By Chidiebere Onyemaizu
Founder and Pioneer National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, Chief Chekwas Okorie in this interview, looks at the seeming slide of Nigeria toward a one party system among other issues.
Given the massive defections that have hit opposition parties, particularly the main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP and the absence of a virile opposition to the ruling party, is Nigeria on the cusp of a one party system?
No. There is no possibility of a one party state in Nigeria. What is common is that any party in power tends to boast of dominating power for a long time but not achieving a one-party state. When the PDP was in power, the late Vincent Ogbulafor who was the National Chairman then boasted the party would rule Nigeria for 60 years but that didn’t happen. Rather, the party held power for only 16 years as a coalition of political forces metamorphosed into the APC and halted its 60-year dream. APC has been in power for eight years, this year is their ninth year in power and the first year of president Tinubu and this idea of a possible one-party state is playing up again.
Why do you think a one-party state is not possible in Nigeria?
Nigeria is too diverse, too complex and too complicated to degenerate into a one-party state. It is not just possible. And right now, even earlier than what we had expected, realignment of forces is in the offing. The realignment of forces definitely will challenge the dominance of the ruling party. The realignment means that some opposition political parties have come to the realisation that a combination of their forces could change the tide in their favour. There will still be other scenarios which will unfold before 2027. We are still in 2024 and 2027 is still three years away. A lot of realignment and fusion of forces is possible before the next elections. So, anybody dreaming of a one-party state is not reading the political barometer of Nigeria correctly.
As a prominent political actor in the country who was a founding chairman of two opposition political parties, can you explain why opposition politics is no longer fashionable in this clime as against what was obtained in the first and second republics and as is the norm in most democracies around the world?
Two things are involved: First of all, we have not developed the right political ideologies that would give direction to political parties. If a political party is ideologically based and people become members of such party based on its ideology, it is not always easy to move from a party you believe in its ideology to another. Ideological concepts of our political parties are not crystallized. The second part of it is that the electoral system we are operating is flawed. It is easy to manipulate election results and our judiciary has been unhelpful even when unfortunately it seems to be the last arbiter in judicial matters. Some of us have been in opposition…and without being immodest, I can count myself as one of the longest opposition politicians in Nigeria. I have been in opposition for over 40 years. So, opposition politics is a lonely road more or less but where you have an electoral system where votes count, the situation will be different. Nigerians, like people in other democracies, are rational. They vote according to the dictates of their consciences but the results that are eventually turned out are not the results that reflect their wishes, their votes and that is what we have been battling for; to have an electoral system that guarantees the sanctity of the ballot box. I can say that I have championed the electronic voting system more than anybody else in this country even though many people didn’t know what the electronic voting system is all about. I championed it even up to the point of writing a memo to President Jonathan and all the members of the National Assembly. But because the PDP was in power, they benefited from the system but until they left power, they did not consider a system that would allow votes to be counted and transmitted directly to the polling units. But today, former President Jonathan is one of the champions of electronic voting yet had the opportunity to do it as president. However today, the APC is not enamoured about electronic voting systems because the flawed system we operate is also favouring them. The National Assembly came close to helping us when they passed a law that results would be transmitted from the polling units but at the same time, they made a proviso that INEC would have the latitude to change the system if it found it would help them to get the appropriate result. So, they gave INEC the latitude to return to the old method and that was what it did, otherwise tell me how the results of the National Assembly election that was conducted the same day and the same time as the Presidential election were transmitted-and that was why you have a near balanced National Assembly- but the results of the presidential election were not transmitted, instead suddenly what INEC called a glitch occurred. We are now telling the National Assembly to please, make it mandatory that election results should be compulsorily transmitted from the polling units; there shouldn’t be an option for INEC to do any other thing different from direct transmission. If that is done, you can even see that the judiciary will have a little work to do as the actual electoral wishes and opinions of the people will be reflected in the election results. If we can do this before the next election, we will experience what other democracies are experiencing. Again, let me also add that Nigeria is the only country in the entire wide world where the system says if you have 36 states, you must have 25 per cent of the votes cast in 24 states before you can now decide on a simple majority. That is not democracy; it was designed to satisfy a particular section of the country that felt they already had 19 states as against the 17 states of the other section. And so they were so certain that their 19 states would always be there for them and that all they required were five other states from the other section to keep power forever. That was the concept for making that provision but it didn’t work this last time. Though we have a president who has won by that formula, the truth is that voters who didn’t want him to become president were more in number; there are close to 13 million voters who voted against Tinubu but because of the flawed system we are operating, somebody who did not win a majority of the votes is now the President. In other multi-party democracies, the whole thing is simple. You win 50 per cent plus one. If we were operating the same method, Tinubu would have won his 8.9 million votes, Atiku would have won his 6.9 million votes and Peter Obi would have won his 6.8 million votes. Now none of them would have won 50 percent of the votes and the first two, that is Atiku and Tinubu would have gone for a run-off, and then other parties, especially Peter Obi’s party would now hold the ace. In order words, they will now be the beautiful bride; it has happened in all democracies around the world. So, which candidate they decide to support will win the run-off election and will they support blindly, no! They will sit down and discuss how power will be shared; any candidate or party that made a better offer, the beautiful bride will support and that is how an inclusive coalition government which we have in the first and second republics came about.