The founder and former National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Chief Chekwas Okorie, recently returned to the party after about a 10-year absence. In this interview with KENNETH OFOMA, Okorie bares his mind on reasons for his dumping the APC to return to APGA, the political quagmire Ndigbo found themselves and his future role in leading the Igbo movement
The South East has lost out in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and people are already apprehensive that the South East may lose out in APC too, and that means that they may lose out completely in the 2023 project. How do you see this development?
No doubt Igbo people have lost out in PDP and I saw it coming more than a year ago, I never mince words in letting the people know, including Igbo people through any medium available to me.
Ann so my position is in the public space that PDP will not give it to us. I didn’t stop at PDP, I told them that APC will not do the same and I predicated it on the ground that our peoples interest in PDP will not be assuaged by any kind of persuasion and so that it was going to get the party to swing to his interest and that is exactly what happened.
Even when they elected their national chairman from the same North Central Zone I still came out to say that that is not a guarantee that presidential slot will be reserved, so it has played out. I also said that APC will not surrender the Northern space to PDP, if PDP went North, that they like to also go North and that APC was going to follow PDP to go to Central and choose their chairman.
That again, the issue of chairman has played out. And today we are beginning to see what I predicted about presidential candidate coming to roost.
There are only two outstanding aspirants from the North; and that is the Senate President, Senator Lawan and the governor of Kogi state. So it becomes easy for them with the large delegates they have to do exactly what Atiku and Tambuwal did. Look at the number of aspirants from the South.
As a matter of fact they have contributed most of the money the party will need to run for the next four years. And that’s the level of the political naivety of the Southern political leaders.
So whether you go democratically or they decide to go by consensus which is near impossible because if you are going for consensus you wouldn’t go ahead and collect even nomination fee and allow them to go around the country canvassing for delegates.
And President Buhari having been one who has all along been preaching democratic practice and ethos that he will deepen democracy; will find it difficult to embark on undemocratic methods to have his way. So, eventually APC will g North even with the President’s tacit support.
But last Tuesday Mr. President had a meeting with the governors of APC, the report coming out from that is first he was requesting that they should allow him pick his successor, and secondly at the same time telling the governors to help him search for a strong consensus candidate. Is it possible for the president?
You see, APC is in a particular dilemma because the president had become the only winning factor for the APC, he continues to enjoy folk followership in the North. In most of the North, especially North West and North East where you will say you have the bulk of the delegates.
Now this followership is not transferable, it is what he earned over time. So if they deny him what may look as a mild request, they may not have the same man come to draw campaign for them because he is the one they are relying on to remain in power. That’s the dilemma of APC as it stands.
They will eventually panda to his desires whether he is imposing it them or he is asking it mildly, even the APC has been known to panda to his body language not to talk of when he has made an expressive demand.
So at the end of the day the president will have is way, but then their dilemma continues because right now I know that they are not less than four aspirants who believe in their heart of hearts and who may have been also told by their private prophets that they will be the ones to take over and they believed it that they will be the one that the president will choose.
And these aspirants come from different sections of the country but he will choose only one person. But political reality is that he will choose somebody from the North except if they had planned to hand over power to the PDP which I know that is the last thing on heir card. And the likes of Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, you must credit him with some political knowledge, he has been around, has been active and he has his antenna here and there.
And when he came out to say the shortest way of APC losing is by going to South; some people chose to attack his views and even his person but I see a lot of cold political calculation in what he said. And that is it.
If what he is saying is anything to hold on to, why did he even wanted to contest the presidency in the first place and gave the condition that only if it zoned to the South East. Secondly, is it that the South will not smell the presidency again because the sane scenario will always play out?
No, you see let us not mix these things; we are talking about nomination of candidates. When we get to the issue of elections, it’s a different ballgame all together, I will come to that.
But what Orji Uzor said, and I understood him very well, I still understand him, he said that he is sufficiently eligible and qualified to contest for the president if the right thing is done, if there is fairness in the system and it is zoned to the South East.
Of course that has not happened and it is not about to happen and like I said he has seen the handwriting on the wall; he didn’t want to do knocking his head on the wall when he knew that even if he brought all the money in the world he would not stand a chance at his party presidential primary election.
And so that reason he would return to the senate. So he didn’t buy the form in the first place; that was wisdom, political wisdom as far as I’m concerned. I’m not saying that is Gospel truth but that is simply political wisdom; that’s why I called it cold political calculation.
Now you come to the issue of who wins and who does not win, it’s a different ballgame. Right now I can tell you that four or five political parties are going to be in serious contention. APGA will not be the APGA of the past few elections, we are going back to the APGA of 2003 that triggered off a near revolution in the political consciousness of the Igbo people who are spread all over the world. So that is APGA for you.
I can’t see Bola Tinubu winning the nomination, in fact, he will be shooting himself in the foot to even participate in the primary election because once he has participated, then he is shut out from contesting and that may be one of the reasons APC has been shifting their days to make it difficult for him even to change his mind whenever he is short-changed.
If I were him, this is the time to move on and go to where his people have been waiting for him and that is in SDP. Then you go to the North that boasts of all these numbers that you are talking about. Kwakwanso and Shekarau, these are two political gladiators that with their combination Kano state is as good as taken. And that is the largest political power base in the North in terms of elections.
And then of course he also appeals to other Hausa communities outside of Kano state. Then you have the PDP that has already thrown up Atiku Abubakar. Then from that same zone like APC candidate will emerge. So the North East power base will be shared not equally because those who follow Buhari there still follow him and the candidate they bring will also be somebody that has his own level of followership.
You now come to the North West where President Buhari is the Lord of the Manor in terms of followership. Now in these three political parties and gladiators split the Northern vote, where then lies that confidence that they will overrun the country? It doesn’t exist.
The Middle Belt is no longer available to the North as a zone that simply tags along; they have started asserting themselves and how they will go will depend on what the parties and the candidates have to offer especially with the restructuring of Nigeria, which is their principal concern in order to assert their self determination within the context of Nigeria.
So I predict that no one party out of about this five I have mentioned, not to say that Labour Party may not also pick up votes here and there because of the presence of Peter Obi, he is actually going to come a distant sixth in this configuration I’m giving you, I’m sure when you publish it people will still mark it and come back and say Chekwas Okorie where do you see all these hen you talk?
So, now what will form the government of 2023 will be the coalition political parties; two or more political parties after the event because you have to come to the coalition with something on the table; something that you are bringing at the National Assembly and other places to show how that coalition will accommodate you.
So this is what is going to happen and this is what normally happens in every country with multiparty democracy where election is credible. You name them, Spain, Germany, Britain, Canada, Israel; all of these countries go back to coalition after elections to form government. Nigeria will begin that process from 2023.
What is your motivation to g back to APGA after eight years, do you actually feel like fish out of water?
The pressure to go back to APGA had been on for a long time even before myself and associates decided to join APC. Actually we joined APC formally in 2020 when UPP was deregistered by INEC; we were deregistered in February 2020 and immediately after we took a decision to join APC. Of course that was a difficult decision on my path, s many Igbo people who had associated me with a particular line of struggle felt disappointed but I also have my good reasons, may be that will be for another time.
So we joined APC and quite frankly it was a strange place for me because all my political life I have been in the opposition and there is no way you can be struggling and fighting for Igbo cause and you be with the establishment, no way. So the only place I can stay and be heard and mobilize people for political action and not for any other method of liberating oneself will be the political process.
So I didn’t quite find the comfort I was looking for in APC and many people discovered that from time to time I will make my public contribution in the area of my objection to the lopsidedness in appointment and my suggestion for use of the political process to solve the case of Nnamdi Kanu and other prisoners of conscience and then some of the policies I found quite unacceptable and these are policies that are being promoted by the government in power.
So that really didn’t really present me as a kind of APC member that will kowtow to every whims and caprice of the party and its leadership.
So I knew that a person like me will not find the kind of accommodation that is due for somebody of my standing in the public space. But on the other hand I said to myself, for those who are pressurizing me to go back to APGA, I said I cannot go back to APGA a party I founded, how can I return to it from the back door? That will not be right, that will even be humiliating, it will better come from the front door and what is that font door?
The party leadership could have made that move to say let bygone be bygone lets come and rebuild this party and take it back to the trajectory it has followed; the fact that it has remained in one corner of Anambra state for 20 years is nothing to be proud of.
So, that didn’t happen until Edozie Njoku got the affirmation of the Supreme Court of Nigeria and read the corrected judgment, I also read the judgment he had from the Federal High Court that affirmed the convention that he had at Owerri that threw his executive up as the legitimate and lawful convention of the party; I made up my mind that this is the way to go.
And the moment the Supreme Court gave them that affirmation, the first pot of call was to come to Enugu with his entire members of the National Working Committee and a few others.
That’s what they told me they were coming but the elders of the party in the five South East states insisted that if it was my place they will not like to miss that historic event and so when they came and made an appeal, very passionate and emotional appeal I have no hesitation in accepting the apology.
But I also needed time to make some consultation because I didn’t leave APGA alone, there are people who left with me and joined me in UPP, and some of them joined me in APC. So I need to tell them that this is the new decision in case they want to come along.
That being done, I went to my village, submitted my letter resigning from APC, which I have done last week; and relisted my name in the register of APGA in my ward which also I did the same day. And now today, (Wednesday June 1) I will be making my formal return to APGA.
It appears you have a special assignment which you have been missing nostalgically since you were away from the party, because APGA at inception was like a movement, and it had influence in more than two states in South East and one thought they were going to continue in that trajectory, only for the party to start having reverses. So what do will happen now with your come back?
Without being immodest there is already excitement in the air, it’s so palpable that you can touch it and people home and abroad, I’m actually humbled by such outpour of emotions and sentiment and support.
So it makes it real and all of us will be returning to APGA. I have some calls from the Diaspora and said that they have never been to any political a party in Nigeria but if after going through what I went through and I have the good mind to go back and help Igbo people regain their voice, they will now register and become members of APGA. So what are we going to do? We are going to resume what was halted 20 years ago.
That revolution will resume and the time is so auspicious, we are in election period. When we brought in Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu who actually facilitated that initial revolution we presented him to the public through our convention in January 2003 and we only had three months because by April elections took place. But here we are having almost eight months before election, a lot will change, a lot will happen.
But there is no other figure like Ojukwu?
Yeah, but there is no society that God denied rallying leaders. Some people have said it, Ojukwu himself said it several times over including at his 70th birthday in the presence of several people including this President Buhari when he attended his 70th birthday before the whole world; he said to them if you look around and you don’t find me follow Chief Chekwas Okorie, he said it.
Nobody lives forever, now we are trying to rebuild that platform and when the time comes for me to begin to think along that line, I will also think along that line.
Do you think that APGA is the party that will save Ndigbo?
It is the only party that will produce an Igbo presidential candidate; I’m talking about credible, trusted presidential candidate with impeccable Igbo profile.
Without alliance?
Alliance will be after election, I have already, even myself, even when we founded APGA it’s there in the constitution of APGA, it’s there in the objective principles of the constitution and the manifesto.
The party is for engagement, it’s for alliances, that’s why it’s grand alliance. The name was nt arbitrarily chosen, it was deliberate. But it will be after election, post election alliance. Zik led NCNC to a post election oalition with the NPC, Northern Peoples Congress.
The same Zik led NPP, Nigerian Peoples Party to an accord, which is a post election alliance with NPN. And in all of those alliances, the people of South East had certain level of accommodation in the government of the First and Second Republic. I’m an ardent student of Zik’s political philosophy, so there will be alliance.
But many people are skeptical about the ability of APGA which is being seen as a regional party to muster enough force to win the presidency and to get the buy in of people from the North and South West?
It is the easiest job for us to do now, that’s why I said the time is auspicious, check the whole political parties, check all the aspirants, not to talk of the candidates that have just emerged, they are just emerging. Check everything they said even in the course of going public to say what they will do. None of them touched the issue of restructuring even with a long spoon.
And that is the cardinal programme of APGA. The people of the Middle Belt, there is no way you can pursue such a lofty political agenda on the platform of a cultural organization, nowhere in the world is it done. So it has to be a political party, and it has to be a [political party that has it as a social contract with the Nigerian people.
The present APGA I’m returning to will immediately get the endorsement of all the various blocs in Nigeria and sections that look up to the restructuring of Nigeria, the issue of state [police and community policing, the issue of devolution of power and so on and so forth are the only way they can have a breathing space to even develop at their own pace.
Let me tell you, all these Indonesian model, Chinese model, Ruandan model, American, European models of economic development; non will work in Nigeria because those countries where those models are working do not run the political structure we are running in Nigeria.
And so we start from the fundamental and as I said we have eight months to campaign, eight months to espouse some of these things and people will begin to listen, people will begin to say well if this is what this party is offering, if this is in their document not just rhetoric for the purpose of campaign and it is there, can be seen in black and white as a social contract and that is the party to follow.
And if the candidate of that party is also credible, and from South East; first of all take it this way, there is no state in Nigeria that you don’t have people from the South East up to 25 per cent of the electoral population. If you want to talk about general population they are second to the indigenous population in all the states of the federation.
They control the overwhelming majority in the FCT; they control the majority in Lagos state.
And when you take the Igbo and Ikwere of Rivers State they control the majority because Ikwere is also Igbo. So when you put all of that and then entire Middlebelt that has taken a position, but is looking for a political platform t drive it. And I have been involved in all of these things for over 46 good years; consistently on these issues.
So the APGA that I’m returning to is the PGA that I will assist to resume that journey and promote it powerfully. Before election APGA will be the party to watch let me not say the party to beat.
(New Telegraph)
