In this Interview with JOHN ALECHENU,
a former Minister of Health, Prof. A.B.C Nwosu, speaks on the Nigerian
Civil War, the life of late Biafran warlord, Dim Chukwuemeka
Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the proposed national conference, the PDP crisis and
sundry other issues
This is 53 years after independence. Can you assess Nigeria’s progress in social, political and infrastructural development?
If you look at certain things that are
on the ground, you will say that we have made progress. But for me, the
problem has always been human development and our fire brigade approach.
Administrations in the past anticipated growth; in 1953, seven years
before independence, they built Government Secondary School, Afikpo
where I went to. And a year later, they found they had none for girls;
so, they built one. They anticipated for the population and tried to
recreate what was there. We had CKC, and others. But sadly, we have not
added to these things. We should have anticipated the growth.
What could be responsible for the
seeming deterioration in governance and leadership in the country?
Would you blame this on military incursion into governance as many have
done?
I have a strange attitude to the
military, which is unlike others. I judge every administration on its
own. For example, it was the military that built the Third Mainland
Bridge. Since 1999, why haven’t a civilian government done a forth
mainland bridge or any? So, it’s not the military. It was the military
that did the fuel depots, it was the military that did the Federal Unity
Colleges. I don’t have a dichotomy between military and civilian
governments, maybe because of the school I attended. Government
Secondary School, Afikpo had a cadet unit, so many who made Division 1
opted for the Army, the same with Umuahia, many who went to schools that
had cadet units made Division 1 and opted for the Army. It is an
individual thing but what I think is responsible was captured properly
in two novels of Chinua Achebe, ‘No Longer at Ease’ where Obi Okonkwo,
brilliant, trained by the community came and got obsessed with the perks
of the civil service instead of thinking about how the community that
trained him could be mobilised to be lifted up. He was thinking of his
cars, his Government Reserved Area quarters and in the end, he got
jailed for taking two pounds bribe. It was that early that we lost the
spirit of public service. In the second book, “Anthills on the
Savannah,” he had completely lost interest in the military. He looked at
the military, and the civilian regimes, whose ills the military came
to correct, he found no difference. In fact, he found that the military
was worse and he made a profound statement that ‘those who make plans
for us only make plans for themselves and their families.’
If we are to get back the spirit of
public service into public officials such as (Nnamdi)Azikiwe, late
Michael Okpara, Sardauna and the wonderful Prime Minister we had in the
person of the late Tafawa Balewa, if we get that type of spirit back
into the people, who lead us, it will be a good start.
South-East PDP governors recently
endorsed President Goodluck Jonathan for a second term and some other
Igbo groups have done so. What has happened to the aspiration for Igbo
presidency? Will there ever be an Igbo man in the Aso Rock and when?
I neither belong to the South-East PDP
governors forum nor to any of those groups that you have referred to.
More importantly, President Jonathan has not declared that he is
running. As for the Igbo becoming President, it used to be a make or
break point for me, it is not any longer. What I want is a nation where
there is a level-playing field. I believe in restructuring this country
in a way that it will give every ethnic nationality a sense of
belonging so that each ethnic group has a chance to produce the
President.
Since Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu died, there has been no clear leadership or unity of the Igbo. Why is it so?
Even the late Dim, never considered
himself as an Igbo leader; if you called him an Igbo leader, he would
just chuckle. Don’t get me wrong, he enjoyed the respect and adulation
he got from his people. If you saw the way he lived his life among
Ndi’igbo, everybody is trying to recreate those attributes that made him
so loved by his people. Leaders emerge; leaders are not crowned in Igbo
land. By their fruits you shall known them. The greatest unity the
Ndi’igbo had was from 1966 to 1970.
Can you tell us your civil war experience. Did Ojukwu conscript you to fight during the war?
No person of my age was conscripted. We
desired to join the Biafran Army, we did not fear the military front, we
did not fear to die and that was what made the war last as long as it
did. If Ojukwu didn’t declare that war at the time he did, we would have
killed him. In my set in the Biafran School of Infantry, I was
commissioned the same day with Ojo Maduekwe, he wasn’t conscripted. I
was commissioned the same day with Joseph Okonkwo, the first Peoples
Democratic Party Chairman in Anambra State, he wasn’t conscripted and so
many. In fact, if you were turned down, you agonised you didn’t take
part. We didn’t regret dying, that was a war we didn’t regret any wound
we got. And I had serious wounds in 1968, which I’ve carried till
today.
Looking back now, would you say that as a nation we have learnt lessons from that sad episode?
Definitely, we have learnt lessons. To
us, the issue was not a matter of Biafra; it was a matter of security of
lives and property. It was also a traumatic psychological experience
for us to feel unwanted by brethren and by societies where we wanted to
belong. In typical Igbo fashion, we said to ourselves that if people
rejected us, we should not reject ourselves. I think we’ve learnt that
lesson now and we are all over Nigeria and even the killings that happen
now, only a few are targeted at us. Many are collateral damage. In
1966, it was definite pogrom. We’ve learnt the lesson that you can’t
have pogrom and expect to be one country, if that is one lesson we have
learnt, I think we have learnt something.
You were close to Ojukwu, tell us some things about him that many people do not know.
I thank God that I was privileged to
have known him for as long as I knew him. I had admired him as a young
man. Two things about Ojukwu that the world may not know: He was strong
physically, he was strong emotionally. In the language of young people,
he was the one person I wanted most to chill with. There are two things
he told me: The decision to declare war was the most agonising time of
his life, he spent time alone in his office clutching his rosary, this
is not the attitude of somebody who wanted to be emperor from the word
go. The second thing that he told me was that he could never get out of
his system the picture of those people who were killed after he had
asked everyone who fled the North, to go back. If those people, who had
come to safety, went back and died in gruesome circumstances, he was
always praying to God to forgive him. If you entered his study, you will
see this picture of a huge Igbo man who was beheaded and his body sent
down to the East by train.
He had people like Uche Chukwumerije,
the late Chuba Okadigbo, Ambassador George Obiozor and others around
him. What came out was not Ojukwu’s view, what came out was superior
argument but in this superior argument, you saw that Ojukwu was a man of
great intellectual capacity. I can see why those who didn’t have that
kind of intellect will feel threatened. One other thing during the war
that people didn’t know was that Ojukwu always slept with his boots on;
so, whenever there was crisis, Ojukwu needed just five minutes to move
out and to get to the point of the crisis. He wasn’t afraid of a fight.
Sometimes, we thought he had a death wish, he wasn’t afraid of bullets
and mortars.
Would you then describe him as suicidal?
Ah, you could say so. Fleeing Biafra was
a collective decision. Let me put it this way, If Ojukwu had been
captured and humiliated by remaining as he wanted to remain, it would
have dealt an irreparable damage on the Igbo psyche. Anybody who knew
the details of the Ugwuta operation will know that Ojukwu was suicidal.
Since the end of the civil war,
the Igbo claim to be the target of victimisation, a recent one being the
deportation of some Igbo people from Lagos. What can be done to stem
this trend?
That was completely inexplicable. Up
till now, I cannot understand it. I also don’t think Governor Babatunde
Fashola gave an apology, Fashola said he was sorry, that he was
misunderstood by people, he was sorry that he was misunderstood, he
should have said he was sorry for what he did. Fashola is a person who
gave us the greatest respect when we went to see him as members of the
burial committee for Ojukwu. I think he must do more than he has already
done. What people feel is that that was not an apology, that it was a
contrived thing not to damage the campaign of Chris Ngige (the All
Progressives Congress candidate in Anambra governorship election).
Fashola is a person we as Igbo people love; we have the greatest respect
for him. The family and Igbo families are so interwoven. It was Asiwaju
(former Lagos Governor, Bola tinubu) that appointed Joe Igbokwe (APC’s
spokesman in Lagos). What Fashola did frightened many of us and he needs
to go further than what he has done, it is almost like Okonkwo killing
Ikemefuna who called him father. I think I will stop here because I like
him very much, if I didn’t like him, I would have said a few things.
What do you think should be the
outcome of the proposed National Conference? Should the Igbo seek
secession, the way they wanted Biafra?
It amuses me when Nigerians say the Igbo
sought Biafra. The Igbo did not seek Biafra. If the Igbo sought Biafra,
there would have been massive support for the Movement for the
Actulisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra. The Igbo felt rejected
and thrown out by Nigeria and being a proud people, said to Nigeria we
are capable of existing by ourselves and we will call ourselves the
Republic of Biafra and when in 1970 it ended, it ended. So, the issue of
secession is completely out of the question. What the Igbo want are
exactly those things which you look for in a normal association with
your fellow citizens. Treat me as you treat yourself, if you have a law,
let that law apply equally to you and to me, if you have a right to be
President, I also should have a right to be President, this is what the
Igbo are looking for. The Igbo don’t want to be excluded or
marginalised, they want to exercise their full citizenship rights as
Nigerians. The people who should bear the greater blame for secession
are the people who mutilated Aburi because there would have been no
Biafra. If you found that there were 10 agreements in Aburi and you
could only implement four, why didn’t they implement four and then
consult Ojukwu again and said look, these other six, we have problems
with it, can we renegotiate? There would have been no Biafra. You
reached a ten-point agreement, signed them as men of honour and got back
and thought you couldn’t implement them and instead of getting back to
the person so that you can review those agreements, you went ahead,
buoyed up by your power, to crush these little ants in 24 hours. That
was exactly what led to the war.
From your point of view, will the Igbo support resource control or rotational presidency?
It is not a matter of support. These two
issues were championed by the Igbo. The resource control that is being
enjoyed now by the South-South was championed by the Igbo and those who
were at the Abacha Constitutional Conference knew that.
These are things that we feel seriously
about. These two issues are matters we must resolve in the interest of
Nigeria and I cannot see the Igbo not supporting them.
Resident doctors are on strike
again. As health minister under Obasanjo, why did you fix some of these
issues in our health sector that are leading to doctors strikes?
These things are dynamic. Society is
dynamic, the problems that I faced as health minister are not the same
problems as the current health minister is facing. In fact, in my own
time, I even got a prize from resident doctors. They honoured me and we
had peace for the duration that I was there. The people that gave me
problem for the period that I was there were nurses and the other
workers but we resolved the issues. I went into office with a five-point
agenda. I initiated the anti-retroviral drugs in Nigeria, we had health
insurance. We had war on fake drugs and when I recommended Dr. Dora
Akunyili, I was even accused that she was from Anambra and I am from
Anambra and the drug counterfeiters were also predominantly from
Anambra. Thank God she delivered.
What exactly is the problem with
our health sector? Why do government officials and former government
officials like you keep going abroad for medical treatment?
I don’t go abroad for medical
treatment. But when I go outside, I take the opportunity of a second
opinion. The main reason is that it is expensive but I go to Abuja
Clinics here, I like Abuja clinics. I like the endocrinologist when I
have their tests, when I travel outside in London, I go and confirm and
find that their tests are accurate. When I go to stay with my brother
who is also a Professor of Medicine in the United States, we confirm
that their tests are accurate. So, I don’t really have to go outside. I
don’t know that I have ever slept in a hospital outside Nigeria but I do
my tests.
What is your view on the current ASUU strike? Who should shift ground ASUU or Federal Government?
Both should shift ground. What
government has done, which is take inventory and find that the
universities are in decay, is a beginning. We had a system; government
should try and go back to that university system. I was there; it was
the frustration that made me to leave. ASUU, what percentage of members
have doctorate degrees? Which of their certificates will stand scrutiny?
They don’t want to retire until they reach 90, haven’t they heard of
Professor Emeritus if you are good? How many of them have publications
in learned journals? How many of them really teach, is it handouts? In
1975 when I came back to teach at the University of Nigeria, we were at
least 50 young people about 30, years of age who had PHDs from the most
reputable universities in the world. What is the quality of the
lecturers and the professors you now have? How many of them are being
invited? The current university lecturers should do what they are
supposed to do and raise themselves to the standard of excellence and
the university should provide research grants and facilities that will
help them to do that.
As a founding member of PDP, do you support the so-called revolution being carried out by the rebel governors of the New PDP?
I am amused by it. Once upon a time,
when the PDP was going funny, we formed a group, if you remember, I was
the keynote speaker and I said there was nothing in the PDP constitution
that allows for a PDP Governors’ Forum, PDP governors had pocketed the
party. They were now determining who would go for Senate, who would go
for this or that. Of course, they fought us, everybody was depended on
the money the governors could offer, we got expelled, nine of us. We
preached internal democracy, we should give the people of Nigeria who
they want. We said we should be having something like PDP convention not
just to endorse candidates. It was at such a Democratic Party
convention in the United States that threw up brilliant people like
Barrack Obama, why can’t we have such? We were thrown away including
former Presidents of the Senate, Speakers of the House of Reps. I don’t
know what to make of this thing (New PDP)? What is their agenda? I
remember it was the same Abubakar Baraje and those people running about
today that called us names and threw us out. It was this (President)
Jonathan who called us back.
In your opinion, do you think President Jonathan should run for a second term in 2015? Does he deserve a second term?
We should leave President Jonathan to
decide. I personally felt insulted when governors went to him to say he
should not run, who among them will brook it in their states? The
institution of the Presidency deserves the respect of every one of us. I
say this with all seriousness because you can’t ridicule what you
ultimately want to aspire to. What will then happen when you occupy the
office and some people come and insult you and you take precipitated
action?
News-Portal Nigeria (c) 2013
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