Gains Under Jonathan Are Being Downplayed

 …Dr. Sylvan Ebigwei

Dr Sylvan Ebigwei, President Emeritus Aka-Ikenga, Ndigbo intellectual think-tank, national coordinator, South-South Forum, Lagos and national coordinator Anioma nation for Jonathan in this interview with Uzo Chikere speaks on the strength, weakness and challenge of the two major parties in the race for 2015 among other national issues.

Excerpts:  

The political campaigns are up swing; so far what is your assessment?

The campaigns are on and you can see that two major political parties, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) are trying seriously to burrow into the stronghold of each other. There are a lot of media assaults from both sides so as to gather enough votes from the electorate. For instance, the PDP which is the ruling party where I belong seem to have tried winning the electronic media war. APC is lagging behind in the electronic media war. I can see APC coming up strongly in the house-to-house campaign, and also trying to engage the grassroots. They are fighting like wounded lion.  Take for example in Lagos, Delta etc. They are trying to have very strong foothold in PDP areas. PDP on the other hand, because of the President, there are more than 10,000 Goodluck support groups. And if these groups’ interests are well harvested, and are giving a helping hand, I think PDP will have no problem having an upper hand. The only thing there is that PDP should not centralise its campaign strategy because that will be detrimental to the overall interest of PDP winning in all existing states of this country. Since there are already existing strongholds and existing structures within the Goodluck support groups, I believe that the PDP should empower and influence those support groups no matter how small they are, to pour out into the field like locusts and capture the votes. For us, we have many areas supporting the presidency. Take for example in Delta; we have Anioma Nation for Jonathan which I coordinate. There are other areas of massive support for Jonathan. But let me advise that the PDP must be careful on who they are dealing with because most of their campaign coordinators don’t have any structure to rely on. And if they are not careful, they will fall into wrong hands, and at the end, such areas may fail to deliver. In Lagos here, we equally have many structures: South-South Leaders Council and South-South Forum. These are mainly professionals. Why we are building up South-South here in Lagos is because there are millions of votes; there are millions of people from South-South who are registered and are not being taken care of, just like the Arewas and the Ohanaeze. So, what we are doing is to give the South-South people a sense of belonging because they are complaining. Nobody thinks of South-South in Lagos whereas they have millions of votes. Among the South-South, we have the Igbos, Itsekiris, Ijaws, Efiks, Anang,  Isokos, Ogojas, just name them. But they are not being coordinated as a unified force for the President. What we are trying to do is to unite the people of various formations; make them feel relevant so that they can come out to vote. Lagos has almost 6 million voters. That is the highest bloc vote any candidate can get in this country. Unfortunately, most of this people are not being attended to. And PDP alone cannot do the job. If you go out there, how many PDP billboards do you have if you compare with that of APC? So, APC is working very strong in every local government in the state. But PDP appears not to be doing that. I believe that PDP should up their acts and we should know and realise that 2015 is not 2011 when there was easy coasting. Now, the opposition is fighting very strong and deadly. So, whoever is in charge of the campaign organizations for PDP should try to device a way where they will use the multiplicity of the Goodluck support groups to carry out this campaign. They have to decentralize their strategy.

Are you worried about the election postponement?

I think government has given good reasons for the postponement. We will not benefit anything if you endanger the lives of the voters. The shift did not affect the handover date so why can’t we be patient?  

Some people are saying that all the laudable projects of the President are not adequately highlighted to the public. Don’t you think articulating it as a flyer will be a good spice?

You see, the gains made by this nation under Jonathan are being downplayed, and it is being supplanted by the negative side of what is happening in the country. The various campaign organizations should focus on highlighting the transformation of this nation by the Jonathan’s administration. A lot has happened since he took over. But those positive aspects of his administration are being dwarfed seriously through the massive campaign of the opposition in trying to hoodwink the nation and trying to mask the various transformations this country has witnessed. If I am in charge of Jonathan’s campaign today, in every known language, I will do a massive media publicity using especially radio, flyers and pamphlets to highlight what Jonathan has done. TAN has done a lot in electronic media in terms of singing and dancing on television.  That is not enough because not many people have access to watch the television. It is only the rich. So, what TAN did is good. But it is not enough. More massive publicity should be done through the radio.  Because electricity or no electricity, radio has a massive reach. Moreover, there will be leaflets, pamphlets in various Nigerian languages, spread all over this country to highlight the good aspect of this administration. Right now, the few negative aspects of what the country is witnessing now, the opposition is capitalizing on those negative aspects to rubbish the good work of the administration.  What you hear is Boko Haram, Chibok girls, corruption.

Don’t you think the security challenge, is a minus to the President’s campaign?

It is only a fool who does not know the significance of insurrection caused through religious war. Nigeria is not the only country having religious bigots fighting. It is not a conventional war. These are people who fight and run across the border. And Nigeria military has not been trained in the area of Guerilla warfare. Also, try to understand that after 1970 when the civil war ended, Nigeria has not fought a war again. But we participated in international peace-keeping which is a different thing from what we are witnessing now. Also, over the years, when the military ruled this country, they were having the highest budgetary votes for the military. But where is it? What did they do with the money? There are no military hardware, no helicopters, no submarines, no good war ships, no good APCs. The gun the military is using is outdated. The highest is AK47. Warfare has gone beyond that. And the Boko Haram are being funded from outside. And they have benefitted from the left-over of arms of the Libyan war. Had the military era up to the administration of Olusegun Obasanjo acquired some modern sophisticated weapons to at least defend the borders of this country, such as attack helicopters, very good jet bombers, good guns for the infantry, we will not be witnessing all this today. And you don’t equip the army overnight. It is not garri where you go to buy in the market. These arms cannot be manufactured overnight.

Recently the major opposition and the ruling party signed a no-violence pact. What is your impression of that?

It is a very good step in the right direction. And I believe that the media will capitalise on the big embrace by Buhari and Jonathan. The media should use that picture more to show their followers that their Ogas at the top are laughing and drinking tea, so why should they be killing each other. It was a step in the right direction championed by Senator Ben Obi, the presidential adviser on inter-party affairs.  But the issue is; how do we sell that accord to the people at the bottom, especially up north? How do you communicate it to those people who are burning presidential buses and all that? So, each party should equally do the right thing; go down from the top to the lowest cell of their party structure that Nigeria does not need any form of violence in this election.

When you look at the scenario that is playing now, can you in anyway trace it to the 2015 prediction that perhaps Nigeria may scatter if care is not taken.

Nigeria will not scatter. Whatever is happening is very unfortunate. I am not tracing it to 2015 at all. It is very unfortunate that the happenstances are going on now. If it is to 2015, the insurgents are killing Muslims and non-Muslims. If those who are supporting the insurgents because they want to win the election, I think they failed because the votes that should accrue to Borno, Adamawa and Yobe will not go to those who are fighting the government. And the government cannot be supporting the insurgents, knowing that the opposition will use that to attack them. Those who think that 2015 will make heaven fall, heaven is not going to fall.  After 2015, Nigeria will continue to wax strong.  My message to the country is that every Nigerian should contribute his or her quota to make sure that the election is violent free. Every Nigerian should join hands with the government to fight the insurgents. This is not the only country where insurgency is on. Every country teams up with her leaders to fight insurgents, and they don’t use it as political gimmick to fault the ruling government.  Fighting insurgents is no easy affair, and nobody should claim that if he is there he would stop it in a day.

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