Anambra State governor between 1999 and 2003, Chinwoke Mbadinuju on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was denied the opportunity to run for second term. This, he blames on former President Olusegun Obasanjo, among other issues in this interview with Special Correspondent, OKEY MADUFORO.
How has life been with you since leaving office?
It is 11 years since I left office, not by the will of God, but by the intrigues of man. But I know that whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap.
I was in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) right from its inception in 1998 and was in Jos for the first convention of the party. It was no mistake to attach myself close to the former Vice President, Alex Ekwueme, whom I served as Special Assistant in the Shehu Shagari administration in the Second Republic.
I took a kind of permission from the then PDP candidate, Olusegun Obasanjo, telling him I was too close to Ekwueme and for that reason, I would vote for him. Obasanjo agreed and told me he would do the same thing if he was in my shoes. This was the beginning of a sour relationship between the would-be President Obasanjo and I. The other four South East governors voted for Obasanjo at the convention. From that time, our relationship became frosty.
It was on record also that Obasanjo did not, at all, want me as governor because a few months that Anambra was in crisis as to who would become Speaker and as solution was being proffered, he instructed the then Speaker of House of Representatives, Salisu Buhari, to prepare a bad report to show that Anambra was ungovernable, and to prepare for my impeachment.
Unfortunately, the Speaker filed a different report and praised my efforts at bringing together some disparate groups fighting unnecessary “wars”. As soon as the report was made available, Obasanjo was very sad, to the extent that he sacked Buhari, alleging that, he (the Speaker) forged his certificates.
So, you see that whether good or bad, Obasanjo tried his best to ensure I was removed from office within four months I was in office. So it had been between me and my then president.
Apart from opposition from money-bags in Anambra, Obasanjo constituted himself into a one-man opponent against my government and made sure my federal allocation was the poorest. There was a month I received N200 million out of which I was supposed to pay salary of workers which was N583 million per month, but we managed.
By the time the president visited the state, he saw a different thing. And after inspection of projects, he concluded: “I have come, I have seen, I have heard, and I have been heard, all in all I’m satisfied with what I saw on the ground.”
The Obasanjo I knew was such that if he didn’t see anything on the ground when he visited Anambra, he would shout it to high heavens. But then, what he saw simply impressed him and he said so, as anybody could see from my book, How I Governed Anambra State.
So that your question is one which anyone who knows me could answer quite easily. At my earliest age, my father was a tailor, while my mother sold fish. I was sent to a kindergarten school, grew up a bit, and went to a teacher’s missionary school. While there, I studied and passed in GCE ‘O’ Level in six subjects, and three papers at Advanced Level. From that point, I got admission at the University of Ibadan (UI) but I had no 10 pounds to pay for entry.
However, during the same week, I got a letter of admission from Staten University of New York with all expenses paid as scholarship. I took my bachelor’s degree in Political Science and went on to Ohio University, Athens Ohio, where I took my master’s degree in International Affairs, and then went to Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, again on scholarship at Cornell (an Ivy League School). At Cornell, I took my Ph.D degree in International Law and Relations at the age of 28.
Meanwhile, I got an appointment as Assistant Professor at the State University of New York, Cortland, and rose to the rank of Associate Professor and chairman of the Black Studies Department.
My CV tells the whole story of where I came from, and how I later returned home in Nigeria. Eventually, I became governor of Anambra which I never contemplated upon.
You wrote a book on how you governed Anambra where you told stories that seem to suggest that you were stampeded by some forces. How do you mean?
Yes, as I said earlier, I wrote a book, How I Governed Anambra State (Stewardship & Accountability). Later I wrote the Book Summary (Legacies and Challenges) which books tell my stories from A to Z. These books are free of charge.
My books on Anambra State are not fiction, but truth and reality. It is from the books that one can see that I did not just become governor of Anambra; rather I was the best of all the aspirants in the contest in 1998 to emerge winner with 96 per cent of the votes cast. No candidate in Nigeria has won such election, without rigging.
Having won such an electoral victory, we began by making sure that workers were happy with the government. The three months arrears of salary the military administration left unpaid, I quickly paid them off and began to pay workers their salary on the 27th day of every month.
We passed that test by paying salaries as and when due. Anambra State under my watch took a gold cup (first position) in a national competition of 36 states.
For four years, I was the only governor to banish kidnapping, armed robbery and so on. The propaganda that I closed schools cannot hold because the period opponents were talking about closing schools, students were still taking their final examinations and passing with distinction.
We did everything humanly possible to make Anambra governable.
It had been expected that you would be given a political appointment as a loyal PDP member. Why has it not been so?
What people expect in politics are often not what they get because, as they say, (in politics) two plus two is not always four. So people’s expectation that I would have been given a political appointment, having been a PDP loyalist from the start till today, sounds good, but it didn’t follow.
Actually, at a time, I felt bad the way the PDP was treating me during the second term issue. Almost everything good I laboured for were forgotten. I didn’t really join the Alliance for Democracy (AD) because that was where I wanted to go. AD didn’t even want me.
That’s why immediately the election was over, I quickly sneaked back to PDP where I truly belong. My movement then was a kind of protest action. Since 2003 when I finished my four-year term in office, and since I left Awka, there has not been much in Anambra PDP till today.
It was one-man leadership that killed the PDP in Anambra, and it may remain so until those who were responsible take the initiative to restore or resurrect both the party they destroyed because of their lust for power and money. But progress will continue to elude them.
Until the PDP allows some of us to go back to Anambra and start picking up the pieces, Abuja, which destroyed the PDP at the state level, must take the responsibility to restore that which they destroyed. But as for political appointments, it is entirely up to the president. It is his constitutional right, prerogative, and privilege.
Our party, the PDP, decided to allow the first term governors go on to second term in a kind of gentleman’s agreement. But the agreement did not extend to me. Our party leader stopped me from second term and barred me from any appointment.
May be it was because I didn’t vote for Obasanjo at the Jos Convention I never was considered.
Your political opponents claim that you did nothing while in office.
I am happy you called them my political opponents. Is it possible to find a politician who has no opponent or opposition? I am yet to find one. Of course, I had opposition while I was governor of Anambra, and till today, it seems I have got stronger opponents now that I am on the sideline. My shadows still haunt my political opponents. They have tried everything possible to get me out of the way, but God has delivered me from them.
If my opponents say I did nothing while in office, why have they not been able to instal a better governor, or indeed become governors themselves after the 11 years since I left office? Political opponents are known to talk too much and do so little.
If anybody wants to know what I did as governor of Anambra, I advise such persons to read my books on Anambra.
What would you say were your regrets while in office as governor?
Governance is like a relay race. In a relay, the first runner takes off with his baton in his hand; he hands over to the next runner till the fourth and final race. In this respect, there were good projects for Anambra people which I initiated and built up, but which were not completed before I left office. There are projects like Zik’s Place at Awka; they are still standing uncompleted. The other project was the expansion of the Onitsha Main Market to help the electronic market grow and expand towards Oba. The then Vice President Atiku Abubakar, took interest in the project and raised funds from banks. He was clearly magnanimous. When the project was nearing completion, the then President Obasanjo did Anambra proud to come and inaugurate and bless the project.
The electronic market was about to take off when I left office and my successors swore they would not touch the projects or continue from where I stopped. But I’m not the loser; Anambra was the loser.
The same thing with the Oba Air Strip, a project for air cargo to assist traders mainly in Onitsha Market and environs. The ceremonies were almost coming to an end when I left office and no governor after me accepted to continue from where I stopped. There were several other abandoned projects in the state, but my successors said they won’t touch the projects.
But hope was raised recently when the present
Anambra Governor, Willie Obiano, said he would tackle those abandoned projects which are vital to economic growth of the state.
These are my regrets, but there are now indicators that politics should not be allowed to deny Anambra people projects that will enhance the living conditions of our people.
You seem to admire the leadership of President Goodluck Jonathan.
Only the opposition will fail to admire the leadership qualities of Mr. President, Goodluck Jonathan. First of all, the president came to office and made up his mind to do his best to follow the dictates of our constitution which he publicly agreed to uphold and protect. He has so far done it, not being dramatic about it.
Most people would agree that President Jonathan is one of the best presidents Nigeria has ever produced. Many a time, some people accuse the president of moving too slowly. But we have also had military regimes who threw aside the constitution and ruled with iron hand. During their period, Nigerians groaned under heavy burden of not being allowed even to talk freely.
President Jonathan is a true democrat, despite all efforts of political opponents to drag him into unnecessary argument and insinuations that nobody can prove.
I support President Jonathan because he has the fear of God in him, and the manner in which he became president suggests that God was with him. How many people can rise from deputy governor of a state to governor, then to vice president, and to president of the country in such quick succession? Is it not clear that God has hand in it? Further, Jonathan is an underdog. God has always been on the side of the underdog, and Jonathan will not be an exception.
But the opposition is out to stop the re-election bid of Jonathan. How possible is it?
Whatever the APC is doing to stop the re-election bid of Jonathan is neither here nor there. It is true that the job of the opposition party is to try to stop the president from succeeding. They would try to drag his government down by any means possible, sometimes unconstitutionally.
From all indications, it seems that APC as a party commits several constitutional infractions, but Jonathan very often over-looks the excesses of the opposition as sacrifice for peace, as he bends backwards to accommodate whosoever wills.
But this bending backwards does not mean that the president can only bark and not bite. Nigeria is already getting over-heated as we move towards 2015, and it is the job of the president to do all that is possible to slow down the tempo, and to lessen some acrimony engendered by clash of interests as between parties and opponents.
PDP still remains the winning party, and it will take more years than 2015 for APC to dislodge it. I have not seen anything to dislodge the president’s ambition.
Insecurity remains one of the problems of the present day Nigeria. How did you manage the menace while in office?
When I look back and see what we passed through to establish peace and security in Anambra, we can pat ourselves on the back and thank God for the miracle of the period.
Before I moved to Awka to start governing Anambra, insecurity was so bad at Onitsha, particularly, as the hoodlums were in the habit of sending letters to streets informing them of the dates they would visit the occupants. Women were sleeping in churches to avoid confrontation with the kidnappers and armed robbers.
The three communities of Umuleri, Aguleri and Umuoba-Anam had fought themselves for over 50 years, burying their dead in wheel-barrows. I invited Obasanjo to visit the three communities. He advised them, preached to them, and miracle began to manifest.
I developed a blueprint to end the internecine wars, and we succeeded. Till today, there has been no such community wars. We also set up the Vigilante Boys, otherwise called ‘Bakassi Boys’ who took control of the state and within a few months, like a magic, Anambra became free of killings, kidnappings, stealing. Banks opened for business and Onitsha Main Market, Nnewi, and others came alive for economic activities.
Some people attributed the peace and harmony we achieved to prayers of what we started as “Monday Morning Prayers” with all workers in government circles responding very well.
The prayers often shifted to main markets and till today the prayer regime has continued. This remains a big miracle for the State.
Till today, Anambra is happy for these accomplishments.
How have you been able to strike a balance between politics and your new calling as an evangelist?
There is nothing extra-ordinary to have a Christian or Muslim being a politician at the same time. Actually, I began my life as a Christian, at the moment I was born, and at four years of age I was already reading the Bible.
I was born into an Anglican family and remained in the Anglican Church till my studies abroad ended and I returned to Nigeria in 1977. In 1983, I attended a Pentecostal crusade at the Grace of God Mission in Onitsha. So I repented and joined Pentecostal fold in 1984.
Christianity is a religion in motion as we see in the Bible.
In any case, evangelist is not a title; it is a ministry for the purpose of perfecting the Church.