From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
Labour Party (LP) chieftain and National Secretary of the Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP), Chief Peter Ameh, has built himself into a big political brand, having distinguished himself in party administration and contributions to the growth of Nigeria’s democratic journey over the years.
Ameh spoke to Sunday Sun in Abuja on a wide range of issues, including why Peter Obi should not leave LP despite the crisis ravaging the party, how APC has become a bigger failure than PDP, and the difficulties President Bola Tinubu will still encounter to retain his seat beyond the 2027 presidential election.
He also expressed concerns over the failure of the immediate past governor of Kogi State, Yahaya Bello, emphasising that he disappointed God that gave him the position miraculously, Nigerian and Kogi youths.
In your wildest imagination, did you expect that LP will follow this trajectory?
I have really contributed to LP over the years and nobody can deny that. Whether the current chairman or the past ones, nobody can deny my contribution or what I have done to stabilise LP before the current party leader, Peter Obi actually changed the face of the party. He is the man who has given life and trajectory to the party to be at par with even parties like the PDP and APC. In the eyes of the public, LP is actually greater because it is not driven by factors and strong men like governors, and lawmakers that have been in government. LP is driven by the masses that constitute the bulk of our democracy because when you have them behind you, you become more of a powerful force to determine the cause and direction of the ship of state. So, that part is where LP is totally different, even if you want to rate them at par they are the three leading political parties in Nigeria, but LP is higher because when you have the support of the people, you actually have this opportunity. So, what is happening to LP did not come to me as a surprise.
Why do they want to balkanise LP?
I think most of the problems we have are more internal because the friction within the party was not properly handled and managed. When you say that you have so much power, you end up breaking what is in your hand. If you see yourself as the leader and hold the power so tight, that means breaking whatever is in your hand, but with intra-party dialogue model, communicate often, and discuss with the lower, the middle, the equal class of people and critical stakeholders you discuss with and carry along, there will be less crisis. Inclusivity is what drives party politics. People want to be seen to be participating in the process; people want their voices to be heard. They want to be respected for whatever opinions or views that they hold. But when the leaders start to feel that other people’s views and opinions don’t matter, then there will be clashes. People will feel that they should define a new trajectory for a party. A party is in perpetual secession and an entity that stands on its own. It has a life of its own that even if everybody resigns today from the LP, it still remains a party. Nobody is going to say that LP revolves around them. We must give it to Peter Obi for doing what is impossible in the history of our political system. I have been in party politics for quite some time now where we formed lots of coalitions. In 2019, we formed CUPP, where Olagunsoye Oyelola was the chairman and I the secretary up till now. It is not really easy, but the character Peter Obi brought integrity, personality, and transparency that wished Nigeria well, his industrialisation idea of consuming what we produce and consumption to production levels are factors that actually stood him out. Nigerians wanted a place to pour all they wanted into the new Nigeria of their dream, they saw a man who fit into those qualities and didn’t care. LP was clearly the vehicle, but it was Peter Obi that was actually the focus and that gave LP that name because there was no independent candidacy in Nigeria. LP has so much goodwill and it is breaking the hearts of many people that our goodwill is trying to be pushed to the dustbin of history. Emergency decisions must be taken and critical stakeholders must stand up, lock ourselves in a room and speak the truth to themselves, be frank with the truth, and then find a solution to this problem and solve it. We can’t solve it by speaking behind, sycophancy, back-biting and gossiping. It cannot solve this problem. This problem is beyond what people will be using the telephone to converse and talk. Everybody has their opinion. Abure has his over what is making him angry. People also have their opinions on why Abure should go. We need to sit down, hear from Abure, every stakeholder, and then have a final solution to this problem, not because of Peter Obi alone, and politicians, but because of the future of our dear country. If you allow these two parties that have held our people hostage, 16 years for PDP, and APC will complete its 16 years very soon. They have nothing to show for it. They are in the same level of failure. APC is even worse than the PDP, but we can compare the two as failed platforms. What it means is that we don’t have anything to compete with. The best option is to give Nigeria that true platform that can actually be totally different from the PDP and APC.
Can you substantiate your claim that APC is a bigger failure than PDP?
Of course, APC has really failed. We have 133 million people in multi-dimension poverty. We have about 20 million out of school children. There is no solution to that; there is no infrastructure to say that we have modern international schools to reckon with apart from what they met on ground. APC is not running a production economy. What they do is go about sharing tokenism. They are still executing the same failed political system and model that has never worked. They give out bags of rice and share N2 billion to state governors to distribute among their citizens as palliatives. Sometimes, it won’t get to the targeted beneficiaries and even if they get to them, five bags of rice will never take anybody out of poverty. I have not seen any economic blueprint that will push Nigeria into industrialisation. They have even made the future of Nigeria bleaker than what we saw with the PDP administration. What area can you say that the APC has helped the country? Even recently, the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission approved a new electricity tariff. PDP was even more proactive in wanting to privatise in line with its private-driven economy. They wanted to do something for the economic system of Nigeria. What is President Tinubu doing other than travelling from one country to the other? Our debt to GDP ratio today is alarming. We use some percentage of our generated revenue to service debt. It was APC that brought us to that level. I don’t see anything they are doing. There is no sincerity of purpose or the intention to take Nigerians out of poverty. Unless they want to prove to me otherwise, the incompetence of the system under APC is at an extreme level.
What fate will befall Peter Obi with the crisis ravaging LP?
There is no negative fate befalling him because Peter Obi is a brand. He has made a name for himself, but I don’t believe he should look at another party as an option. I know people will urge him to register a political party or a movement. But Nigeria is not the kind of country that you take people for granted. They want to see you solve problems, and I think that Peter Obi is at a crossroads. Yes, there are so many crises in the party right now and he won’t want to be seen as trying to remove Abure or something of that nature. But the future to lead this country out of this debacle and quagmire we found ourselves lies in the political party itself. Since we don’t have independent candidacy, without a reformed political system, and a reformed political party, there will not be marginal improvement. For example, if the 18 political parties field armed robbers as their candidates during the general election, whoever emerges among them, will still end up as elected armed robber to rule the country. It is the internal processes within the political party that determine what the buyer gets as a by-product of what the political parties produce on the ballot. Because if the parties produce 18 intelligent candidates even for the not well-informed citizens, and they vote for one of them, they will still make a better choice. Political parties are a very critical unit to determine who governs us or the quality of the persons that should appear on the ballot box. It is necessary that Peter Obi sits with his team and looks at this holistically like he has done. He has put in a lot of interventions that people don’t know because he doesn’t like to talk about himself. He has put in a heavy intervention to solve this problem. But you know that politicians are very terrible, very dynamic, and can manoeuvre everything in a lot of ways to make you look bad even when they are the ones doing worse things. He should be very careful not to get into these murky waters of politics or accuse you, accuse my type of politics. He has tried so far, but I think with time we will be able to solve the problem.
Are you not advising him to leave LP with the rumblings within the party?
Why should he leave? LP has very strong stakeholders around it. He is a brand, he has a reputation. He has a name that means he can go anywhere and perform magic. But, if he leaves today, it is not everybody that will go with him. People like us will follow him even though he met me in LP. My relationship with him dates way back; he has assisted in shaping my political career in one way or the other by his little kinds of contributions. But we want him to succeed. And collectively we will do everything to actualise that. If he succeeds, Nigeria will succeed. He remains the voice of the voiceless, the voice of the Middle Belters, the minorities, and those whose voices have not been heard. He is the bridge between the North and the South. He is the beacon of hope for a lot of broken people, and he changed the orientation of people who see our politics as destructive, who saw politics as something that cannot bear good fruit, Peter Obi came and restored that hope for the new generation of Nigerian politicians.
As a patriotic Nigerian, deep down where has Tinubu impressed you?
If I want to be honest, it is not about his policy because policy-wise, I didn’t see anywhere he has impressed me. But, if it is a personal administrative action, like attending the burial of the military personnel slaughtered recently, because Buhari never attended anyone, I will say he tried. Buhari is a military general, but never attended any even when people were slaughtered, or killed in many parts of the country. He never cared or attended to anyone. I was happy that Tinubu did not only attend, but also spoke so passionately about the welfare of their loved ones. For him to step up and get into that burial venue at the airport road Military Cemetery, and make such a brilliant statement and promise to the late soldiers’ family, I was really impressed. But he hasn’t really done much concerning his economic policy. He needs to put on his economic team because Nigerians are suffering; the basis of government is to protect the lives and property of people. Whether kinetic or non-kinetic means, there must be security of life by providing food on the tables, providing good roads, and other amenities that can improve the lives of the people. He has to focus on that and then do something that will be able to reduce the poverty in the country because that is the focus of governance. The government should be responsible for explaining its policies in a way that is most understandable and can reflect on the lives of the people. Whatever he is doing is not translating into bettering the lives of the masses, people are not seeing any benefit from it. If he provides power to Nigerians, things will work, and lots of young people will go back to their businesses. Many people will engage in small and medium-scale enterprises and it will thrive and survive. But there is no power, and there is no good road. He removed the subsidy, in a hasty decision-making process, without any plan or structure in place. The life of our people is not about elections. It is not about the four-year election cycle, but the quality of those four years given to them. How does it translate into better living for the people? So, the people should be his concern and if he is not concerned then he is insensitive. On security, he has not really done much. We are still running the former policy on security. Look at the kidnapping that happened in Kaduna involving school children. Media are even under reporting the kidnappings. In my own community in Kogi, a newly built road has been blocked because people can no longer pass because of the incessant kidnapping of people. People cannot pass the new road now. You cannot say that security has improved. A young lady in my place was shot by kidnappers. It is heartbreaking. The government must find a solution to ungoverned spaces. We have massive arable land that has not been put to use. Since we can’t wake up and start producing nuclear weapons now, we can start to manufacture cars like private companies are already doing and are struggling, but we can stop tribal sentiment and support them. We can do what Obama did with manufacturing companies in America when he gave them a lot of money so that they don’t go under. It is in the public interest that these companies grow into standard vehicle manufacturing plants, enough of it in Nigeria, so that we can export to get more foreign exchange. The government is rather practicing a kindergarten economy. So for security, I don’t think the government has done enough because kidnapping is still at a very alarming rate.
What is your impression about the clash between incumbent governors and their predecessors?
It is pure human greed that is fuelling the crisis. After completing their eight years, the predecessors should walk away honourably. If they give advice and the incumbent didn’t take it, they should make them public through interviews, or write letters like Olusegun Obasanjo did during the Buhari-led administration. It is wrong for them to force their opinions on the sitting executive governors. They don’t expect them to be doing their bidding after they have left office. It is happening because our elections are not free, fair, and credible. That is why godfatherism still exists. Godfatherism exists because they will threaten to deal with the godsons in the next election for failing to do their bidding. They don’t believe that the people can back the godsons and they will remind Nigerians how they made the godsons, just like what Wike was shouting on the television, how he bought nomination forms for all candidates in Rivers State, and how they got the positions they currently occupy. Such embarrassing utterance ought not to be made in the public if we should call a spade by its proper name. I don’t care who bought what forms for anybody. The fact is that we must save our democracy because whatever affects Rivers or Kaduna affects other states in the country. It is not about Rivers because it is likely to happen in other parts of the country. But for this, we have to deal with this. We run an independent state. The federating units are independent even from the federal units in the first place. It is just some level of collaboration. We are not talking about an individual outside government, but those still holding on to power outside government. It will be difficult for the incumbent governor to deliver for the people. Everybody in government must be free to act fairly and treat everybody equally in the states in line with the principles of the Constitution. They should not discriminate based on race or religion when the governor knows that he will definitely function and deliver to the people. But if he has a godfather breathing down his neck because he bought his ticket, he will take permission on what to do, whether to give the people light, and roads, and wait for his approval. Look at the appointment of local government caretaker chairmen in Rivers. Who was appointing them when Wike was the governor? But today he still wants to take charge and even screen the list submitted, changing the names. What Wike is doing to Fubara is wrong. If a former governor does his eight-year tenure, he doesn’t need to worry about controlling his successor, compelling him to do what he wants because God created us with the uniqueness of ideas that if not allowed to implement ours, whatever you are forcing us to implement will not be as balanced as what we want. They should allow the person on the saddle to fumble, learn and correct himself so that the people can be the watchdog to make sure that they do the right thing. Not those who have done their part and are using remote control to do another extra term outside their constitutionally required terms. What Wike and others are doing is executing another extra term. It should not be so and nobody should encourage it.
What will you tell Yahaya Bello, the immediate past governor of your state, If you sit down with him?
I will tell him that I am a bit disappointed in him. Bello was very young when he came into office. He came with a lot of hopes. And my brother who was his deputy was more of a terror; most people don’t know that Edward Onoja was a terror. He was the one who stole the House of Representatives mandate given to me by my people. I can tell you that whatever Bello learnt Edward taught him. Unfortunately, he played with the tail of the tiger and was consumed. Bello consumed him when he became white lion. I did not believe in the politics of our turn because of what Tinubu is doing with the one we gave to him today? It should be about competence, merit, and ability. Yes, I believe that people have the right to agitate for whatever they want, but they should actually put their best foot forward. They became too power-drunk. They committed so much atrocity in the state. There was so much poverty because they paid LGA workers as little as N3,000 or N4,000 as take-home pay. Bello did not manage his emergence very well. He was handed over the position by God, but I think he disappointed God.
How will the 2027 presidential election play out?
The election will still be between the people and the political gladiators who feel that politics is about money. For us, the 2027 election will not be easy. Anybody who tells you that it is going to be a walk into the park will be lying to you because look at all the challenges Tinubu went through to become the candidate for APC. The presidency and his party’s leadership all worked against him from all fronts. He got himself elected after picking the ticket. He played so many games that even the hierarchy of INEC did not know what happened at the lower level. For him, his principle is that power is not given, but snatched and taken. A man with that kind of ideology is not the type you should go into a contest with, hoping that it will be free, fair, credible, and transparent. They will do a lot of things now that he is in control of power. That is why I say that INEC should be unbundled and strengthened with independence. We cannot be contesting an election with somebody who has the power to appoint the umpire, and the entire members of the commission with the whole security apparatus under his control. It is not like that in America because as soon as Trump becomes the frontrunner for the Republican Party, he will be getting security briefings so that he will know what to do when he gets there and the kind of safety net of the system. So, we must create this kind of system for the country. The frontline party candidates should be meeting to hear from the security agencies. That is why I also advocated that the leadership of the political parties should be allowed to be part of INEC’s Inter-Party Consultative Committee on Election Security (ICCES) meeting because after the meeting the security personnel will go and brief Mr President, but what happens to the leaders of the political parties? There is need to expand the process because democracy is inclusive, and gives more opportunity for people to be part of the process. The more transparent the processes, the more opportunities that people get to run their game and be part of the process. So, INEC must do that, but I know that 2027 will not be a walk into the park.
