Comrade Joseph Evah is National Coordinator,
Ijaw Monitoring Group and former National Secretary, Ijaw Monitoring
Group. In this interview, he says the people of Niger Delta are proud of
President Goodluck Jonathan inspite of his defeat at the March 28 presidential
election.
President Goodluck Jonathan is on his way
out of office. How do you rate his performance?
Glory be to God that my generation witnessed the emergence of a
Niger Delta President in Nigeria. It gives a historic and great feelings.
I will score him above average. We would say, he performed in a war situation.
Jonathan, like General Yakubu Gowon before him, are war Presidents that Nigeria
had produced. During the Biafra war, General Gowon never performed
development-wise. He embarked on developmental projects at the end of the war
in 1970. Gowon spent three years, fighting to stop the war and
unite Nigeria. But the Boko Haram insurgency was more of a scientific and
terrorist warfare with global connections.
Boko Haram was deadly, basically making Jonathan’s government to
concentrate on fighting insurgents to save Nigeria from degenerating into the
worst civil war in Africa. But for Jonathan’s handling of the situation, this
could have degenerated into one great religious war in the continent. So
we give him kudos. A religious war in Nigeria as happens in the Middle East is
easily imagined than experienced. Jonathan saved this country, but we may
not realise it today, historians will accord him a rightful place. He
deserves special award.
There are those who say, he was not only
defeated at the polls, that he was a total failure?
Those who say this are not sincere to themselves. The North
never had it so good in their history. Despite all the obstacles they created
for him, Jonathan performed creditably well in several sectors and across
geo-political zones. There is no Nigerian President, dead or alive, who can
beat the developmental records of the Jonathan administration. He worked
for the love of country. He surrounded himself with all kinds of people,
irrespective of tribes, gender or religion. Tell me any Nigerian leader
with a better developmental record. He assembled the best brains in the country
to achieve results. He had in his cabinet, great minds like Hon.
Kingsley Kuku; the great orator, the late Oronto Douglas; Ambassador
Igali; Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, among others, men and women dedicated,
who placed Nigerian in the world map as the biggest economy in Africa.
President Goodluck
Jonathan
I wept the day the former Minster of Sports, Abdulahi from Kwara
State left the cabinet because his boss was part of the governors that broke
away from the PDP. A young man who was focused should not have been kicked out
of government because of politics. On television, radio and newspaper, I made
my positions clear. I begged Jonathan to keep an eye on his cabinet and his
team. I suggested the inclusion of the likes of A.K. Horsfall, Timi Alaibe;
Col. Abubakar Umar, detribalised Nigerians, who were capable of giving
direction to government. All our suggestions fell on deaf ears. Several
factors, some self-imposed, led to this defeat.
The greatest being sycophancy and blackmail. Those of us
who told the bitter truth to the President were ignored. We expected that by
the time he left office, there will an airport in Yenagoa; a coastal road from
Calabar to Edo extending to Lagos; we expected factories and industries and sea
food production centres across the region and the creation of mega cities with
modern facilities for the people. Afterall the crude oil that sustains
Nigeria is sourced from our land. We however understood it was not
possible for a war time President to achieve such feats but he was able to use
the amnesty programme to empower and educate some youths in the region and the
East-West road also came alive during this period. The truth is that
Jonathan performed creditably well in other parts of the country. Our children
will learn from this experience and do better than our generation, when next
God gives their generation another opportunity.
How do you see the new political alliance of
the South-west and the North?
We wish them goodluck. The Owelle of Onitsha, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe
did everything to stop what has happened now. Zik rightly felt that if the West
and North came together, it will affect the survival of the Nigerian state. He
ensured that this kind of alliance never happened. If Zik was alive he would
never have allowed Jonathan to create this political order. We look forward to
Vice President-elect Osinbajo surrounding himself with technocrats of Yoruba
origin as advisers and aides. They will replicate what Chief Obafemi
Awolowo did as Finance Minister under Gowon’s rule. to pursue the development
of Yoruba land. Meanwhile, Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu regales as ceremonial
president, calling the shots in Nigeria, just like Queen Elizabeth II does in
Great Britain. That suits the overall desires of Tinubu as he moves to develop Yoruba
land.
Did you think it would have been better to
serve your region first before serving other Nigerians?
In Nigeria, you serve your region first, because the rest of the
country would not voluntarily give us power. Since Nigeria’s independence, we
remain the most deprived in terms of development, despite the resources which
is used to manage the affairs of the country. Again, they gave us the
name ‘minority’. So, it was important that he used the opportunity to focus on
our people first, while expanding development to other parts of Nigeria.
Like they say, ‘opportunity comes but once’. But we are not bitter
because Jonathan has broken the spiritual jinx that our region was incapable of
producing an elected president in the country. Jonathan has opened the gate of
the Presidency for our children and their children’s children, so our children
are now free to occupy that seat.
There was a time you organised a deliverance
service for Aso Rock. Why did you do that?
It was historic. I called men of God across the Niger Delta and
sponsored the service. One beloved brother, Mr. Ken Etete, provided over
5,000 Bibles which was distributed to all the participants free. This enabled
them carry out that spiritual exercise in Lagos. I did that to mark Goodluck
Jonathan’s 100 Days in office. You remember I was the spokesman for Ijaw
National Congress when Ken Saro-Wiwa was hanged. I went ahead to stop the
dredging of the River Niger using the courts, during the military. I was
brought up in Yoruba land. I sent four petitions to Oputa Panel and the Panel
was shocked by the level of mistreatment the Niger Delta had endured from the
Nigerian state.
I joined activism when MKO Abiola election was annulled. I
was the coordinator of non-indigenes for the actualization of June 12 and we
fought the military for insulting Nigerians. But today our people in government
don’t value us. They don’t allow us to advise them because we are not gamblers.
Vanguard
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