Secondus: Those against Military Deployment During Elections Have Hidden Agenda

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Deputy National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Prince Uche Secondus, in this interview,  spoke on several issues including  the PDP presidential campaign, the political violence in Rivers State, especially the Okrika crisis, and the deployment of military during elections. Chuks Okocha presents the excerpts

How has the PDP presidential campaign been so far?
We have made a lot of progress going round the country and received warm reception. In the next phase of our campaign we are going to emphasis on townhall meetings, meeting face to face with the people and get to know what is going on. That has been going on in virtually all the states of the federation. Some of our governorship candidates have carried the campaigns to the market, mechanic workshops and so on. We are dealing with the people directly. So the campaign is on and strong.

If you have to reflect on the campaigns so far, are there things you wish you would have done differently?

Not at all. The only regret was the actions of some misguided youths who threw stones when we visited some of the states in the north. I believe they were not civilized enough. Those were the issues. However, APC and its leadership are putting together their propaganda. In fact, in their propaganda machine is to misinform Nigeria by attacking Mr. President, part of which was arranging the youths in part of the northern states to throw stones as if the president was not liked by Nigerians. They want to create impression both inside and outside the country that they are more popular than the PDP. But they are not. The fact of the matter is that if you do a comparative analysis you will see that a party that has been on the ground for over 16 years, has the structures across all the wards and the polling units in the country.

This is what is their major headache; how to dislodge us that is why they resorted to actions of throwing stones, blackmail and propaganda to turn the people against us.

But I can assure you that those things are not working because we know their tricks. Part of it is to imagine meetings that never held, and make up what they discussed in meetings that never held as well as monies that were never distributed. I am quite sure you are aware of the text messages people received about the distribution of $20bn. Also, Governor Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers State accused the leadership of the church in Nigeria that they received N6bn from the presidency. The onus is on Amaechi to name the person who received the money or the bank where the money was paid into. But let me tell you this is aimed at causing division in the body of Christ and Amaechi is a satanic agent to cause problem in Christendom.

Those are part of the misinformation to the public and this is evil. I regard it as a satanic verse by the APC. It is going to cause crisis because when it heigthens everybody will know the consequences of politicians being so bitter. You can reflect your mind to what happened in 1965 and 1966. It was the same situation of politicians accusing themselves. It is particularly painful that a party that is barely less than one year, which came about as a result of some small parties coming together, now think that by propaganda they can take over government. It doesn’t work that way rather it will create confusion in the country and they are already in the mission of misinforming Nigerians as seen in text messages, emails and all sorts of things from the internet, against the President and Nigeria. Their target now is that if they don’t win the election then the world will believe that they were rigged. And of cause you know that when Buhari lost election in 2011, he said he will make the country ungovernable. Thereafter, the majority of the states in the Northeast were taken over by Boko Haram. He never made any contribution on the ways and means to bring peace to the North. So those are the things we want to reveal that APC plan is to come up with all these stories to misinform Nigerians in order to cause instability. This was the trend in 1965-66 and APC is beating the drum for crisis, bloodshed and threats. Amaechi and the national chairman of the APC, John Oyegun, said they will form a parallel government  if they don’t win and they are carrying it out in the misinformation and propaganda but this has to stop because the country has reached a level where people need to know the truth and the lies being disseminated by the APC leadership.

But the governor of Bauchi State, Isa Yuguda, said those who stoned the president in Bauchi were PDP members, how do you reconcile that with your position on the stoning in some northern states?

The governor and the minister of Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have their own problems. But the statement I made was that some part of the North, not all. Not only Bauchi alone. What happened in Bauchi is unfortunate but I think that the two or three major office holders theer are trying to blame each other. But obviously what I saw, because I was there that day, it is not a question of PDP. Our people were at the stadium, we went to the Emir’s palace to pay courtesy call, so we came out of the Emir’s palace…  It couldn’t have been. But as it were, there is blame game between them, indicating that they are not united. But that is left for them to sort out. But generally, we believe and I believe that they were sponsored by the APC.

You went round the country for your campaigns, is PDP ready for the election?

PDP is 100 per cent ready for the elections. As you are aware we have contested this general election from 1999 to 2011. So we are more on the ground than any other political party in this country. We are ready and we went to each state of the federation. We didn’t invite a state to go to another state like some other parties did. We wanted to see things on the ground for ourselves and the people came out to welcome us and we campaigned. Ours is not to bring zones to one state and do media gymnastic, but we were meeting with our people directly for our elections. We have won elections in the past so we know the styles of winning elections. We were ready for elections even on Feburary 14. But before that date, chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, called all the political parties to a meeting. I represented our party at the meeting and 16 political parties accused Jega directly that INEC was not ready for the election. It wasn’t just about the issue of insecurity. On page 11 of his memo, Jega said if INEC has a little time they will perfect their preparations. And as you can see from that time he had that meeting with us, some millions of PVC has been distributed and people have received them. But we were ready then and we are ready now for the election.

What is the position of the PDP on the use of military for the elections?

Honestly speaking, issues of security should be handled by the experts, they are professionals. But I believe that it is not the first time the country would deploy military to safeguard, and not to conduct elections. If you see what happened in Ekiti State, the military was put at strategic positions in case there were uprising or thuggery. And that is what it is supposed to be. Today the world is at the palm of the internet, you will recall that the capital of France, Paris was bombed and the leaders of European Union (EU) and other world leaders flew into Paris to give solidarity to the French government. On that particular day, the French government deployed 10,000 soldiers to safeguard the city of Paris. The soldiers were not walking with the leaders of Europe, but they were In strategic places to keep the city safe. It is not new, it has been done before, soldiers are not involved in elections, neither are the police. But they are kept in strategic places to safeguard the nation. Whoever is afraid of the security, whether army and police, and wants to have their own private army conduct the elections, are the ones that want to throw this country into crisis and destabilise the nation. Don’t forget that the United States had predicted that there will not be a country in 2015, but God forbid. The PDP will support the government to make sure that they protect lives and property. Remember what happened in the First Republic, the infamous wild wild west. No one was ready then but we have moved further and we are advanced now. In Ekiti State, the APC alleged that Army was used in Ekiti, Army was never used to rig. Moreover, the report from the election monitors shows that the election was free and transparent, soldiers were never found at polling booths rather they were strategically positioned for the unforeseen.

But the recent audio tape involving the Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose and some military personnel seems to have informed the fears of the APC?

Whatever they cooked up as video was not on the day of election. And we believe and Fani-Kayode has said that it was concorted by the APC. However, we also showed what happened in Osun State, where people were taken to a safe place and they were thumb printing for the APC. Such thing never happened in Ekiti State. So you can see the difference.

PDP has also been accused of trying to use military to suppress the opposition because it is afraid of the popularity of APC?

Mr. President as Commander-in-Chief, is a different person from the previous leaders. You can’t say so of others. Jonathan is such a quiet man that will not want it hurt a fly. This is part of what I said earlier, about the imaginations being cooked up by the APC. But there is no truth in it. As a commander-in-chief, Mr. President has never given order to the military to harass not only the APC but any other political party. In fact you can see the case when we conducted election in Osun State, they won. If he is that type of president he would have used the army to get the victory. The same thing happened in Edo State, where the APC won. But the APC is a propaganda freak such that in every issue there must be propaganda in order to malign and blackmail the PDP. The allegation is not correct at all.

There is this notion that if the PDP had put its house in order by not allowing its governors to defect, the leadership was not arrogant, and not allowing the former President Olusegun Obasanjo to leave, there wouldn’t have been this crisis and tension now. How do you react to this?

Obviously, human enterprise is the most difficult. When a child is grown to an age to marry and he feels he is independent, he goes out to marry. He separates himself from his original family. So most of the governors felt they could do it on their own. There is no way you can control them. There were a lot of peace talks and meetings. It happens that if any man feels he can do it on his own, he goes and that is what we find today. It is HEALTHY for the democracy in Nigeria but we should play by the rules of the game. So PDP is intact, there is no problem. For those who left there was no way to stop them. It was not deliberately done on our part. In the case of Obasanjo, I believe that he can best be described by his children Iyabo and Gbenga. So I will not make any further comments. He is their father. So if you can have that kind of father you will know the kind of trouble that PDP has gone through.

You are from Rivers State, what is your take on the spate of crises in the state viz -a-vis the last one that happened in Okrika?

The crisis in Rivers State is Amaechi. He shut down the court and locked the gate. He also shut down the State Assembly and locked the gate. He is now the sole administrator and maximum leader and the people are resisting it. Salaries are not paid as at when due, monies are taken away from the state to sponsor Buhari; our jet now is owned by Buhari. where in this world will you see that such people will be happy? So all the news of crisis is being generated by Ameachi because he has lost the state, he is sustaining himself on the pages of newspapers. All his projects have failed. He has collected so much money on monorail and it has failed. No people-oriented project is going on in Rivers State in the last two to five years. We are not playing politics with the development of the people. Take for instance if there is infighting in the National Assembly and the President goes there to be a partaker. The governor of Rivers State, who is the architect of the crisis in the state, moved from the Government House to the House of Assembly and was supervising and giving direction on the beating of people. He supervised the beating of a guy whose head was so bruised. Is that a governor that is free from crisis? We need journalists to do their investigative journalism. So Amaechi is the architect of the crisis. Nigerians should tell him to stop, he is now planning to release persons waiting trial, who were caught in criminal activities to use them for election. He is planning to release them. Is that a governor who wants peace? In the Okrika matter it was APC against APC. Amaechi is orchestrating it as if it is PDP and even bringing the name of the wife of the President. Amaechi has insulted the intelligence of the Rivers people. He is now permanently based in Lagos. He is no longer the governor. In fact the government in Rivers State has collapsed because Amaechi is no longer governing. What is important to him now as director general is how APC will win. He has left the governance of the state, because when the doors of the legislature are closed and the judiciary which is the third arm of government is shut down, where then is the government? Have you ever seen in this country where a governor will put a budget in a day and one hour after, the budget is approved? Is that not a shame to democracy and the man will come to the media and say he is democratic. The media knows the fact but it is not reporting.

What will you do to stop this?

All we are doing is praying for the safety of the state and asking the security to take charge. We don’t have private army so it is God and security. Journalist should also go and investigate, we are not hiding anything.

What is your reaction to reports that the National Working Committee (NWC) of your party is polarized on the issue of the president?

It is not correct. It is false and propaganda by the APC. My first statement in this interview is that the APC leadership has package a propaganda of misinformation to the public. And what you just said now is part of it.

Will your party be able to win Rivers State against the background of the post primary disagreements?

All those issues have been settled. We are coasting to victory. We are at a comfortable cruising level and Amaechi himself knows that Rivers has been taken away from his hand. The PDP will win back that state and of course he left the party and he can’t get the mandate of the people overnight to take them to APC. They have been with PDP for the last 16 years so it is not easy to just change the people.

There is an evolving concern over the campaigns particularly in the North. There are reports that some of your candidates and governors are afraid of campaigning for your presidential candidate for fear that it would affect their own chances. How is the party addressing this?

I don’t think it is correct. Those are part of the propaganda that APC is sending out. That is falsehood. We were in Jigawa, Kebbi and our governors there came out openly, canvassed for votes and campaigned. What else do you want to know? They all came out and campaigned openly for the president. It is the APC that is misinforming the people. Our members are intact. Sometime ago they said Sule Lamido had decamped. Amaechi visited him to do gymnastic, but, of course, Lamido came out and said he was remaining in the party. He has since met with the President and he is the zonal coordinator of the presidential campaign.

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Secondus: Those against Military Deployment During Elections Have Hidden Agenda