First Republic Aviation Minister and one of the few surviving nationalists, Chief Mbazuluike Amaechi, has expressed disappointment with the President Muhammadu Buhari administration over its total neglect of Ndigbo in the appointments he has made so far as the president of Nigeria.He said that his hatred for the people has long history, dating to his days as military leader.
Amechi who spoke to Oriental News pointed out that though his antecedent showed the president to be anti-Igbo, and the fact that most of the Igbo did not vote for him during the presidential election, he would not win the love of Ndigbo by alienating them so openly.
A former member of the Zikists Movement, Amechi, popularly known as “the Boy is Good,” spoke on the appointments so far made by the president, the delay in inaugurating his cabinet, warning that Nigeria was too big to be run by an absolute sole administrator.
He also spoke about the anti-corruption war and the difficulties before Buhari, the opposition political parties and the political attitude of Ndigbo. Excerpts:
President Buhari is yet to constitute his cabinet, how healthy is that for the country? Also the new government has been talking tough on the fight against corruption, is it possible?
I don’t know why the new President, Buhari has not been able to select some materials for his cabinet and forward them to the Senate three months after his inauguration. Nigeria is too big a country to be run by an absolute sole administrator. On the other hand, I’m afraid; I’m still uncomfortable about certain things, statements emanating from the government. For example, the President has said that his searchlight for corrupt people and dirty politicians who stole money belonging to the country will be limited to the past administration. If he does that, then I will say he is not the Buhari that I know. The Buhari I know is the one that has the courage to face any situation. Unless he did that when he was a military man, but I hear people say that once a soldier, always a soldier. There are in his APC party some of the most corrupt people in the country; there are some past governors and other high ranking government functionaries at the federal level who stole more money than even the people in the Jonathan’s bazaar. My fear is that he will be afraid to beam a searchlight on such people because most of the people who provided the money with which he fought his election are the people who stole this money from the public, from the state and federal government. So, if he is really sincere, his search should go back to all political parties, to all past office holders in the National Assembly, in the state executive levels and even presidential executive level that’s where he should go. But I imagine that is the difficulty that he is having because there are some of these people who he wants to be in his government but they are dirty as the devil himself. Be that as it may, there are other people in this country who are still good. There are yet untried people in this country, he doesn’t have to look for only experienced politicians, he should use a new set of people. The military introduced so much stealing and plundering into governance in Nigeria, that it will be difficult to eradicate it unless we start all over again. The military sent away nationalists who fought for independence for the country and went into government. The military came and went into stealing and looting and since the military remained for such a long time, totaling 38 years, and the people they produced that took over from them are surrogates and collaborators in the military looting. And so it will not be easy to kick them all out, it will not be advisable to pick new rulers from the people who still have the stigma and stern of the military. But he has to shake it off, the whole world is looking upon Buhari, he should be the original Buhari that we know.
There have been massive condemnation of Buhari’s appointments so far especially from the South-East where people felt by the appointments the president seems to have alienated the zone from the country, is that not a worrisome development?
There is no doubt that Alhaji Muhammadu Buhari, President of Nigeria is anti-Igbo so far in what he has done in the government. It is also true that the majority of Ndigbo did not vote for him during the election, but that is not a reason why he should hate a people so much that he will neglect them totally.
Alright, look at the case of Ogbonnaya Onu, why did he not appoint Ogbonnaya Onu the Secretary to the Federal Government. Ogbonnaya Onu has been faithfully with him, he contested two past presidential elections under the chairmanship of Ogbonnaya Onu’s political party when Ogbonnaya Onu was the national chairman of that political party. He has worked with the man and Ogbonnaya Onu is the cleanest possible Igbo man in politics, we have seen so far. If he does not hate Ndigbo why did he stall the appointment of such a man and is one of the few higher appointments that need not go to the Senate for clearing. I will personally advise Buhari to be a new Buhari particularly, with regards to his attitude towards Ndigbo. He took over the government of Shagari in 1983 because Umaru Dikko said it and he has not refuted it, that he took over that government to stop an Igbo man being a President of Nigeria in 1987. Because according to NPN then, the next presidential candidate of NPN then in 1987 will be an Igbo man and he was desperate to stop an Igbo man being a president in 1987, that was why he took over government in 1983. He so hated the Igbo at that time and must not give the impression that in the new arrangement, in the new shift that has come, that he has continued to hate Ndigbo to that extent. In my personal letter to him when he won the election, I told him one thing, I said you don’t catch a fly with vinegar.
If really you want to kill a fly, you attract a fly with honey, not with vinegar. So, if even you don’t like the Igbo, you don’t win them back to love you, to be a man by so openly alienating them. On part of Ndigbo themselves, they are so divided, they are so purposeless, they are so scattered that the present generation are a very great liability to the Igbo nation, Igbo ethnic group in Nigeria. The present generation of political leaders, they are doing the greatest disservice, they cannot come together, and most of them are thinking so much of their individual selves.
So, unless they come together, there was a time the Youruba were in the kind of position in which Ndigbo are now. But the Yoruba are better politicians, they regrouped, planned, drew up a programme, made a term programme and eventually bounced back. Ndigbo should go back to the drawing board and allow a real leadership to come up. They have materials, they don’t want to use. They are so individualist, some of them are so short-sighted, some of them are so machinery that they do their own politics of chop and quench. Chop today don’t think about tomorrow. But the President owes it as a natural and constitutional duty to lessen his apparent dislike of Ndigbo.
Now there is a new ruling party, what kind of opposition are you expecting from other parties like the PDP?
The PDP is the official opposition party in the country, the PDP itself lacks organization. They lack purposeful leadership, even as at now I don’t know if they have any leadership at all, they are so confused. Another possible political party that could have some strength is APGA, but APGA is too small and too sectional. They talk of being Igbo party, how can you, no tribal party can go anywhere in Nigeria. Nigeria is a big country; you need every part of this country if you are a political organization. So, the PDP needs a total reorganization, the PDP is a conglomeration of different political bird fellows who came together for the purpose of stealing. Owing to the poor leadership it had or lack of leadership it had during the Jonathan era.
Jonathan sat there, then the hawks and thieves were plundering the country and he couldn’t do anything. People like us wanted to get to him to say look don’t you see what is happening, but they closed the gate so tight that they made it impossible for people to get to Jonathan and so the poor man kept swallowing in his ineptitude and poor leadership quality that eventually he got drowned in the pool and it is the same hawks that remained in the PDP now. But most of them as opportunistic as they are, are rushing over now to the APC and I have told APC to be very, very careful of them. In the letter I wrote to Buhari, I told him very soon you will get people rushing into your party, the same people who are rushing into your party, is there any problem within their party, they will go away with the speed with which they came in and they are not coming in because they believe in your ideology, if you have any ideology at all, they are coming in to see if they can find a new platform either to protect themselves from crimes of looting they committed before or they want a new platform to continue to steal.
I wrote to Buhari in this regard, I do hope the letter got to him, I do hope he reads it with objectivity and not looking at it as coming from an Igbo man. I see myself as a Nigerian nationalist and that is what I am. I was never a regional politician in my political days, I was a member of parliament for four years, re-elected again as a member of parliament. I became National Publicity Secretary of my political party, the NCNC, and the secretary of its parliamentary party.
So, I have been looking at Nigeria from a nationalistic and national point of view, I’m not sectional in Nigeria, so when I talk to people like Buhari as president, I know what I am saying. That is also what I told people in the Ohanaeze, the poor leadership we had in Ohanaeze, and they are merely interested in how much money they can grab from Jonathan. They were rushing to Abuja to collect money, the Igbo organizations; the Aka Ikenga in Lagos went to Buhari to collect money and I heard that the man who collected the money from Buhari did not share the money with the people and so they are having crisis there. The same thing is perverting Ohanaeze; I don’t know, it is a rotten society in which we live, I feel ashamed.
