Second Republic Steel Minister, Wantaregh Paul Unongo, in this interview with journalists, speaks on the desperation for power by politicians, the Boko Haram challenge, his legendary philanthropy as well as how he rejected late MKO Abiola’s N68 million and frustrated his presidential ambition. GEORGE AGBA was there. Excerpts:
There is so much desperation among the political class. Incumbents use violence to intimidate their opponents, and when they win, they rely on state power, sometimes even state terror to retain their mandates. What is your take on this?
There should be no desperation about power. People who kill or employ violence are those who do not know the purpose of power. If God gives you power, it is to let people see through you His extreme love, His unconditional goodness for the human person. You know, God loved man so much that He gave Himself to redeem man; He humiliated Himself to the point of taking on the form of a human being, and then dying the shameful death of crucifixion. Just to save man from eternal damnation. God created us in His image, we are dear to Him.
And no one should play God or presume that he can play God by unwisely turning the coercive apparatus of state on the people so as to cow them.
So if God gives you power, it is to replicate His infinite goodness and sacrificial love. And these reflect through compassion, love, humility, service, sacrifice, and the common good. It is unfortunate that when some people get into power, especially the young men of today, they become pompous, inaccessible, unapproachable, and all-knowing. This is what our young men that just got into power are doing. This pomposity, this conspicuous and opulent consumption, and utter disregard for other people are antithetical to democracy and God’s kind of rulership. This is the tragedy of political power in Nigeria today. But God will stop them; He will turn their power into powder, and on top of that, He will judge them. This is a democracy, and our young men should remember that we have not surrendered our sovereign right to change them when we want. And when we change them, they should not fight people who were magnanimous enough to give them the mandate in the first place. And the person coming should not come with vendetta in mind. This is because if that happens, I will not hesitate to speak up in protest. This is why I pity some of these young people who have just come into easy money.
But the combination of money and power can be very intoxicating. So could it be that because young men have both, they do not care again about the sovereignty of people’s power or the place of truth in politics?
Is power not transient? Where are yesterday’s big men today? Are today’s big men necessarily not tomorrow’s ex-this and ex-that? Can they run away from that inimitable fact of life? And if you talk of money, what money have they seen? In any case, for some of us, money is not the ultimate goal in life, and so, it cannot dull our perception of truth. We speak as we see it. If it may interest you, the late Chief MKO Abiola brought N68 million to my house in Gboko. How much is that today? He wanted power, but he betrayed something that is dear to some of us, I for one told him he was finished politically. I said: Look, you have a large heart, but you will never be President.
And he did not become President…
Well, did he become? You tell me. Why I brought this up is because I can oppose anybody when I feel the person is not right or straying. And as a member of the same party with him (Abiola), I took 12 of my vehicles and put Tofa, Alh. Othman Bashir Tofa’s pictures plus mine and said people should vote for Tofa. Reason: Abiola breached a cardinal principle of togetherness. I was with him at his house until 3 am, we resolved that his vice president must be, should be and would be a Christian. To convince me, he sent his car, and then he changed his mind.
He called a person, Pascal Bafyau, the then President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC). And when he came, Abiola presented him to me as his running mate. I said fine; let’s go for the Convention in Jos. And President indeed you will be. And I told Abiola why at that point in time, it was necessary that as a Muslim who was so committed to his religion, it was crucially proper that his Vice is a Christian. When we got to Abuja, I do not know what happened, but after we had nominated and elected him as the SDP’s presidential candidate, Abiola shocked me. Mind you, we were together on the eve of the Jos Convention.
He shocked me: he stood up, looked me straight in the face and announced Baba Gana Kingibe as his running mate. And I told him straight away too that: You are a joker, a big joker, MKO. The God that I worship, with all your money, will stop you. You shall run, but you shall not win; you can do all you please, but you will not be president. Because you have betrayed trust, you have betrayed fidelity and, inadvertently, you have betrayed what is on your mind. You are a religious bigot, you are going to make us fight religious wars, and I know that when that happens, the people that would die most would be my people, the Tiv people. So I will make sure you fail in this project. And I made sure of that. The details will come out one day.
When he came to Benue shortly after to campaign, the big men in power then, including my son, Rev. Fr. Moses Adasu, told him not to visit me; that I was not important, and they were laughing at me. And I laughed back; I said MKO, you know, am your friend. And you are such a big hearted and generous person, but this project is doomed. You will not be elected; and if by any chance you are elected, you will not rule. So on the eve of the elections, he brought the money, in these, what do you call them, these big bags? And he told me, this one is 30 something million, this one is 30 something million Naira. And he said, please, take it. You are my friend, let us win this election.
Plus, I will make you very rich, and I rejected it; I told him I did not want his riches. I said I have never had N10 million at once, and if I took the N60 plus millions, I would lose my balance. And he, in a bid to sway me, gave everybody in my house N50,000. Ordinarily, my house is a crowded affair, but on election eve, it was like a market. I know at least 25 people got the money. But I remained resolute. I did touch it, the N68million. That is what he said. I never counted it, but he said N68 million. He drank my palm wine and left, frustrated. And these little boys in Benue, say I must stop speaking the truth or I will starve. And I say: they are welcome. What is the value of that N68 million today? Unluckily for them, I have spoken the truth for too long to suddenly be converted to the vegetative state of keeping quiet in the face of falsehood. So I repeat that the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) beat our candidate, Gov. Suswam, in the Benue gubernatorial elections.
What is your comment on the problem of nation-wide insecurity? Just as kidnapping is receding in the Niger Delta, the dreaded Boko Haram is on the ascendancy in the North. What is to be done?
Let me say, a hungry man is an angry man. The Nigerian government pushed the Niger Delta youths to the wall, to the level where they could not but fight back, and they did. And in effect, they said: to hell with Nigeria. It is the same with Boko Haram, but I hope the government will find the right solution, and muster the will to do the right thing, and quickly.
Many Nigerians give in front of the TV camera, and for this, they collect chieftaincy titles and honorary doctorates. But you give quietly and without fanfare. What informs your legendary philanthropy?
Three forces; my God, my mother and my father, even though I am not a religious person, but rather a very spiritual person, my ideal model in life is Jesus Christ. Jesus was God, is God, but he emptied Himself for lost mankind. He left His Almightiness, His divinity, His deity and becomes man, ordinary man, to save us. There is no better example of giving: it is selfless and pure.
Then my parents, both of them late now, were model givers who gave themselves even when they did not have to give. I used to worry about my father trying to carry everybody on his shoulders. My mother was the same thing. She took on all-comers. I never saw them hold back, I never saw them complain or worry; if they worried, it was over their inadequacy to do more. So in my life, in my experiences and in my studies, I have congruence between the parental example and the Jesus model. But most importantly, I did not see or hear them talk about their generosity.
Never! And they were not as favoured as I am or have been, but they gave even when objectively they did not have to give. And their targets were the weak, the old, the destitute, the orphaned, the bereaved etc. So I am a complete reflection of my God, my mother and my father. I imbibed selflessness from my earthly parents, and learnt total sacrifice from Jesus, my God. So this PR giving, this camera-view generosity, it is alien to me. This is what sets me apart from the cultivated generosity of unscrupulous politicians who want to be shown on TV, in movies and newspapers etc.
Sir, you have been a giver almost all of your adult life. You have given scholarships, education to the indigent; you have given away hotels, houses, cars etc. In old age now, do you have regrets, more so as you are not listed among the wealthy Nigerians?
No regrets at all. Not one. And I give praise to God for sending you to me. I do not know what people define as either success or wealth, but I know what happiness or wealth means to me. I do not know if foreign accounts would have made me happier than I am now. I do not know if I had estates in Dubai or Europe or South Africa or even nearby Ghana, which is now the craze, I do not know if I would be more fulfilled. So I know what I want in life, and I have it. For me money is not more important than people, so instead of gathering money, I gather people. And instead of accumulating tons of money, I accumulate friends. One day, I will go the way of all mankind, and I would love to know that I left the world a little bit better than I found it. So these little acts of love or sharing constitute my happiness, my joy, my fulfilment.
You have been very vocal lately, baring your mind on Benue politics, on the Tor Tiv etc. Some people think you are being too blunt, especially in your statements on the Tor Tiv.
Again, I pray that that people who genuinely love me will allow me to be myself, to give me the room to just be me. I cannot be somebody else. That has been my problem with Nigerians. Why can’t some of us be a little different? Why should someone want me to be voiceless, even as an elder who has seen it all, so to say? But some of us who are at once students and teachers of human psychology, this type of behavior only intrigues me.
In 2007, you did something unprecedented; you changed parties by moving from the opposition All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) into the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Looking back, would you say it has been worth it?
I have explained this before, but let me repeat it here. I did not like the excessive killings that were going on between my supporters in the ANPP and those of my opponents in the PDP. When I was in opposition, any time I stood for election, I would win, but the powers that be would steal my victory. The powers that be are always scared of Paul Unongo. I do not know why: I am still thinking about it. So they went out of their way to do all manner of things, including killing people, to stop me from assuming office. The thing was too much. The last killing was traumatic. The PDP killed more than 1500 people in Kwande alone during the local government election. They even came to my village here, Unongo Village, and razed everything down. But worse, in gross depravity, those who were sent, security personnel, they bombed the place, exhumed the remains of my parents and burnt them. What remains of them today are the ashes. It was so bad. But because I wanted my people to live, I was assured that if I moved into PDP, the violence would stop.
So I came to the party that always has to win. Unfortunately, we did not win. We were concentrating, majoring in minors. Here was a world-class Professor of Marketing, a tenured professor from a world-class university ie Prof. Steve Ugbah of the ACN. And he was being marketed by another globally acclaimed Professor of Marketing, i.e. Prof. David Iornem who was his campaign Director-General. And you know what marketers can do in the political space. But rather than focus on our main opponent, we zeroed in on another candidate, who was vying for a senatorial seat. So we missed it. I saw it and drew the attention of my party to it, but no one listened to the old man. And when another round of violence set, with the intimidation, killing of people, and I spoke against it, some people started calling me names. But name-calling will not change the reality. Not at all. Some of them are now calling me names, saying I have never won any election in my life. And they know they are being mischievous. For every election I have stood for in my life, I have won. So my party did not listen to me and we lost. Now instead of honouring me as a political philosopher, they are embarrassing themselves by thinking they are abusing me.