Nigeria’s first Minister of Aviation, Chief Mbazulike Amaechi lives in Nnewi, Anambra State. In an encounter with Sunday Vanguard, he spoke on the Nigeria of his days as minister and how, despite the resolve of his colleagues in the Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa-led cabinet to continue the First Republic following the assassination of the Prime Minister, the military, led by General G.T.Y. Aguiyi-Ironsi, sacked the democratic process.
Amaechi, the Chairman, Reparation Committee of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, blamed
the problems of Nigeria on the first coup and proffered the way out, hanging his hope on outcome of the 2015 general elections. He doubted that subjecting the resolutions of the just concluded National Conference to the endorsement of the National Assembly would bring solution. Excerpts:
Amaechi Mbazulike
Amaechi Mbazulike
Your name has its own place in the history of this country, but, for quite some time, you have been out of the scene. First and foremost, from what background are you coming from?
I am coming from the public background that, aside being an Igbo leader, I was Nigeria’s first Minister of Aviation. When I became minister, I inherited the West African Airways Corporation which included Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone. When Ghana got independence, they decided to form their own airline. Therefore the West African Airways Corporation was dissolved and so we started with Nigeria Airways.
At that time, Nigeria Airways had three aircraft: ADC and Boeing.
Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, during his second time as president, said he left about 28 aircraft in the fleet of Nigeria Airways in 1979, but that on his second coming in 1999, he met nothing in the fleet….
By the time I left the Aviation Ministry in 1966, I had increased the fleet from three to 18 aircraft including about 10 intercontinental big-body planes. We were then having flights to virtually all the countries across the world including Washington in the US and Europe. And built the Nigerian College of Aviation, Zaria where we trained pilots. But it must be stated here that the military did havoc to the aviation industry in this country because they sold off those aircraft and even the hanger we built alongside planes spare parts worth billions of dollars. I heard they have even sold the Airways building now.
Your time and now, what is your description of situation of things and what lessons do we stand to learn?
How can I describe the situation? Even though you were not born during our days in government, don’t you see that what we have now is not a country? This is not a country where people can live to survive. This country is a place ruled by criminals, thieves and people who believe in plundering, looting; from the executive to the legislature and the judiciary.
Have you seen anywhere in the world where they have the situation that we are facing now in this country? That is what, precisely, the military gave to this country! Because what you see now is a surrogate of the military madness.
So, people like me, who offered their lives and fought for the independence of this country, went to prison in and out for the freedom of this country and, when we got the independence, the people said, ‘You nationalists who fought for this thing should go and run it’. And we were just trying to give that patriotic, nationalistic leadership to the country when the unpatriotic military people struck. They started with stealing in government until the whole wealth of the country was plundered.
During our time there was no oil. Our economy was grown through our strength. We had groundnut in the North, palm produce in theEast, cocoa in the West and rubber in the Mid- West. It was with all these that we, in the regions, set out to develop this country and actually made it a great one. We started industries gradually and were moving up when the unfortunate military intervention occurred and committed the highest of treason against the country. Instead of these people sent to life imprisonment, they are still ruling the country directly and indirectly.
Some people still believe General Aguiyi Ironsi was blameable for the collapse of the First Republic as, despite the assassination of your boss, the Prime Minister, Sir Tafawa Balewa, you had one of you picked to be sworn in as Prime Minister but that Ironsi instead went ahead to say the cabinet had asked him to take over.
When the first coup happened and the Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, disappeared, there was confusion. It later happened that we heard that the Prime Minister had been killed and so we elected Inua Wada to act as Prime Minister. That is what the arrangement was, really, until the military decided to forcefully take over. The military took over and appointed Ironsi. We did not hand over willingly to Ironsi. We wanted the government to continue with Inua Wada as Prime Minister.
The situation in the country now, what is the way out?
I don’t know if the people in authority now have the competence, the capability, the wisdom, the knowledge to run the country. But let us see what the 2015 elections will bring because this country is dangerously heading towards the precipice.
Even with the National Conference just concluded, is there no hope in sight that the country can be salvaged?
Well, there is hope in sight. But the other big problem is Boko Haram overrunning the Nigerian Army, taking over their barracks, bombing their locations and formations and hoisting their flags as if they are an independent state within the country.
Worse still is that they are doing this and the military is not able to do anything. It is sad!
Still on the National Conference, what is your fear?
For the president to send the report of the National Conference to the National Assembly, they won’t bring anything out from there. They will not endorse it and the thing might even create crisis in the National Assembly. All classes of people from the country have successfully come together to brainstorm and do something, instead of sending it to a plebiscite, you are sending it to the National Assembly. The people who can correct them to say, ‘No, we don’t want what you have done’ or ‘yes, we love the way you have put these things together’ are Nigerians.
But to send the decision of that wide body to a smaller body like the National Assembly, which does not want to be rejuvenized, who do not want the cake they have been sharing to be taken away from them, will be the end of the road for such a brilliant job done by the National Conference. And the president will not be wise enough to do a thing like that. I mean, I do hope he will not do such thing.
Chief Richard Akinjide, Alhaji Yusuf Maitama Sule, Alhaji Shehu Shagari who later rose to become the president of the Federal Republic, just to mention a few, were your contemporaries. They were.
Your time, some people are saying, was the last time we had genuine democracy inNigeria. Going by your own rating of that time, was it the kind of democracy of your dream as founding fathers of Nigeria. If so, why then did the military strike?
The military that struck in the First Republic did not do so out of patriotism. When you hear about the five majors and why they struck, let me keep the records straight by saying they did not strike because there was any defect in the democratic setting of the time that was beyond being managed. They only came to carry out a criminal treasonable action.
In democracy, you talk about election.
There could be error or inadequacy in the electoral process but the point is, the only way of running a democracy is through election. That is what we were doing.
You said democracy was all about election and that it was what you were doing even though the military cut short the dispensation.
However, when that is juxtaposed with today when everybody is crying for free and fair eection towards rediscovery of Nigerian national integrity and citizens’ good, what is your fatherly advice as one of the few surviving founding fathers of independent Nigeria?
If Nigeria has looked forward to free and fair election and are Nigerians electing their leaders freely and fairly? If elections could be influenced by sharing money, bags of rice and dresses and it is on that note that votes are given willingly by the people that supposedly should use their votes wisely, can that election be said to be free and fair? If elections are conducted where voters are intimidated; where election campaigners are neither free nor have level playing ground, can there be free and fair election coming out of that process?
Are Nigerians themselves ready to ensure that election is free and fair and that their votes, cast reasonably, count? In Egypt (during the election that produced Mohammed Morsi), an election was held, there was an attempt to manipulate the process but the people stood their ground and said, ‘No, we are not going to allow that to happen.’ And so it was.
In the old Ondo State in 1983, Adekunle Ajasin won the governorship election but Akin Omoboriowo was declared elected and the people said, ‘No! We did not elect Omoboriowo and we will not allow him to be sworn in.’ And Omoboriowo was never sworn in. Ajasin, the people’s choice, was sworn in. This is how it is done in all the countries that have succeeded democratically.
But today, Nigerian voters have become docile because the economy is so bad that people are so poor and so they are desperate to live.
Therefore, anybody who is offered a little amount of money sells his conscience and sells his vote in order to survive because of poverty.
People are very poor. The middle class has been destroyed while some people are stupendously rich while the masses are miserably poor.
Don’t you think Nigerian party system should carry the blame for why democracy has not worked in this country? I mean for somebody to contest for primary, he has to buy form to indicate his intention as an aspirant, which is in the range of N500, 000 ; N2 million; even N10 million depending on the office being sought. After the primary, he still has to spend money to face his opponent in the main election.
So, after winning election, he still has to sit down to remve the capital of his investment before now facing the business of government. Don’t you think it is high time money is removed from party politics if truly Nigeria and Nigerians are sincerely speaking desirous of workable democracy?
If somebody could spend N1 billion to contest for a position where he will end up legally to earn about six million naira, what do you think he is going to do? He is going to steal?
You got it! People want to go into position to hold the key to the treasury of a state or country to loot. That is what is happening. Our legislative bodies that should monitor these things are more corrupt than the executive side of the system. And the judiciary people, seeing what is happening there now, are opening their own ways to steal. So, the whole place is a decaying body.
Nigeria is a decaying body; it is rotten. Somebody wants to be governor of a state, not with the intention to serve because in four years’ time you find him being richer than the state itself. The states don’t even produce any revenue. What they do is wait for federal allocation at the end of the month and share. Local governments are the same thing. At the end of the month, when they get the allocation, they come to sit for three or four days and you find that the local governments are not working!
In the state, it is one-man affair. In many states, commissioners are appointed but they don’t work. They don’t have any initiative of their own. And you find the governors calling themselves executive governors. It is so bad people spend money and even kill to get hold of that power and this is so because that is the easy way to get stupendously rich without work.
But is there any difference between ‘governor’ and ‘executive governor’?
The Constitution of the Republic says there shall be a ‘governor’ for a state. It never said there shall be ‘executive governor’ or ‘administrative governor’. Governor is simply governor but Nigerians like titles.
Amaechi, the Chairman, Reparation Committee of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, blamed
the problems of Nigeria on the first coup and proffered the way out, hanging his hope on outcome of the 2015 general elections. He doubted that subjecting the resolutions of the just concluded National Conference to the endorsement of the National Assembly would bring solution. Excerpts:
Amaechi Mbazulike
Amaechi Mbazulike
Your name has its own place in the history of this country, but, for quite some time, you have been out of the scene. First and foremost, from what background are you coming from?
I am coming from the public background that, aside being an Igbo leader, I was Nigeria’s first Minister of Aviation. When I became minister, I inherited the West African Airways Corporation which included Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone. When Ghana got independence, they decided to form their own airline. Therefore the West African Airways Corporation was dissolved and so we started with Nigeria Airways.
At that time, Nigeria Airways had three aircraft: ADC and Boeing.
Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, during his second time as president, said he left about 28 aircraft in the fleet of Nigeria Airways in 1979, but that on his second coming in 1999, he met nothing in the fleet….
By the time I left the Aviation Ministry in 1966, I had increased the fleet from three to 18 aircraft including about 10 intercontinental big-body planes. We were then having flights to virtually all the countries across the world including Washington in the US and Europe. And built the Nigerian College of Aviation, Zaria where we trained pilots. But it must be stated here that the military did havoc to the aviation industry in this country because they sold off those aircraft and even the hanger we built alongside planes spare parts worth billions of dollars. I heard they have even sold the Airways building now.
Your time and now, what is your description of situation of things and what lessons do we stand to learn?
How can I describe the situation? Even though you were not born during our days in government, don’t you see that what we have now is not a country? This is not a country where people can live to survive. This country is a place ruled by criminals, thieves and people who believe in plundering, looting; from the executive to the legislature and the judiciary.
Have you seen anywhere in the world where they have the situation that we are facing now in this country? That is what, precisely, the military gave to this country! Because what you see now is a surrogate of the military madness.
So, people like me, who offered their lives and fought for the independence of this country, went to prison in and out for the freedom of this country and, when we got the independence, the people said, ‘You nationalists who fought for this thing should go and run it’. And we were just trying to give that patriotic, nationalistic leadership to the country when the unpatriotic military people struck. They started with stealing in government until the whole wealth of the country was plundered.
During our time there was no oil. Our economy was grown through our strength. We had groundnut in the North, palm produce in theEast, cocoa in the West and rubber in the Mid- West. It was with all these that we, in the regions, set out to develop this country and actually made it a great one. We started industries gradually and were moving up when the unfortunate military intervention occurred and committed the highest of treason against the country. Instead of these people sent to life imprisonment, they are still ruling the country directly and indirectly.
Some people still believe General Aguiyi Ironsi was blameable for the collapse of the First Republic as, despite the assassination of your boss, the Prime Minister, Sir Tafawa Balewa, you had one of you picked to be sworn in as Prime Minister but that Ironsi instead went ahead to say the cabinet had asked him to take over.
When the first coup happened and the Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, disappeared, there was confusion. It later happened that we heard that the Prime Minister had been killed and so we elected Inua Wada to act as Prime Minister. That is what the arrangement was, really, until the military decided to forcefully take over. The military took over and appointed Ironsi. We did not hand over willingly to Ironsi. We wanted the government to continue with Inua Wada as Prime Minister.
The situation in the country now, what is the way out?
I don’t know if the people in authority now have the competence, the capability, the wisdom, the knowledge to run the country. But let us see what the 2015 elections will bring because this country is dangerously heading towards the precipice.
Even with the National Conference just concluded, is there no hope in sight that the country can be salvaged?
Well, there is hope in sight. But the other big problem is Boko Haram overrunning the Nigerian Army, taking over their barracks, bombing their locations and formations and hoisting their flags as if they are an independent state within the country.
Worse still is that they are doing this and the military is not able to do anything. It is sad!
Still on the National Conference, what is your fear?
For the president to send the report of the National Conference to the National Assembly, they won’t bring anything out from there. They will not endorse it and the thing might even create crisis in the National Assembly. All classes of people from the country have successfully come together to brainstorm and do something, instead of sending it to a plebiscite, you are sending it to the National Assembly. The people who can correct them to say, ‘No, we don’t want what you have done’ or ‘yes, we love the way you have put these things together’ are Nigerians.
But to send the decision of that wide body to a smaller body like the National Assembly, which does not want to be rejuvenized, who do not want the cake they have been sharing to be taken away from them, will be the end of the road for such a brilliant job done by the National Conference. And the president will not be wise enough to do a thing like that. I mean, I do hope he will not do such thing.
Chief Richard Akinjide, Alhaji Yusuf Maitama Sule, Alhaji Shehu Shagari who later rose to become the president of the Federal Republic, just to mention a few, were your contemporaries. They were.
Your time, some people are saying, was the last time we had genuine democracy inNigeria. Going by your own rating of that time, was it the kind of democracy of your dream as founding fathers of Nigeria. If so, why then did the military strike?
The military that struck in the First Republic did not do so out of patriotism. When you hear about the five majors and why they struck, let me keep the records straight by saying they did not strike because there was any defect in the democratic setting of the time that was beyond being managed. They only came to carry out a criminal treasonable action.
In democracy, you talk about election.
There could be error or inadequacy in the electoral process but the point is, the only way of running a democracy is through election. That is what we were doing.
You said democracy was all about election and that it was what you were doing even though the military cut short the dispensation.
However, when that is juxtaposed with today when everybody is crying for free and fair eection towards rediscovery of Nigerian national integrity and citizens’ good, what is your fatherly advice as one of the few surviving founding fathers of independent Nigeria?
If Nigeria has looked forward to free and fair election and are Nigerians electing their leaders freely and fairly? If elections could be influenced by sharing money, bags of rice and dresses and it is on that note that votes are given willingly by the people that supposedly should use their votes wisely, can that election be said to be free and fair? If elections are conducted where voters are intimidated; where election campaigners are neither free nor have level playing ground, can there be free and fair election coming out of that process?
Are Nigerians themselves ready to ensure that election is free and fair and that their votes, cast reasonably, count? In Egypt (during the election that produced Mohammed Morsi), an election was held, there was an attempt to manipulate the process but the people stood their ground and said, ‘No, we are not going to allow that to happen.’ And so it was.
In the old Ondo State in 1983, Adekunle Ajasin won the governorship election but Akin Omoboriowo was declared elected and the people said, ‘No! We did not elect Omoboriowo and we will not allow him to be sworn in.’ And Omoboriowo was never sworn in. Ajasin, the people’s choice, was sworn in. This is how it is done in all the countries that have succeeded democratically.
But today, Nigerian voters have become docile because the economy is so bad that people are so poor and so they are desperate to live.
Therefore, anybody who is offered a little amount of money sells his conscience and sells his vote in order to survive because of poverty.
People are very poor. The middle class has been destroyed while some people are stupendously rich while the masses are miserably poor.
Don’t you think Nigerian party system should carry the blame for why democracy has not worked in this country? I mean for somebody to contest for primary, he has to buy form to indicate his intention as an aspirant, which is in the range of N500, 000 ; N2 million; even N10 million depending on the office being sought. After the primary, he still has to spend money to face his opponent in the main election.
So, after winning election, he still has to sit down to remve the capital of his investment before now facing the business of government. Don’t you think it is high time money is removed from party politics if truly Nigeria and Nigerians are sincerely speaking desirous of workable democracy?
If somebody could spend N1 billion to contest for a position where he will end up legally to earn about six million naira, what do you think he is going to do? He is going to steal?
You got it! People want to go into position to hold the key to the treasury of a state or country to loot. That is what is happening. Our legislative bodies that should monitor these things are more corrupt than the executive side of the system. And the judiciary people, seeing what is happening there now, are opening their own ways to steal. So, the whole place is a decaying body.
Nigeria is a decaying body; it is rotten. Somebody wants to be governor of a state, not with the intention to serve because in four years’ time you find him being richer than the state itself. The states don’t even produce any revenue. What they do is wait for federal allocation at the end of the month and share. Local governments are the same thing. At the end of the month, when they get the allocation, they come to sit for three or four days and you find that the local governments are not working!
In the state, it is one-man affair. In many states, commissioners are appointed but they don’t work. They don’t have any initiative of their own. And you find the governors calling themselves executive governors. It is so bad people spend money and even kill to get hold of that power and this is so because that is the easy way to get stupendously rich without work.
But is there any difference between ‘governor’ and ‘executive governor’?
The Constitution of the Republic says there shall be a ‘governor’ for a state. It never said there shall be ‘executive governor’ or ‘administrative governor’. Governor is simply governor but Nigerians like titles.
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