Umahi, Anyim’s Presidential Announcement Good For Ndigbo – Okorie

Former National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and currently a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Chekwas Okorie, in this interview with KENNETH OFOMA, reacts to the recent interview by President Muhammadu Buhari with Channels Television in which he opposed restructuring and dismissed additional state for South-East.

Okorie declares among other things that no northern President will support the restructuring of Nigeria because of the weighted advantage the military juntas gave the North in Nigeria’s Constitution
 
Some politicians of South-East Igbo extraction have declared their interest in the presidency. Governor David of Umahi just met President Buhari to inform him of his presidential aspiration. Former Governor of Abia State and Senate Chief Whip Orji Uzor Kalu has equally announced his interest just like former Senate President, Anyim Pius Anyim. How do you receive these declarations?

Well, I watched those indicating interest that they will run with some excitement but I know from experience that it’s only when one has actually thrown his hat in the ring by making an open declaration that he is running that you can take the person seriously. So the declaration by Engr Dave Umahi the governor of Ebonyi State which he made by first visiting the President to inform him of his intention, I received with great excitement.
 
And I did not hesitate immediately to send him a solidarity message urging him to remain strong and that he was on the right course. I also had the opportunity to express my support for those who are yet to come out because we really need to show that yes, we are interested in that office, nobody will come and give it to you as a result of his milk of human kindness. You have to contest for it. So but for Rochas Okorocha, for instance, I still classify him where I classify the Vice President, Osinbajo and Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu himself.
These are the ones whose supporters are drumming support for them but they have not made any public commitment. For me now in the APC South-East, Umahi has taken the lead. I watched Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu’s video, I mean his interview on television, he predicated his coming out on whether the party will zone the position to the South-East; that means he has not made up his mind to run. That one is as clear as daylight. The case of PDP Anyim, that’s good, it’s also good that he has come, he should be encouraged to take the battle to its logical conclusion. PDP does not really hold any promise for Igbo people of what they have for us in the past and I don’t see the PDP have a change of mind. But like I said, Pius Anyim needs to be encouraged; he doesn’t need to be scared by the intrigues in the PDP.

Assuming that APC gives its presidential ticket to a South Westerner, don’t you think that PDP might be a shortcut for the president of Igbo extraction being that should Igbo run with Northern candidate in PDP, the person can easily hand over to an Igbo person in PDP after his tenure?

Hahaha, it has not been the convention in Nigeria for a Vice Presidents to take over, the case of Jonathan was a peculiar case where we had to go through the doctrine of necessity; and so he now contested that election as an incumbent not as Vice President. But be that as it may, as I said, the PDP started by giving Dr. Alex Ekwueme false hope and they knew that they had no intention to fulfill their promise.

But they now told Dr. Alex Ekwueme that based on the loyalty and commitment to President Shagari as Vice President and his statesman characteristics and disposition that they were going to give him support to become the president in the third Republic.
 
And he believed them, and he came back to the South East and convinced many of us that the PDP had given a condition that any person that will be eligible to run will win his ward at the state election which they got INEC to announce a date for state House of Assembly and governorship elections well in advance of the presidential election.
 
So they now gave us the impression that if an aspirant was unable to win his ward, just ward, that he would not be eligible to contest the presidency. So what Igbo people did, we all met, we met at MODOTEL and made a decision to give Ekwueme what he needed.
 
So PDP didn’t just win in Ekwueme’s ward they won in the entire South-East, all the governorship seats, all the state Assembly seats, one hundred per cent. And what did PDP do? General Olusegun Obasanjo (rtd) was the preferred candidate; he did not win his polling boot not to talk of ward in the South -West.

So when they got to the Jos Convention, they changed the policy and said that it did not matter again whether you won your place or not. And on the basis that Ekwueme was shortchanged, then they turned around to promote the propaganda that Jim Nwobodo and Orji Uzor Kalu were responsible for his failure, which is outright balderdash; because figures, the numbers are there to show.
 
So even if you combine Orji Kalu’s vote and that of, of course Orji Uzor Kalu didn’t contest, but even if you took that of Jim Nwododo and added to that of Ekwueme he would still not have won. This is what happened and I can go on and on about PDP sidelining and maltreatment of Igbo people in the party.
 
Recently, during the presidential interview with Channels Television, the President dismissed the call for restructuring and also said that the call for an additional state for South-East that he met with the Ohanaeze leadership and asked them from where would the state be created and they left and never came back. What’s your reaction?
 
The issue of restructuring has been promoted by the majority of Nigerians as what will bring about a stable polity and give ev
erybody a sense of freedom and latitude to develop at their own pace and all that; the advantages are immense.
 
But I have said it over and over that no Northern president will ever promote or support restructuring of this country because this country was designed this way by the military junta to give advantage to the North. And they also put in the 1999 Constitution impossible conditions for even new states or new local governments to be created.
 
And so I don’t see a Northern president who will want to take away that advantage that they gave to themselves through military fiat. So it’s a president who is from the South that can go for restructuring. And we have tried without the government to see whether we could
bring about a National Conference through PRONACO, I was part of it. We found out that it was impossible to really convoke a National Conference without the support of the state especially in terms of logistics and all and legitimacy of the process. So we still need a president that will do that and that restructuring you raise is going to be a major issue in the 2023 presidential campaign.

On the state creation I think that the President was playing politics there, because even if they all agreed and gave him one particular name, he doesn’t have the power to create a state, he knows it; because as I said, the condition for state creation is near impossible, it’s all there in the Constitution. If he said because they didn’t just come back with one particular state that an additional state has not been created in the South-East, I will say, I don’t want to use any derogatory term, but I will say he was simply playing politics.
 
The delay in holding APC convention and the tension it is generating, even a meeting the APC governors scheduled to hold with the president was postponed without any reason. There are still rumours that they want to push the Convention to June. How do you assess the situation and possible implosion?
 
Honestly as one who has some experience in party administration, I can tell you that what is going on now in APC is quite disturbing.
 
The critical organs of the party that ought to be on top of this kind of situation don’t exist or have been sidelined. When last did the national executive committee of the party meet?
 
That’s the highest executive committee of the party, the Convention is the highest organ; for the executive arm, in fact, what you call Caretaker Committee is like a national working committee that is usually a subcommittee of NEC. Now that NEC appears to have been supplanted by the governors. Governors don’t have the powers to do what they are trying to do and the party is sinking deeper and deeper into confusion. It’s unfortunate.
 
My own advice will be to immediately convene a meeting of NEC and let NEC take a disposal action on the pending issues so that the convention can hold even. If they want to move it to June, it’s just like postponing the evil day.
 
And if you postpone it to June, the INEC timetable is already out, like when you are going to have your primaries and submit your candidates to the commission for election. So it’s very, very sad. Whatever they like to do, let them do and go to the president, I pray that God will give the president the wisdom to be able to guide the party properly because he is the de facto leader of the party.