Sen Kalu: I won’t criticise Abia governor in public

Senator Oji Uzor Kalu is the Senator Chief Whip and represents Abia North in the National Assembly. In this interview on Channels Television, he reminisces on his tenure as Governor of Abia State and other political issues ahead of the 2023 elections

 

Between 1999 and 2007, you were the Governor of Abia State, a seat you occupied at 39. A number of persons would look back at that period and want to know how you were able to go through electoral processes at that time, coming from the military rule to actually govern Abia State at that age?

 

Well, it was a very interesting moment for me and for people of Abia State. So, it was tough with real pressures. Sometimes, I felt like crying; sometimes I felt like ‘oh, should I end this thing today, because it was very difficult to govern Abia at that stage. But we did our best and our best was good enough.

We put certain things in place; there were hard decisions that had to be taken and they were taken. So, we had to consider the interest of the people first. Our state was very united when I was governor. We brought everybody together for the common cause, which was the development of our state and taking our state to a higher level, making sure that we brought education to be free.

 

We brought institutions to fund them very well. The College of Education in Arochukwu, the School of Health Technology, the Polytechnic in Aba and I grew up at Abia State University. We had very cardinal points because I made sure that the state, with education, would go anywhere.

It’s sad that after the 1999 era, we’ve not had a governor below 40. And most of the people who will be going to the polls in 2023 were not born when you were governor. What does that say of our political evolution?

 

Well, there are a lot of younger ones running now and it’s the duty of the younger people to elect younger people. So, the people followed me. They believed my message and I was very aggressive and I came from the private sector. To be able to be governor, I had all it takes to go through being governor. But younger people now are busy abusing elderly people. Instead of them working harder to make sure they put themselves in the line of succession. You go to the internet, people are abusing you. People are saying all kinds of things. This is something to learn. You can see this is why my community, the weather, is a different place altogether. I don’t know if you have watched it, but you could have seen our cultural festival we did on the 2nd of January this year and it was very successful. You see the respect between the little, the big and the small and all the rest of them. So, Nigeria needs to go back to respect the elders because we have absolutely derailed. There is no mentorship between our younger ones and the elderly people right away because the younger ones are just busy thinking that it is their life. It’s a life of hard work. You need to come out to work harder to be able to do things that are spectacular and walk towards being successful. I was very successful in the private sector before I came into politics and I’m still successful in the private sector. So, I’m not sure that since 1999 that any governor has been as successful as I was.

But why blame solely the younger people because you talked about mentorship; you talked about the need for them to learn. Some would say that the political system as it is now does not favour young people. I mean a lot of young people have put themselves forward for positions but they don’t emerge through the political primaries?

 

Now, the process is that I was ready for leadership. I was thrilled to be a leader and I followed up things and I was ready to position myself. There were a lot of elderly people then, 50 to 60s. They ran for the election but the younger people supported me because of the radical ideas I had and they believed in those ideas. So, we moved on.

This is why everything we did in our state, they were for the people, not for anybody and that is why my popularity in the state is still intact through tomorrow.

But when you look back at your time in office and the governors after you, do you beat your chest and say that you’re the best Governor Abia State has had?

No!

I cannot say that because I always leave the judgment of my political track record to the people. In all honesty, God provided us at every time for a purpose. I cannot compare myself with any leader and no leader should compare himself with me. I leave those judgments to the people of Abia State.

On a few occasions, you have come out to blow your own horn. You have also questioned administrations after you. I recall what you said about your successor, Theodore Orji, and then you questioned his governorship prowess as well. So, when you say that you leave it to the people, it draws the question, are you not confident in some of the things you achieved?

What are some of the projects that you put in place? I achieved a lot. I continue leaving it. We have a very good relationship. We enjoy very robust relationship. I think it will be unethical; it will be very wrong for me to discuss them in public and it is not going to be good for me but all I know for any advice, I have to give to any governor, including the sitting governor now, I have access to give him such advice and I’ve been giving him without anything. He knows that I speak my mind.

You know that your party and indeed, the presidential candidate of your party boasts with what they call the template that Senator Bola Tinubu put in place, which has taken Lagos to where it is today and you were governors at the same time, 1999-2007.

So, clearly, you are campaigning for him based on what he did in Lagos and what your party has done so far in the past eight years. So, many would want to know as well, as governor of Abia State, whether there was a template that you put on ground that successive administrations have followed?

There was a template, only that it was derailed. They derailed. Let me tell you, when I was governor, if President Olusegun Obasanjo had given me a Sovereign Guarantee I requested for about N10 billion in 1999, Abia would have been on its own today, because we had to grow food throughout, got our Airlines, our hotel. So, with some Israelis and this is something like this is exactly what Dr. Michael Okpara did when he was there but because I had no access to this finance and they could have finished it in seven and a half years. I showed him the blueprints that we needed a Sovereign Guarantee. He refused and this is why the Nigeria we are running today is not what we should be. All states should be fairly independent to go to London or Singapore or anywhere to take a loan. So, that derailed our state. You can imagine the kind of investment I planned but there was no money to do it. So, I knew what I wanted to do with that state.

There was a blueprint. Maybe, I would have had one of the best economies. I had one of the best teams to work with – Professor Awa Kalu and others. I had one of the best sets of Commissioners in Nigeria. Our problem was lack of funds.

When we came to the government, the first allocation we had was N168 million.

You can check. The records are there. Then we got N1 billion for the first time in 2004 November. The records are there. I can’t work with my hands. You see it. I knew what to do as a private sector driven person. I tried to do everything I could and that was largely agriculture based. Yeah, we did a lot in agriculture. What I wanted to do was agriculture because the hope of this country still lies in agriculture.

But you do realize that Aba is described by many as small China because of the business acumen of the people there and the manufacturing prowess of the people. There are those who believe that if Abia State had got a good leader or a visionary leader in place since 1999, that Abia State or perhaps Aba would have been the manufacturing capital of probably the country?

I did exactly that. What killed it was electricity. I could not afford electricity at the cost of $1 million per megawatts cost and Aba alone needed about 89 megawatts to operate the city. I’m not an idiot. I’m well-grounded on what I wanted to do. At a time, people that lived in Port Harcourt because there was a conducive environment, no business, there was no capital to move from point A to point B. It became a problem and I was not going to manufacture money.

So, we were giving investors’ confidence to come back to our state because security was there. When there was security in all South-Eastern states and South-South states, when the kidnapping had not started, it was the safest place to live. Ask anybody. People who are coming from Warri from Potiskum; from everywhere to live in Aba. House rents increased. We had liberties.

We had Indians; we had everybody moving from Port Harcourt to Aba. That is the truth. There were instances, where the government should probably step in to either subsidize electricity. Well, which money would I use to subsidize it? Where was I going to get the money or was that not where revenue generation comes in? No, because the military mortgaged this revenue collection for five, six years and I went to a court of competent jurisdiction.

The court ruled that you must allow the contract to run. Some of them were mortgaged for eight years; some of them were about eight or 10 years and I was going to break a quarterback. I’m a believer in our court system. No matter how you criticize our court system it remains one of the best. I will give you a good example. You know I was building a road to connect water from Ariaria Market to Port Harcourt road to Waterside. A court of records gave an order that I should stop and I stopped at the project and saw where I left it. So, I’m a believer in God. I am not an Executive, who would disobey the Judiciary. God forbid!

I will never do that as a man because I believe that if I’m wrong at the first court, I’ll go to the second court. If I fail at the second court, I will go to the Supreme Court. So, when the military awarded contracts to people to collect revenue, immediately I came, I wanted to dismantle them. They went to court and the court said you should allow the contract to run and some of the contracts ran out since 2006. And in 2007, I left. So, I don’t know what I could have done. If you were in my shoes, would you respect the court order and court judgment on that? The answer is that it is better to respect the court’s judgment but the excuse doesn’t apply to successive administrations because clearly, Aba isn’t where it should be up till now and have to give people what they need first before collecting money.

Mind you, when people look at places like Calabar, Lagos, these places have been capital for God knows when since they created Nigeria. I have no moral authority to talk to these governors because as governors, I am not in their party. I’m in a different political party and it becomes a problem. Even now, I cannot say that this is what to do because we’re still in a parallel party. But I hope one day, God will give Abia State a governor who I will have access to lay back my ideas to give back my vision too and God will bless them.

But you believe that the state has been in good hands since he has been in office?

I’m not going to answer that question because it will be inappropriate. From day one, I have made my decision. I will never criticize the governor in public. I will never criticize Governor Okezie Ikpeazu in public. I would say my mind whenever I’m with them and I would say people know that I speak my mind.

Let’s talk about your representation now. You’ve been in the Senate in the past almost four years now but it would seem that your return in 2023 is being threatened. Members of your party in your state are accusing you of anti-party activities. They say that you are supporting your brother, who is in another party against the APC governorship candidate in the state. How do you react?

No, those things are easy talks. My brother is an adult. I don’t want to stay here to state to you what happened before my brother left the party. My brother was a very strong member of APC and when he wanted to leave, I called the National Chairman, who happens to be my colleague as governor, my colleague as Senator. I said this young man wants to leave the party. Is there anything we can do to remedy him? They did not do anything. He spoke to him and said ‘please don’t go.’

I called the Deputy National Chairman, who also was my colleague and he has been my banker for a long time. I’ve known him all my life for 40 something years.

We had lunch and dinner with my brother. Nothing was done. I called the National Deputy Chairman for the South-East, Chief Emmanuel Enekwu. He spoke to my brother. My brother refused. I called the governorship candidate. He’s alive.

You can interview him. I invited him and said the greatest challenge you will have as a governorship candidate is if my brother broke out of the party; if he gets away from the party, you will have problems.

Why?

Because he has his own spirit as I do.

So, you wanted your brother to be the governor?

No, you don’t understand me. I said let us, let me book an appointment to see President Buhari, so he could do the talking, that we have a problem. The problem is my brother. Let them find him the post of an executive director or something somewhere, either executive or not executive for four years, so he can leave us to go and do our governorship and Abia they told me after primaries and after primaries, he didn’t come back to me, and in June, my brother found a new political party.

Your old party that you founded?

No, it’s not my party. No, my old party was PPA. I don’t know the other party. What people are talking about is rubbish. Do a check. PPA was our former party. I don’t know the owner of this party. I never discussed this party with my brother.

He is an adult. He is competent at making his own decisions. I’m not his father. He has his wife, he has his children, he has his family to make decisions and any decision he makes is his, not mine. I mean I’m in APC. I try to rally even at the party. They spoke to him, all of them. So, what do you expect me to do? I complained to the presidential candidate of our party. I don’t know what anybody expects me to do.

Senator, how would you assess your time in the Senate so far?

Well, first of all, I want to thank my party, the APC because they gave me the position. I never asked for that position. I was in the house one day in this house when former governor of Edo State, Adams Oshimhole, who was National Chairman of the party, called me and said ‘I’m coming to see you now. I’m by the Villa.’

He came and asked me, ‘we have this position. The party and the presidency have asked you to choose one.’ I said do I have time to think about it? He said yes. I said give me two or three days to think about it. So, I went to one of my friends, who was a Majority Leader of a party of the Senate before and I said these are the positions. Which one would you want me to take?

He said, ‘listen, I know you’re a very busy man. I know you fly like no other person. I know you. Your time is very tight.’ He said ‘don’t take this, take that.’ So, I went back to Governor Oshiomhole and I said, well let me have the Chief Whip. So, the person who nominated me was the party and the National Chairman and the President and Commander-in-Chief, President Muhammadu Buhari. They gave me that position. I never had to lobby anybody. I never asked for it. They gave it to me and this is why on the floor of the Senate, which you guys walked there and also know. I defend everything about our APC, about the party. The first interest is our party. The second interest is the Nigerian people.

Do you prioritize your party over the country?

No, no. I said the first interest about the Senate is the people I represent and the entire Nigerian people and the second is the interest of the party. The party comes first when we are taken into caucus, secondly because on the floor, they have the other political parties. We have to talk about the interests of our party.

Interest of Nigerians is superior to any other interest because when we are in the Senate, the interest of the party over the opposing party comes first.

In terms of lawmaking, yes, for Nigerian people, that comes first in anything we do because they have given us the opportunity to have ourselves. In terms of practical cause inside the Senate, my party comes first before the opposition party. So, we are there defending the cause of our party. No compromise and let me be honest with you, our party has never for one day given out a directive to vote here, vote there. We have voted according to our conscience -every senator in APC. I don’t know about the opposing party. Nobody has asked us to vote there or vote here. No, no! The National Chairman called us? No! The National Secretary has called us? No! NWC members have called us to vote there? My colleagues are there. You can ask them. They are there.

Would you like to be Senate President?

Well, it’s a very hard question because this is what I always ask people like you. Your colleagues have asked me before whether I would like to be President of Nigeria. I said ‘yes, if it’s zoned to the South-East.’ My answer to you is yes! The party is supreme. If the party zones it to the South-East, why not? You know, I’ll be very willing.

The reason for this question is that should your party win the presidential election in 2023, there would be redistribution of offices…

We will win. With the permutations, no one is holding us back.

Who will win, we will talk about the details in a short while, but the permutation is that if your party wins, is that the South-East is likely to produce a Senate President, and do you think you’re the number one person for that position?

I can never say that. We have Governor Hope Uzodimma; we have Governor Umahi. We have the party itself. We have the National Chairman of the party.

Mind you, also the Deputy National Chairman, South, comes from Enugu State.

So, we have the NWC. We have these people. It’s only the collective job of these people. If they say ‘yes, go and be,’ if it’s given to our zone because they can put anybody they like. So, whether I’m qualified or don’t qualify, the important thing is that we have two strong governors there. These governors are very strong in our party. They are very strong in their constituency. They are very strong in Nigeria. The National Chairman of the party is very strong on his own. So, for me, I think the interesting thing is that you’re open to the idea. You are open to the position. Oh! If it is given to me, I will take it but I’m not going to fight for it okay.