share Dr. Ben Nwoye is the Chairman, All Progressives Congress (APC) in Enugu State. In this interview with KENNETH OFOMA, he carpets Governor Sullivan Chime and members of the State House of Assembly for embarking on the impeachment of the state’s deputy governor, Chief Sunday Onyebuchi, based on what he called flimsy excuses. Nwoye fingered the ambition of Chief of Staff to Governor Chime, Mrs. Ifeoma Nwobodo to become the senator representing Enugu East Senatorial District as the cause of Onyebuchi’s travails. He also accused Chime of trying to instigate ethnic war in the state. Apart from being the chairman of All Progressives Congress in Enugu State you are also an indigene of the state and should be concerned about events and things happening in your state and the current one being the impeachment noose around the neck of the state deputy governor, Sunday Onyebuchi; what do you have to say about this development at this point in time? It is quite sad. First I have spent time studying the charges against the deputy governor and I’m alarmed number as a citizen of Enugu State and unfortunately politics here is very ethnic driven and as a true son of Nkanu land, I’m particularly alarmed also because I’m a lawyer and I understand what gross misconduct is under the eyes of the law. I studied law, I practiced and I taught law. After looking at the indictment, I could see that we have reduced the act of governance into child’s play. We have turned things upside down and turned the rule of law to basically personal gains. So I’m ashamed to call myself a citizen of Enugu State as a lawyer, because it makes mockery of our modern day democracy. If we bring approximately 23 persons (lawmakers) in the House and the 23 persons after reading those charges, and these are not 23 ordinary persons; 23 persons that were elected to become makers of law, will become those that will operate our fundamental arm of the government, the checks and balances if you go the actual bicameralism that we are practicing. You have the executive and you have the legislators and those people, all of them with the exception of those who did not sign, could not see through the truth, that it was a child’s play, that if there is any other reason that they want to bring the charge against or remove deputy governor, they should, but not on the basis of legal tyranny. If you look at it one by one, if you look at the charge, apparently, His Excellency Sunday Onyebuchi had had the poultry before a law was enacted to remove the poultry. So under the law, there is what we call grand fathering, because the poultry was there before the law, you don’t make law retrospectively; laws are made to prevent future harm, not past harm. If all the days he has been operating the poultry and His Excellency Sullivan Chime, the governor of Enugu State feels that in the interest of the health and safety of Enugu people that poultry should have been removed, number one; they should never have allowed it to start in the beginning and then he started it, and you don’t pass targeted laws, it is called punitive laws. You don’t pass a law to punish a particular person. So what he has done is to punitise an act that has been done by the deputy governor way before it was made illegal. In normal society, where someone engage in an enterprise, in this case, poultry enterprise, and you decide you want to change the law, those who had already been engaged in that business have to be exempted, certain provisions are made for them and certain things put in place for them. They didn’t do that in this case. The poultry was there before the governor abandoned his duty post for almost a year and went out of the country on medical vacation and lied about it. That is impeachable offence. They lied to Enugu people, encouraged his entire executive members, including the chief of staff to lie to Enugu people. That is impeachable offence. Those are gross misconduct. Enugu people for months were left in the dark as to where their governor was; that is impeachable offence. People were calling, well meaning individuals were calling for the removal of the governor since it became obvious that they were lying, he overstayed his vacation time under the constitution, that again is an impeachable offence. Yet, Sunday Onyebuchi, because he is a good gentle man and humble individual, which in this case, if you look at it objectively, to me that would have been the only offence Sunday Onyebuchi had committed for not living up to his legal obligation of sending in, at least alerting the State Assembly that the governor is engaged in lies, that governor at the time was condolesense, could not afford to take care of the affairs of the state and therefore that the governor also had overstayed his vacation without explanation and without an extension by any act of the law. If they are bringing charges against Sunday Onyebuchi for failing to carry out those constitutional duties, in fact, if indeed he knows the truth; because I suppose he didn’t know the truth because things were being done in the hiding. The chief of staff was allowed to run the state and take salute illegally and these were the impunities they have allowed to permeate Enugu State. And then today, you have again a rubber stamp, it is the biggest rubber stamp legislators and they forget that there is history to go through with this, and they forget that they are living their finger prints on history for their children and children’s children. And now they made law to target an individual, none other. Let him go around Enugu State and see if you will not find any other person somewhere who is involved in poultry business around a residential area. Even Garki where they sell the cow and raise cow, people live there, they have not been able to clear Garki and get rid of all the animal faeces that are hatched in the Garki area. That’s a residential area and you can go round and round and you can see piggeries in residential area, they have done nothing about it. This brings to question, it is also being debunked, the ideas that he didn’t take order from the governor in going to assist the President in the stone laying of the second Niger Bridge. That’s flat out lie that has been brought against a deputy governor that has been most obedient and most subservient, that had treated His Excellency Sullivan Chime almost like a father-like figure; and at the end of the tunnel this is what he gets, punitive law against him. Most people are looking at these charges as mere smokescreen, that his main offence is political, located in his alleged romance with your party, and as chairman of the party let me ask, is the deputy governor romancing with your party? You know there is a saying that if you want to kill a dog you call it a bad name. The pretence is not any other, the pretence is clear. Madam Ifeoma Nwobodo (chief of staff) wants to be a senator for Nkanu people at all cost. And so the truth of the matter remains that she is stopping at no length in getting rid of anything that is on her way. She has been described by some as a bulldozer. She has been going around the town and villages in Enugu East, around the 77 wards dishing out state funds, in an attempt to become a senator, but she will never be the senator for Nkanu people. We must say this; she will never ever attain that height because Nkanu people are not stupid people. What she is calling Nkanu people is stupid, and Nkanu people are seeing that. First she declared, and nothing is wrong in anybody declaring to wanting to be anything politically, but Enugu people are very culturally conscious and ethnic conscious. She is an Udi woman, an Agbaja woman married to the Nkanu ethnic class. The person she is trying to unseat is a prince of Nkanu land, he is a first class prince, he is a son of the king of the eldest sub-ethnic group in Nkanu land. The gods of our fore-fathers will never allow such a thing to occur. Now the pretence is that Sunday Onyebuchi took on the mantle of an Nkanu citizen as a true Nkanu son, he took on that mantle within the Sullivan’s team and declared his intension to vie for the same office which Sullivan had prepared for his sister. If allowed to occur, Sullivan is able to get the ticket to represent the Agbaja people, the Udi people, then Sullivan will give his kid sister the position of Nkanu people in the senate. So the Agbajas will be having two senators from Enugu, while the Nsukka ethnic group will be having one. Then politically Nkanu is gone. Nkanu group we have absolutely no more voice. And greater Awgu people? Greater Awgu had always been ably represented; it is not an issue here. They have always been ably represented by Ike Ekweremadu and this is the exit plan that Sullivan has for Enugu people; is to cause ethnic clash amongst various ethnic groups. He has plotted it selfishly without regard to the ramifications. So we may begin to raise other pretentious reasons that he is romancing. I’m the state chairman of APC, I have never met with Sunday Onyebuchi one on one either now or before. I’m not a defender of Sunday Onyebuchi, if anything I think if they had brought a charge that he failed on his constitutional duties to push for a bill to impeach the governor while he was out; if they said that’s why he is being impeached it will make more sense because he had the constitutional obligation to remove the governor. Even when the governor came back and refused to disclose to Enugu people how much it cost him to get healed from his illness. He said to every Enugu citizen then he owes no apology to anybody because Sullivan is the emperor of our own time and the emperoic behaviour that he has acquired in the last seven plus years, people had allowed it to grow without checks, because he carefully selected rubber stamp representatives, members of the House and then he carefully silenced other opposition figures. And so now he parades himself, he wants to remove Ike Ekweremadu, a sitting deputy Senate President, he is hell bent in making sure Ike leaves that sit without regard that we Enugu State has a vibrant deputy Senate President that has attracted development to this state, that if he Sullivan goes up there he will become a junior senator, he will be inexperienced, we would have lost the amiable position that we have, which is a position that is due to South East but was retained in Enugu State, a deputy Senate President. So not looking at these things objectively, it makes the entire society suffer. When we say that his pretentious reason, we use the term romance. What type of romance? Is Ike Ekweremadu an APC person, the answer is no. Is Sunday Onyebuchi a card carrying member of APC, the answer is no. they are pursuing policy of witch-hunting, and so you can’t go to birthday party of your friend who happen to belong to another party. You can’t go to a burial service or a naming ceremony of your friend who is not a member of PDP. There is also this speculation, and you are also from Nkanu land, that people from that area are already jostling to take over Onyebuchi’s position? You see, the deputy governor’s position, the way the political arrangement was made by the PDP I think beginning from time immemorial, when it was set up by His Excellency former governor Chimaroke Nnamani, Nkanu was supposed to produce the deputy governor and of course the Udi Agbaja axis produced the governor. If they successfully remove the deputy governor, invariably he will get Nkanu I suppose. So generally speaking they are vultures in political climate, so the vultures will wait for the dead meat. As you rightly stated, they placed the executioners noose around Sunday Onyebuchi’s political neck so the vultures are waiting, and these are vultures without conscience, because even among vultures, there are still dead meat that some of the vultures will not partake in. So the political vultures without conscience, are now all hovering around and they are waiting for the executioner to pull the noose. But let me tell you one more thing, not just that, the rumour around is that this is also a way to accelerate the ambition of Ifeoma Nwobodo who is an Agbaja woman married to an Nkanu man. When she declares formally for the senate she is supposed to resign. In fact she is supposed to resign right now. She is campaigning with peoples fund, she is campaigning while on duty, she is spending less time on governance issues, administrative issues and more time on her campaign work. She ought to resign just like those who were advisers to President Goodluck Jonathan, that want to run they are resigning. But because they had a culture of impunity in Enugu State government House, they want to use all the government apparatus to actualise their personal political gains. So there is also story in case you have not heard that the plan is to replace Sunday Onyebuchi with Ifeoma Nwobodo to avoid Ifeoma resigning. That is also there in the air, so if that is true and Sullivan Chime successfully makes his little sister his deputy, you know what he is causing, you know what that has now resulted? The sharing pattern has now been destroyed, it becomes winner takes it all. You can go and invite your mother, your sister, your brother to come in and let us run this kingdom, Enugu State will now become Sullivan’s kingdom. And he continues to sit as an emperor, but Nkanu people will not allow these things to go un-noticed. You must remember that nothing lasts forever, the hatred he is now planting between Nkanu and Agbaja, the effect of it is one that he will never ever be able to imagine in his life time. Today he is in power but that power will not last forever, he has children and God bless him he has children’s children. It will go down in record that he is the one that caused the ethnic clash between the Agbaja and the Greater Awgu community and between the Agbaja clan and the Nkanu people; because Sunday Onyebuchi whether we like it or not is our son and he is a good son and Nkanu people are proud of Sunday Onyebuchi. Again I must disclose that I have never met Sunday Onyebuchi in person, I’m not a spokesperson for Sunday Onyebuchi, but I can tell you as an Nkanu son that I’m only raising a word of warning, it is an alarm, a stitch in time saves nine. The governor needs to begin to retrace his steps, he made a mistake, it is a grievous mistake; he is starting and putting together frivolous charges to remove someone that had been so loyal to him, someone that has done nothing but given this state service. Sunday Onyebuchi is one of the unseen hands in whatever good things that may have occurred within the PDP, he had been the stabilising factor, when people were pushing him to come up and become the arrow head for the removal of Sullivan Chime who had indeed violated the constitution by taking off, abandoning his duty. Sunday Onyebuchi became s stabilising factor; that was the first time I have ever seen him spoke, he took time to defend the governor and now today Sunday Onyebuchi has become someone that no longer takes order from His Excellency Sullivan Chime. So he just needs to be careful, he just has to trade with caution, because power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. There is no better example of that statement by Thomas Jefferson than Enugu State and what is happening now. Do you foresee a situation the opposition parties can gain from this if indeed people of Nkanu land and by extension other parts of the state like the Greater Awgu people, like he is also trying to displace their son, Ekweremadu; do you think that the APC can leverage on this to make an inroad into the state? You see, now I speak as the chairman of APC in Enugu State. In APC we are not political vultures, but historically people come to us on their own when they have nowhere else to go; that is why we are an alternative party. Right now you have PDP and you have APC just like in the United States, you have the Democrats and the Republicans and unlike the United States where you can run as independent after you have raised so much signatories to support your independency candidature, in Nigeria you cannot have an independent. So at the end of the day whether the victims from all these melee that are thrown in mudslinging, there is going to be victims; those that will back with bruises, those that will lose an eye, an arm, limb and all those stuff. They will look for a place to be, we are here, APC is here to welcome everybody, anyone that embrace our own political ideology, which we are for the people. We are talking about employment, education, self-sustenance, lower reliance on crude oil and other natural resources that we can exploit, local farming as the base of employment; those things that make us different. Security, number one thing is to provide security; you must give someone an alternative. If you are going to tell a child in the North do not strap explosives on your body, you must tell the child what else, why you must live, why life is worth living. But if you allow these things to continue why we have child labour; we are rated sixth in the world on those that abuse child labour law; we are rated number one on infant mortality, number two on maternal mortality. They still show that 70 percent of Nigerians are living under two dollars per day, which is about less than N320 a day, that is where 70 percent of Nigerians live off. So we can’t continue on that path, so those who believe in our ideology, that we can turn these things around by following the rule of law, providing education, thinking about our future, reducing the death rate, I think it’s about 43-45 years, it has consistently come down. So you join APC, you will be welcomed.
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 20:59:46 +0000
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