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By Kareem Islamiyat
Chief Chekwas Okorie is the founding National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and a chieftain of apex Igbo body, Ohaneze Ndigbo. In this interview, he speaks on expectation from newly-inaugurated federal cabinet and other national issues.
The President Bola Tinubu-led All Progressives Congress (APC)-led administration could be said to have formally taken off with the inauguration of the cabinet. What are your expectations from the ministers?
While it is expected that the President would have done his homework in setting out terms of references for the respective ministers in order to implement what he promised Nigerians during the campaign as contained in his elaborate Renewed Agenda policy framework, he must ensure efficient supervision of the ministers. Each of the minister is the political head of the ministry assigned to him or her. They may be professionals in their ministries area of focus or not, but they are the alter ego of the President in their respective ministries, so it is their duty to put together the men and resources in their respective ministries to achieve maximum positive results and make the government to succeed.
Why I said they may be professionals or not is because I have read many people talk about round pegs in round holes and square pegs in square holes, and whether some persons have backgrounds in particular ministries. It is not in all ministries that one must have a cognate experience before one can deliver. Besides the Ministry of Justice, all one needs is to be a good political head to perform optimally in the other ministries. In every ministry we have in Nigeria, there are so many civil servants, who have enough experience, so it is the duty of the minister to harness what is already there and make sure that men and resources are put together to achieve set goals.
So, the President should come up with a well-defined yardstick that would be used to appraise the ministers and which in turn will be his own assessment. This could be on a monthly or quarterly basis and that is what accountability is all about. This will enable the people measure what he told them during the campaigns with what they can see. A president has the power to hire and fire. So, any minister, who fails to live up to expectation should be removed and replaced with someone who has the capacity to deliver because the buck stops on his table. It shouldn’t be what we experienced under the Muhammadu Buhari administration, which put Nigeria in this deplorable situation we are now.
What is your take on the proposal by the Oyo State governor, Seyi Makinde, for adoption of a single-term tenure for the president and governors to mitigate problems usually associated with re-election bids?
Every option has its own merits and demerits. Late former Vice President Alex Ekwueme’s proposal in 1995 was more acceptable and had more sound reasoning based on our experience as a nation. He proposed six vice-presidents to serve with a president, who will have a five-year single term. He further proposed that if anything happens to a president in office, whether as a result of death or resignation, the vice president from his geopolitical zone will complete his tenure and that power should rotate among the zones.
So, his proposal was based on rotation of power and he didn’t say that it should be what Nigeria should do forever. He proposed that by the time all the six geopolitical zones would have produced a president, who would serve for a single term of five years within a period of 30 years, it would be completely erased in the sense that Nigeria would have attained such nationhood that where a presidential candidate comes from will no longer matter. That was the idealistic context of Ekwueme’s proposal, which for me, made a lot of sense. If it was adopted at that time, by now, we would have gone past the issue of zoning.
I want to also point out that if a president or governor does very well, there shouldn’t be that fear over second term bid. All this experimentation is what has contributed to where we are today; Nigeria is not a Guinea pig for experimenting on democratic processes and systems. So, let us maintain and sustain what works for us although I will suggest that we adopt full electronic voting system, where votes will count.
Secondly, I have always insisted that except Nigeria is restructured in such a manner that every federating unit is given the latitude to develop at its own pace, no president, no matter how well intended he is, will succeed. Nigeria is structured to retrogress; the nation is structured to stagnate. So, it needs to be restructured. And the president we have now, at one time, was one of the champions of true federalism. All of us were in the trenches at that time, so I expect him, to beyond anything he is doing, give us a Nigeria that is restructured to develop.
All the talks about oil theft and illegal mining of our solid minerals will be a thing of the past if Nigeria is restructured and every federating unit is allowed to control its resources and contribute to the national coffers as obtained during the First Republic, when allocation was 50 per cent by derivation. If you do it, every state will explore its own resources and give 50 per cent to the Federal Government and use what is left to compete with others in terms of development.
What Governor Makinde is talking about is basically based on reduction of cost of elections and the belief that elected public office holders will put in their best within the single term tenure. Don’t you see reason in his position?
It doesn’t work like that. What if somebody, who is going there for one term decides that he or she will steal whatever that is available to be stolen, knowing that he or she is not coming back? That is the down side of the option. Proponents of a single term, also seem not to have considered the other argument that someone, who is elected for a single term may turn to a dictator or ‘president or governor do nothing’ as he is not going to seek re-election. Another point is that a single term will deny the electorate the right and desire to vote out a non performing governor or president earlier than desired.
A governor or president, who is voted out after the first term is an eloquent testimony of nonperformance and such bad record will continue to haunt the person. The fear of losing re-election will induce performance in a public office holder, who ordinarily will not have done anything. Conversely, a single tenure will manacle the electorate from enjoying the good work of a performing governor or president.
Having said that, I want to add that the two-term tenure is working in the United States, where we copied our presidential system of government from. We shouldn’t see it that the polity will always get heated up, whenever people are seeking for a second term. It is just that we have not been able to come up with a mechanism that will sufficiently guarantee that votes of Nigerians count. We thought we were getting close to that until the Mahmood Yakubu-led Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) took us back with its confused guidelines and lack of implementation of its own rules.
Do you see President Tinubu agreeing to restructure Nigeria as that will whittle his powers?
I believe that he understands how transient power is and that his name would be written in gold as someone who laid the foundation for Nigeria to achieve nationhood and exponential growth if his administration restructures Nigeria. Is that not better than holding onto power and at the end of the day he goes with a bad name? President Buhari has just left office; I want to see one person who will come out tomorrow to say that he was one of the best presidents we’ve ever had.
Unfortunately, he is recorded as the worst in terms of everything. This is somebody, who said that he will not touch the report of the 2014 National Conference, but look at how he ended. The side of history he ended is not an enviable one. Nobody would want to be associated with how he left the country. Division in the country has become so glaring; every department of government you go to, you see lopsided appointments. And now, it seems that Tinubu has copied Buhari although with some improvement.
What he has done is not exactly what Buhari did but some northerners believe that what we have now is Federal Republic of Oduduwa, which is a very uncharitable statement. Why didn’t they say that we had Federal Republic of Fulani, when Buhari was in power? But this is the kind of package you take home when you fail to restructure Nigeria as a president because after eight years, another person will come to office and may likely abuse power more than you did. So, Tinubu has a historical responsibility and divine calling to reset Nigeria for development. If he is able to do it, he would be remembered as the father of modern Nigeria.
There have been arguments on what this restructuring is all about. What exactly do you want restructured?
If I want to go into details of what restructuring entails, the time we have for interview may not be enough to explain it. Like I said before, I want each of the federating units to have the latitude to develop at their own pace. What restructuring also means is that the Federal Government of Nigeria will only be responsible for federal matters such as monetary and fiscal policies, foreign affairs, military, immigration and customs.
These are the basic things that the Federal Government handles anywhere there is a federation. Again, instead of having 65 items on the Exclusive Legislative List, all those things that do not touch on these particular areas that I’ve listed, will now go the Concurrent and Residual lists. That is what restructuring is all about.
As someone who resides in Abuja, what do you make of the appointment of ex-Governor Nyesom Wike as Minister of the Federal Capital and the riot act he read immediately he assumed office?
Honestly, I believe that President Tinubu scored the bull’s eye by appointing Wike as Minister of The Federal Capital Territory because Abuja is an eye sore. It is not a place you can be proud of. Many of us have the privilege of travelling to other countries and we see how their major cities and not even their capital look like. Nothing is working in Abuja but a lot can work. And Wike, despite the fact that he is neither an engineer nor an architect, has shown what a competent leader can do with what he did as governor of Rivers State. He turned Port Harcourt, the state capital, around, better than the time the city was described as Garden City.
With a man who has his kind of courage and the resources available to the Federal Capital Territory, I believe residents of Abuja will be proud of the city once again. People use their powers and connections to appropriate areas that were marked as green areas and build all sorts of edifices on them. It is only somebody with the courage and has the full backing of the president that can tell them that they cannot do such a thing and get away with it.
So, I was happy when he made reference that whether you are a former minister or ambassador anywhere, what applies to the small man is what will apply to you. When Nasir el-Rufai did that type of thing, some people were pained but a lot of people felt that Abuja was really coming back to what it ought to be. But when this other people came during Buhari’s time, everything was reversed to the negative. So, I encourage Wike to do what he can to make Abuja a befitting capital of Nigeria.
What is your take on ECOWAS intervention in the crisis in Niger Republic? Can Nigeria afford to lead the planned military intervention?
I pity President Tinubu because this is happening at the time that he is the chairman of ECOWAS but he should be circumspect with his approach to the crisis. Going to war will not augur well for us as the other countries will not contribute much in terms of men and resources, and when the war starts, it will be almost like Nigeria versus Niger Republic. And when you have a large population of your people, who believe that they have cultural and religious affinity with the people you are going to fight, you may have sabotage within the system, which includes the military and that is dangerous.
Strategically, it is not advisable to go to war. Again, the economic downturn of Nigeria doesn’t support that. So, I will advise that ECOWAS insists on very strict sanctions, so that the people of Niger Republic themselves will rise up against the junta, when they see that things are not going well in their country. By the time they see that things were better before the usurpation of power by the military, they will resolve their problem internally. Going to war can cause us internal schism in Nigeria and we don’t need that at this time.
