animosity or the rivalry, but rather allowed the rivalry to fester and transmogrified into a personal fight and that was why as soon as Tinubu became President, all he has tried to do as President is to deconstruct the Amaechi political machinery in the APC in Rivers State.
But the reality is that he who holds the knife and yam dictates the term of engagement in sharing the yam. Amaechi is just a leader in name. And because they are not in parties based on ideology, their followers are only out for what they can get, and once you are no longer in a position to dispense favours, people will naturally gravitate to the direction where favours are being dispensed.
Now, going to the events beginning from October 30, leading to the factionalisation of the House of Assembly, impeachment notice on the governor, etc, what is your take on all of these as they affect governance?
Well, the former governor called his successor an ingrate and accused him of importing crises to the state. He was categorical. Hate Wike or love him, one thing is that you can never be in doubt of where he stands on any issue. They asked if his public appearance with the governor was an indication that everything had been resolved, and he said all of those were photo ops. And he said nobody can stop him from attending public functions. So, it is clear that there is no resolution of anything. Is it good for the state? No, I don’t think so. Should they be talking? I believe they should be talking about how to fix their relationship, in the interest of the state.
