By Olayinka Ajayi

Contrary to the claim that Ndigbo put all their eggs in one basket by voting for President Goodluck  Jonathan en masse in the just concluded presidential election, the Okwadike Ndi’gbo, Dr. Chukwuemeka Ezeife, a former governor of Anambra State, and a delegate at the 2014  National Conference, in this encounter, stresses the need for the North  to win the confidence of Ndigbo to move Nigeria forward. He adds the need for the  President-elect  Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (rtd), to implement the report of the 2014 National Conference  in the interest of a peaceful Nigeria. Excerpts:

You hoped for an Igbo president after Jonathan.  What happened?

We Igbo believe totally in God. By the just concluded 2015 general elections result, what is God saying to us? He said: “I only used the instrumentality of British colonialism to create Nigeria. I don’t want Nigeria to disintegrate. I created Nigeria for the benefit of the Black-race and it should continue to exist for the benefit of mankind”. That is how I see the result of the just concluded 2015 general elections. For instance, If you have a relation that is sick,   and you took that relation to every conceivable place you believe he or she ailment will be cured, yet, he died, you don’t go sobering like a person that has no hope. I campaigned for President Jonathan, but God chose Gen. Buhari to win the presidential election. All of us: Yoruba, Igbo, Fulani and Hausa should cooperate with the will of God.

I had a pre-conception of a nation ruled by an executive Igbo President because we are people of destiny. We believe in what we are doing.  When it becomes necessary, we act like one person and one voice. You saw how the election was in the East. Nigerians   can now know who they are dealing with, when they look towards Igbo people. We are a united people acting like one person. As you can see, we are not divided even by religion. Therefore when something becomes necessary, we focus and act as one.

Some otherwise wise people said we packed all our eggs in one basket, but for most of us who are not so wise, we are so happy with the result of the elections, where we demonstrated oneness, trust and comradeship with the South-South.

There are people who say the Igbo, unlike other tribes didn’t  negotiate with President Jonathan, rather they voted for him on compassionate ground because he is from the minority. How do you react to that?

You don’t negotiate in the market place. People will always find excuses. The South-west that negotiated with Jonathan, did they vote for him? We, in South-east who did not negotiate with him, came out en masse to vote for him. Let us be truthful to ourselves; the fact is that President Jonathan is from the a minority tribe, an area where the economic power of Nigeria comes from. And we believe, it is not right to treat the minority as if they are inferior to the rest of the country. If any person, deserves a second term, we, Igbo, believed  President Goodluck Jonathan deserved it. We saw the difficulty he went through from those who vowed to make the country ungovernable for him. Emotion is a natural thing. If your neighbour’s home is on fire, it is not just emotion that will propel you to help put out the fire, but the fear of not allowing fire to consume your own house.

But we negotiated with President Jonathan in his first term. At first, we negotiated with the North, but majority of the Igbo that decided to support the North wrote a communiqué and said they supported the Northern candidate for 2011 election,and   in return the northerners will support Igbo for 2015 election. Some people were boasting that they got a major achievement by that. In fact, one of them said if the devil gives you scholarship, take it. Because they saw it as a scholarship. But to me, as a person, I saw it differently. I didn’t see how anybody, be it Gen. Babangida, Atiku or whoever is from the North will serve one term, then in 2015 will handover to Igbo. So I disagreed.  But the majority carried the vote. Fortunately, when the document got to the media, I found my name on it just the next day and I kicked against it violently. It was on a Tuesday that we met with the North, the same week, Friday, there was an Ohanaeze Ndigbo meeting in Enugu. I rushed to Ohanaeze to fight against the communique.  Uwazurike Amaechi had wanted to head the summit.  I stopped him, because when the adoption of the Northern candidate came, I told him to go ahead with his plan. Then Jonathan was adopted. Coming back to Abuja again, I got a message that Chief Edwin Clark is waiting for me in Warri to assure his people that they are not alone. So, I left for Warri. So, eventually, we all agreed to support Jonathan.

We negotiated with Jonathan and we demanded something apart from positions in government like secretary to the government, Chief of Army Staff, Chief of Naval Staff, then Minister of Finance, Power and Aviation. We also requested for the construction of the second Niger Bridge.  We also demanded for an International Airport in the East and many other things. Of course, we got most of what we asked for. However, the most important in terms of movement is that all federal roads in the East are very bad. That is the one thing you can say Jonathan did not do for our people. But he did more by far for the North.

One of the things we asked from him, was an access to the sea. I went to identify the spot where the seaport would be built, so Igbo will have access to the sea. I even negotiated Finance for it. So it not a matter of government spending too much on the project, what we wanted from the government is an approval of the project by dredging 21 nautical miles to reach the Atlantic.

So it is not true that we voted Jonathan based on emotion, but emotion is reasonable at that circumstance.

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