His Excellency, Chief Ojo Maduekwe
Black Ottawa Scene met with his Excellency on Saturday 19 July at the Nigerian community mega clinic held at Vincent Massey Park. With his wife by his side and decked out in the very best Calgary Stampede cowboy outfit, the distinguished diplomat went out of his way to mix and chat with Nigerians from all walks of life. His Excellency was gracious enough to grant us an interview on the spot.
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Your excellency, welcome
Thank you.
We are very pleased to see you here today. First of all, why did you decide to come to the Nigerian picnic?
Because my people are here, because of Nigeria, you may have heard about citizen diplomacy. When I was Minister of Foreign Affairs, I said our diplomacy should have the Nigerian citizen at the centre of it. I was Minister at the time, I didn’t know I would one day have the opportunity to now put this to test. And now I can put it to test that the citizen is the centre of our diplomacy. That means that whatever they are doing we identify with it. We make them proud that they are Nigerians, even when they are Canadian citizens, their origin is Nigeria. We want to make sure that just like Americans, or Canadians are proud to say they are Americans or Canadians, we want Nigerians to say I am proud to be Nigerian. My green passport is a passport of honour and excellence, a passport of the global importance of Nigeria. We cannot do that if we are just armchair ambassadors, sitting in our embassies or high commissions as they are called in the Commonwealth, we have to get out and interact with Nigerians, know their challenges, see how we can be of help, commend them for their achievements, encourage them to continue to be the real ambassadors of Nigeria because the ultimate ambassadors of Nigeria are not we who are here because of a federal appointment. The job will be over one of these days and we are back home to Nigeria. The real ambassadors are Nigerians who are here in Canada, who when they go thier various offices , they know Nigerians in Canada re doing very well, both in the universities or in offices when they excell. Even though you are a Canadian citizen now, when they excel , people will ask, what part of the world are you from, you will say I’m from Nigeria. We get a lot of kudos for that. I am honoured that citizen diplomacy has now been approved by the National confab, a committee headed by a former Federal Minister of Foreign affairs, Profesor Gambari, as something that defines the way we engage our people all over the world. it is not yet final because it has to come back to government, the issue is not that the confab said so, I said so long ago. They adopted what I had said long ago. The issue is when government will make it formal. The important thing is that we were elected by the people of Nigeria, so people of Nigeria, whether they are in Nigeria or in Canada they are our real bosses. Servant leadership is what this is about so wherever they are , we identify with them.
You’ve been in Canada about three years now. How do you find Canadians, what do you think the attitude of Canadians to Nigerians is?
It’s a great society, well organised with the rule of law, democracy, human rights, multiculturalism, strong institutions, all these make Canada great.
But what do you think Canadians think of Nigerians?
These are things that we as we continue with not just nation building in Nigeria but state building in Nigeria, we should be looking at the things that have made other countries truly great and modern and we are also in that track. W we are moving in that track . That’s what the Johnathan agenda is about. As far as what Canadians think about Nigerians, I think generally they have a healthy view about Nigeria. Many Canadians will be the first to tell you that no country is perfect but generally they have so much confidence in what Nigeria will be, not what it is today , they realize that Nigeria is work in progress.
The Canadian and world media have focussed a lot of attention on the Boko Haram insurgency in the north and the type of instability it has the potential of bringing to Nigeria. What is the Nigerian government doing to address this problem?
The more informed Canadians or from anywhere else in the world, understand the complexity of the Boko Haram situation and they will concede that the Johnathan administration has done quite a lot to deal with this novel and complex challenge.
What exactly have they done? The general impression is that the Nigerian army is totally powerless to face the insurgents.
You call it impression, impression is not reality. A lot of what happens in fighting insurgency is not a matter the government will start announcing publicly. There are operational reasons why you cannot go and give information to the enemy which they can use to fight you. The government has increased funding in fighting terror, government has acquired new technology in fighting terror. Let me also underscore the fact this is a new experience for Nigeria, we never had the experience of insurgency before at this level. So government has improved in its own learning curve in dealing with terror.
But the impression from many people and that includes many Nigerians, is that the government of Nigeria does not seem to have the will, or the power to address the Boko Haram menace, especially when it comes to those 200 girls kidnapped from Chibok, more than three months ago, and there doesn’t to be any movement along those lines.
There is a lot of movement but there are people who will always want to discredit the government. Just like when Americans were kidnapped and held hostage in Iran , it took 240 days to rescue the hostages. There were people who didn’t want to give the American government any benefit of the doubt. Up to now there are people who don’t want to give the American government any benefit of the doubt after 10 years of fighting insurgency in Iraq. Iraq is still a challenge so people will always take away whatever they want to, but the important thing is what is the government doing . It is not everything government is doing that the government will go public. The government will be the first to admit that it is perfecting its strategy and improving on its skill. About the Chibok girls they cannot come and announce to the world what it wants to do to rescue those girls because that would put the girls in danger. That would ensure that the girls won’t come out alive. Government emphasis is to rescue those girls, to see how as many as possible can be rescued and already under pressure from the government, many of the girls are finding their way out, a number of them have come out. The most important thing is the final success story, not government coming to talk carelessly about what they are are doing.
One of the things other countries including Canada has as the image of Nigeria, is one of a country rife with corruption and incompetence and this is borne by all kinds of news that we get from Nigerian from time to time: 419, kidnappings and so on. What is the government of Nigeria doing to address these problems , because as a Nigerian myself, we suffer from this image ?
We punish criminals in Nigeria but if you are a Nigerian you are in Canada and you are a 419 person here, it is for the Canadian government to deal with you. We cannot come from Nigeria and interfere with the jurisdiction of the Canadian government. so you should talk to those Nigerians who make our outlook terrible, outside Nigeria, talk to them . There is a limit to what government can do . Government cannot control all Nigerians all over the world, the same way the British or the Americans or Canadians , they can’t control their nationals all over the world.
The presidential elections are coming up in 2015. Can you comment on what you expect to happen and will President Johnathan run again?
President Johnathan has every right to run because speaking to you as a lawyer and as one of those who wrote the current constitution that is the basis of our democracy since 1999, the president is entitled to a second term, if he chooses to. If he chooses to put his name on the ballot , there is no constitutional reason for him not to run
But as one of his assistants and confidantes do you think he will he be running?
The final decision will be his own
You’re one of his closest assistants and advisers, so what can you tell me about his plans because Nigerians here in Canada would like to know?
He doesn’t want to break any law since there is a calendar for elections. When the time comes he will make the announcement as to what he wants to do. I can’t preempt him.
There are some people who are predicting that this next election would result in a break up of Nigeria. How do you respond that kind of prediction?
That is rubbish, absolute rubbish.
You don’t think there is any basis for that prediction?
It’s absolute nonsense.
Is there any message you’d like to give to readers of Black Ottawa Scene about Nigeria in general because they want to know a little more about Nigeria and have a good impression of the country?
Nigeria is a country with so many strong dimensions. It will be one of the most important countries in the world in a very short time from now . With 170 million people, very hard working, you heard about 419, you’re talking about corruption, you can accuse Nigerians of virtually every other thing, but you can’t accuse them of laziness. Our people are not lazy. They are very hard working , very enterprising, sometimes for the wrong reasons. A country with that kind of population , very intelligent, very enterprising, a large educated cadre , there is no way it will not succeed, whether we talk of economics or politics , or continued regional leadership.
We just finished the World Cup. With the Super Eagles, there was a lot of expectation that they would do well and yet they failed miserably when it came to the second round and there were reports about money not getting to the players and bad organisation and so on. What do you say to that sir?
These are administrative issues that are being handled properly at home. We like to see our team win, the same way as other countries. We should be able to come to terms with that. It’s not only when the Green Eagles win when they do well, we feel they are the best , when they don’t do well, we want to throw them out. Those of them who have shown indiscipline,, those not showing enough commitment, I expect that the normal administrative process will sort them out. It would be unfair to the vast majority of the players who have played their hearts out, who have worked very hard and who have played very well, to be lumped together with those being rubbish. We have a sense of generalization, we over generalize too much; every body in government is corrupt, the whole of Nigeria is corrupt, the nation will fail . Can we be a little bit more reasonable and more healthy, make sure we don’t generalize? There are a lot of good people in Nigeria, even in politics, even in government. There a lot of good Green Eagle members. Same as here, some people who are not patriotic . I believe that the vast majority of Nigerians are good law-abiding citizens and patriotic people.
What is your prediction for the election in 2015? Which party do you think will win at the federal level?
You are speaking to the former national secretary of the ruling party. Do you want me to tell you that my party will not win?
Do you think Johnathan will win?
My friend, who are the APC people? Some of them are people who we have sent on an errand to the opposition party. We allowed them to go to APC. so we can have a vibrant political system. We are tired of winning without much challenge. We like to win, we like to be better challenged so that the whole thing can be more competitive. Some of our members like to help the APC. We let them go so they can strengthen the opposition, so we can have a more vigorous contest. At the end of the day, there is no way PDP will not win. We are more national, we are more widespread , we are not brought down by the various fault lines of region or religion, we are a pan-Nigerian party. and we have considerable institutional memory about how to govern. We are Nigeria and Nigeria is us.
The fact that President Johnathan is from the south seems to be a big issue for some Nigerian politicians. Do you consider this a problem?
That’s their problem. Coming from the south does it make him less of a Nigerian. We have gone beyond that state of north and south, that’s the reason why someone like President Johnathan who is not from any of the big tribes , as I do, I am Igbo as you know, he is not Igbo or Yyoruba or Hausa, somebody like President Johnathan from a minority ethnic group in the south, a nationality within a minority group, for him to become president shows that we have turned that corner of where you come from should determine whether you are president or not. President Johnathan did not become president today because he is from the south or because he is Ijaw. He became president because the constitution of Nigeria did not intend that in the unfortunate event of a president going the way all of us will go one day, to meet his maker, the constitution did not expect that there should be no president when a serving president dies in office. That’s why we have a Vice President, so the then Vice President Johnathan filled in that slot of our former boss President Yar Adua. As president who filled in the slot of his former boss what does the constitution say? The constitution says he can run for a first term of 4 years and, if chosen by his party and people of Nigeria, for another 4 years. When you go and sit down as party elders and chose president Johnathan , his emergence is a game changer, and he should be celebrated. At the end of the day, what’s important is who can put food on the table, who can make sure there is potable water, who can ensure we have qualitative education, who can make Nigeria rise to its manifest destiny as a truly great African country, that should be the agenda. Not where the person comes from. So he is in office now because the constitution allows him to be in office. If he runs again, of course I’ll support him , because he is a good man He is the one to decide that. Of course there has been a lot of appeals for him to run, they are looking at the national interest , he is best qualified. At the end of the day, he will take that decision. If he does, I will support as I was last time.
One last question, are you going to be contesting the 2015 election and in what capacity?
Myself, for what? I am here doing a job . I am an elder statesman
What does that mean sir? Does that mean you’re not going to run?
What it means is that for me I’ve been around for a while. I started my life by running elections to the parliament in the Shagari republic I was there over 30 years as a member of Parliament . Must I be running for the rest of my life?
You mean you are not going to run?
We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.
Thank you so much sir.