Former National Shairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance and federal lawmaker that represented Anambra Central Senatorial District, Senator Victor Umeh shares his thoughts on issues of national interest with Charles Ajunwa

Your party, APGA, has now produced three successive governors in Anambra State. That is a feat, considering the massive opposition you have faced. As somebody, who has been at the centre of the battle, how do you feel?

In the last gubernatorial election in Anambra State on November 6, 2021, I am very happy that despite the challenges that faced that election, we were able to win the election resoundingly. I was deeply involved in the mobilisation of the electorate to vote for APGA. I have always been in the forefront of working hard to ensure that APGA does not lose Anambra State because the party produced its first governor in its fold in Anambra State and anytime the party loses the governorship election, it would signal the end of the party. I am always desperate that APGA will ever remain alive, no matter the challenges that would be on our way. I will put all that I can muster as a human being in terms of influence and experience to support the party to win the election. Last election happened to be one that was very testy. In other words, it was knotty and we had to prepare ahead of time to put in a candidate that will win the election. There were scrambles in the beginning but we didn’t lose focus. We had our eyes on the ball. We were determined to field a candidate that would beat the other candidates in public reckoning. So, we got Professor Chukwuma Soludo to be our candidate. We stood behind him very strongly and of course, the messages we gave resonated with the people. He was actually seen as the best candidate among the lot. We are happy that in the end, we were able to overcome all the hurdles and he won the election. APGA is firmly in control in Anambra State. At least, for the next four years, that will make it the 20th year an APGA governor will be in office, if Soludo serves the next four years. We have done 16 years. Peter Obi did eight years and Willie Obiano did another eight years, and now, Soludo starting four years with a possible eight-year run in office. With that, I believe the party will continue to have hope to be able to expand its frontiers and getting to other areas but if we had lost the last election, it would have been a pipe dream to think about going to other places. With this victory that has come our way, we need to go back to the drawing board and work hard to take APGA beyond Anambra State. We have been in Imo but the former governor of Imo State, Rochas Okorocha misappropriated the victory we got there and frittered it away. We pray that if we break into other territories, that we will not suffer what Okorocha foisted on the party in 2013, when he went away from the party with our victory.

You talked about the challenges before the election. Initially there were doubts whether the election was going to hold with the IPOB issue. The governorship election was later conducted and it was described as one of the elections that had the brightest and best in Anambra. What was your winning strategy apart from having a roundly qualified candidate in the person of Prof. Chukwuma Soludo?

Our strategy was very simple; a consistent message. We had to continuously drum it to the ears of our people that since APGA came into Anambra State in 2006, through Governor Peter Obi and Willie Obiano, that the party has served the people of Anambra State faithfully and passionately. We have been able to drive developments in the state in various sectors. Peter Obi did well as a governor when he was with us but his case was that of somebody, who came to start afresh. The state had gone through a lot of decay before APGA emerged in 2006. Before that time, Chris Ngige, who did not win the election was declared winner in 2003 before we went to court. He tried to work for Anambra people. I will always give it to him, but the circumstances of his becoming governor couldn’t allow his efforts to endure. There were crisis between him and his godfathers. He was not settled to do any work until the court removed him. If he had stayed longer, he had the zeal to work for the good of the state but because he didn’t have the mandate of the people, we didn’t allow him to stay. We ensured that we removed him because democracy is about getting into government through the will of the people- use their votes to become whatever one wants to be in a democracy. It does not matter the great things one wants to do. If a mandate is stolen and one wants to do good things with it, it won’t go down well. We persisted and persevered in our legal struggle against him and we got him removed.

When Peter Obi came, he tried to cleanse the past and then turned the state in a new direction which APGA has sustained till the present day. Our people are very wise and discerning. They were able to go through the records of APGA’s stay in office and they easily agreed with us. One is that we returned peace to the state. Peter tried and laid a lot of foundation and his tenure ended. Somebody who came to lay foundation may not be able to erect things that every eye will see. We described his government as the one that laid the foundation for a greater Anambra State. He built the sub structure which is the foundation and by the time he was beginning to erect the superstructure which are things people will see, his tenure ended. So, in our campaign to get Obiano take over from him, we said that Peter Obi has built the sub structure and Obiano will now build the super structures. That is the consistency in movement. Because we promised continuity, Obiano did exactly that. He was able to do a lot of things people could see. Apart from security, which he made his major priority, he was able to foray into other areas and maintained some of the things Peter Obi did which was a healthy relationship between the government and the workforce. He continued to pay them their salaries, carried out general promotion of workers more than two times, workers became happy and they were never owed a dime. Obiano introduced payment of workers’ salaries on the 25th of every month. They computerized their salaries that once it is the 25th, workers get alert and he has maintained this for eight years. So, people who are there would remember history that there was a time they were not paid salaries, when they were owed many years of accumulated salaries. APGA never owed anybody under Peter Obi and Willie Obiano. It was a good point for APGA in our campaign. When the state became notoriously unsafe, Obiano came with a magic wand that drove criminals away from Anambra State and people started coming home to do their social things, bringing their investment nearer home again. Anambra became a beehive of activities one more time. People could come home again and do business and leave without molestation. It was also a major point in the campaign. Towards the end, he did what Napoleon Bonaparte could not do. He started an international cargo and passenger airport and he delivered within two years. His completion of the airport came at the heels of the election and people could not understand it was possible; even our opponents, who had said he would not be able to complete the airport were dumbfounded. They were criticising the airport, trying to demean the importance of the airport but the Anambra people both in the Diaspora and Nigeria were gladdened that such airport actually became a reality, and it started operations in December. Light aircraft first started coming, and bigger aircraft started coming this January. It is a place one cannot easily push APGA away in the consciousness of the people of Anambra State. We were talking to an electorate that was taking stock and they agreed with the things we were saying because they are seeing these things. I don’t know how an electorate would have been averse to letting APGA continue. That was why I gladly engaged them in all the various debates on television to pin down correctly the achievements of APGA in Anambra State. Nobody could wish it away. There is a saying in Igboland that says everybody likes to keep what is good rather than to let it go. The people flowed with us because we were pointing at the things we have done. They knew that a bird in hand is worth more than two in the bush. Others were making promises of what they would do but we were pointing at what we have done and what we are going to do if we were given the chance to continue. We came with a candidate that was well-prepared. Soludo has a brilliant manifesto and he was able to explain his manifesto to all and sundry during the campaigns. So, people reposed so much hope in his coming and that was why we went into the election, we won almost all the 21 local governments again. The challenges were stiff because other candidates did not go to bed. They tried to do all that they could muster to ensure they break the lead of APGA in the state, but it didn’t work. APC made a lot of noise; even they started buying APGA’s members to confuse the Nigerian public that APGA has collapsed and people have ported to APC. I dismissed such insinuations very strongly because I knew those things will not have any effect in the election and when the election came, it was a dismal outing for APC in Anambra State.

Did you at any time feel that Anambra was running the risk of falling into the hands of APC?

I didn’t feel that if there were credible elections but because there were potent threats that the elections will be manipulated and rigged, APC made a boast through their agents in Anambra that the election was already over. There was palpable anxiety in the state that the election will not be free and fair; that was when I became apprehensive and took on the authority in my press and television interviews that INEC must do the right thing and the government of Nigeria must allow credible elections to take place in Anambra. If in a credible election, APC wins, so be it. What I was convinced of was that in a credible election, APC will not win. They had nothing to campaign with. The environment was not conducive for them. The people, who would cast the votes, do not hold APC in good light. The agitation against the marginalisation of the Igbo people, the ordinary man on the street in Anambra State or in Igboland believes that APC has not taken care of our people in a measure that they deserved. So, everything was going against APC in the election but because they control the federal agencies and the apparatus, including people who will play some roles in the election, there was anxiety that they would rig the election. Their candidate had rigged the election before in Anambra State in 2007 when he was returned without getting any votes; when he came and was flouting it again that it is done, people became apprehensive. But our pressure has to fall in the right places and INEC saw to its responsibilities and followed public opinion to prepare for the election. They brought neutral people from the University of Calabar as against the touted people from the Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO). Remember, Hope Uzodinma was the driver of the APC challenge in Anambra State. We cried out and relevant authorities yielded to our cries and made sure the election was free and fair. The over 34,000 security agents that came did their job without hurting anybody. They mainly provided a serene environment for the election to take place and INEC was on top of their game. The security challenges that came ahead of the election were neutralized by the domination of Anambra State with a very strong contingent of policemen, soldiers, members of the DSS and Nigeria Security Corps, Anambra was completely shut down and people were allowed to go and cast their votes for the candidate of their choice. So, the election was saved by the combination of these efforts.

Is it a coincidence that the violence before the election stopped immediately after the election or were there some people in Anambra State that didn’t want the election to hold?

Remember, I said it clearly last year that the upsurge in the insecurity in Anambra was politically motivated. There were signs that some people were working to instill fear in the minds of the citizens, so that they would not be eager to participate in the election. You will also recall that when the insecurity became tenuous, the Attorney General and Minister of Justice called for a State of Emergency in Anambra State. What that would have meant is that Governor Obiano would have been kept aside and some arrangements would be in place for the election to take place. Those things were orchestrated to attempt to reduce the firm grip of APGA in Anambra State at that time. When the threat of a State of Emergency failed, the killings continued and I said that immediately after the election, those things would stop and immediately after the election, results were announced and those things faded away. It gives credence to that believe we had that the killings were politically motivated. Today, people can come to Anambra State and nobody will be molested. Life has returned to normal. When those things were at its peak, people were scared of coming to Anambra State, not even the electorate, or people of Anambra leaving the state could come for the election. But one week to the election, the grand forces have been mobilized from everywhere to Anambra. We had such number of policemen, security operatives and soldiers. So people who were scared of coming changed their mind and started coming in the week of the election.

Were you at any time convinced that IPOB was the one working against the election as alleged by the federal government?

One would not say categorically from where these things are coming. The case of Nnamdi Kanu’s incarceration and trial was a challenge because this is someone who has been crying out against the marginalisation of his people and he has been saying that because of the way the Igbo people had been treated in Nigeria negatively, that they don’t want to be part of Nigeria again. His arrest and detention during the process created tension in the South-east generally. It happened that Anambra had its own election during that period. It was a situation where the people were sympathetic to the plight of Nnamdi Kanu but constitutionally, there must be an election to fill in a new governor since the incumbent would be going. So, we were caught in that scenario. It took the deft management of the situation for that election to take place. Our religious leaders and traditional rulers tried to mediate because IPOB was saying no election while they also declared sit-at-home within the period. Sit-at-home in Igboland is like law now. Nobody dared to come out when IPOB said don’t come out. They declared sit-at-home in the week of the election. It was a big challenge. Our religious and traditional leaders had to get involved in the negotiation and then issued public and press statements calling for calm and appealing to all concerned to allow the election to take place. The sympathy the people had for Nnamdi Kanu’s struggle created its own problem. If IPOB didn’t call off the sit-at-home order in the week of the election, I can bet you that many people wouldn’t have participated in the election out of fear that IPOB would disrupt the election and secondly, because they share in the plight of Kanu. But through the negotiation by our people, religious and traditional leaders and members of the Igbo Diaspora communities were also involved, because we needed to redeem our land and the only way we saw it possible was by allowing election to take place. They reached out, negotiated and IPOB patriotically called-off the sit-at-home and directed people to participate in the election. Within 48 hours, the tension evaporated and people were mobilized to participate in the election.

Nnamdi Kanu is still in detention, some Igbo leaders say they are mediating but the President has said he would go through the full process of the court. What do you think is the best way out of his case?

I have always maintained that the federal government needs dialogue to resolve the problems with the IPOB and indeed the entire Igbo land. I have continued to canvas this position even when I was at the Senate and when I was yet to be in the Senate. I have always disagreed with the approach of the Federal Government of Nigeria in dealing with the agitation of Igbo people against the marginalisation they suffer in Nigeria.