Friday Nwosu, a lawyer and politician, is the National Welfare Secretary of the ruling All Progressives Congress. Nwosu was a gubernatorial aspirant in Abia State in the People’s Democratic Party before dumping the party and pitching his tent with the APC. In this interview with BENEDICT NWACHUKWU, he spoke about the intention of APC South East stakeholders to ensure the party’s victory in more states’ governorship elections and turn the entire region into a stronghold of the party. Excerpts:
The 2023 general elections are just about seven months away, what are the chances of your party as an opposition party in your state, Abia?
At the national level, my party is the ruling party. We have a very good chance to repeat the electoral victory in 2023. If you also talk about my state Abia, I will tell you that we also have very high prospects to win the election in Abia State with Ikechi Emenike as the governorship candidate of the party. We also have other prominent people who are going to campaign to ensure victory for the party; of course including my humble self. I also have some level of popularity in Abia State and now that I am in APC. Before now I have run for the governorship of the state under the People’s Democratic Party. I struggled to get the nomination ticket in 2014 but couldn’t get it, I struggled for it up to the Supreme Court but I eventually lost. Again in 2019, when I believe I should have unseated the serving governor, who was not and is still not doing anything meaningful, some people denied me the ticket and gave it to somebody who people believed sold the ticket to the PDP and got money for himself. But this time around, because of Emenike, who is somebody we know will not sell the party ticket given to him; he will run the election diligently and by the grace of god, we have bright huge chances of winning.
But the PDP is still the ruling party in the state and still has the power of incumbency which can help it to win the election, what is your reaction to that?
Yes, the PDP is the ruling party but Abia people will not look the way of the PDP because they have seen a lot of evils in government. The incompetence and nonperformance of the present PDP government in Abia State are very glaring for everybody to see. So, Abia people normally want to see a change. The present administration in Abia State has taken mediocrity to another level; to the extent that what is now being considered as development is the presence of an eatery like Chicken Republic or Dominion Pizza. They will boldly tell those who clamour for development in Aba that there are now some of these eateries in the city. I tell you that the outgoing governor, my brother Okezie Ikpeazu, has not even been able to repair the road of 35 kilometres from Ogbo Hill through his own village, past my own village, then the village of the senator and the village of all of us up to his own village which is just about 10 kilometres from Aba, he has not been able to repair that road almost eight years in office.
That is a clear example of the incompetence and nonperformance of the PDP in Abia State. Normally, the people with this scenario will deserve a change.
“The incompetence and nonperformance of the present PDP government in Abia State are very glaring for everybody to see. So, Abia people normally, want to see a change. The present administration in Abia state has taken mediocrity to another level”
It is good that Abia people have identified their problems that the PDP government has not been performing, and the APC stands a chance, is that what you are saying?
Yes exactly! They have performed very abysmally and the people are ready for a positive change which the APC is ready to provide.
But your party had some squabbles in Abia State concerning the governorship ticket, has that been settled? Secondly, what exactly do you think the APC has to offer to Abia State in terms of governance that will make them look away from the PDP?
The right person that is supposed to answer that question is Chief Emenike. He is the person who has the governorship nomination. If you had asked me when I had the ticket in 2015 and 2019 when I was still in the race, I would have answered you, but now I am not in the race and cannot answer what the candidate has in stock for the state.
But what is it that the APC as a political party has that can make the people vote their candidate against the candidate of the PDP? As a national officer, what will your party do to make the Abia voters ignore the ruling PDP for the opposition APC?
What we have is our determination to do things right, to do things better than they have been done since the PDP administration. Our determination is to take government and governance as a serious thing and not a joking matter. Life has been reduced to nothingness in Abia State and the people are determined to do something better.
Is the APC a united force going into the election in Abia State?
The squabbles that existed have been settled in the first place because the party has organised its primary elections and nominated a candidate. There are no two nominations for the governorship candidate, there is only one and that is Chief Ikechi Emenike. As you can see, there may not be, if we’re two million or one million party members in Abia State. There is no time you call for a meeting or a plebiscite and out of one million, everybody will agree on one thing. That you have up to 500,000 party members and about 450,000 or 470,000 have agreed to work together, and the other five or ten thousand people say they do not agree, does it make the party not to be united? It doesn’t. So, you cannot have one hundred per cent unity in the party. So, if the unity perspective of the party in the state is up to 75% to 90%, I can say the party is united. The leader of the other faction at that time, Senator Chris Adighijie, is now the Chairman of the reconciliation committee. One of our leaders, Nkiru Onyejiocha is now the Secretary. And we are all working together to bring as many people that will agree to work for the success of the party to come. There are a lot of things to do, a lot of functions to perform if and when our party wins.
Let’s increase the scope a little bit to the South East. You are controlling two states in the region going into the election and the region has an illustrious son who is in an opposition party for the presidency. What do you think?
Which illustrious son?
Mr. Peter Obi, of course
I don’t think he’s the only person contesting for something from the region.
He is not the only but you and I know that he’s more prominent than the rest of the region. So, what do you think are the chances of APC, how do you plan to capture the remaining three states from the region?
I will speak about Abia first. We are doing everything, hoping to God that we, APC with our candidate, will win the election. I don’t know what the Labour Party is doing to win. I was in Owerri last week Saturday, in the South East APC stakeholders meeting and it’s our preaching that we should align ourselves, and I have to say so authoritatively now that our Igbo people should stop politics of sentiment and align ourselves with where things are being distributed. Do you understand me? If our people believe the Labour Party is where His Excellency Peter Obi will win, I’m an APC leader. I will preach APC, I will convince my people, try my best to convince my people by telling them, let us follow where things are, let us not continue agitating. Let us do our contribution where the government may emerge so that we can deliver and demand at the appropriate time. It’s one of my burning desires to make sure that the President did not only win 25 per cent, in my state and in the South East but that we should win additional states in the South East so that next time when somebody says you are this you are that, we will say, you are talking rubbish. We delivered APC. What are you talking about? I want to be able to tell that person who would say, shut up, you don’t have your facts. We mustn’t leave the country. The war was over 50-something years ago. We mustn’t be suffering from the mentality of civil war. Civil war has been fought and we lost. We came back to Nigeria and 19 years after the civil war, we became Vice President of this country. We should have built on that. Join other people in the country to struggle for power the best way we can. I don’t want us to pity ourselves. This one Peter Obi, that one Peter Obi, I wish him well but I am in APC and I want APC to win as many states as possible in the South East.
Finally, you said you had a meeting in Owerri with the APC South East stakeholders. What was the outcome of the meeting?
What happened was that we as APC people must work hard to make sure that the South East delivers its APC candidates. To ensure that the South East produces as many APC governors as possible, as many senators as possible, as many House of Representatives members as possible, as many state Houses of Assembly members of APC as possible. By that, we will have major roles to play in national politics.
