Why I nominated Akunyili for NAFDAC job – ABC Nwosu

Prof. ABC Nwosu served as Minister of Health in the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo. Be­fore his ministerial appointment, he had served President Obasanjo as Political Adviser. Since leaving cabinet, he has been playing some notable roles in the polity. He was y a member of the National Conference.

In this chat, the elder statesman spoke on a number of issues, including the reason he nominated the late Prof. Dora Akunyili, to head NAFDAC.

You played a significant role in the emergence of Prof. Dora Akunyili, as the DG of NAFDAC. Can you give an insight into her life and the implication of her death?

I don’t think I played a major role in her appointment. Dora instead played a major role in her appointment.  She was the kind of person that was required at that time by Nigeria to head NAFDAC. She had prepared herself without knowing it all her life. So, when the opportunity came, those of us who were in a position to recommend did exactly that. The president approved our recommendation and she was appointed. Nobody discovered Dora. The woman, by nature and destiny, was made for NAFDAC. That is how I would like to look at it. When it was time and I became minister and the position of DG NAFDAC became vacant, it is by law that the minister has to recommend and I recommended her. Fortunately, the president, Chief Obasanjo, approved her appointment.  Dora was the right man for the job. I have chosen my word carefully. I didn’t say the right woman; she was the right man, the right woman, the right human being for the job. You could see what she did there. God chose her to intervene on behalf of Nigerians at that time, especially in the area of fake drugs. I thank God that we all were privileged to be part of ensuring that the right person was recommended to head NAFDAC.

Would you say Nigerians missed her when she left that position?

It was good Dora left that position at the time she did. When a star comes in the firmament it shines brightly, then it goes its way. Dora came, saw and did her best. And her best was good enough. She left when the ovation was still loudest. When Dora came, NAFDAC was hardly known; it was in the back burner even in the ministry of health. She brought it into the front burner. She generated, through her integrity, the funds with which NAFDAC purchased the new office. It was under Dora that NAFDAC purchased its new office. I think that Dora, being a minister of information and communication, was a necessary retirement and phasing out plan. Her energy, passion and knowledge helped very much in establishing NAFDAC.

Do you share the sentiment that her appointment as minister dealt a blow on her reputation and integrity you talked about?

No, no, no Dora was an intelligent woman. She was a public-spirited person, a woman who had passion for her fellow citizens. These qualities found expression in NAFDAC and they were best suited for NAFDAC. A person imbued with those qualities does not just expire. You cannot finish doing what she did in NAFDAC and your spirit of public service will go. The spirit of public service found its expression when she was also appointed minister. She introduced ‘Good People,  Great Nation.’ She was using that as another platform to express her passion that things could be good in Nigeria. She was using that platform of minister to expend her energies on that fact that ‘Yes, we can.’ So, I don’t think that her appointment as minister diminished her. I don’t think it also affected her. It was still the same woman, bringing her passion and energies to the new place.

When that was over and she went into politics, it was still public service. I hear people now saying, no, I am not a politician. I feel sorry for such people. I also feel sorry for those who say they are professionals in politics. I do that because inside them, they think politicians are bad people. Politicians are good people, who have the interest of everyone at heart. You have good politicians; you also have bad politicians. Some have even said there are moneyticians, who are masquerading as politicians.

I don’t know how to describe one of the most saintly men I ever knew. He was Dr. Michael I. Okpara, Premier of Eastern Region then. He was a politician and a medical doctor. It was people like M. I. Okpara that inspired me to put in my national identity card ‘Politician’ in the column that specified my profession. But I am a Professor of Parasitology. I wrote the template and spearheaded the eradication of guinea worm from Nigeria. This fact is known by most people.  But who am I? I am a politician. That is what I want to be.

Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe was a politician with a motto: ‘show the light and people will find the way.’  Chief Obafemi Awolowo was a politician with a ‘Free education for all’. Sir Ahmadu Bello was a politician. I am glad to be in the company of such people. It is the useless politician and moneytician that we have now, who fly around in private jets that give politics and politicians a bad name. So, Dora’s public service life could only express itself in politics; that is why she sought to be in the Senate. I am certain that if she had gone to the Senate, her impact would have been well felt.

Do you subscribe to the argument that her membership of PDP and government at that time was responsible for some negative tag that some people tried to pin on her?

Politics and politicians are good. If moneyticians tried to spoil politics, good people must come in to reclaim politics, as a noble and good profession. I asked somebody recently:  ‘How many people did God want in Sodom and Gomorrah? Must everybody become evil because Sodom and Gomorrah is bad?’ The problem we are facing with not developing Nigeria now is because there are many bad people who have no interest in politics but are interested in the public treasury. They are not interested in public service. They have interest in dispensing patronage but not in giving service. It is our collective duty to chase those people away. It won’t be easy.

People like us will remain in politics. When I see good and young people, I talk them into joining politics. Yes, their hands will be burnt; they will have bruised faces but they need to come into politics, otherwise people of questionable characters will run over our country. When they do that, we will continue to complain. Somebody told me recently that the reason they were uncomfortable with me in Anambra, after I won the governorship primaries, was that they felt I was too educated, that they were more comfortable with people they can do business with. This is different from what happens in other climes. For instance,  in Britain, you can’t be a prime minister unless you trained in Oxford University. The President of Singapore that we are quoting is a product of Cambridge. Cameron brought together all the people from Cambridge. If you look at Clinton and his wife, they are both Yell and Harvard and Princeton. But in Nigeria the less you know, the more suitable you are for public offices, more people would be comfortable with you. If you are well educated many will be afraid of your too much education.

Educated people, in spite of this, must join politics; they must bring big ideas into politics. It is their duty also to make their brothers to accept them. You must not know book so much you will become haughty, proud and dismissive of others. A politician is not better than every other person. A politician has the interest of every other person at heart. You can’t come in to a place and claim to know more than every person there. You can’t succeed when you believe that nobody can contribute to the development of the society. That is not a mark of a good politician. A good politician is a man of the people, always pointing the light that will lead the people out of darkness.

Would you say Anambra central and indeed the entire state lost anything by Akunyili not representing them in the senate?

My answer is from the Igbo adage that you really never know food in a covered dish until you have opened it. If you open it, it may be the meal you have been looking for all along that you rejected. Nobody knew what Akunyili could do in NAFDAC until she got the opportunity. And this opportunity she once sought and was not given but she later had the opportunity and did it. Perhaps, if she had got the opportunity to go to Senate, Anambra and Nigeria would have seen what she could do. Dora was really neither Anambra, woman nor any state person. She was a good human spirit.

Did you know her deeply before nominating her for the DG appointment?

Yes, I knew her. I knew her when I was opening the Agulu General Hospital. Remember that I served longer than anybody did in Nigeria as Commissioner for Health in Anambra. When I was opening that hospital, Dora was everywhere; she was all over the place, making sure that she did things properly and correctly. I saw a woman, who was driven by passion for her husband’s people. I saw a woman, who didn’t really look at herself . When the chance came, I knew that Dora would bring into the job a high level of competence, energy, integrity and passion. I knew, of course, the husband, Dr. Chike. He is an excellent medical doctor and deeply religious person. I knew them and knew that they were family with good mentality.

The only drawback was that the husband was afraid for his wife’s life because he knew that she would throw herself into the job. He was also afraid because he knew that the people she would deal with would spare no effort to get rid of her. That is, fake drug dealers.

Some argue that she should not have accepted to come to the National Conference, in view of her ill health. Do you share similar view?

No, no, please. I knew Dora would come to the Confab. I was privileged to have seen the list of the nominees, the three of us from Anambra. The governor of Anambra at that time, Mr. Peter Obi, a very good person, did not take us by surprise.

He told us that he was sending me, Dr. Ezeife and Akunyili to the conference. He demanded nothing but that we should provide superior arguments on issues that would get Nigeria to a better place. I knew her health situation but that is not the issue. The issue was that Dora wanted to make a statement to Nigeria and the world. She did make that statement, standing up. She refused to sit down when she said a nation is great because the old men labour selflessly to plant trees whose sheds they know they will not sit under.

I think Nigeria should reflect on this statement. That is Dora’s message to Nigeria and the world. We should work to plant trees, do good things, knowing fully well that we will not sit under the shades of those trees. We don’t have to benefit from any good thing we recommend for Nigeria. That will make our nation great. That is what selflessness is all about.

In view of what has come out of the Conference, would Dora be happy and proud of the Conference, even in death?

I was there the day the delegates poured out their minds about Dora. They paid her enormous tribute to her. I did not want to speak. I only chose to listen to the delegates talk about  somebody I knew.

The tributes came from all sides. Nobody has had that kind of tribute paid. The announcement came from the leadership. We gave her more than a minute’s silence. Thereafter, the Catholic bishop of Kafanchan and Monsignor, Prof. Obiora Ike organised what would have pleased Dora, a complete mass for the repose of her soul. It was held in her house and was well attended. I think no other thing can be done other than pray that she should have an eternal rest in the bosom of our creator.

One of the things she sought in that conference was helping to articulate ways of moving Nigeria forward but several delegates campaigned for the retention of the status quo. Would her spirit feel fulfilled ?

The Confab went well, in my view. Talking about the status quo, when somebody is benefiting from a situation, it will not be easy for him or her to relinquish those benefits and support a new order. It is like asking somebody to take a drop in his or her salary so that his or her community can build a new secondary school.

Such sacrifice was common in the 60s.  It was well captured in Chinua Achebe’s No longer at Ease where communities, especially in the South-east contributed to build secondary schools and hospitals. People gave part of their salaries for all that. But it was not easy, arriving at the decision to give out part of one’s salary, neither was it easy, arriving at the locations where those projects would be sited. But most people agreed on the locations, contributed to the projects. In my town, we built a post office, Girls Secondary School, Boys Secondary School, General Hospital.  The hospital has been upgraded and is now the new Teaching Hospital for Nnamdi Azikiwe University. It started as a community effort.

The late Sir Louis Odumegwu-Ojukwu, father of Chief Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, in the early 60s, gave two million pounds in his will for the General Hospital I talked about. When you are benefiting from a particular situation or you will be inconvenienced by a decision, it requires some force, logic to move you from the inertia.

What you are seeing is not reluctance, it is inertia. Inertia means that you are still where you are until a force moves from the point you are. The important thing is that we moved from where we were and we are now in new places in decisions we have taken at the conference. I rate the conference very highly.