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By Daniel Kanu
Chief Chekwas Okorie was the founding National Chairman of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA). He later left APGA to become the National Chairman of the United Progressive Party (UPP) and the party’s presidential candidate in the 2015 elections.
Following the de-registration of UPP by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) together with other 73 political parties, he collapsed UPP structure to join the ruling APC.
From APC, he went back to APGA as the de facto leader of the party.
In this exclusive chat with Sunday Sun, he speaks on the outcome of the 2023 presidential election, why the Southeast deserves the Senate president slot and his random thoughts on critical political issues as he celebrates his 70th year birthday. Excerpt:
Let’s start with your views on the elections that just took place, I mean the Presidential/National Assembly and the Governorship/House of Assembly elections?
Well, I am not completely satisfied because the complaints both from those who lost, including those who won, as well as comments of local and international observers, definitely point to the fact that not everything went well. For the very first time the party that won the presidential election is also demanding access to the election materials to be able to look at areas they felt that they were equally cheated and all that. But outside of that I can say that this election has also followed my earlier prediction. I had earlier predicted that there will be surprises. I also predicted that the election itself will be characterised by sentiments bothering on religion and ethnicity, I also added sectionalism in the case of Middle Belt and the South-south where there are multiple ethnic groups and almost balanced religious affiliations. I said that all of these will influence the outcome of the election and that is exactly what has happened. And when you look at the surprises, nobody would have imagined that an obscure party prior to the election, like the Labour Party (LP) will defeat the almighty Asiwaju-controlled APC state like Lagos, a very strategic state. And then you go further to the FCT, the LP won so overwhelmingly that none of the other parties could make 25 per cent where the Federal Government of Nigeria is seated, even with the president of Nigeria, a de facto leader of the APC residing there. Also in the National Assembly election, people who you will feel or think are untouchable, governors, senators who have been recycled so many times over as if they will be life senators were all overthrown by the new forces that emerged. And because of the experience of people like us who have been around for a long time, it’s only an improved electoral process where votes counted that could bring about such surprises. So, I think on the balance there is a great improvement in the conduct of the 2023 elections leaving still much to be improved upon moving forward.
Most political observers seem to be worried on the dangerous dimension the issue of ethnicity has taken, for instance, in a place like Lagos, given what happened during the governorship/House of Assembly elections…?
(Cuts in) All I can say on the issue is that Nigeria is beginning to develop to a proper democratic state where certain factors that were not questioned in the past are beginning to be questioned and the political complacency and apathy of the Igbo people over the years for which I have devoted my time to try to arouse seem to have been aroused this time beyond what ever anybody had expected. And that has also resulted to greater respect. So, after this threats and counter-threats, because the threat is not coming from only one side. Those who are being threatened have also said, well, they have their back on the wall, that whatever it is you do, you will be rest assured that there will be reprisal. And now the security agencies have also been part and parcel of trying to alert the major security top brass in Abuja to make sure that nothing untoward happens to any section or tribe, so that we will get through this election and prepare for the future. But what I can see that has happened now is that the Igbo people in particular and the non-indigenes in the various places where they reside in general will begin to be taken more seriously knowing that their votes can alter the local equation. It appears Nigeria has retrogressed badly and we are trying to come back to what it used to be in the past. Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Great Zik of Africa, won election in Lagos when it was parliamentary system and as the leader of NCNC, that was what entitled him to form government in the Western region before the cross carpeting and that same period a young man from Sokoto State called Umaru won election in Enugu, he has lived in Enugu for a little over one year, and he won election as the First Mayor of Enugu on the platform of the NCNC. By his second tenure the party did not re-nominate him, he ran as an independent candidate and won and nobody was talking that he is a Fulani man in Enugu State becoming a Mayor of Enugu etc. So, we thought we were making progress until the war ended and bad blood was injected into the Nigerian politics, so now there is renewed respect being accorded to the so-called non-indigenes in states. If you look at what has happened after the presidential campaign, what has happened is that candidates are now taking their campaigns to the market places, knowing that that is where the raw votes can come from not from those who sit back in their cosy rooms and make very flowery statements without going to vote. So, the electorate have become more relevant now as I am sure if we improve on the technology for conducting elections that will take care of the leakages that we still observe, in future nobody will be threatening the other because you know that the person you threaten can very well determine your political victory, your political future.
The jostling for the seat of the Senate president is gearing up. Do you think the Southeast deserves the slot for the position?
Obviously, I do respect that considering all that happened especially the fact that the Southeast had been treated as if they are strangers in Nigeria, to put it mildly, it will be part of the healing process to compensate the Southeast with the position of the Senate president which in effect is the 3rd most powerful position in the governance structure of Nigeria. When you already have the president coming from the Southwest, the vice president from the Northeast and the 9th Assembly is going to end with a Senate president that came from the Northeast, even when the president is from Northwest, it’s only reasonable and quite accommodating and a healing balm to look in the direction of the Southeast for the Senate president. But, be that as it may, the ruling party, APC, has such a strong presence in the National Assembly. In fact, they can approve anything that requires simple majority without even recourse to any other party for cooperation. So, having said that, therefore, and the good thing is that there are also APC senators from the Southeast who have done very well and are back in the Senate. So, the ball is in their court, but if they deny the Southeast this slot the feeling of alienation will continue to deepen and it is not good for Nigeria.
You are almost hitting 70 in a matter of days. Looking back, what are some of your random thoughts about Nigeria and where the country is today? Are you satisfied?
1 will be 70 on Sunday, March 19, but because it fell within the Lenten period and being a Christian, all Christians worldwide pray and fast during this period and I also have some of my family members who are coming from abroad so we agreed that Easter Monday, when everybody will be on a celebration mood, will be more like it for the celebration. That is why we fixed it on April 10th but by then I would have been 2 weeks older into my 70s (laughs). Nigeria has come a long way; there were democratic trajectory that could be said to be a checkered one in the sense that from independence we moved to parliamentary system to presidential system and along the line, we have also had civil war that lasted approximately 30 months (two and half years). We are back to democracy, and now we have had democratic government consistently for about 24 years, that is quite some landmark achievement. From 1960 we had some series of military interventions that affected the deepening of democracy. And luckily, no matter how each democratic contest turned out to be contentious it never really shook the foundation of Nigeria. I was part and parcel of the 2003 presidential election in which as the chairman of All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, I led Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu (Eze Igbo Gburugburu) into the campaign and that election came out, so very contentious that the current president today, President Buhari, who was the presidential candidate of the ANPP, Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu, myself, Dr Chuba Okadigbo, Alhaji Balarabe Musa, Dr Tunji Braithwaite etc, these were the frontline leaders that marched the streets of Abuja in protest. At this time around it’s Alhaji Atiku Abubakar that has actually marched, but during that time, all these great men that I have mentioned not only marched in Abuja, but some went home to march in their various areas. It will be recalled that it was Dr Okadigbo’s participation in the Kano march that he had the tear gas attack which eventually took his life. Nigeria still went beyond that to continue to make other attempts and now there is this improvement, I think Nigeria will continue to improve in the deepening of democracy. I am confident that by next election, God’s willing, the issue of the use of technology would have been perfected, certain funny things that happened this time around may not happen again. Sometimes our people keep quiet when things are going wrong, and when they come full circle they begin to lament. I give you an example: there is an Igbo chap called Chuddy Nwafor, who was the director of ICT in INEC. He was the one that developed the BVAS and that is what made BVAS an in-house technological innovation, we didn’t have to buy the machine from abroad in terms of the technology and when it was just one year to the use of that technology for a nationwide exercise the young man was posted to Enugu as an administrative secretary. It is only in Nigeria that such a thing will happen and people will keep quiet. Now everybody has seen what his absence has caused in terms of the misapplication and abuse of the BVAS that the young man developed from his brain. So, we believe that such a thing will not repeat itself going forward and Nigerians have to be more alert. Once we are alert and the technology is right and we go into full scale electronic voting things will get better. Even some other countries within our region have done it successfully, I think the next election will be quite impressive.
What is your expectation from the in-coming president, a blueprint?
As a matter of fact what I thought would have been a major campaign issue which nobody touched with a long spoon for the sake of being politically correct is the issue of restructuring of Nigeria. Even those who tried to mention it talked about it haphazardly. The restructuring of Nigeria should be the cardinal programme of the in-coming president and good a thing he was one of the champions of true federalism long before he came into his present position. Now, though he didn’t promise Nigerians that as I said earlier for reasons of being politically correct, now he has been elected, no matter what anybody will offer in terms of leadership, no matter the experts he may recruit as he is talking about bringing experts, technocrats into government, Nigerian’s structure in this manner is not going to develop. Nigeria is currently structured to retrogress and this is what we have been experiencing. We will have to restructure Nigeria in a manner that every federating unit will have the latitude to develop along its comparative advantages; it is only in that way that jobs will be created, that the economy will experience exponential growth, that poverty will be eradicated. Nigeria can have an exponential growth in GDP and become what God created it to be. Outside of this, any economic postulations and experimentation will continue to fail just like everything we have done has failed. And we are blaming everything on the man at the head, just like everybody is trying to blame President Buhari for what we are going through now, but the truth is that except Jesus Christ, who is God, except Him, no other person can rule Nigeria under this structure and be a success.
