APC won’t impose presidential candidate –Odigie-Oyegun

Odigie-Oyegun

The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, in this interview with ALEXANDER OKERE, speaks on the party’s preparations for the 2015 presidential election, Ekiti judicial fracas and other issues.

There are fears that the oncoming presidential primary of the APC will tear your party apart.

Well, there may be disagreements but we always overcome them. We have survived all the predictions so far. That one too will come and it will pass. We have insisted we are going to have a level-playing field. There is no anointed candidate to the best of my knowledge and we are issuing a code of conduct to the aspirants – that will ensure that the run-up to the primary will be rancour-free in terms of personal attacks. People must state their merits. But it is not within the rules to say why somebody else shouldn’t get it. We are trying to have as wide an electorate as possible, giving the fact that conventions hold in just a single venue. Whoever comes out successful from the primary becomes the person behind whom the entire party will unite.

The Peoples Democratic Party have opted for a consensus candidate by endorsing President Goodluck Jonathan. Is the APC not likely to toe the line?

We don’t believe in a forced consensus. I don’t want to comment on what the PDP did but that was a forced consensus. If by tomorrow, all our aspirants come to me and say, “Mr. National Chairman, we have all agreed that out of three, four or five of us, this man will be the preferred candidate,” we will support him because as at today, to my mind, each of those who have indicated interest in one form or the other in the APC is capable of beating whoever the PDP presents. We have no problem with all the candidates in the APC deciding that one of them should proceed. Otherwise, we are going to do the right thing, the democratic thing, which is a free and fair convention.

But there are indications that the APC wants to field a northerner for the presidential election. Must the candidate come from the North?

We would like to challenge anybody to tell us when we decided that our candidate must come from the North. We have interested persons from the southern parts of this country. As a matter of fact, it is only the PDP that has decided where its candidate must come from and denied any other aspirants from elsewhere from raising their heads to aspire to become president. But for us, whoever wants to be president is free to come into the race. In fact, I pray that every state will have a presidential aspirant because they help in mobilising. But the important thing is that they all agree that at the end of the day that only one person will be the candidate and that they all unite behind that person. That is what the APC stands for and that is what we are doing.

How set is the party for the governorship bye-election in Adamawa?

We are very prepared. I’ll be there. We have a brilliant candidate (Jubrilla Bindo) and the factors on the ground favour the APC candidate. I’m confident that we are going to get back the governorship of Adamawa State.

Can you react to the statement credited to Chief Tom Ikimi that he “cooked the food” called the APC, which you took away?

The whole thing is turning to be a bad joke. I think we should let it be. He has said what he wants to say. I do not know of any stage in any party when he was of such overriding influence that he cooked the food for everybody to eat. But again, as usual, to put modestly, it is an over exaggeration of his role in the party.

Yes, the (then) Action Congress of Nigeria chose him as the leader of their team and the entire group made him chairman of the process after the leaders of the various parties had agreed to come together. We just needed somebody to chair the negotiating session. So, if that means that he cooked the food, let him enjoy the accolade he is giving himself. I would not want to deprive him of that personal crowning of himself. But all that is now history; what concerns us today is the future.

Has his exist not created a gap within the APC?

No party wants to lose anybody. But if there are people who are not ideologically attuned to where the APC stands, it is best for the party that such people go where they are at home. Just like we lose some, we are gaining some. I was in Kogi a few weeks back to welcome seven sitting members of the House of Assembly. That is a useful addition. That is the type of quality addition that the APC is getting all over the place and we are expecting more.

President Jonathan has threatened that the PDP would win back Edo and Rivers in 2015 and 2016….

What did you want him to say? That they will win Edo and Rivers, of course, is out of the question because we have very strong governors in those two states. Edo has been under the APC although there have been one or two skirmishes. But for the Rivers governor to have survived the onslaughts, including major ones by concentrated security agencies, with Aso Rock backing; for him to have survived, for him to have thrived and for him not to have lost control of the state legislature tells you that he has something a little bit more than the ordinary and that he is firmly in control of the politics in Rivers State.

It appears the APC in Ekiti State is bent on stopping the inauguration of the Governor-elect, Mr. Ayodele Fayose. What’s your view?

The APC plans to get the judicial system to decide whether we are a country of law and order or not. Or whether the laws of the country still mean anything or whether impeachment has almost the same force as a criminal offence. Stopping him or not is a matter that will be left to the court to decide. We have gone to court to seek the interpretation of the laws of the nation on whether he (Fayose) was qualified to have even contested to be governor of Ekiti State. Worthy of emphasis are the very unprecedented events that are happening in Ekiti; like the humiliation of the judiciary and violence in the sacred chambers of justice. Has this country degenerated to that extent? What does it portend for the nation that a political leader will physically lead a team to manhandle judicial officers in the sacred chambers of justice? It has never happened in this country before. I am waiting anxiously to see how the judges themselves will react. Will they get cowed again by the power structures of the nation or will they stand up for themselves to say that it must not happen?

How did you receive the news of the disruption?

I was truly traumatised. I know this country has degenerated but I did not know that it had degenerated that far. I personally did not go to receive the national award of CON (Commander of the Niger) because at that stage I just couldn’t put myself together to say, “No, this cannot happen in our country.” And I cannot go to receive an award when the hall of justice of this country has been so terribly desecrated without any forceful reaction by the Federal Government. The shock was a bit too much for me to wear an “agbada,” smiling and shaking the hands of the Federal Government.

How would you respond to the play up of ethnicity and tribalism in your own state, Edo State, ahead of the 2015 general elections?

In the entire nation, what do we have today? We have religious and ethnic politics. Even at the federal level, we have what is now known in the media as religious tourism. We have our leaders who now go to churches to prostrate. Some of the photographs we see now are so embarrassing, when the symbol of a whole nation, our independence and pride is there prostrating.

So, it’s not just in Edo State. The ethnic thing is very loud and clear. Otherwise, why would anybody in his right senses say that APC is a Boko Haram party? The party is led by a Christian and a Catholic

Some say the South-West has been Islamised by Jihadists. But all the governors there are married to Christian wives. We wonder whether the people doing these things understand the cleavage they are creating in the society. They are people who want power so badly that it does not matter the bitterness and enmity that they create between ethnic and religious groups. We are now polarised in a way we have never been in this country.

So in their desperation, they are using all these extreme measures and we just pity them. We hope that this country will be wise enough to put us in office in February so that we can start rolling back the dangerous forces that have been unleashed on this nation.

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