Chief Don Obot Etiebet is member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Board of Trustees (BoT). He was a petroleum minister and national chairman of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP). In this interview with Assistant Editor, JACKSON UDOM, he speaks on the loss of House of Representatives speakership position by the South-West, among other burning issues. Excerpts:

THE election petition tribunal sitting in  Uyo, Akwa Ibom State,  dismissed the petition brought against the election of Governor Gosdwill Akpabio by the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) governorship candidate, Senator John Akpanudoedehe. What is your reaction to the judgment?
My reaction to that judgment is simply that of excitement. It is a dramatic end to an inglorious outing and a confirmation of Godswill in the state. God had told us of what would happen and it has been confirmed on earth. The voice of the people is the voice of God and whatever propaganda the opposition might have embarked upon to dissuade the people from realising and enjoying the divine will of God for the people of the state, by today’s judgment, it has been destroyed. They have no grounds whatsoever to have challenged the victory of the governor because he was popularly elected by the people of the state based on his transformational agenda for the state in the last four years. They have no ground whatsoever so much so that they did not know what to do at the tribunal. If they were serious and were properly guided, they should have known what to do from the outset of the trial. The failure of their counsel to follow what the Electoral Law says on election petition is an act of God for miracle to be performed in the state. It is a divine intervention in the affairs of the state so that the governor will face governance squarely without any distractions and we thank God for that. In this state, we all know who the oppositions are. I know who they are, I have interacted with them, I have worked with them, so I know them better. They are not the kind of people this state would want to be their leaders.

If you say they are not the kind of people Akwa Ibom  wants as their leaders, how do you describe the support the party reportedly enjoyed throughout the campaign, particularly, the presidential rally in Uyo Township Stadium, where it was reported that the venue got filled to the brim?
They did not have any support of the people. This is what we have been talking about; it was all false propaganda. Whoever planned the propaganda strategy of the ACN should be commended because they did a very good job; let’s give it to them. They drummed it to the ears of the people in Akwa Ibom and outside that Governor Akpabio and the PDP were  goners. First of all, they said because he is not from the majority tribe and because in politics, the majority would always carry the day, he was already a loser because the majority tribe in the state were solidly behind John James Akpanudoedehe, therefore, the ACN will win the state.

That propaganda was already gaining grounds in Abuja and it was causing a major problem for us who knew what was on ground. We did a lot trying to convince the people in government and the party that it was a mere propaganda and that the governor and the party were fully on ground in the state because of his works, performance, his open door policy and the fact that he has given serious facelift to Uyo, the state capital which is located in the land of the majority tribe, without saying he is not from there. He has turned the promises of the state to fulfillment and the generality of the people are happy with him including the majority tribe. The state, under Akpabio is now the envy of Nigerians where corporate and international organisations are now bringing programmes and functions to the state because of what has been put there by the governor. The state is now a destination and not passing land. Look at the constitution of his government. We have the majority tribe as the deputy governor, the Secretary to the State Government (SSG), the speaker of the House of Assembly, the chief judge and finance commissioner among other aides. That shows that the majority tribe is fully in support of the Akpabio-led government and that alone defeated the ACN propaganda.

You kept talking about ACN and its propaganda. Was that also responsible for the massive turnout at the party’s presidential rally?
If you study very well the mode of the ACN propaganda, you will notice that they hire crowd every where they go. It was the crowd that attended the presidential rally that also attended all other rallies at the local governments they went to campaign. They blocked all the roads and rented people, hired buses for them as much as they could, just to show a semblance of popularity and support for the opposition.

Let me also tell you that if you went into that crowd, you will not count up to 10 per cent indigenes of the state. They were all rented crowd from the neighboring states. Everywhere they went to campaign, it was the same crowd, the same bus, the same Okada riders and the same speakers and they would take photographs and send it to the press that they have the support. It was a lie! Nevertheless, there are people in this state who are adamantly opposed to, or let me say out of hatred for Akpabio, who went about with the rumor that Akpabio was dead on the internet and had handed over power to his deputy. The other day, while vice president Namadi Sambo was commissioning some projects in the state, I was reading on the internet that the road commissioned by the vice president did not exist in Uyo. The following day, government had to post the pictures on the internet for them to see. They have made up their minds not to see anything good about the present government because the governor has decided to stand by the people and for the people.

They are blinded by hatred. For example, look at what a professor spoke about. He was the appointed INEC official who conducted and announced the election results. As a professor and somebody who thinks that he has a modicum of integrity, who believes that while he was conducting elections in Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District, there were malpractices. Why would he as a professor go ahead to announce the results if he was not convinced with the outcome?

He said he had to do that for fear of being beaten or killed by the PDP supporters.

A professor forced to announce election results! Please go and ask him why it took him such a long period to report the malpractice to the INEC when election took place since April this year.

If you say Senator Udoedehe is not popular in the state, how come he won a National Assembly and House Assembly seats?
That was in Uyo Federal Constituency. Let me tell you what happened. Uyo Federal Constituency is where Udoedehe comes from and that is the state capital. He had been the chairman of the local government and with his nature, he had gained some supporters. That is one hand. I am a politician and I know what I am talking about. The second point is that he had put in serious propaganda that Akpabio was not popular, that Akpabio he is not from the majority tribe and that he has no support in Uyo. The most dangerous strategy was the introduction of violence into the polity. The pre-election violence in Uyo, while we were in Abak campaigning, also affected the turnout of the people during the election for fear of attacks from the ACN supporters. Their motive was to scare away the real voters in Uyo, where Udoedehe comes from and that strategy worked for them in the constituency. They scared away PDP supporters on the day of election. If you go out now to do a sampling, you will see that many people refused to come out on the elections day because they were afraid that there were arrangements that they would be attacked. You know Uyo is a cosmopolitan city made up of indigenes and non indigenes, so those who were afraid and did not come out on that day made the ACN to have the upper hand. In the other elections, for example the senatorial election, that was the reason the senatorial election was postponed in that district because of the fear of violence. If you take a second look into the senatorial election, you will notice that the other part of the district which is the heartland of Ibibioland voted overwhelmingly for the PDP. There is therefore no iota of truth whatsoever of the people supporting the ACN against the PDP because it was just one constituency out of 12 and in the home of the son of the soil, it was expected. Even in my local government when I was arrested during the election, my people were unanimous in saying that even if they killed all of them, they will still vote for me. It is natural for your people to rally round your ambition.

What do you expect from them as their reaction?
I believe that if they were rational enough, they will thank God and say, we have tried, we have lost on all fronts. Let us wait for another day if they are truly politicians who want to genuinely serve their people. I know that deep in their hearts, the candidates, Ime Umanah and John Udoedehe, they know that they cannot win election as governor and deputy in Akwa Ibom State. They should say we have tried and our propaganda has failed us, let us go back home and see what we can lay our hands on till 2015 if they so wish.

Do you believe they are likely to return to the PDP?
They were PDP members before so if they chose to return, all well and good. They left PDP for the ACN because they thought propaganda would give them the governorship, but God was wonderful to the PDP and He got their plans exposed. The Bible says in everything that happens, give God thanks because you don’t know tomorrow. I don’t believe they should do anything less than that. If they go on appeal, we are ready for them; we are not afraid because we have a good case and we will continue to floor them. The court will always decide on the right thing and they (court) did the right thing as far as that petition was concerned. The election was absolutely free and fair. It has never been as free as that in the history of this country and Akwa Ibom State. I can say that authoritatively because I have been involved in elections since 1978.

The events of the last few months in the House of Representatives had portrayed the PDP as a party that lacks party discipline. House members went ahead, despite the fact that the party had zoned the office of the speaker to the South West zone, to elect a speaker from another zone. What is your take on this?
You members of the press are always contradicting yourselves. On one hand, you want democracy and on the other hand you are talking of dictatorship. PDP is the most democratic party in this part of the world and in a populist country like Nigeria, a party that wants to continue to rule Nigeria democratically has to listen to the voices and opinions of the people at every point in time. This is in a big contrast to the attitude of the ACN. You people will agree with me that during the PDP organised its primaries, there was none in the ACN, but you people did not go after the ACN because you knew that they will not win the presidency because they were inconsequential, so they did whatever they wanted to do.

Chief Bisi Akande, the national chairman of the party, is my friend and he came out and said that in their party, the leaders are the owners of the party and their opinions should be respected and whosoever they want to be the candidate will be the candidate. Did you people take him on on that and tell him that that statement was undemocratic? You did not because you know their party is a regional one. Because the PDP wants to govern Nigeria of over 250 tribes, you ought to listen to the different opinions across the country. I thank Almighty God that what happened in the PDP was the will of God to make sure that we reach out to everybody to participate in the governance of the country, not in a dictatorial manner but in a way where everybody subscribes.

The lawmakers, as far as I know, merely exhibited the tenets of democracy. If you have a group of people in a place and they are arguing about something, the way out of the situation is to cast the ballot to determine the way to go and the majority would definitely carry the day.

The South West zone are now aggrieved over the loss of the speakership, don’t you think that may work against the progress of the party in the zone if the issue is not settled amicably?
I don’t want to go into what happened in the South West because the zone, by what happened during the elections, had made a decision to support the party of their own and they cannot eat their cake and have it at the same time. As I said earlier, in democracy you allow the people to decide. They have decided on where they want to belong. We should thank God that the constitution of this country provides for every zone to be in government at the federal level, so that despite the fact that some areas did not support the government at the centre, they would still be part of that government. We therefore cannot say the South West has been marginalised. Frankly speaking, if you have a speaker from the South West, how many of his sisters and brothers from that zone are going to support him? He would just be floating because he has no political base. President Goodluck Jonathan should be commended that despite the lack of political base of the zone, he has decided to put a lot of them in very high political positions. For example, Ministry of Trade and Investment, which the government wants to use as a platform for the economic development of the country, is headed by somebody from the zone. Go to other countries and even developed democracies, they allocate such portfolios to people who voted for the party.

But the South West zone voted for President Jonathan at the elections and so should be factored in, in the scheme of things.

But they have duly compensated by giving them ministerial positions in government, but where democratic precedence comes in, the president cannot do anything because he cannot force the people in the House to vote for the candidate from the South West and don’t forget that you people told him not interfere in the affairs of the House.

Is the PDP not scared of the expansionist moves of Bola Tinubu-led ACN to take over the political landscape of the country? The South West is already under his control and he is forging ahead.

Let me tell you, out of the six states in the South West, how many did ACN win through the ballots? Three and others, through the Appeal Court. In Nigeria today, we politicians are like water; we follow the path of less resistance wherever we found ourselves. We depend on one source of income and that is the government. Whichever the party the governor belongs, overnight, everybody will move in there. Irrespective of what is happening, they want to survive because there is no other source of income. When the courts in their wisdom delivered those judgments and gave three states to the ACN, the people moved in there for survival. The PDP is not in any way scared of the ACN, in fact it is the other way round because when the PDP comes with its programmes and performance as it is happening in Akwa Ibom State, there would definitely be another movement into the party. We would meet with the people of the South West and tell them that their policy of regionalism has not been working for them, hence you must return to be part and parcel of Nigerian politics instead of being holed up in regional politics.

There appears to be no love lost between some sitting and former governors and President Jonathan on the way the ministerial lists from them were jettisoned by the president. How true is this?
When people are outside government, they think it is easy. The problems of governance are multifarious. When you bring political party system into governance, it compounds the problems. On  one hand, you need technocrats, people who have the experience and who are more exposed to the paradigm of the new world to come in and help you in the implementation of your programmes. On the other hand, you’ve got weighed down with political requirements and you have to make a choice on what you actually want to achieve. Secondly, you have to make choice on whether you can pacify some people to achieve what you want, which I think is what the president is doing right now. I think he is doing the right thing. There are so many mansions in the president’s estate to pacify politicians who were nominated for ministerial appointments and were not able to get it. We must also realise that most of them got appointed, and in fact up to 70 per cent. But there are some certain key areas where you need thorough bred professionals. For example, Mrs Okonjo Iweala was not here to campaign with us, but because we need her, she has to be part of government. Such people can open more international doors for the government because of their connections across the globe, compared to somebody from my village who gave us all the votes in his ward. I know that Mr. President would one way or the other look into the issue and try and accommodate those who could not make it as ministers in other areas so that they all join hands with him for the progress and development of the country.

The Boko Haram crisis where lives are being lost on a daily basis is becoming intractable in the Northern part of the country, why is the PDP controlled government at the centre finding it extremely difficult curtailing their excesses. Has the government run out of ideas?
No no, no, government has not run out of ideas, we are engaging them. We shall engage in dialogue with them because they are Nigerians. It is proper to engage them because they have come out so say that they have some grievances which have to be looked into. It is so all over the world. They are our brothers, we will dialogue with them. It is like a child, who is annoyed with the father, do you kill him or disown him for being annoyed? No, you talk to him and at the end of the day he sees reason with you and changes.