With electioneering campaigns getting to feverish pitch in Anambra State ahead of the February 6, 2010 gubernatorial election in the state, former governor Chris Ngige, a medical doctor, says he is sure of victory.
Dr Ngige who is hinging his hope to return to the Awka Government House on his performance during the 33 months he held sway as governor of the state after the 2003 general elections, said that no other governor had served the Anambra people better than he did.
In this exclusive interview with Daily Sun, the former governor looked at the political credentials of the other prominent candidates in the race and their political parties, saying that he is the man to beat in the February polls, adding that even if he chose to run under a “Goat Party” he will still win as the Anambra people have confidence in him.
Ngige, whose 33 months in office was turbulent as a result of severe opposition, blamed this on his estranged god-father, Chief Chris Uba, who, he said, had the backing of the Federal Government to make his administration difficult.
He told Daily Sun that his travails came because he refused to keep to the agreements his detractors extracted from him under duress.
He also looked at the Governor Obi administration, saying that the governor has not justified the huge allocation he has received going by what is on ground as dividends of democracy to the people just as he revealed the odds against the other candidates in the race. Excerpts:
You were here as governor for 33 months, what’s your experience like?
Well, the experience is one that is already in the public domain and with you people in the media you know what transpired in this state at that time. It was a 33 years which the opportunity presented itself to me whether to align with my people or to desert the people. I had a difficult choice to make and I chose the first option which was to stay with the people, but at very great cost, and the cost was serious in that it even entailed my placing my life on the line.
I came into office on 29th May 2003, and I met a state that was run down. The debt situation was a gigantic one, and the people lost faith in government business, they were helpless, so to say. Schools were closed down, hospitals were closed down, the economy of the state was lying prostrate on the ground, and I had to use my clinical mind to diagnose what was wrong and then applied some treatment as a clinician. There was a political clinical problem at that time. Luckily, and with great thanks to Almighty God I was able to do it because he had equipped me in my life’s journey with worthwhile experiences that I could not have bought in any market or any supermarket.
I had training as medical doctor, I had training as a civil servant for 18 years, I had training as a businessman for about seven years and I had training as a party officer in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), I was Assistant National Secretary for another five years before I mounted the saddle. So, I was very much equipped and I decided to tackle the problem. The problem was god-fatherism and the parasitic elite. They held a stranglehold on the treasury of the state and believed that the state will be at their beck and call, to service them and their needs, I said no, and the battle ensued.
The Federal Government gang-up with my then godfather
Unluckily, for me they had the backing of the Federal Government at the time and so the thing snowballed into a fight between me and the Federal Government. The then Federal Government threw caution to the wind and decided to fight dirty, including at a point withdrawing my police security because a spurious judgment was gotten by my opponents. At one time they sent hoodlums here; they burnt down the paltry money of the state, public buildings were torched, my own office was burnt, and my government lodge was burnt while I was trying to sleep one fateful 18th November.
Anyway, I didn’t mind, I didn’t want that to distract me because I knew that at the end of the day only Chris Ngige will be held responsible for what happened when he was in charge of governance. So, I faced the issue of security with all boldness and when the police were withdrawn I had to faction out a local arrangement by which I got some men and we guarded the state and guarded my Government House. Those patriotic Anambra people, they volunteered themselves and their services and after that when the police came back, we synchronized them with the Nigeria Police. I am happy to tell you that the crime rate was very low here then, there were no kidnappings at that time and there were no violent robbery of homes or even cash at the banks like it is happening today.
In terms of infrastructural development, the people here move about a lot, they are mercantile people, they are traders and they would like to move from one market to another. So, I have to do an arterial network of roads that are interlinked…
How was the opposition in Anambra created?
They were created by many forces; first of all, some of them were created by the military. It’s not a secret that it was during the past military regimes that people got jobs for which they didn’t do and pocket the money. So, it continued, and so when my predecessor Mbadinuju (Chinweoke) came here they came out again. As a matter of fact they tried it with Okwadike, that’s Chukwuemeka Ezeife, but Okwadike you know is a strong fellow and strong willed, and, of course, they looked at him and saw that there was even no money in the state at the time so they left him.
If you remember then Okwadike could hardly pay salaries and he told people to choose to come to work three times in a week so that the salaries would be reduced.
But during Mbadinuju’s time, they became more ferocious, it was a pure civilian regime, during Okwadike it was a diarchy with Babangida at the helm of affairs. So, they wrestled Mbadinuju to the ground and he surrendered and with that surrender a lot of things started going wrong. So, the creation started from the military, but was accentuated during the civilian democracy of Chief Obasanjo (Olusegun). He believed in god-fatherism, he believed in cutting corners, he believed in so many things that are not straight forward and so the people had a field day not only in my state, but in other states.
But my own was more pronounced because I resisted and they became violent and decided to remove me by force whether I liked it or not. That resulted in the famous or notorious July 10 abduction as they called it, and my forceful removal from office and my deputy was called to take over. So, one would have thought that after that they would keep quiet, but they continued.
But all that is now history, the history books have recorded everybody, they have recorded me, they have recorded them, they have recorded Chief Obasanjo and none of us can change it. Historians keep on writing, so I had my eyes on history and I decided to do the right thing to be on the right side of history.
If the federal authorities at that time did not support your opponents, do you think you would have served out your tenure?
Of course yes, I would have served out my tenure. A lot of unorthodox things happened at that time, INEC was under the Federal Government, and if you are going for election petition, you would, of course, need INEC to support their result and in my case it was not so. INEC was totally against me, even the results my field officers did not collect, for us to get ours from INEC to make our defense at the tribunal became a very difficult thing. It was impossible and we never got it.
The federal authorities then connived, that’s my opponents, my tormentors in-chief, connived with the present day governor, Mr Peter Obi, and I don’t know what they did, they knew what they did, but you cannot hide anything for too long. There was collusion between the two of them, they worked together at the tribunal and they worked with INEC, they worked with them even up to the Court of Appeal to the extent that INEC even made a detour, singing a new tune at the Court of Appeal for a cancellation of the entire results. All these were based on the fact that they wanted a fresh election and they believed that in a fresh election PDP will be pressed not to present me, that also culminated in my famous suspension from PDP and eventual expulsion for no just cause. Expulsion without trial, expulsion that even the courts quashed and said that it was wrongly done. But the role of the then Federal Government was that of a Federal Government that wanted to annex every state and for me they regarded me as a state that has refused to pay tribute and pay royalty to the head of the fiefdom.
My battle with Chris Uba
I said no, the Igbo spirit in me will not even allow that because I am a pure and refined Igbo man, I am a proper Igbo man. A lot of people do not understand what happened, they talk about agreement, no agreement, Ngige didn’t keep agreement to do this or that. Which agreement, an agreement that was illegal, an agreement that was procured under duress? We never talked about payment of money or even signing off of political offices when I started, but all these were just brought later when the elections were near and even at gunpoint. And, of course, if you are a good tactician; a good general must be alive to plan for a fresh battle. So, I have to be alive, therefore, I have to agree to what they were saying for me to be alive and then draw a new battle plan.
That battle plan I drew especially when they tried the abduction.
I was even ready to give some commissionership and things like that; I was ready because at the end of the day it is Anambra people that must be appointed.
The only thing I said was that on quality of the people I gave my specification, qualification and wealth of experience; that was what I did. I said that you can appoint, but, for example, my Attorney-General should be a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN). If you bring Commissioner of Finance, no problem, but he must be a chartered accountant, that was my prescription for the man for the job and, of course, they misunderstood it and said oh, he doesn’t want us to appoint somebody we liked. They now formed themselves into a cabal and started plotting for my removal from office, if possible even to kill me. We give thanks to God that all those things came to naught.
You have told us that when you became the governor of this state in 2003, what you met on the ground was nothing to write home about, that everything was in disarray. Incumbent Governor Obi also made the same claim. Does it mean that you left the state like that, what were your major achievements?
The incumbent governor knows that he was lying, it’s either he was lying or he is ignorant of the workings of government or both. I think it was a case of both, I’m more inclined to believe that because even the blind saw that my government worked, they felt my government’s action with their feet, with their hand and with their ears they could hear. So, how can the governor say that, the governor was trying to score cheap political points at that time.
And, of course, he came in with bitterness, he was bitter, he had complained loudly that I took away his mandate for 33 months and that he was only left with 17 months to serve. During that time he believed that he was to serve out the residue of my tenure of four years. If you remove 33 months from 48 months, you have about 15 months. So, he was jittery and bitter and was looking for excuses to haul abuses on me. Otherwise, I left N4.8 billion here for him on credit, a thing that is not done in Nigeria.
People meet empty treasury, but I had in the bank cash of about N8.5 billion. I had counterpart funding with voluntary agencies, with the Universal Basic Education Commission and others to the tune of about N3.3 billion, making it N11.8 billion. I had in excro account money, because I went to court for a court injunction stopping the payments of those monies to those who took LPOs from two, three phoney contractors who were being paid monthly even though their jobs were no longer going on, I had about a billion naira there.
Proof of monies I left in Anambra treasury and my legacies
So, when the governor started saying there was nothing here, there was nothing he didn’t accuse me of. He set up a committee led by Hon. Justice Ononiba, a former retired Chief Judge of this state, with members like Dr. Tim Menakaya, eminent people like Engr. Ajulu Uzodike and the rest of them. The committee came out with their report and said in all the books of Anambra State government, in all the bank accounts of Anambra State government, in the counterpart funding of Anambra State and treasury, they found N11.8 billion as what was left by Dr. Chris Ngige’s administration.
Sun News
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