‘Blame overconfidence for PDP’s diminishing returns’

Abia State Governor, Dr Okezie Victor Ikpeazu, in this interview with LEO SOBECHI, x-rays the recent general elections, stressing that voters’ perception and technicalities of electoral process, rather than government performance shaped the elections. 

People look at PDP’s performance in the recent general elections in Abia State and claim that you dropped the ball. What is your take?
I would have loved my party to win, but the elections have come and gone. It now belongs in the past. The outcome of any election is a combination of many factors. One could be perception of the electorate and the other, the technicalities involved in the election.
     
I am proud to say that we didn’t head from the elections to the mortuary. Whether the verdict is a true reflection of the wishes of the people is a matter for another day. I love the fact that history and posterity are always there to judge and put records straight.
    
Be that as it may, I’m consoled by the fact that elections for everybody should be seen as a call to serve. If the opportunity does not come at the time you desire, you should find the courage to move forward and see whether the outcome will be better next time.
     

Your party still went to court contrary to your appeal in your congratulatory message to the Governor-elect. Did your party consult you before taking the decision to go to court?
My party did not consult me to seek my opinion. I say this because I volunteered my opinion and I spoke like a statesman. I’m convinced that those who win elections should be given the opportunity to work, because I was at the receiving end of a bitter three and half years of litigation. And I don’t want anybody to go through such an experience.
  
What puts spanner in the works is that even the supposed beneficiaries of my advice, the Labour Party, also went to court against the eleven members -elect of my party. So, I lost my foothold in advising the party not to go to court, they could ask me if I want them to sit by and watch the opponent have the upper hand. 
     
All of us should be able to offer what we desire. If I desire peace, I should be able to offer peace too. You can’t be looking for peace with a knife and gun and everything in your pocket at the same time. It doesn’t work that way. Incidentally, I’m not the gubernatorial candidate and I’m not the party. I still think that the characters that are involved in this; the candidates, both the victor and those who were not lucky, can talk to each other.

What is your reaction on the issues that played out after the announcement of the results, especially against the background of claims by the Returning officer for the election, Prof. Nnenna Otti, that she was bullied?
I wish I knew those who bullied her. I think she has been making too much noise out of nothing. The returning officer’s duty is essentially to tally results already collated from the wards through the local government and declare them. She can’t change results, because she has no right to do that unless she went ahead and did something like that.
   
But, her reactions have betrayed the fact that she was overly excited about something. When you come to that kind of position dispassionately, whatever be the outcome should not excite you. But, the victory dance she participated in and her statements which are akin to confessions have betrayed the fact that she came for a hatchet job.
     
It could be to reject or accept some results. I want the world to know that she is celebrating what she has no right to do. I have never met her before; I don’t have her telephone number, because I’m aware that if she came to do the right thing, she has no right to change anything. 
    
In fact, she has no right to even reject results, because those results were generated from the polling units and wards. Her celebration is unfortunate and unbecoming of somebody who is given that kind of responsibility at that level.

Are you not disturbed by the gifts she has received from some highly placed persons in the state, does this justify your fears that she may have been compromised?
You know that bribe can come before or after the event. If I tell you if you do this or if this is the outcome, this is what you get, it is an inducement. It is also an incentive to behave in a certain way. So, could this be a fulfilment of a promise that if this is the outcome, this is what will happen? I think it is unprecedented, I don’t know where this has happened in Nigeria before, and it has opened a new vista of inducement during election. You are my friend, and you are running for an election. I can tell the returning officer to do everything to announce my friend and I will give you something after. And when I keep my promise, it becomes inducement. It is very unfortunate.

Some people said you could have performed better, but for some aides who betrayed you. How much regret do you nurse about your eight years in office?
No, I’m satisfied with my stewardship, even in my relationship and disposition. I think I did what I needed to do in the circumstances. No two circumstances are the same, but I don’t have any regrets.
    
People are only dwelling on conjectures. If I’m to rate my commissioners, am I going to rate them based on their political performance or on the job they are supposed to do? If I rate them on the job they are supposed to do, in the following weeks, every commissioner will bring up what he or she has done. All of us aren’t wired with equal capacity.
     
So, I give allowance to those who are not capable of interpreting my vision of governance. I also give allowance to those who understand the vision, but are slow. I also give allowance to those who come clueless. The challenge of leadership is not in conceptualizing projects, but in connecting the projects and funnelling them towards an agenda that creates better life for the people.
   

What is your attitude to insinuations in some quarters that your administration would be subjected to a probe by the incoming government?
It is not a question of willingness it is something that will happen, whether I’m willing or not, it will happen. So, I’m very willing. I have served well and I have also been prudent. I’m prepared to submit myself to whatever queries that may arise because of my stewardship.
    
I’m bequeathing a very healthy state to the incoming administration. I have said that I have a facility that will enable him to start off. It is a facility of over 50 million Dollars to do 500 roads with 0.006 percent interest rate with a 10 years’ moratorium. This means he won’t pay one naira.
    
How healthier can a state be? What is more, I have done massive infrastructure renewal in Aba and most parts of the state. We did 750 school blocks with over 10,000 people employed. Abia is the most secure state. Security is working and infrastructure is upbeat.

Where is the road to the future leading you?
One of my biggest personal accomplishments is that I was able to complete a book on Biochemistry and Environmental Pollution. I have got reviews that there is no book like that as of today.  So, if I could write a book on a technical subject matter like environmental pollution; the molecular basis of environmental pollution, it means that I’m a man of many parts.
   

As a member of the G5 PDP Governors, would you say the ultimate outcome of the elections vindicated your disagreement with Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Dr. Iyorchia Ayu over the zoning of the party’s chairmanship position?
Within the G5 group, we are held together by our conviction that Nigeria needs our unity more than anything. And that Nigerians are very sensitive to ethnicity, religion and all kinds of things.
   
The last few years have brought many of those sensitivities to the fore. And there was a need to douse these sensitivities by trying to respect one another. Inclusiveness is what we need more than anything else.
   

Further, we said the founding fathers of our party alluded to zoning. We also tasted the water nationally. All the governors sat and agreed that we are going to support power shift to southern Nigeria since we had a president from the North. That it doesn’t mean that we don’t have people from the North that are qualified.
  
But, if we are responding to the sensitivities, we are responding to the inclusiveness that we need to do this. For me, when I attend a meeting and there are agreements made, I take it seriously. It was only after a while that some people said no, the exigencies and all that.
    
I also saw a few of my friends who agreed that this was the agreement. We told the chairman of our party if you will not zero in on zoning in the run up of our presidential primaries, what happens when we have a chairman and candidate from the same part of Nigeria? If the answer is yes, if the presidential candidate emerges from the North, what happens?
    
And the agreement was, I will resign or the chairman will come to the South. When the outcome threw up our presidential candidate, we couldn’t deny the presidential candidate. We said to the national chairman; give us something with which to campaign in the South, otherwise what will I say on the podium in Abia, where there is Mr. Peter Obi, who is from neighbouring Anambra state and is running in the election.