In a
recent interview with Punch, former governor of Anambra State, Chinwoke
Mbadinuju, speaks about the controversies which dodged his administration;
godfathers and the inability of the People’s Democratic Party to form
government in the state since he left office
Excerpts;
With your experience as governor, what
would you say about godfatherism?
Well,
a godfather has many connotations. You could have positive godfathers and
negative ones. The good ones work towards making things work and succeed but if
you have a godfather that is always challenging, he wants to make appointments,
if you have 10 commissioners, he would want to have three or four. After you
have given him two commissioners, he will say he wants Special Advisers,
Special Assistants and he will even want to choose their portfolios but I said
these things are not done like that and they said it is done like that, that is
controversy.
You
are the governor and you run your administration the way you want it. I know
some people helped us. There is nobody who campaigned for elections or any
position who was not assisted. I have not seen one person who will come out and say I didn’t have any help and
it was the same type of help I got and I was in trouble. Some of them wrote a
petition to the President and the petition was carried by the then Vice-President
Atiku Abubakar to the President. They said I had N3.5bn abroad and I told the
President- we were in his office that I never saw such money in Awka. After
attending the federal allocation meeting, sometimes Anambra State will get
N200m, sometimes N600m; it was never straight. I couldn’t pay salaries in some
of the months so where could I get such money to send N3.5bn abroad? I told him
it was not possible, he said, if he didn’t approve it for investigations, some
people would think that he was colluding with me. I said okay. Atiku brought the
petition and Obasanjo looked at the petition and said but there is no covering
letter, Atiku put his hands into his pocket and brought out a covering letter.
These people were ready, everything that they could do to get me jailed or
killed, what did I do? I was doing well. Christ was doing good, healing all
types of diseases. It is my experience to be doing good while people that run
me down go through all sorts of problems, it was terrible I must tell you. In
any case, they went to Europe, London where I studied, they went to Russia
where we visited when I played football, I played in Spain, everywhere, they
saw my CV and thought that all the places I went, I put money there, they went
to America where I also studied and saw
nothing and at the end, President Obasanjo called me on phone and said
“Governor Anambra,” I said sir, he said you can walk with your head high and I
said I told you sir. The only thing I had was three pounds in London at the
University of Southampton where I studied Law and I had left in Lloyds Bank
three pounds, I couldn’t have finished it. I kept it there. Godfather or no
godfather, in my own case, they were negative even in the case of those who
came after me, they had it rough with godfathers. The person who started
godfatherism in Anambra State was former President Obasanjo because he wanted
his boys to be governor. In my own
case, he wanted his boy Andy Uba to rule Anambra and indeed his nominee became
governor for a few weeks. Anambra State is not an easy state where you can go and
do two terms, it’s tough. You can ask Peter Obi what he went through to get a
second term; he succeeded because he had godfathers who were positive. In the
case of the PDP, we had godfathers who were negative. I was sent to prison pending bail but 5,000
hoodlums were hired to start a riot and attack the prison with the aim of
killing me. They came to the prison where I was. They trampled upon the prison
gate and came to my cell but I was gone. One judge told me their aim was to
arrest me, tie my hands and feet and drive me through the streets of Onitsha
main market in an open van, the same market I go to for prayers, before killing
me.
Was there an agreement you had with
these godfathers that you reneged on?
How
can anybody say I was paying godfathers while at the same time they said I
reneged on an agreement? There is a godfather who had an arrangement with the
military that he would be paid N10m every month, I wasn’t there when the
agreement was made. When I tried to stop it, I was dragged to President
Obasanjo’s office and I told Obasanjo this is the situation I found on ground
and Obasanjo said I had to go back and continue paying it; that it was legal.
At what stage did I renege? They will always try to give a dog a bad name in
order to hang it. Obasanjo gave them contracts worth billions of naira, they
were super rich, and there was nothing I could give to them.
You mean Obasanjo asked you to pay this
godfather; who is he?
Yes,
Obasanjo asked me to pay. The godfather is one of the Uba family.
More at Punch
obasanjo is running dis country as if he owns it
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