‘Jonathan has not given hope to minority tribes’

Peter Ameh is the Secretary General of Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC) and national chairman of the Progressive Peoples’ Alliance (PPA).  In this interview, he says Jonathan’s administration has not given hope to minority tribes in Nigeria. Excerpts:

Some say your party is likely to merge with other parties ahead of the 2015 elections having lost two of your governors to the PDP in the past…
No, we have no merger plan. We could have electoral alliance on issues of comparative advantage but we are not merging with any political party ahead of the elections, we will go on our own.
Is your party going to field a presidential candidate for the elections?
Yes, one of the things we have done is to bring on board a lot of our stakeholders. We have been having discussions and we intend to have the PPA national submit and elections very soon, the day will be made public soon. And we want to participate in all the elections that are coming up in Nigeria in 2015. In the next two weeks, we will be holding the National Working Committee (NWC) meeting

of the party to be able to look at maybe it will be zoned or left open to all Nigerians irrespective of tribe or religion. We don’t want a situation where we will still go back to this issue. The NWC will look at it from a very holistic point of view and categorically to look at; is it best to zone it? Is it best to leave it open but whatever the party’s highest decision making body takes, we would work with that but we must participate in the elections.
What is your assessment of President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration?
I believe there are bad advisers around him. And as soon as he takes note of this and kick them out and continue to work for the interest of Nigeria, the better for his administration. Well, there are some problems here and there but there are other good areas that he has done but my issue is that he has shown Nigerians that in some cases, the National Assembly has no right to do anything which I am not happy about because when the National Assembly approves some people to be sacked, the Executive will go against it but when they feel like sacking people on their own, they do that, so these are not the right things that are good for any administration. He should remove the bad eggs in his administration.  People are complaining that corruption is getting increased on a daily basis during his administration.  For me when he came into office, I made a statement I said responsibility lies on him to give hope to the minority tribes in the country because I am an Igala man, a man from the minority in the Nigerian context, that is what they say it is, so for him to become president from his minority tribe, he has given us hope as Igala people that we can become president but if he has given us that hope, that hope can only be sustained if he performs credibly well to show that you don’t need to be part of any major ethnic group to rule this country. He has to perform and that performance to me I am not yet satisfied with the level of his performance.
Are you satisfied with the FG arrangement as regards the non-inclusion of the majority of political parties in the national conference?
How can one be satisfied? That is not true, that is not fair, that is not just because if you look at the Nigerian Bar Association, it is different from political party arrangement, market women and CSOs are different from political parties because there are CSOs which can do the same thing, all Lawyer have one common goal and agenda to be able to put the legal profession in a better state but political parties have different ideologies.  No party will fight for the interest of my party, the PPA, it is only the PPA that will be interested in struggling for what will benefit people so parties can not represent parties. If we want to have a one party system in Nigeria, let’s do it, if it is a two party-system we need, let’s do it but not to allow few parties to represent other parties. All parties pass through the same process of registration and whether you are in government or not, if you look at chapter two of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, all parties are supposed to work in line with this whether you are in government or not and this is a huge responsibility, so you can’t now wake up and say some parties should not participate in the national conference. There should be and undertone to this decision which we don’t understand yet but whatever they are doing is not fair and is not just before the law.
Some of your party members recently defected to the APC.  Are you pleased with this development?
We participated in elections since 2007, we won elections and it is on record even in Taraba, we had a House of Assembly member, a party can win anywhere, in Bayelsa, we currently have a House of Assembly member, we produced governor in Abia and Imo States before despite their unfaithfulness to the party, they were not true party men and left the party but still we are forging ahead. We are going to participate fully in the 2015elections so there are consultations going on. In fact, in the forth coming Ondo Federal House of Reps elections, PPA is going to participate.