2023: Vote buyers will be disappointed in Rivers State, says Beke

Prince Ugo Beke, the governorship candidate of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in Rivers State spoke to MUYIWA ADEYEMI on the poverty situation and living standard of people in the state; and how to tame excesses of the ruling party come 2023.

What is the strength of your party in Rivers State considering the fact that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has controlled the state since 1999?
You cannot judge what happened since 1999 to what would happen in 2023. Every Nigerian believes that whatever took place between 1999 and 2022 was a mere contraption of democracy because people were writing and announcing results, even in some areas where the opposition parties were preponderant in terms of votes, they were usually shortchanged. I give you an example, in 2011, Celestine Omehia versus Rotimi Amaechi, it was publicly believed that Omehia of APGA won that election but it was stolen.

I was part of that system because by 1999 when the PDP was formed in Rivers State, all these names you are mentioning were not in the PDP. They came to the PDP later; they were not there during the formation, late Waziri Muhammed and myself were the two youngest Nigerians that participated in the formation of the PDP. Dr. Peter Odili was in ANPP; Sergent Awuse in ANPP. All the heavy weights were not there, apart from people like Francis Ellah, Graham Douglas and few others. We know the ills of PDP.

But Nigerians have agreed today that enough is enough and that they are tired of result writing and announcement. Nigerians also do not believe in the incumbency factor because it is all fake because the power of incumbency has always centered on result writing, bribery and corruption.

God is about to do something new in this country in 2023 and all the old things would pass away. People that have stolen money to buy votes will be disappointed because people will vote their conscience. I can assure you that.

People will vote for me because they believe I have the competence, character and content to deliver good service and dividends of democracy to them in 2023 after I must have been sworn in as the governor of Rivers State.

Are you not intimidated by awards Governor Nyesom Wike is garnering all over the place, including from the Federal Government for infrastructure development, do you see any other party defeating PDP in 2023?

Let me draw an analogy here, a lot of degree certificates from Nigeria today are not accepted globally. They are not reckoned with because the standard has fallen.

Do you honestly think that these people, including the one in Lagos are truly working? What are the signature projects? I listened to the news recently and they said Lagos is rated at the bottom as one of the worst cities in the world, depending on the yardstick you are using to measure it. If you say Rivers State is performing, in terms of infrastructural development, we are still below three percent.

How has Wike performed in the 23 local governments of Rivers State? Everything is dead. The economy of Rivers State is dead. Trans Amadi where my father owned one of the largest industries is dead. Michelin has left and many others. Poverty rate in Rivers State is over 95 percent.

What is the infrastructural development they are talking about; from one side of Aba road to the other side of Aba Road. That is below three percent of the entire state; the entire state with a voting population of 3.7 million, people say unemployment rate is 45 percent in the state, but I do not agree with that.

I think it is about 80 percent because nothing really is happening in Rivers State. That is why you see that there are more political jobbers in the state; there are many criminals and those into kidnapping because there are no jobs. No man was born a criminal; it is the lack of performance of government that turned many into criminals. So, if Rivers State is really working, you cannot have that high level of poverty.

Flooding just happened in Rivers State, go there and see the level of health hazards. Life expectancy in Rivers is below 45 years old. One of the reasons is because of environmental pollution owing to breaking of pipes and soot. If the state is working, will you have people go and do something they know is unlawful?

Let Nigerians tell themselves the truth, it is not just about bandying words. Those days when M. I. Okpara was the Premier of Eastern Nigeria, when Diete Spiff was military administrator, when Okilo who was my father’s friend performed and opened up Rivers State, even the areas called Bayelsa today and those different divisions, nobody called anybody to come and commission projects and drag poor masses out. All these things are signs of bad governance. We must tell ourselves the honest truth. Even at the national level, there is failure at the highest level.

I happened to have been one of those who wrote this country’s African Peer Review Mechanism report that talks about four thematic areas of governance. I realised the level of failure and that most of the policies have never been implemented. Nigeria has the best policies but they are never implemented. I can mention some of them; most of them due to nepotism; most abandoned because you have policies overlapping.

Now if you look at Rivers State, that is why I said there had been total failure of governance.

You cannot govern a place without a policy manual. You should have a project manual so that, you see the abandoned projects and you model it to global standard. You cannot just abandon a housing estate for years and you are doing your own thing. There is a sports centre that Diete Spiff built and it has been abandoned; no government is looking at it. Oyakhilome came with a fantastic programme of school to land in Ogoni; it has been abandoned.

Like I said, Michelin and all the companies in Trans Amadi have left. Trans Amadi used to be the second largest industrial layout in Africa and not in Nigeria. It was second to the one in Ikeja. At that time, the Eastern region economy was the fastest growing economy in Africa. That is why I talk about signature projects; show me your signature projects.

Can you domesticate and cascade your policies from top to down? That is how it is supposed to work, we need to get the people involved. The poor masses are only doing what the leadership is controlling them to do. Why should I call out one million man march of people who have not eaten; people we have all criminalised in the past 24 years. Where are we going? We should tell ourselves the honest truth. Our education system for instance is completely dead. That is why I said I have all the policies that could make Rivers State to compete with Dubai.

Why should an average Rivers person vote for you?
Every politics is local. The perception of Peter Obi by the majority of the younger people are matching what he did in Anambra State to what he is saying he will do when elected in 2023. For me, every person that comes from Rivers State sees me as somebody who has content, character and competence. They are looking at me from my background.

That here is a rich man’s son who has always associated with the masses, poor persons and who has always come up with ideas to enhance the lives of the less privileged and the physically challenged. Every birthday, I celebrate it with the physically challenged. Everything I have done in life, I have done it with the less privileged. I do not have what Obi has; not that I was not born into it; probably my father was richer but I do not believe in the primitive accumulation of wealth.

As it comes to my pocket, I give out and every Rivers person will attest to that. When you talk about integrity and truth, every Rivers person will attest to that. When you look at the candidates they are parading, every Rivers person knows that I am far ahead of them. Every Rivers person believes that this is a square peg in a square hole. But the only thing they always say is, Wike has plenty money to buy votes.

Where am I going to find money to compete with the PDP? But I keep saying to the poor people, they have been giving you these peanuts and stealing everything and criminalising you for 24 years, when will you learn your lessons. They would tell me that now that we have learnt our lessons, we would vote for you. It is on that strength that I believe I would be governor of Rivers State next year by the special grace of God.

The presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi was in Rivers State and Wike promised to give him logistic support, but told him point blank that the PDP will win the state. What is your reaction and how formidable is the APGA structure in the 23 local governments of Rivers State?
We are still looking at the relationship between the PDP and LP in Rivers State. This is politics but the picture I gathered is that the candidate of the PDP is very weak. He does not have my kind of exposure politically, intellectually and economically. Now, if the PDP would buy votes, the masses are being taught to collect money and vote their conscience. What I also want to let you know is that we also have to match what Wike parades with my personality.

Wike, Amaechi and myself are from Ikwere but one had always had a better pedigree. When people look at my lifestyle and knowing that I am coming from about eight generation and they are just coming from the first generation, that would influence how people would vote. The voters would say, we can collect this money but this man, we know him and we know his grandfather and we know his content.

They know that I do not believe in primitive accumulation of wealth. So, if people can do that for Peter Obi who is even much richer than me, they can do it for me too; they see me as the Prince of the masses, I think that is my selling point. I still believe that Nigerians know what they want.

On the structure, like I said this is not the first outing of APGA in the state. The truth is that even when we were in PDP, the APC was not the opposition party. APGA was the opposition party and I can give you the demographics. It has always been that the Ikwere people command almost 60 percent of the voting strength, it is actually about 67 percent.

The next largest ethnic group in the state are the Igbos. I am talking about the Igbo who live in Rivers State. They have over 20 percent of the voting strength. So, APGA is perceived to be an Igbo party. When Omehia contested in 2011, he was perceived to be an Ikwere son who was unjustly treated. That is why I earlier said that I believe Omehia actually won that election.

Omehia was loved and he had 80 percent votes from his Ikwere extraction and had almost 90 percent of the Igbo votes in Rivers State. Yet the results were written against him. I come from a more prominent and well-known family. My younger brother is the chairman of APC in the state. My elder brother is with the PDP; so you can see how versatile and strong my family is in terms of political capacity.