- Abaribe: FG mismanaged the Nnamdi Kanu phenomenon
Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe is a quintessential lawmaker. All you need to do to gauge the mood of the opposition is to talk to him. As the Senate Minority Leader, he knows his responsibilities and has performed them to the hilt. The former Deputy Governor of Abia State, an economist by training, was first elected into the Senate to represent Abia South Senatorial District in 2007.
Intelligent, debonair, yet intrepid, Abaribe is an interviewer’s delight. He hardly parries any question. On Monday, November 16, IKECHUKWU AMAECHI sat down with the 66-year-old lawmaker for two hours in his National Assembly office. As usual, he pulled no punches. It was a “state of the nation” interview. There were no off-limits.
In the first part of the interview published on Tuesday, he spoke about the PDP, APC, the Buhari government, etc.
Today, in the concluding part of the explosive interview, he talks about IPOB, his relationship with Nnamdi Kanu, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, recent raid on the Abuja residence of Justice Mary Odili and where he was headed in 2023 politically.
Alaigbo is boiling and that is not typical. What do you think is the problem?
Whatever I say, I am also complicit. The basic thing we have in the Southeast is that a lacuna was created because those who ought to have dominated the space with proper leadership did not and so it was now filled by non-state actors and what we now have is a situation where we are scrambling to keep up with where the people are at the moment.
So, there is this whole thing going on and it started with the ill-advised actions of the Federal Government in treating people who are legitimately aspiring for whatever they feel is their right in such a brutal manner that you tended to radicalize people and we had warned at that time when things were going this way what you do is to say let us sit down and talk. But we had a set of leadership who had a feudalistic hangover in which those at the lower class are not supposed to talk, agitate or say anything.
And I think that coloured their response to legitimate aspirations and agitation. And so, rather than applying diplomacy, tact and using discussions, people were murdered by the state and with each incident, you simply continue to build resentment among the youths in the Southeast.
Now, when you couple it with the infrastructural deficit in the Southeast, and the fact that the Federal Government at the same time also applied a nepotistic strategy of saying that the commanding heights of security and everything else will be domiciled in the hands of people from one part of the country, what you simply did was to stoke the embers of fire that was already simmering. And so, the concomitant thing is really that these youths will ask themselves a question: If you are down, you don’t fear no fall anymore.
And so, those of us who are leaders were now in the unenviable position of having to mediate both with them and also with the Federal Government who rather than understand what the leadership was going through, tended to blame the leadership for pandering to whoever is there on the ground.
So, everybody was in a catch-22 situation – on one side the Federal Government is saying all of you are part of the agitation, and on the other side the youths are saying you are part of our problems and you are hobnobbing with the oppressors. So, you could see how the whole thing has turned the Southeast into a hotbed of problems.
Now, when the rendition of Nnamdi Kanu happened, that poured fuel on the fire and has escalated it and because of the feeling among the populace that they have not been well served by their leaders, even leaders from the zone are finding it difficult to calm down the populace while seeking for solutions.
So, it has been a hard struggle and of course, when it is also coupled with political differences, you now see that coming together to resolve the issue becomes a lot more difficult.
So, is it a hopeless situation?
No, I am glad that everybody has come to the realization that we all need to sit down and talk through it. That is all that we have been saying from the beginning. Everybody has also come to the realization that any incident that happens cannot be blamed solely on a particularly group or the other because right now, all manners of miscreants, cultists, armed robbers have taken the toga of IPOB and any atrocity that is committed is now attributed to them.
When it was compounded with the sit-at-home orders that even made life more difficult for the average person in the Southeast, and what we did from the back was to engage and engage and engage.
And we were engaging in order to get things to calm down. We were also doing public advocacy. You remember that I was in Anambra during the campaigns and I went around and talked to the people of Anambra and I talked to all Igbos and said, we cannot hurt ourselves. We must have to make a choice and that choice cannot be obviated by saying let us not vote because that will not help anybody.
I am glad that our people listened. I am glad that the IPOB people called off their sit-at-home. The election held peacefully and a winner has emerged and so the process of healing can now start so that we can get ourselves back to what we are, which is an industrious people geared for success within the country called Nigeria.
The Southeast caucus in the National Assembly recently made a move on the Nnamdi Kanu matter seeking a political solution. Where are you on that journey?
We are still on it but we are keeping it under wraps because it is not something that you do in public. But the consultations with all groups – the Federal Government, state governments, traditional rulers, the clergy, agitation groups because it is not only IPOB, other groups are also there – are going on.
And I am glad to say that everybody is coming to the realization that we cannot destroy ourselves in seeking for a fair shake in Nigeria. The understanding has been very tremendous. And I must commend all those that have put forward themselves to be part of this resolution because it is not something that you can finish in one day. And because the court case is also ongoing, it is something that we have to be approaching in a sequential manner, one step after the other until we get to a proper resolution of everything.
Are you an IPOB sympathizer as has been insinuated in certain quarters?
I tell such people that I am a justice and equity sympathizer because at every point, whenever you speak up for the downtrodden, whenever you speak for the person who has no voice, whenever you stand firm and say what is wrong is wrong, the knee-jerk response of those who feel that they ought to be in the good books of government is to try to label you one thing or the other.
When the DSS arrested and detained me and searched my house, what they were looking for was for IPOB paraphernalia. They thought that I would have all those things but they were sorely disappointed.
As much as I speak with IPOB, I try to make others see their point of view. And in any case, like I said earlier, what people see that really symbolizes this government is its inability to utilise diplomacy in its dealings with the constituent parts of the country.
At every point that you confront them and say, why don’t we try to find a way of doing something in a better way, you are hammered with anti-Buhari toga. And I think that if we must have a viable union, all interests and opinions must be accommodated within this country.
Where you want to enthrone only one view or opinion, you are likely going to run into problems. That is why you have agitations all over the country because those who are running the country now are not taking everybody’s interest into account.
What relationship do you have with Nnamdi Kanu?
I was the person that went when Justice Nyako made the condition for his bail to be a Senator of the Federal Republic among the three people. I signed his bail bond. And I saw him as a younger brother that we can sit and reason with. And I actually sat and had discussions with him and I think that his matter was poorly managed by the authorities. Because the authorities just felt that oh, anyone who raises his head, you slam him in jail and when you do that, it will stop whatever.
If they had approached it in a different way, we probably will not be where we are today with him. And I still think that you can still have a discussion with him and reach reasonable compromises. I still think that is possible. That is why I support those who have been saying that rather than just continuing along the path of the legal tussle, that the option of having a political solution may work.
I had canvassed this opinion even before he was rendered into Nigeria and I have spoken with high officials of this government on the need for us to have some discussion. But you know, I also warned at that time in my discussions with them that a triumphalist approach to the issues of Nigeria will not bode well for the country and for those who have temporary advantage now, because if you are in power, it is for a set period. You will ultimately have to leave office after four years or eight years as the case may be.
READ ALSO: Abaribe says APC govt has turned Nigeria into a bandit country
But on a personal level, what is your relationship with him?
My relationship with Nnamdi Kanu is very cordial. And I have been relating with him, his family and all that. The point really is that if somebody has a point of view, you can sit with him and debate his point of view. That is why we are all civilized people. And I can convince you that your point of view is not correct. The one that I will never support is a point of view that is violent, that will lead to people losing their lives or destruction of properties. I can never be part of that.
But that a group makes their demand, I have always said, why don’t we sit with these people and talk with them. Then, it is only at that point that you can know those who are bent on anarchy and those who are not.
And at the point that every other thing was happening, we have never supported any violence and we condemned it. At the Southeast, we came out to condemn the violence. But what we find is that those who have made up their minds that they have to demonise a group, they now put you in a position where they ask you as if telling you to throw someone under the bus so that they can feel happy.
I said I won’t do that. And of course, if I say I am not going to throw all young men under the bus just so that you can be satisfied that you are running the country at the moment, at the end of the day, every one of us will have to sit and decide what is the best way for us to go forward.
Nobody wants a situation of anarchy. Nobody wants a situation where people cannot go around and make their daily living. That is why when they started the matter of sit-at-home and all that, we reached out to them and said you cannot continue with this. This is hurting the same people that you claim to be fighting for.
But of course, in order to talk to a group of people, you don’t talk to them on the pages of newspapers, you meet them and agree with them and negotiate with them and point out to them the faults and the wrong logic and reasoning for which you want them to take another path. And I thank God that they listened. Of course, criminals will take advantage of a fluid situation like this and go ahead to commit some crime and then they blame some other people.
So, what do you do in that instance, you tell the law enforcement agents to dig in, do an investigation and find out what happened.
Now, there was a jailbreak in Owerri if you remember and that was blamed on IPOB. We pointed out that the sophisticated nature of that jail break could not have been by these people waving flags that I know. Subsequently, so much insecurity, killings and all that and some of these people were arrested, and you found out that those who were arrested were people incarcerated but released during the jailbreak and then armed to go and cause so much mayhem. So, there was far much more to it than meets the eye. And that was why we were very circumspect in coming out to say that it was A, B or C.
We are imploring the security agents because I guess that in the security architecture of every nation, Nigeria inclusive, the first order of business is intelligence. You must know what is going on. You must be abreast of things and we were saying, what are our security and intelligence agencies doing? Who were the people that were released? Do you have their names, photographs, etc.? How do we track them?
Now, the same thing, in the same manner also happened in Oyo State. So, could you have now turned around to say IPOB also went to Oyo to do that? So the pattern being the same has shown that we were very correct cautioning at that time not to apportion any blames without any investigation.
So, I am saying that sometimes, it just seems like there is a rush to judgement and not enough time given for analysis of whatever happened at that time.
But the Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, said the other day that it was IPOB that attacked the palace of the Oba of Lagos and destroyed other public buildings in Lagos. If they have the capacity to cause such mayhem in Lagos, definitely, a jailbreak in Oyo will be a piece of cake for them.
If there is anything that Malami did with that press conference, it is to actually undermine his own position as a Minister of Justice. And you could see that since then, it has been a cascade of one wrong step after another till this moment, which doesn’t give the impression of a lot of rigour going into the thinking within that circle before statements are made.
There is this adage that says it is better that you kept your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt. For something that is in the public glare, for something that we still have videos and even the face of the person who carried the Oba’s staff of office, his name is known, and then somebody now comes, makes a press conference, several months after and now says oh, it is this other people. You could see that what he did was simply to ridicule his office. I guess he forgot the demands of that office, which includes that you are also a public defender.
You are not just working for the Federal Government, because you are not only Minister of Justice, you are also the Attorney General at the same time.
That is probably why in the constitution amendment, there was an effort to separate both offices because somebody who is unable to detach himself from the executive may not just be able to play both roles successfully.
That also raises the issue of the raiding of the Abuja residence of Justice Mary Odili and the denials. What do you make of that ugly saga?
What I make out of it is that the APC government has turned Nigeria into a bandit country – bandit in quote – where someone will wake up, gather a group of people, obtain a court order, and go to invade the house of one of the highest people in this country ostensibly searching for incriminating materials. And on being caught, will turn around and say we were actually sent by a member of this government in high standing.
And the member of government in high standing turns around to say, I do not know you. If everybody concerned – the DSS, EFCC, Police, Office of the Attorney General – say we don’t know, how can this be possible except if the country is no longer in anybody’s hands. It is now whatever you can get away with, and it portends very grave danger for the country and for everybody who lives in this country. Because what it means really is that anybody can go, procure anything, show up in my house and say we have come to take you or we have come to search you, or whatever and you don’t even know and there is no way you can legitimately confirm whether they are real or not.
On that day that it happened, we were in a meeting, which involved PDP governors and the news broke and everybody was calling and Governor Nyesom Wike said he was on his way there and then the other governors were now calling the different heads of the security outfits and everybody was saying, we don’t know. How could that be?
So, I agree with Governor Wike that it was simply an effort to intimidate the judiciary. In other words, if you can do that to a Supreme Court Justice, then who are the rest of all the judges down the line to the Magistrates?
Secondly, what manner of training do Magistrates get that a Magistrate can actually be railroaded into signing a warrant for the house of a Supreme Court Justice?
How could a magistrate be railroaded into that? I mean, all that the Magistrate needed to do was to call his or her superior along the line. In Abuja, you have the head of the Magistracy, you also have the Chief Judge for Abuja, and I am sure that they have their numbers because they can call and ask that I have this on my table, can you look at it and you bump it upwards. Because it is only at that level that you can ask questions and get clarifications.
So, how could this happen? It makes us to look so ridiculous in the eyes of the world. Meanwhile, Nigeria has a Nobel Laureate and Nigerians are all over the world doing wonderful things and this type of thing happens in this country.
I will end with this. There is this apocryphal story and I don’t know whether it is true or not but it paints the picture Nigeria. It has to do with the opening lines of the speech of one of the Professors that was the Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan.
And this was supposed to be in the 1980s, not now. He was giving his farewell address and he started it with the Christian hymn, “All things bright and beautiful.” The next line is, “The Good Lord makes them all,” but he now puts in that second line, “Nigeria kills them all.”
“All things bright and beautiful; Nigeria kills them all.”
Look, if we don’t have a leadership that comes in to redirect this country, I tell you that all of us will regret the day that we brought this (Buhari) government into being in 2015.
When I say that we brought this government into being, it is because when a government comes in, it is all of us that have contributed in one way or the other to bring it.
It used to be that we will boast to ourselves that Nigeria is not a banana republic, tell me the difference between a banana republic and this incident that has happened.
Chief Justice of the nation removed, not following the laws of the country in any way, through an inferior legal entity called Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) because decisions of the CCT can be overturned by a High Court because when you appeal the ruling of the CCT, you go to a High Court. So, it is an inferior Court.
Yet, the topmost judicial officer in this country was removed against what the Constitution says that if you have to remove somebody of that calibre, you must make an address that will come to the Senate of the Federal Republic which will in turn look at the circumstances and vote on it before you can do so.
Yet, the legislature was by-passed. We have a government that has subverted all decency, all rules, all things that are in the Constitution, and some people still think that oh, it doesn’t matter.
I have said it before, we have to put these things out and ask Nigerians, is this the way that you want to live? That question must come.
Where is Enyinnaya Abaribe headed in 2023? Some people have suggested that you throw your hat in the presidential ring, while others think that Abia governorship is more like it?
Ndigbo say, “ana amara nma sina ulo puo na ama.” In other words, you have to keep your house in order before you go to dance outside.
Okay, I get it. Abia is it then?
I know that you will get my drift because our people also have a saying that “onye aturu ilu kowara ya, ego ejiri luo nne ya furu ohia,” which means that when a proverb is explained to someone, the bride price paid on his mother is a waste.