Chekwas Okorie, founding chairman of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) has been one of the consistent voices advocating for Nigeria President of Igbo extraction. In this interview with LEO SOBECHI, he x-rays the chequered history of the clamour and how to achieve it in 2015.COME 2015, is it feasible for Igbo to ascend the presidency'I believe very strongly as I have always believed that the Igbo have the brightest prospects of producing the President of Nigeria in 2015.Upon what platform could that vision be actualised'Very sound question. The platform is the crucial point. The Igbo have the potential to produce the president of Nigeria. The Igbo people of Nigeria have the outreach, the contact and the affiliation to produce the president of this country in alliance, in collaboration and cooperation with the rest of Nigeria. But the critical question is what you have just raised. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) can never provide that platform, has never provided that platform and will never provide that platform. The All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), I can say the same thing as I said of PDP; I will say the same thing of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and perhaps the Labour Party (LP). Therefore, it is only a platform that is favourably disposed to this agenda and can produce that candidate that will win the presidency of Nigeria. There is no way the Igbo can talk of producing the president without guaranteeing a viable political platform. And I therefore state unequivocally that it is only a political platform that is favourably disposed to the idea that can produce that candidate.And that platform was there since 2002. Those who did not want the Igbo to effectively contest for the presidency found a weak link and used it to sabotage that ambition. Another attempt was made in 2007 general election, and those against the Igbo political agenda ensured that they used their agents in APGA to frustrate the idea. By 2011, it was total compromise, for which some persons were settled. And what APGA did was first, to put a price of N20 million as nomination fee for presidential election, to make it unattractive for anybody to aspire, when even the ruling PDP and all the other parties placed N10 million as their maximum nomination fee. A party in crisis placed N20 million in order to make it absolutely unattractive for anybody to contest. And those who sold that agenda for pittance turned around to tell the public that nobody aspired.Now, we are heading to 2015 and an effort is being made to recreate a viable platform in the form of UPGA, that will promote and make the democratic contest keener than ever before, the same weak link was fully mobilised materially and otherwise to sabotage the effort.And Independent National Electoral Commission officials, not the commissioners, not the chairman, but some persons behind the board of INEC sabotaged that effort using reasons that are pedestrian, reasons that are stupid, unintelligent and disgustful to deny UPGA registration. For instance, they even said that the symbol of UPGA was similar to the symbol of Biafra. Although they said it was defunct Biafra, fine; if it is defunct, it means it no longer exists. But Biafra never had a symbol. While it existed for thirty months, it was a sovereign country. So, it had coat of arms and flag. Nigeria does not have a symbol. No sovereign country in the world has a symbol. But a government commission, with a full- fledged legal department even gave life back to a defunct nation in order to find reason to deny Igbo the platform to contest.They even talked about pronunciation of APGA and UPGA, even though they went into the bad language of calling it pronouncement, because as far as I am concerned, pronouncement is a declaration. But pronunciation is perhaps what they had in mind and I have to go by that, believing they had pronunciation in mind. They even tried to find an aspect of the electoral act that supported that position.INEC has the problem of containing the internal saboteurs, who are easily available to sabotage their agenda in Nigeria. So I say in conclusion therefore that until Nigerians are prepared, the government of Nigeria is prepared, the electoral body is prepared to provide level playing field, it may be impossible for the Igbo to contest. But the Igbo should not be taken for granted. They have tried before an attempt to pull out of Nigeria and it took thirty months and millions of lives to be annulled. If you look at the Boko Haram insurgency, you are counting numbers in hundreds or a few thousands. That means it is nothing to be compared to the Igbo revolt. If they continue to provoke the Igbo, let me warn that this time around, it would be difficult to be contained. It is about time Igbo people are allowed. I am not saying as an Igbo man, that the presidency should be given to us on a platter of gold; I am only saying: give us a level playing field to contest. And we have the brightest prospects to win democratically.The north as a geopolitical bloc is putting up a spirited strategy to fight for 2015; down south it seems President Jonathan may be going for second term; how do these challenges shape the prospects of Igbo presidency'Those agenda of the North and perhaps the South-south are legitimate. Just like I have stated, I believe there is no longer a monolithic North. But whatever you call the North today has the legitimacy to aspire to produce the president of Nigeria like other people. I also believe that President Jonathan has the right under the laws of Nigeria to aspire for a second term. He should not be blackmailed into not running. It is his constitutional right to do so, but whether PDP will present him as their candidate is their own business. I have nothing to contribute there.As for the North, we watched when the North showed an uncommon unity as certain powerful aspirants, prior to the 2011 election stepped down for one person, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. And they could not lift their ambition beyond the minimum level when they went for presidential primary election at the Eagles Square, Abuja. So, that also showed that whatever they conspired failed because the northern delegates voted differently, they were not coerced as far as we know. And so, you can aspire or conspire. As a matter of fact, politics has been loosely defined as concentric circles of conspiracy! That is politics. So it is legitimate for the North to try to conspire; the Southeast will conspire, the South-south will conspire and all that. But I believe at the end of the day, if we have a level playing field, the best candidate supported by the majority of Nigerians, in the spirit of democracy, will win. And I like the fact that it has become conclusive that no one section of this country can go it alone.Are you sure there would be strong cohesion in the zone to help drive the process'Really there is the fear that a united Igbo will take power in Nigeria democratically. So the strategy of those outside Igbo land is to destabilise Igbo, so that they do not take advantage of their God-given strengths.The Igbo have the highest population in the country. If anybody wants to doubt that, he should just cross-check the statistics to see that Igbo constitute the second largest population in any state of Nigeria. And so that gives number; that gives spread! And in a democracy, such as the one we practice in Nigeria, number and spread added will give you political power. Knowing that it is a latent force that can result to political empowerment, those who do not want to see that are constantly in the political laboratory, coming up with strategies to ensure that the Igbo do not have the cohesive approach to their political empowerment in Nigeria.And at every point in time, they always find very gullible weak links, if you like saboteurs, who are prepared to sell their conscience for a mess of porridge. This is what has been happening. But having said that, you cannot continue to shift the blame all the time to non-Igbo players, who are also strategising. You have to come back home and talk about those who have always made themselves available to betray their own people. And what do Igbo do once they identify such traitors' So far, they have not taken concerted actions to call such traitors to order; that is why they feel that they can always get away with their treachery. I think from my own personal experience, Igbo are waking up to this realisation. The recent travails of the new UPGA in INEC has been responsible more than anything else in waking Nd'Igbo to the realisation that they are facing more serious internal problems than external ones.Given this trajectory, what is the way forward'Well, like I said, UPGA has become a party based on the laws of this country. On April 18, 2012 UPGA became a full-fledged political party by operation of law. On April 24, UPGA received a letter, which was like a late rally from INEC; not to deregister an existing party, but to say that this party cannot be registered. It is a misnomer because you cannot say you would not register some thing that has been registered by law. So if INEC will insist on disobeying their laws, then a moral burden has arisen. That means there will be no election in 2015 if the ordinary job of registering a party can be treated with such brazenness and impunity, then the serious business of conducting an election where power will be contested for is already compromised in advance.And whatever we do will be in consonance with the laws of this country, we never take laws into our own hands. We have never done that. Personally, I have been involved in the crusade for our people for 36 years, and it is not on record that anybody has lost even a hair in the course of my struggles. I have very strong, powerful supporters at all levels, and nobody has lost his life. So, it has been non-violence all this while, without boasting about being non-violent.So, if they eventually conspire and say UPGA will not be a party, we will take another lawful step. We will continue to take lawful steps till they make lawful steps impossible. Whatever happens, God will decide.
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