Lack of internal party democracy bane of Nigeria’s efficiency as a nation – Princewill

Tonye Princewill, a prince of the Kalabari Kingdom of Rivers State is a politician, business man, and a successful film producer. Princewill had tried his hands at the gubernatorial race for different parties in the state. In this explosive interaction with journalists in Rivers State recently, Princewill reasoned that the major problem of Nigeria has been the lack of internal party democracy. He also speaks on other issues at the state and national issues. AMAKA AGBU was there.

The act of carpet-crossing by politicians seems to have become the order of the day and you have even been described as a serial defector. How do you respond to this and to the belief that politicians do not have principles or integrity?
There are strong and genuine reasons for my defections. Since you asked, it will be fair I respond. Only somebody without principles will stay in a party without principles.

I have come to the conclusion that a lot of people don’t understand that if you are truly a person of integrity, and truly somebody who has the people’s interest at heart, you cannot belong to a party without integrity.

If you continue to stay in a party that disregards integrity and disregards the people, it is an indication of selfishness and lack of integrity. May be the party is feathering your nest and for that reason, you stay.

I have always been a man of many endeavours. I have not relied on government or party. I don’t play politics for money. That is why when Amaechi and I fell out in 2014, I went out for him straight.

They had nothing on me because I don’t compromise myself. And that is why I can go now head-on with Wike because when I was in PDP, they found nothing on me. I have a history of constantly putting money into politics.

I’m in politics to spend money. For instance, I donated the media centre at the PDP headquarters, Abuja, to the party. I know how much it cost me.

So I am constantly on record for speaking my mind because I create endeavours outside of what you might call the political space.

The fact that people can define a person’s character by his choice of political party shows the shallowness of their minds.

How can you be defining somebody by the person’s choice of political party? Unfortunately, too many of our people, not just in Rivers State but nationally, tend to look at individuals and character in a very shallow manner.

So your choice of party does not define you. Let’s be frank. Ask yourself why the person is moving. I’m moving to APC not because I’m in love with APC.

I’ve told everybody who cares to listen that my love is for the state. That’s my priority, not party, because I don’t see one party as significantly different from the other. What you find are the individuals in the parties.

That’s what makes the difference. And if you are fortunate enough you will find like minds within the party. Normally, people go to parties for their political ambition, to serve their interests better.

I’ve always said that for me after what PDP did to me and other gubernatorial aspirants in the 2015 primaries, those who remained there deserves awards for people who can take anything, otherwise, you can’t scheme out aspirants in that manner and expect them to be loyal to that same party.

I was absolutely surprised at the people who still remained there in PDP after that. I could not stay there. The party that behaves that way does not deserve my support. And so I moved on. That is my character.

As far as I am concerned political parties are vehicles for people to realise their ambition. The question is: is your ambition a personal ambition? Or is it a group ambition. In this case for me it is a state ambition.

I am moving or crossing because I know that APC and I working together is a better combination to address what you might call the impotence of the PDP.

Mine is not a personal ambition, unless you want to say that my ambition to move my state forward is personal. So I think that rather than criticising people crossing carpets, ask yourself why they are doing that.

Why did Tonye cross to APC. There is a story, there is a reason. But if you want to simplify it, you will be saying that Tonye Princewill is just crossing because of what he will gain. That is far from the truth.

You have been out of politics for quite some time now. Why did it take you so long to bounce back? And why did you choose the APC?
I’m coming to APC now not because I love the party, but because we need a stronger opposition to the PDP. And I believe that joining the APC will strengthen the APC.

I believe that joining the APC would improve its chances at the polls. So if we have what you might call scattered opposition that is good news for the PDP. And as you can see I’m not interested in good news for the PDP.

Yes, I’ve been out of politics for quite some time now. I am a man of many parts. In 2007, I did my first film entitled 76. The film was shot in 2012 in Ibadan. We did not release it because I focused on 2015 elections.

After the elections, we went back to finish 76 because, if you know anything about movie production you will know that there is pre-production. If any of you had watched the film, you would notice that everything about it was 1976.

To even get the cars and arrange all of that takes time. There was the actual production. When you finish production, you do post production. After the election we went back to conclude the post production.

So we have been doing it little by little. Other movies did not make a profit but this time I decided to make sure that 76 made profit. I dedicated my time and energy to ensuring that 76 was a success.

None of those activities involved Port Harcourt. It involved a lot of Lagos and of Abuja, especially to get the final permissions from the army.

It involved Munich which is in Germany where we did our post production. It involved travelling the world for festivals. Now I’m not going to do all that and be sitting down in Port Harcourt.

But I’m glad that the film was a huge success, winning Africa film of the year, best director, best actor, best actress and a host of other accolades, including the best Nigerian movie to have a Hollywood distribution deal.

So I did not run away from Rivers State. I did not abandon Rivers State. Rivers State has always been on my mind.

But I decided as a business man to focus on my businesses, as an entrepreneur to focus on my entrepreneurial endeavours because we cannot live off politics without compromising ourselves.

Now that you are back to the APC I would like to know where and how you fit into this crisis-ridden party in the state. What do you intend to achieve from a divided party?
I believe that what is happening in APC Rivers State has not taken a political crisis dimension. The situation is over rated. I can analyse it and break it down for you because I watched it from a distance.

What is going on now has made APC to recognise that it has work to do. Recall what happened to PDP governorship aspirants in the primaries that produced Wike.

Don’t forget that the primaries that produced him was state’s. Look at the ward congresses and the LGA congresses before that. Then you will understand what a crisis situation is.

I’m not coming to APC now because of my governorship ambition. I’m coming because I want the party to be strong. So when I hear crisis, it makes me laugh because I’ve spoken with Senator Magnus Abe and Dr. Dakuku Peterside.

The reality of it is that personal ambitions are now secondary. But in politics some people will argue that it is their ambition that strengthens the party.

It is just a differing of opinions, differing of views, deferring of priorities. There is no doubt about this. There are tensions, but those tensions are mild. As my brother Opunabo Inko Taria often says, conflict is a function of interaction.

There is no how that you have so many people interacting that you would not have conflicts. So let us not overplay what is going on.

Magnus Abe, Rotimi Amaechi, Dakuku Peterside, ultimately will resolve the issues and people who are playing on this crisis would have ridiculous looks on their faces in future.

My role in the APC now is peace-making. I want to show people that they can be involved in politics without having personal political ambition.

I always said that politics is too important to be left to politicians. We all must be involved. I’m here to build the party, to help bring my own grassroots techniques to help move the party forward.

Ultimately I believe that if you combine Amaechi’s doggedness, his grace, because he has a lot of that, I have to give him that, with the grassroots support, and relative sincerity compared to PDP, I think we can give PDP a run for its money.

Defeating them? That’s God’s choice. But definitely let’s improve them because PDP is taking Rivers people for granted. No budget, nobody is talking about it. The media is afraid because you don’t have life and security in your hands.

A lot of you have been expired in the past. So I can’t blame you. But if you give some of us the opportunity, we will put the PDP government in Rivers State on notice. Constituency projects, projects being awarded and nobody knows the cost.

How is the APC’s internal misunderstanding and then the APC-PDP political fight affecting development in the state?
Even the simple fight between APC and PDP in itself is driving investors away. There is nothing stopping Wike from collaborating with Amaechi to bring more benefits to the state. We have two sea ports and two airports.

We have land mass. We are a corridor for East to West. We have a Minister of Transport and we have a governor of one of the richest states in the nation. Are all these reflecting in the state?

Amaechi has finished his tenure as governor and gone. Now that Wike is here, is it now his responsibility to rally round, break and overcome all barriers and make Rivers State a great state?

I believe the answer is yes. The governor should be creative, very intelligent and understand the need to bring people together. It’s not about APC or PDP.

I expected that Wike, in his wisdom, because Wike is not a fool, he’s a very smart guy, would have to understand that he cannot do this alone. I say he is smart because Wike has successfully convinced Rivers people that their problem is APC.

When you were in AC, you had a lot of structures, especially the Princewill Political Associates, PPA. You moved into Labour Party with the organisation. But since you ventured into APC, little have been heard of PPA. Why did you form it, in the first place, and is that organisation still relevant?
One of the things I said when I joined the APC was that I was no longer interested in my governorship ambition. I don’t see myself coming down to contest for governor again. That is the truth.

I believe that we should be encouraging the younger people to come up. So for strategic reasons, playing up my political family is counterproductive. I want them to be part and parcel of APC.

I don’t want them to have an identity that is too loud because that ultimately makes it look like I want to contest for governor. I want my people to be APC members through and through. I want them to show their strength by their works.

Why did we form PPA? When we were leaving AC to join PDP, they were blocking our people. They didn’t want our people to join because they felt that we were coming to contest in the 2011 election.

They didn’t know that was not our intention. We were leaving AC because we were fed up with the blackmail. So in that fear, they created barriers for us.

I then realised that if I join the party my people would be outside. So I formed the PPA so that our people will still have their identity.

I asked Amaechi whether we should dissolve the PPA when we joined the PDP since I had dropped my governorship ambition for the 2011 election because I noticed that some of his lieutenants, particularly Wike, were uncomfortable about it.

He said no, I should keep it. He assured me that he will supervise the orderly transition of our members from AC into PDP. So why am I still keeping PPA? But he insisted that I keep it.

That’s the only reason why we kept PPA. PPA was kept first of all to ensure the transition was smooth. But I must be honest with you, in the APC now, the party has really helped with the transition. So there is really no need for PPA apart for sentimental reasons.

You were in the PDP but later left because you were not treated well. What is the guarantee that you will not leave if APC treats you badly?
The answer is there is no guarantee. If I’m not treated well, then I will leave.

As a business man, do you agree with Dr. Okonjo Iweala’s statement that the economic recession we are experiencing is, partly, caused by the negative utterances by Mr. President at the early stage of his presidency?
I will say yes and no. I say yes just for the fact that when you hear someone speaking, you must ascertain where the person he is speaking from. She was speaking from the position a PDP government.

She was in a sensitive position as Minister of Finance. Some of what you might call truths of her statement might also have what you might call biases as well. I will give you a typical example.

When you frighten investors, their natural reaction would be to want to collect back their money and move. So she is right in saying that some of the utterances that came in the early days of the new administration definitely frightened the markets, investors.

You have to understand that one of the financial indicators that matters a lot is government’s reserves. How much does a country have in its reserves?

You may not know this but when Jonathan took over from Yar’Adua, Nigeria had an excess of $60billion in its excess crude account. By the time he left, it has fallen to $10billion.

If the financial market gets a simple glimpse of that kind of financial indicators, it will frighten investors because it shows a government that is not equipped to deal with emergencies.

We notice how the dollar is dropping on a daily basis. This is partly because of the infusion of foreign exchange into the market by the CBN.

CBN is infusing foreign exchange into the financial market whereas in the previous administration, they were infusing it into the PDP. So for people to say that had no impact on where we are today means that they are not connecting the dots.

I want to say that utterances, actions, the idea that you are giving certain sector of the economy access to foreign exchange and not giving others can result in people withdrawing their money.

In fact, not just withdrawing money, but changing their money from naira to dollar. It means that the demand for the dollar becomes higher. And you know what demand and supply is. It means price is altered.

So without a doubt, utterances would have had an impact, but let me say something. A lot of people don’t recognise that any government or every government makes mistakes.

It is natural, especially a government that has not been in power for such a long time. Some of these sensitivities may not be immediately obvious. Nigeria is a very powerful country.

We have a lot of interests. A lot of people have their eyes on us so we may not realise that an utterance here or there, as Wike has demonstrated recently, go a very long way.

When Wike mentioned that he would revoke the Certificate of Occupancy of NOVOTEL Hotel, he may not have realised the significance of a statement like that, that people in Paris and Washington, and all the corners of the world were amazed that their interests and investments would be so threatened.

Financial mismanagement is a factor too. But you see if you continue to blame the previous administration, what ultimately happens at the end of the day is people now become insensitive to that blame.

They will say it is enough, that you can’t keep blaming people and tell you to get things done. And I think we should take our criticisms in good faith but let us recognise that things are now on track and progress is being made.

The debate now is on restructuring and I am sure you will agree with the fact that Nigeria needs to do things differently. In your view what manner of restructuring do you think would move the country forward?
Well discussion is on-going, but I think that I can say without any equivocation that Nigeria needs restructuring. I think the government has an enormous opportunity here.

Why do I say that? I have checked the word restructuring in the dictionary and it has a simple definition and it is very powerful.

It says `restructuring is the improvement of an organisation or an entity to improve its performance. I don’t know why there is resistance to restructuring because in itself, restructuring is not defined to the point where you are restricted.

Last time they just announced that creative industries would have tax rebate. I did the film entitled 76. I know how much money we spent, I know how much tax we paid. If I do 76 now the difference on financials will be huge.

That is restructuring. There are so many things and so many angles to restructuring that government needs to look at to see what they can do now and what they can do later and do it. The idea of rejecting restructuring, to me, is not wise.

I think that the APC government should address restructuring in a manner that is reasonable; otherwise, it will affect them at the next election.

I believe that government should look at restructuring since the country is not as efficient as it should be. All that is expected is to make the country a little more efficient.

Even the Treasury Single Account, TSA, is a form of restructuring. I know the benefits of TSA. There is no doubt that the centre is too heavy and decentralisation is important, but you see we have to be very careful. One of the core problems we have in Nigeria is lack of internal party democracy.

If we are truly producing candidates who are popular and are speaking on behalf of the people at the state governments, legislatures, Federal Government, National Assembly as true representatives, then decentralisation of power, whether via state police or via increased resources from local government level to state and federal, restructuring can be easily achieved.

But right now we have power in the hands of people who have gone through no internal democracy. They are not truly the products of the people.

They are not even truly the products of the parties they claim to represent; therefore, giving such people, or even increasing power, is going to be a discomfort.

So for me I believe that we should decentralise, but do it only when we have issues of internal democracy straightened out.

You are a creative person. You said you don’t want to vie in APC this time around. Why do you want to be redundant in a party even with your power of creativity?
The power of creativity is even the more reason why you don’t have to be a governor. The power of creativity is to be valued. In 2007 I worked with Amaechi creatively.

I believe that we can be proud of what we did in 2007 and 2011. Actually, if you are creative, you can add value even more if you are not a governor.

I’m glad that people walked up to me and said that 76 was the best Nigerian film they have seen. We were able to, even outside of politics, to show value and make contributions.

And so for me I have been able to demonstrate that I do not have to be governor to add value.

Secondly, I really believe that we have to come away from this idea of ‘it must be me’. If we are going to be honest with ourselves, a true executive is an executive that learns how to build the next generation, how to build capacity.

So what we should be doing now, as individuals, is preaching the gospel to the next generation. The next generation can come and lead.

Like I said I think that I’m bigger than governor now. I believe that going to vie for governor is going backwards. So our job now is to try and get the next generation to understand what governance should be. So I don’t think that should be an issue.

Quote
I’m coming to APC now not because I love the party, but because we need a stronger opposition to the PDP. And I believe that joining the APC will strengthen the APC.

I believe that joining the APC would improve its chances at the polls. So if we have what you might call scattered opposition that is good news for the PDP. And as you can see I’m not interested in good news for the PDP.

Quote 2
One of the core problems we have in Nigeria is lack of internal party democracy. If we are truly producing candidates who are popular and are speaking on behalf of the people at the state governments, legislatures, Federal Government, National Assembly as true representatives, then decentralisation of power, whether via state police or via increased resources from local government level to state and federal, restructuring can be easily achieved. But right now we have power in the hands of people who have gone through no internal democracy