From Tony Osauzo and Ighomuaye Lucky, Benin

Charles Idahosa, popularly known as ‘Charly Temple’ has been long in the All Progressive Congress, politics and government either as chairman of local government, Commissioner, member of board or Political Adviser in which capacity he served in the administration of ex-governor Adams Oshiomhole.  In this interview with journalists in Benin City, Idahosa, a journalist who just turned 64 and known for his bluntness, bared his mind on burning national issues from anti-corruption fight, agitation in the land, restructuring, devolution of power and state police. On the clamour for President Buhari to re-contest in 2019, Idahosa drew attention to Ghana where incumbents have been defeated and the situation in Kenya, saying anything can happen. He however urged, APC and President Buhari to do soul-searching to arrive at the right decision.  Excerpts.

How do you feel at 64?

Is is great. I thank God for all His mercies. For one to get to 64 in a third world country like this is a big achievement when you consider the average life span. In Nigeria, I think for me, it is 50, 51, 52, 48, 49 so we thank God He’s been very nice, there has been a long political journey and I am grateful to God to have been able to reach 64 and I am looking forward to 65 and God willing, 70.

Tell us about your growing up.

It was okay. I had a very privileged life. I thank God for that. I grew up with my uncle, the first Benin Anglican Bishop Rt. Rev. J. W .Idahosa. He is late now, may his soul rest in peace. That was the immediate senior brother to my dad. When I was five, he took me from my father. My father was a politician, Chief Robison Idahosa, the one that they called Akakasiaka, but I grew up with my uncle and I lived all my life in a Vicarage.  Living in a Vicarage then was like we were ministers’ children. That time, we were very privileged. I grew up in Vicarage at St. Andrew at Ekpoma. My uncle was the priest in that area.

I grew up with a priest and that is why I am very straightforward and that is why people do not like me. People do not like those who say the truth but that was how I was brought up.

The various agitations, restructuring, IPOB and others threatening the existence of the nation, what are your views about them?

The truth of the matter is that Nigeria is a country of the absurd. The kind of things that happen in this country especially with you media people, blowing it up and making it very important and making sensationalism out of it. It beats me hollow because there is nothing that is happening in this country that the ordinary eyes cannot see. When I granted an interview to some newspapers houses, I said very soon, corruption will start fighting back. And what you are seeing now is corruption fighting back.

All these agitation here and there, they are being sponsored and stage-managed to distract the APC federal government led by President Muhammadu Buhari from getting to where he wants to get Nigeria to. 

The campaign programme of APC and President Muhammadu Buhari  was to clear the mess of this country. And of course, the money stolen during the PDP time was so much. The money in the hands of individuals is so much and you do not expect them to just fold their hands at the rate President Muhammadu Buhari is going, looking at his antecedents, looking at his records, he wants to set up special court,sso be trying corrupt cases, the Senate is battling Magu.

So, they go with all kinds of devices. So what you are seeing, IPOB, secession, where were they since?

So, what you are seeing right now, is corruption fighting back, nothing more, nothing less. It’s just that we are a country of very many unserious people. This thing could have been tackled in a way that nobody would even know that such a thing happened.  We made Nnamdi Kanu important. A 36-year-old boy who never saw the Civil War. I saw war. I know what war is and I am sure none of you  here saw war. When you see war, mother will deny her child, father will be running to different direction while the children will be running to different direction.

You people do not know what is called war. So, children like Kanu and his cohorts started talking rubbish because people are pumping money to them, even people that are supposed to be enlightened.

I was reading the papers, on the hue and the noise that was surrounding what Alhassan said.

Madam Taraba. What was the meaning of that? Why should that one attract any attention? That the woman said Atiku is my man and I will not support  Buhari. Is that news? The Vice President, Osinbajo, is he a Buhari’s man? Is he not from Atiku? Is there any minister in the federal cabinet apart from one or two that Buhari picked by himself. How many governors of a state can pick their commissioners? Leaders would bring their representation and the loyalty still goes to that godfather.

So, when that woman opened her mouth and said what she said, everybody said she should be sacked. A country where you say the truth and you become an enemy is not a country. 

Tell me who is in that cabinet? What could be different from what madam Taraba said and Buhari’s wife who said in the next election, I will not go out to campaign for my husband because my husband does not know up to about 40 percent of the ministers and the people in the presidency today. My husband started taking people who were sitting in their sitting rooms and making them ministers where people who worked are left out.

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Did you people not read it? That was the wife of the president. A country where people concentrate on the irrelevance, we have a long way to go. There is no crisis in this country. It is still at its bottom.

Buhari missed it immediately he won and the whole world was giving him the accolades and he visited London. You people do not remember. You pressmen, it is the ones that will make us fight and throw stones at each other that you will publicise.

Buhari said in London, when I get back to Nigeria, I am going to release the list  of those who looted Nigeria and the amount they stole. Can you remember? The cabal inside that Aso Rock, because there are thieves among the cabals there. There are looters inside the same government who are in APC who probably were in other political parties at other times. For such strange reason, he has not been able to explain. Lia Mohammad, my friend and my colleague with who we were in the national publicity committee of the ACN that  is today, APC, under Daniel Elu who was our interim chairman then, nobody has been able to ask why he did not do that. And immediately he came and said no, we will do it later, and if we announce now, it will affect the process, that was the end of it all.

He gave them room. If he had made that statement that time and said Mr. A embezzled N10 billion from such place and we have the evidence, this problem would not have been here. So, if any of us in this country is expecting all these big shots in the previous administration that stole so much will fold their hands and allow themselves to be taken to prison, then, you must be wasting your time.

In this country, until you have a private jet, you are a billionaire and when you talk, nobody listens, corruption will fight back. I have said it over 70 times in the last one year.

Where do you stand  on the call by many stakeholders for the restructuring of the country aside the issue of agitation and IPOB?

You media men, you have asked me this question several times and I have given you answers. You are still coming back with the same question. So for the purpose of this special interview for my birthday, let me go back to the answer again. What is restructuring? What is devolution of power and what is confederation? What led to the civil war? What is on Aburi we stand? Is that not what we are still fighting today?

When Nigeria was on the top of the crisis and Nigeria was going to scatter into pieces, they went to Aburi, Ghana. General Joseph Arthur Ankrah presided and they did not want any civilian. Gowon, Ojukwu and few other people. I think the only civilian that went there was then Prince Akenzua who later became the Oba of Benin, the father of the present Oba as federal permanent secretary. They did not allow the civil servants to enter. All that Gowon understood, many of you have not asked yourself after that disastrous outing, the civil war, why Gowon went to school? Because he did not understand the meaning of the English word ‘confederation’. All he knew was that Nigeria will not divide. 

Ojukwu said we want confederation, a weak centre and a powerful region. And by the time the meeting ended, Gowon signed. That was the Aburi accord, that Nigeria will now go back to confederation because Aguiyi Ironsi at the inception of the military system of government, which centralized all the powers in the centre, the Northerners who were far behind in the areas of development, kicked against it.  All the formations that the Ibos are shouting for now, head of army, head of central bank, president and senate, were occupied by the Ibos. And after, they toppled Aguiyi Ironsi. Let’s go back. Before that, there was regionalism. Each state was moving at its own pace. If you as a Nigerian remembered that the first television station in Nigeria was in Ibadan under Western Region Government of  Obafemi Awolowo, you will weep.

If you now look at South Africa, you look at Tunisia, Morrocco and if also you remember that Malaysia and Indonesia, which are the world exporters, the biggest producers of palm oil today, came to NIFOR to pick the seedlings and took training and now we are going back to them to come and help us do palm oil, you will see that there are a lot of things we do that we do not even remember where we are going because we are not taking cognizance of our past because if you do not understand your past, you cannot predict  your future. Back to your question, what is restructuring? Politics is a game of numbers, politics is sharing the dividends of democracy. The constitution has taken care of restructuring because every state has a minister in the country. Each local government must have a  commissioner so, there is proper representation at all levels. if you people need restructuring, because I heard people saying appointment in this and that, how do you expect APC to give equal appointments in Boards and others to the South-East that voted 90 percent PDP? Those who voted for Buhari were APC so he will not compensate them and you expected him to compensate those who did not vote for him? Is that one done anywhere in democracy? 

My late friend Gaddafi (Samson Ekhabafe) who was then the Attorney General in the state  once explained to us  in 2003. I remember, we were in exco meeting and Lucky Igbinedion was presiding and the security man came to us to say there was heavy protest at the gate. So, he asked the deputy governor, Ogiadomhe to go and find out, and when he came back, he said some group of people from Akoko-Edo were protesting that their king has been deposed and been detained for the past one month.

And Lucky did not even know. So, we turned to Gaddafi and asked what happened? He said he did. And Lucky asked him why did he dethrone a traditional ruler without even telling him? He said he did not know that he had to tell him. And Lucky said you cannot do that. What did he do? He said when we got to his domain, he was completely against us. So what does that mean? Oh democracy, winning, there will be laughing, eating and jubilation in the house of the winner and there will be gnashing of teeth in the home of the looser. I will never forget that statement from Gaddafi.

So, we all laughed and the governor said you cannot do that. Tell them to take it easy  and that we will look into that. So we then recommended that he should re-enthrone him.

In a nutshell, I think people are not following what the constitution says, there is no state today… the South-East, they have five ministers, each one representing each state whether they voted APC or not. So when we now do what we did, you do not expect us to have an equal share maybe that is what they are calling restructuring. And the funny thing is that what we should be talking about is the devolution of power. Let the states have more powers and let’s have a weak center. Let the centre handle economy,  external affairs and defence. Electricity, water, transportation should be left to the states and the minerals in your areas, you should be able to explore and pay taxes to the centre. That was what we were doing when we had the cocoa and rubber boom and that was how the West was able to build the first high rise, Olympic stadium in Africa, first television, started free education before the East and the North followed. This English of restructuring, I am not into it. Let the states  be more powerful and that is why I still come back to what I have been saying that in this country, we are just deceiving ourselves. You talked about federal police, if we create state police, the governors will use it. What other examples do you need to know about the effectiveness of a state police? When Anini took over the whole of Edo and Delta, then Bendel, nobody told the federal government that it needed state police. Because what they did at that time was state police command.

They deployed all the Edo people back to the state. DIG Parry Osayende, CP Erabor and Oyakhire, they brought them back to Benin to arrest Anini because if you go and bring a man from Katsina, how will he know the terrain in Ehor. So, we need local police. In America, in Europe, you have village police. Police are under local government chairmen that you call mayor. You go and put one Inspector General of Police in Abuja, do not federal government use the police? You heard Wike last week that the police are the one conducting all the armed robberies in the state in order to create a state of uncertainty in his area. That was what Wike said. I listened to him. So, this country, we really need to look at the reality on ground.

As far as I am concerned, if I must answer the initial question you asked me, what we are seeing now is being sponsored by politicians who are scared of going to prison, who cannot be ridiculed because they know that Buhari is very determined.

Buhari will pursue this corruption because that is what he said he was coming to do. So, they are distracting him so that people will not notice the good work the APC government is doing and if you allow them to succeed, then this country is finished. We have less than 16 months to go for the next presidential election.