By Daniel Kanu
Chief Chewas Okorie has been around in the political space for a long time. He is indeed one of the living political encyclopedia of the Nigeria’s politics.
He was the pioneer national chairman of the All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA. He later founded the United Progressive Party. UPP, and was the national chairman of the party, as well as the party’s presidential candidate in the 2015 general elections.
He is today a chieftain of APGA, the party he founded 20 years ago.
In this exclusive interview with Sunday Sun, he speaks on crucial national issues, including the continued detention of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, stressing the need for political solution in the case.
He also spoke on the economy, recent subsidy on transportation for Christmas celebration travellers by President Bola Tinubu, and defects in the Electoral Act. Excerpt:
How did you feel when Nnamdi Kanu was not released by the Supreme Court in his last court appearance?
Honestly, I am personally disappointed because I had thought that will be one way of healing that particular wound and closing that ugly chapter on a people. Then, we in the Southeast will be able and in a better position to fish out true agitators and the real criminals who are hiding on the cover of the continued detention of Nnamdi Kanu to make life unbearable for our people. But on a deeper reflection, the court did not deny Nnamdi Kanu everything. The Supreme Court was very strong on the issue of his forceful seizure and maltreatment from Kenya back to Nigeria and suggested that it is a civil matter that needed to be pursued along that line. For me, all that is happening has brought us back to political engagement with the president on seat (President Tinubu). If you go through my interviews in the past, I have always advocated a political solution on the issue of Nnamdi Kanu. I have always known that going through the legal process will led us to nowhere. And I don’t expect that we will crawl from the trial court all the way to Supreme Court again. The most single opportunity we have is to go to President Tinubu as a zone with genuine leaders from the zone that have credibility and that also enjoy the trust of the people. Unfortunately, most of our young people don’t trust some of our acclaimed leaders any more as they believe that when they go to negotiate they go to negotiate for themselves. So, these are two areas we must take care of, the credibility of those who will be sent to handle the issue, then we need to have a heart to heart conversation with Nnamdi Kanu and his immediate leadership because when you are making presentation to the president, you are well equipped with what is possible and what is not possible. I feel uncomfortable when I hear some people you expect to be matured ordering the government to release him unconditionally. It is never a proper way to go in approaching a political solution. It’s a matter of give and take so there are certain words or talks you avoid, but the most important thing is for the person to regain his freedom of expression and other freedoms, but within the laws of the country and then let him be a free man. He has a young family to run and cater for, including his relations. Many people are unhappy including my humble self that he is being incarcerated there. Look, let me tell you the truth, no Igbo person that does not have the feeling that it is for their sake that Nnamdi Kanu is suffering. I want to see one Igbo man who says the reason he is suffering is not because of the Igbo cause. Of course, no human being is perfect, he may have areas you may not like, but he is fighting a cause. You may not be comfortable with some of his tactics. Let me tell you something, just a couple of days ago they passed the Southeast Development Commission bill in the House of Representatives. Do you know that the bill has been there since 2017, sponsored originally by Hon. Chukwuka (Utazi) and it was roundly defeated in the House of Reps. They didn’t allow it to see second reading because the North came together and said we will never have a commission when the other zones that were devastated by either environmental degradation or the insurgency war in the North already have their commission. Both the North and the Niger Delta have development commissions, but only the Southeast since after the war in 1970, the oldest area to be attended to has been left behind despite the massive degradation of the region after the civil war. The issue of the policy of the 3R, reconciliation, reconstruction, rehabilitation was ignored. I praise Hon. Benjamin Kalu, deputy speaker, who mobilised his colleagues from the Southeast and was able to lobby their counterparts and the bill was speedily passed by this 10th Assembly. What is left now is for concurrence of the Senate and which I believe with the momentum going on now, the Senate will concur and if the president finally signs it, it will become the first time after 53 years of civil war that the commission that would have addressed some of the devastations of the war will now be set up for the Southeast. These are some of the things that tend to make some of our young men feel that we are not wanted in Nigeria. But if it is done now, it is one asset that will help to develop the area and some of the agitations will be addressed. The creation of such commission in the Southeast will go a long way in helping matters.
How would you react to the 50 per cent transportation subsidy gesture by President Bola Tinubu to Nigerians travelling this Christmas season?
I think the intention is very good and those who have benefitted from it, I have met some that have also commended the intervention that it came to them as a pleasant surprise and they also confessed that it was very helpful in reducing the cost and that some of them and many others were encouraged by such gesture to now visit their respective places of origin that they probably would never have gone to without such gesture. But as good as such intension is the problem of Nigeria has always been the modalities of implementation when it comes to reaching out to the vulnerable Nigerians who deserve taking the palliatives in a country that have stolen several millions of the very poor people. So, modalities on how to reach out to them has always been the issue, but the intension I must tell you was a good one. In every country there is always one subsidy or the other at some periods and I think it’s a well thought out plan for this particular period.
Speak on the off-season election which most Nigerians thought would be freer and fairer when compared to the main elections, but which is not. Is there anything that you think that should be added to the Electoral Act that is not there to make it become more credible?
A lot of things need to be added to the Electoral Act. The Electoral Act did not help matters when after talking about transmission of results from the polling units you ignored such rules and still gave INEC the latitude to do what they think will be the best for our people. And Nigerians being who they are and especially the kind of INEC we have that has almost a zero public confidence, once you give them such latitude be rest assured that they will abuse it. I would have thought that the Electoral Act should be complied with to ensure that the transmission of results must take place at the level of the polling units and avoid all intermediary collation units where all the manipulations normally take place. If it is made mandatory that the transmission of results must take place at the level of the polling units, every other results outside there should be rejected because it is likely to be altered. When you do the transmission of results from the polling units, you will only be reporting or publishing what is already known to the public, but only to formalize it, and any polling unit that is not able to comply, such polling unit results should be rejected. It is either you do a new election there or if it is as a result of violence you cancel the election in such polling units. Anywhere we have had problem during the election is always in an attempt to manipulate the results there. There shouldn’t be anything like over-voting and those manipulation things that we have continued to hear. If results after accreditation and voting are transmitted straight from the polling units we will not have this problem of alterations and over-voting when you are using the BVAS according to instruction. We should stop tolerating the use of results not transmitted straight from the polling units. We need to be strict about it and to reject all those flimsy excuses offered to bypass the BVAS because it aids in manipulating the outcome of the results. Another issue to be considered in the Electoral Act is this idea of insisting that somebody must win one quarter of the votes cast in two-third of the states in Nigeria before a winner emerges. It was the late Dr Chuba Okadigbo that called it political arithmetic. It was from there that all these mathematical problems have continued to emerge. Democracy follows simple arithmetic order and that is a person wishing to be president of a country, just like in the case of a governor wishing to be governor of a state must have a minimum of 50 per cent plus one of the total votes cast for, either at the presidential poll or at the gubernatorial election. In a situation that you are not able to meet such, then there will be a run-off election in which the first two will go for a run-off and if the first two go for a run-off, definitely one of them must go above 50 per cent and in a country as large as Nigeria nobody can make 50 per cent plus one without having votes from across the country. You cannot rely on votes from one particular area to achieve that feat. But I know the reason behind the provision that you must win two-third of the states of the federation. Those who wrote that constitution for us already had at the back of their minds that there was a monolithic North and the North already had 19 states by their own creation and that if you add Abuja which already has the status of a state making it already 20 states for the North and they only needed four or five more states from the 17 states in the South to remain in power. But now the monolithic North has ceased to exist, the Middle Belt has started attacking themselves, the Hausa are distancing themselves from the Fulani oligarchy, so, it is now time to go to what other countries in Africa or other democracies have been doing especially on presidential democracy. In 50 per cent plus one system the issue of legitimacy can no longer be questioned and will no longer arise like what we have now. President Tinubu, for instance, has won the election by the majority votes, but the number of those who didn’t want him to be president are far more than those who wanted him to be president. He had, I think, 8.9 million votes and those that didn’t want him had more than 14 million votes. In 50 per cent plus one there will not be issue of illegitimacy and it makes it easy for calculation. Tinubu had 33 per cent as against the total votes cast and he is the president because of the type of electoral law that we have. So, that aspect should be removed and be made to look like others. The benefit of it is that if you are not able to make it 50 per cent on your party strength, then when you go on run-off you now look for other political parties who are strong in some other parts of the country to have a coalition for you to emerge in the run-off. And what does that mean? It means government of national unity because no party is coming into a coalition without making demands. And that is why when you go to Spain or in Israel and so many other countries except America that runs this democratic system, all the other countries have coalition governments and it leads to more stability. Even in Britain, in the election before the last one, the conservative party was unable to meet the number they now went to the Liberal Party to make up for additional states and then Liberal Party produced the Deputy Prime Minister and even counsellor of the exchequer as their own benefit for supporting Conservative Party to form the government. In Nigeria in the first republic it was a coalition government between the NCNC and the NPC and that was how the Igbo were very relevant in that government led by Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe. In the second republic it was an accord coalition between the NPP and NPN, again government of national unity. So, when the military government of Abdulsalami Abubakar imposed this obnoxious constitution on us, we began to see the escalation of ethnicity and religious sentiments, among others and these were divisions that were almost diffused and not promoted. The military incursion promoted these divisions as it opened up and during the time of Buhari, unfortunately, these divisions got to its worst point. So President Tinubu really has the responsibility to pulling Nigerians out of this dangerous divisive sentiments and he needs to try and do a lot to unify the country by sponsoring Executive Bills that will come up with laws that will give everybody a sense of belonging.
Let’s look at the economy and your candid assessment of the budget which despite the Federal Government’s promises, critics say it’s a budget that does not inspire hope?
I am naturally an optimistic person. People say I am incurably optimistic by my nature, but having said that I am sure that the government must have done more work on the issue, based on the fact that this government was also the party that formed the previous government. They must have learnt their lessons to know what to do about the present situwation of the economy. I know that this government will try to right the wrongs they made with their previous government. We saw the mess that was perpetrated in previous government and not much was done. During the time of Buhari, if you say anything the North will attack you and say it is because their man is in power. That is the problem with Nigeria, always weeping up ethnic and religious sentiment. But Tinubu is now in office and he will be compelled by some circumstances behind his emergence to take some very unpalatable and unavoidable steps. I have seen the will, an unprecedented determination to solve near impossible problems and Tinubu used the right type of expression “trying to draw water from a dry well”. To the glory of God, because I wouldn’t say it is entirely his making, our two major refineries are ready to go on stream for production, the Dangote and the refinery in Port Harcourt. There is also one in Akwa Ibom State that I learnt will be on stream. I see 2024 as a year of some kind of boom in Nigeria if we are able to deal with the issue of insecurity the North alone can stand and bounce back as the food basket of Nigeria. And the way Tinubu is fighting corruption, I find it very attractive using people who are highly qualified, who have eagle eyes identifying areas of leakage and I have noticed a lot of executions and areas that have been under-utilized in terms of revenue generation will come on stream, the area of solid minerals that was left in the hands of those who have it to do as they like will no longer be business as usual. There is the area of the blue economy which will attract even more revenue than you can get from oil if properly tapped. These things are coming up because you have somebody who is focused and has eye on where money can be generated.
In all, if Tinubu is not distracted, I see him achieving much because he knows what to do to build this country. As I have always said in my recent interviews, Tinubu should learn from mistakes of Buhari, avoid discrimination, and promote nationalism.