Nwanyanwu: LP is not my father’s estate

Outgoing National Chairman of the La­bour party, LP, Chief Dan Nwanyanwu, in this interview with Sunday Sun relives his experiences in the saddle, as he prepares to bow out after more than a decade . He dis­misses growing tales of defections from the party, arguing that the party is like a Catholic church with free entry and exit. He speaks more on other related issues. Excerpts.

 Your last NEC meeting appears to be your last before you step aside. Look­ing back at the time you served, what would’ve been your major achievement?

We started building the party from the scratch. When I came on board as chairman of the party in 2004, I was given only the certificate of registra­tion of the party and nothing more. So we started scouting for members. Two years later, In 2006, there was election. We scouted for candidates, and at the same time continued to build structures. We pushed it on to 2009, when I was reelected, until now. So, I can say the major achievement in the party is that we have built a major party, structure-wise, that is without rancor. My tenure for 10 years and eight months was without quarrel, like in other parties. For instance, there is a party that has over 36 intra party cases, but we don’t have that here. We have tried as much as possible to raise the im­age and tempo of our party. So today, Nigerians know the party and its leadership. Along the line, we produced a governor, senators, House of Rep­resentatives members, and state assembly mem­bers, local government chairmen, ambassador and director general. But all these were not easy for a political party that didn’t have the resources. How­ever, it was because of the integrity of the leader­ship of the party that made most politicians come to the party to contest for election, and they are still coming in now. So the major achievement is that we now have a major political party that is ready to blossom and this will start after the convention when we have a new leadership. We have provided the infrastructure which is ready to go. I hope and pray that my successors will see the potentials that I have put on ground. Many people are calling that they want to come to the party, because they believe this is a party where they will get justice and not suffer imposition. In our party, we operate strictly by our constitution and guidelines before you emerge as candidate. These are the things we have put in place, and we are happy for it.

 By its formation and composition, La­bour Party is seen as a socialist inclined party. Would you say the party has lived up to that expectation?

That is correct. I am not ashamed of saying that Labour Party was formed on behalf of the Nigerian workers as a whole, by the Nigeria Labour Con­gress (NLC) under the former chairman Adams Oshiomole. Then the party was registered as party for social democrats. And I think the intent of reg­istering the party was to give the Nigerian workers a voice and opportunity to contest elections where they are popular, and win. So, of course, that will give you an idea that the party was formed on a very strong ideology which is the ideal of social democracy. If you look at the logo of all other par­ties in Nigeria, only the Labour Party has a human face to its own logo. Some have dog, others have monkey, broom, umbrella etc. but we have a fa­ther, wife and a child, a family, as our logo. There must be nexus between democracy, governance and the people. So everything we are doing, if we don’t anchor it on the people, we might not be right. So, our party has its mission and vision, as articulated in its manifesto and constitution. We are social democrats. We are not so much concerned that the rich are getting richer. We are concerned and bother that while all these things are happen­ing, the poor must leave poverty That is the point of departure between Labour Party and others.

 With the spate of rumoured defections, involving the Ondo State governor, your­self and Senator Joshua Dariye, who has declared his defection, doesn’t this signal the fizzling out of Labour Party?

We had a National Executive Council meeting a few days ago. Gov Mimiko was there. I am not aware that governors of other political parties can attend NEC meetings of other political parties. At least, as at that day that Dr. Mimiko came. He was still a member of the Labour Party. As at this morning, I was with him, he was still a member of LP. So that settles the issue of Gov. Mimiko. As for Dan Nwanyanwu, I started building this party since 2004. I have put time and resources, denied myself things and privileges that ought to get to me as right. But that didn’t bother me, because I was bothered for the people of Nigeria, offering them a platform to ventilate their beliefs and ideology. I started that, and I have done it for 10 years and eight months.  My tenure expired in December 2013, the NEC in its wisdom invoked the provi­sion of the constitution which allows it to extend the national convention to a later date, if for any reason what so ever the convention cannot be held as when due. So they shifted the convention by nine months, and pleaded with me to accept it, including Gov. Mimiko. I reluctantly accepted. The reason was that they wanted me to oversee the Ekiti and Osun elections. The NEC was planning a coup to arrive at the same situation, so that I will prosecute the primaries and elections, and the con­vention will come after Feburary/ March next year. So that was why the first early statement I made was that I won’t be available, thereby pulling the carpet from under their feet. If I had gone through the normal procedure of the NEC meeting, they would have taken me back again, and I can tell you that majority of the NEC members felt very bad that I was stepping down. But there must be a time a man will look back. Constitutionally, I have no encumbrance to continue in office, the leadership of the LP from wards to states and national head­quarters, have no time limit. You can be elected as many times as the people want you to be there. But this is not my father’s estate, I refused to accept the third term offer to contest and I came to the inevi­table conclusion that this is my time to go. So when people say I want to go, and I want to follow Dr. Mimiko to go, these are statements made due to gross ignorance, maybe malice. You cannot say a man that has been national chairman of a political party for over 10 years, stepping aside for younger ones to come in is decamping. That is a stupid thing for anybody to say. Check the history of Nigeria’s political parties. No national chairman  has stayed for ten years and eight months. So you can see that I am a democrat, I am not leaving because I am go­ing somewhere else, but you must also know that this game is dynamic. Politics is dynamic. Things move fast. As I am talking to you now , I am leav­ing because I have done my best, and I felt it is my time to leave.

 If you look at political parties in Nigeria today, they are plagued by crisis. What, in your estimation, are the reasons for the persistent political crisis in Nigeria?

So many reasons can be adduced for such in­tractable issues in political parties, ranging from greed, selfishness, bad leadership, lack of openness and transparency. It is both from the leadership and followership. When a leadership is transparent, open and honest, those being led will know. They won’t disturb you. Nobody has disturbed me here. I am the only chairman of a political party with government that is not on salary or allowances, honorarium or any sort of penny what so ever for the 10 years I have been here. I know some that get up to N40 to N50 million Naira a month. An­other one gets about N15 million Naira in a month from government; and so on and so forth. But I don’t get a kobo. If you run through the accounts of the party, you will never see Dan Nwanyanwu’s name as having signed for any amount in the party throughout the time I served. Most people ask me how I survived, and the answer is simple. I said at the floor of the national conference when I was making a contribution on the topic of political par­ties that, I am a professional in politics, not a pro­fessional politician. The difference is that a profes­sional in politics is somebody who has something doing

a means of livelihood, but decided to get into politics to add value. But a professional politidoing, a means of livelihood, but decided to get cian is that person whose life is dependent solely on politics, and any attempt to touch it, the person will kill.­

For instance, I don’t have an official car. The cars you see here are my personal cars. The other car is my official car as pro- chancellor of Adekun­le Ajasin University. But in spite of not having all these perks of  office, I work everyday at the office, projecting the image of the party. That is what I call sacrifice, and somebody committed to an ideology.

National conference tried to offer some answers to the defection malaise. What should be done to curtail the spate of such defections?

We have taken care of that at the confab. The national confab came to the conclusion that we will not stop people from defecting, when they are in office, but when you are defecting, you must drop the mandate and go. That is cast in stone right now, even though it has not become effective now. I am not in a position to hold anybody who plans to defect from LP. It is free entry and free exit. But one thing I say authoritatively is that this party has offended no one. LP is like the Catholic Church. People leave Catholic Church everyday to Pente­costal churches, but if you go for morning mass at 6 o’clock, and you are five minutes late, you will not find seat to sit in church. That is what LP is, and hoping to become. We are not building a party that is in a hurry to produce the president of Nigeria. That is not to say that if we have the opportunity today, and we have the structures as per the can­didate and the capacities we will not give it a shot. We are building our party from bottom up, not for somebody to just come in and say because he has money we should give him our presidential tick­et. I always laugh at some of these fringe parties that are clowning around and clogging the ballot papers In the guise of contesting presidential elec­tion. It is a mockery for a party to go into a presi­dential election and at the end of the day get 1000 votes. That is not the kind of thing we are trying to do here. We are trying to build a party that can become a household name, and people will under­stand what it represents. So by the time you put up a presidential candidate, Nigerians will say yes, we know the party is ready. So people can move in or move out. We can’t stop them. I can decide now to go and form a new party. Nobody can stop me, but it has not changed the concept and belief of a political party. I will not comment on those who want to leave our party. Time will tell whether they will leave or not.

Going by your response it does appear that LP will not contest 2015. Will your party therefore support a candidate of an­other party?

It is not correct to say that I said we will not run in 2015. You are anticipating me, and that is specu­lative. As somebody who has some knowledge of elections in Nigeria, presidential election in Nige­ria is not for small boys. I have been saying this since 2007. For instance, we were blackmailed in 2011 by one of the leaders of the opposition par­ties who accused us of not fielding a candidate for the presidential election. I said that is a stupid talk. Why didn’t he send one to us? We don’t manufac­ture presidential candidate. it is not a factory where you go and present one. You must have the capac­ity. Somebody came here and said he wanted to be the candidate of the party. We gave him our intent form which he secured at the stipulated cost of N500,000.

And then, we gave him the nomination form at the stipulated N10million to return. But I asked him, if he has the capacity. But before I could fin­ish the question, he opened three laptops and was showing me his fans on Facebook, I asked him if these were the people that were going to vote?  He said I should not worry and then drifted into philos­ophizing. Then I told him, if you ask me, I will ad­vise you to go for Senate. He said why? I told him that in 2007 we paid our agents where we had can­didates N2000 for each election. In a presidential election alone, the entire Nigeria is your constitu­ency and we have 120,000 polling units, meaning four days to the election, you have to make avail­able N240 million on the table to pay agents. He exclaimed. I told him he has to setup  campaign offices starting with Abuja, buy buses, and for the riverine areas he would hire boats, and have a sta­tioned airplane because there are days he will go to three or four states in a day.

So I asked him, do you have the capacity?, He ran away. That is why I say it is not for small boys. But he turned around to blackmail the party two days to when he was supposed to return the form, saying he does not know where the party expected him to get N10 million. So he can’t pay N10 mil­lion and he wanted to contest for president of Ni­geria. People ask me, why do we have to talk about money? But we do have to talk about money in politics. That is not to say that everything is money, but at least the basics, like movement, mobiliza­tion, membership and so on, can’t be compro­mised. In the last election in Ekiti, some parties paid N15,000 to N20,000 per agent, unlike in 2007 where N2000 Naira was paid. So how can a small boy come and say he wants to run for president?. So when that person comes back, I will tell him to go for councillorship, not even Senate again. So that is the reality on ground. Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying a poor man cannot be president. a poor man can be president of Nigeria, but he must have backers who believe and trust in his person. After all, no rich man has ever become president of Nigeria. They only become richer when they get into office. So let nobody get me wrong that this is a labour man talking about money in this way. I am a realist. I don’t pretend, at least I have been on this job for over a decade. So I know what I am talking about.

Why is it that the party has problems penetrating other regions of the country besides south west?

On the issue of the party not making inroads outside the southwest, it is not correct. It is not easy to build a party. It is easy to penetrate a region like the south west, because they are more ideologi­cally correct politically than the south east. I am from the south east.

How do you mean?

In the south west, they don’t look at who you are. They want to know what you are made of. They want to know what you are made of. They ask questions about whether they are interested, on whether they can trust the person, not what the per­son has put on the table. In the south west, politics is not the run of the mill.

 What of the complaints of the stomach infrastructure phenomenon arising from the Ekiti and Osun elections?

No. You are coming to the finished product. You were asking me why LP has not moved. It is pos­sible that you may not win election, but you are on ground. PDP, APC and LP are on ground in Ekiti.  But somebody must win. It doesn’t mean they are not on ground. That is what also happened in Osun. So the type of politics they play in the south west left behind by Pa Obafemi Awolowo, is not the same in the south east. There are things we overlook in the south east which can’t be over­looked in the south west as a matter of priority. So in the south west, I have been there, I know them, I can say it that they are more ideologically correct politically than any part of Nigeria. So that is the difficulty in selling the party in other parts of the country as easily as we did it in south west. But we have made in roads. Anambra has accepted us, we are very strong in Edo, Plateau and some oth­ers states. But we have to do this gradually. So by the time we get some other governors, just as we have done in Ondo, people will say they want us to come and replicate what we have done, and the gospel will spread.

At the last NEC meeting, there was a massive turnout of Labour unionists. Does this mean, leaders of the labour union will take over the party again?

As for a Labour inclined successor, no. I am a Labour man. If you listen to my statement at the last NEC, I started my trade union activities in 1979. And all through my working life, I have done nothing than fight for the oppressed Nige­rian. Even as a lawyer, I have used my degree to advance the cause of the underprivileged and op­pressed. I was the president of National Union of Banks, Insurance, and Financial Institutions, from 1983 to 1993. Before then I had been treasurer, state chairman, local government chairman, and so on.  The national secretary of the party used to be general secretary of local government. The depu­ties in LP are either, NUPENG, NASU, TEXTILE UNION. So you can see that it is a Labour inclined movement. So, that is how the entire leadership of labour movement is. It is to underscore and send the signal that Labour Party is becoming stronger. Before, they were laid back. Now, they have seen that they have to mobilize for the political party that they registered, and it is a welcome develop­ment. I acknowledge and accept it, but you also have to be a part and parcel, of a political party, and its administration, through its membership, before you start thinking of membership. We are all one and the same.

If today you step aside and Mimiko leaves will that be the end of LP in Ondo state?

Assuming governor Mimiko leaves, which you people have been speculating, and me leaving the leadership of the party, not the party, I don’t think it will be the end of the party. People will emerge. I didn’t do this work alone for the past one decade. There were people around me. I didn’t go to spe­cial school to do the little contributions I did here. You will learn on the job, make experiences and improve on them. Be rest assured that Labour Party will be intact.

There is a huge perception that the La­bour Party is too close to PDP.  At what point will such perception become un­healthy for the Labour Party?

If by being friendly with the PDP, as we are friendly with other parties is a crime, we will like to commit it the more. LP has no special arrange­ment with the PDP. LP has never sat down with the level PDP leadership either at national, state or local and agreed on a working relationship. And as national chairman of LP for more than a decade, I have never been privy to such a meeting. This has been the blackmail of defunct Action Congress of Nigeria which has metamorphosed into APC. They don’t like us. They hate us, because we are not dancing to their tunes. They want a situation where, when they abuse the president, we should also abuse the president from the other end. Or when they lie against the president, we should also corroborate it. That is why I said if not doing that, is a crime, we will commit it the more, and we will have no apologies to give to anybody. But let me give you the genesis of how it started. It was be­cause of the issue of presidential candidate that we didn’t have in 2011. We didn’t have a presidential candidate.The election was coming, and the lead­ership of the LP said we must be part and parcel of the making of the next president. And we asked ourselves, if any candidate has reached out to us?. But this president got in touch with our party, and we gave him a nine point agenda. He agreed to all of them. We later met as a party and endorsed him and gave more than 33 percent of the votes he got, because most Nigerians had not made up their minds until LP endorsed him. So, because we didn’t endorse the ACN, which was arrogant and blasted in emptiness, they thought we struck a deal with PDP. LP did not agree on any benefit, mon­etary or otherwise with the president. We endorsed him as at that time, because we considered him as the best and most qualified to run for that office. So we have no apologies to render.

Will your party endorse Jonathan again in 2015?

Please go and find me a presidential candidate. If you don’t find me a presidential candidate and let all the presidential candidates emerge, LP will sit down and take a decision.

After your stay as chairman, what next?

Well, I have always hesitated to bother myself about tomorrow. I am a highly spiritual person when it comes to be living in God’s direction for me. But what is in my mind now is to go back to school to study terrorism, counter terrorism, intel­ligence and conflict resolution. I have found two universities that can give me that. One is in Isreal and the other is Harvard University. I have started the process. Anything can come before then, but I don’t know when it will be. But I know that I will be busy after leaving the office. The reason why I want to study that is because I want to find out why a man will wake up and kill many people he has never met before, who have never done any­thing to him, and just kill them. And at times he will kill himself. I want to know why? Before I find out how to counter it. So these are some of the things agitating my mind with the situation in this country. Maybe, by the time I am done with it, if it comes first, I may have opportunity to visit the Sambisa Forest.

Do you agree with the notion that the current insurgency war is political?

Of course, it is political. I have said it many times. And I will define it with one statement which I want somebody to bet me on. If President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan, announces to Nigerians today, that he is not going to run in 2015, you will not hear the sound of bombs again in Ni­geria. That will be the end of terrorism.