High Chief Solomon Ogbonna Aguene, (Ekpere Chukwu Zara Ndigbo) is the Ohanaeze President, Lagos State chapter. Elected in 2018, he is the first President of the Igbo apex body in Lagos state to secure a befitting secretariat and to bring the body closer to the Lagos state government. Over the weekend, he was honoured with the “Most Outstanding President of Ohanaeze Award” by the Unique Model Magazine management team. Sharing his experience, the Ohanaeze president spoke about his numerous achievements without any allocation from the headquarter, stressing that he is better than some past governors of Abia and Imo states who collected huge allocations with little or nothing to show for it. He also advised the President-General of Ohanaeze, Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu to braze up and initiate programmes that will favour Ndigbo and silent his opposition.
Excerpts:
Tell us about your success story in Ohanaeze leadership, how you got the secretariat shortly after your emergence as president and maintain it?
I emerged as the president of Ohanaeze Ndigbo in 2018 but before then, we all know that Ohanaeze Ndigbo had no secretariat and one of my campaign promises was to get Ohanaeze Ndigbo a secretariat and when I emerged as the president against Tony Nwakaeze who contested with me, I felt getting a secretariat was the first thing I should do.
I found the secretariat before my inauguration because a man without an office cannot present himself before the public as a leader, you must present where you work and where you sleep, and we cannot be doing Ohanaeze without a secretariat. There’s no country that has police without a station. So, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Lagos state is the headquarter and for me, after the election, nobody handed over to me because there was crisis before my emergence, then I was supported by friends and brothers financially to be able to secure the secretariat for Ohanaeze according to my campaign promise.
Hon. Linus Okorie Aba, an Honorable member representing old Ohaozara constituency of Ebonyi state supported me financially. Then, the grand patron of Ohanaeze, Ifeanyichukwu Odii also supported me. Then, my next move was to bring the government of Lagos state close to Ndigbo, I brought Ndigbo close to the protocol list of the government of Lagos state. I have a lot to say and I’m sure this is not the first interview I’m granting to this medium and I always remember those very important things to say.
We had Ndigbo Lagos which tried to pocket Ohanaeze under them, which had been happening in Lagos for so many years, to the extent that the leadership and the head of Ndigbo, Lagos (their President) made every effort to make me his vice and I refused and I gave him the Igbo adage which says that a son cannot have the first child before his father which in Igbo interpretation means, “Nwata anaghi ebu nnaya uzo muta di okpara.”
So, I made sure that Ohanaeze members stand on their feet and secure their voice through Ohanaeze platform which is the umbrella body of Ndigbo and that covers every Igbo man including every other association in Lagos. Ohanaeze is the father and you cannot have a son before your father. Because what they normally do is to bring Ohanaeze members and use them as the background and use them to showcase politicians and at the end of the day, they will go for appointments, even the logistics to move any politician forward, they will charge.
The only thing that Ohanaeze members benefited was that if there is a diner night, the members would be struggling among themselves to have the invite because it’s usually strictly by invitation and when they get any, that ends it. Their struggling and standing to vote for any politician to emerge, after doing all those things, their compensation is a plate of jellof rice and bitter leaf soup and that ends it. And that is the area many people say that I’m stubborn.
If any leader emerges today and wants to focus on the grass root people and to have more interest in the common people, he will become the most stubborn person among the elite that is what I’m passing through. If I was stubborn, I could have made so much money from people before securing the secretariat. The secretariat was inaugurated by the then President-General, Chief Nnia Nwodo before my inauguration, if I was a stubborn person, I could have pocketed the money that came from the governor of Lagos state to empower widows which I asked for.
A lot of women who are financial members of Ohanaeze in the various LGAs are widows, they are also serving Ndigbo through Ohanaeze and when they lost their husbands and nobody asked them and even at the wake-keep, Ohanaeze does not perform any role, so we must move in those areas by supporting such widows. We then decided to empower them, first with N100,000.00 each. So, if I’m stubborn, that will not happen.
So many people had problems with their property in Lagos state, I can mention a number of them which involved huge sums of money that I helped by appealing to the governor of Lagos state that he should look into it and he did and the people recovered their property. If I start counting what I have done for Ohanaeze when there is no allocation from the headquarter, it’s numerous. A Councilor serving in a local government is better than Ohanaeze in terms of finance but I was able to find my way to achieve all what we achieved.
In fact, it was during my tenure that I stopped Ohanaeze members from paying monthly dues in any local government since the inception of Ohanazez in Lagos. What I did was to talk to some of our people who God has blessed to support Ohanaeze because Ohanaeze has no allocation of any kind from the headquarter, rather the headquarter use us as a background to get money from the presidential candidates during an election.
So, if you come to rebuild this country and put it in order the way the colonial masters or the way Zik, M.I Okpara, R.B.K. Okafor and co left it, you will have problems with those who had been looting the money in the name of politics. So, because of the statement you made before the presentation that was why I accepted the award with all my heart.
I know that no human being watches his back when he’s dancing, it is only other people who are watching that will tell you how your buttocks is shaking and I have my superior here who is the first elected president of Ohanaeze here in the person of Chief John Uche, and the others, they are the people who encouraged me to accept this award because they had been in office before me and seen how difficult it is to deal with an Igbo man especially if you are coming on the platform of the truth.
The only thing I refer to is that I’m doing better than some past governors Imo and Abia state who are collecting billions of allocations since after the administration of Mbakwe. I can challenge many of them that I’m doing better than them.
How do you assess the leadership of Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu?
Like you said earlier, Ohanaeze Ndigbo leadership today is very difficult. Chief Iwuayanwu is standing as a factional leader of Ohanaeze while Chief Chide Ibe also has his own empire in Ohanaeze. In Lagos Ohanaeze too, we have Sunday Ossai who they brought to challenge the good things I’m doing in Lagos and also to use him as a platform for getting money from some people and sharing within themselves.
But I think Iwuanyanwu should tighten up his belt by standing to challenge his opposition by doing what the opposition cannot do that will favour Ndigbo. But as for Ohanaeze, we have factions in Enugu which is the national as well as in Lagos but who outweighs each other is what we will look into, not as enmity because whatever goes up must come down.
In no distant time, Ndigbo will realize that they should respect their leaders and that leaders should also respect their people. A leader should not use the people as a platform to enrich himself. The people should also take any good advice their leader gives them.