BARRISTER Uche Okewukwu is the chairman of the Action Congress of Nigeria in Rivers State. In this interview, he denied recent allegations leveled against him by the governorship candidate of ACN in Rivers State, Dr Abiye Sekibo that he was bribed to work against the ACN.
Excerpts:

There have been allegations leveled against you that you were bribed to work against your party, the ACN in the April general elections. Is it true that you were bribed?

The accusation that I was bribed doesn’t hold any issue.  The reason is clear.  I have said, time without number, that you can only support a man who the people want to become something.  The people from the beginning said, look, we don’t prefer you. Amaechi we want you.  Sekibo, we don’t.

How do you respond to the allegation that for abandoning the party, you lack integrity?
I say, that my integrity is intact.  If he said that I sympathize with him.  If I don’t have integrity, there is no way I can go to an election and my people will follow  me and vote for an opposition party and he who was a former Minister, a former SSG will go to an election and his people will score him zero.

It shows clearly that I have a better integrity than he.  I have integrity because my people believe in me.

I heard you say that under the law, you are still the State Chairman of ACN.

Yes, I am still the State Chairman of the ACN in Rivers State.

From your standpoint as ACN Chairman, do you believe that elections in Rivers State were free and fair?

Yes.  The truth is that, I have told you that he (Sekibo) was not a candidate for April 26.  He was playing to the gallery.  On the 26th of April, Dr. Sekibo was not a candidate of the party. The party, by my pronouncement, had no candidate.  He knew he was not a candidate.  A serious minded candidate, assuming without conceding that he says he is a candidate, no serious-minded candidate in a poll of more two million people can get 63,000 votes.

He came behind Omehia (APGA) in that election.  A former minister, a former SSG runs an election in a State he had opportunity of supervising, based in 23 LGAs and he got 63,000 votes.  That is terrible.  Mathematically speaking, in political parlance, he got a zero vote.

If he participated in that election, I doubt if he had the gut of voting for himself.  The election was free and fair.  The truth is that the 63,000 votes he got was by mistake because I had said, look we don’t have a candidate by my pronouncement.  So, what was he doing?

If he said he got 63,000 votes, that is alright, he should clap for himself for getting 63,000 votes out of more than two million votes.  But beyond that, he had opportunity of presenting his case in the Tribunal.  The (ACN) governorship candidate of Akwa Ibom has gone on appeal.

His matter was dismissed technically and he has gone on appeal.  He (Sekibo) had opportunity of presenting his case, he failed.  It was after he had withdrawn his case, it took him three weeks to come and start telling you this story.

Why didn’t he tell you this story, these are reasons why I withdrew my matter (before now).  He withdrew his matter, switched off his lines, left the country, returned because people had spoken. We had already fixed a meeting for him to meet with Fashola, the Governor of Lagos State, and then he didn’t even deem it fit to tell K.K. Kobani as the National Treasurer, the most senior party officer in Rivers State. He left.  When he now came back, he started telling cock and bull story.  It was an after thought.  It goes to no issue. It would not take any person three weeks to explain why he did something.  It is an after thought.

By my training as a lawyer, if they give you opportunity to write a statement for something you have knowledge of, then you write, three weeks after, you come back and say they should give you paper to write another side of the story, they will say ‘No’, that thing you are saying doesn’t go to any issue as an after thought.  What Sekibo is saying is just a fallacy.  There was no petition in the Tribunal as I have said.

Who is that godfather that asked Dr. Sekibo not to run?
Well, please with the greatest respect, permit me to say that I will not mention the name.  But you agree with me that in recent times, Dr. Sekibo had admitted that he had a political godfather.  Yes, he said that Dr. Odili was his godfather and that he had a fantastic relationship with him up till April 24, and it was on that 24th April that I took my decision.

But did Dr. Odili influence you?
No, No.  Dr. Odili did not influence me.  Nobody influenced me.  He is a very respected senior citizen of the State.  I respect him.

Your comment was not just on Dr. Sekibo alone.  You also spoke on House of Assembly elections.  Is it that the candidate for that election too was really not prepared for the election?
One thing I don’t do, I will never take you to war and abandon you.  It is not in my character. To a large extent, Chilam Dimkpa, the ACN candidate believed in me to run the House of Assembly election in my local government, Ikwerre.  I was the Chairman of the party and of course I consulted with him that I was going to speak and he endorsed all I did.  Chilam Dimkpa is a Knight.

There is an allegation that you were bribed by Amaechi to make that pronouncement and you were given a jeep to work against your party. How true is that?

You see, I supported Omehia and Amaechi became Governor of Rivers State on the 25th of October. I didn’t deny that.  I remained in Abuja.  Omehia spoke to me that I should wait in Abuja to see him.. That was the confidence he had in me.

Omehia arrived Abuja in a chartered aircraft about 10.30 pm with Uncle Glory Eme, and his aides.  That was the day he handed over here (Port Harcourt) and I received him at about 10.30pm and I remained in Abuja and returned about two days after.

From that day till I went on air, I never saw Amaechi.  The records are there.  Now, for avoidance of doubt (too many things have been said, oh, Sekibo did this etc.), I bought a car for myself and the car was bought in Cotonou by the yellow boy that was with me here at the cost of N2.2million – a Belgium 1998 model, Toyota Land Cruiser because of the terrain we are running, from my personal money.

In spite of what I am doing, my practice still goes on as a lawyer.  I never closed down my chambers. So, I will like to say this, Dr. Sekibo and I are alive, the earning can be shown, how I get my money.

Specifically, were you bribed by Gov. Amaechi?
I was never, never bribed by Amaechi.  As I said, I never met him before I left.  I never met with anybody.  I went to Rhythm myself. Saturday was the last day you can issue any statement because election was going to be on Tuesday and you must not issue any statement 24 hours to the election.  Therefore, everything must stop latest, Sunday midnight.  You cannot issue any statement after that because it is presumed that Monday, technically speaking is less than 24 hours to the election on Tuesday under the law.

Reason the ACN and Sekibo performed poorly in the elections.
Opposition is nurtured; it is not an ad hoc thing.  We are doing too much ad hoc in the South South and the South East.  Those who desire to contest election for 2015 should start early to build structures. It is not something that is done in a hurry. The transition from AD to ACN has taken the Yorubas 13 to 14 years planning. So, the opposition here is so much in a hurry. What happens is that very close to the election, people return and most of them returned from Abuja and other places and come and jump that they want to run an election.

For example, if Omehia wants to run an election, he should have stayed and been part of the people for the last four years. You don’t just relocate and few months to the election, you come. If Sekibo wants to run election, he should stay. Anybody who wants to run an election should be part of the people, feel their pulse, participate in activities and then indicate to serve. You don’t come and just ask people who don’t know you to vote for you. That is the biggest problem facing opposition in the South-East and the South-South. It is an ad hoc thing and something you just do ad hoc doesn’t succeed.

As you are even doing it, people know and would say, ‘oh, let’s us see; if they lose this election, they will run away’ and they have all left. All of them have relocated again to Abuja and they will now wait for January or February, 2015, to come back and do election in April. You don’t win election that way. You must stay home. Why I can go home and do election is that I am here with them; they can assess me. They can’t assess me from outside.

That is the biggest problem of the opposition. It is not issue of money; it is issue of visibility. Those who run election in opposition in the Niger Delta are not very visible.