•Chekwas Okorie
The first national chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Chief Chekwas Okorie, in this interview, bares his mind on the current political realignment in the country, the place of the Ndigbo in the scheme of things and the buildup to the 2027 general election, reports Nigerian Tribune.
Excerpts:
Recently, you proposed a summit of Igbo political leaders to mobilise the Ndigbo for political engagement ahead of the 2027 general election. What prompted the move?
Since the Nigerian Civil War ended in 1970, Igbo people have held all manners of meetings. And those meetings led to the establishment of the pan-Igbo organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo in 1976, where I was the youngest member and an undergraduate then.
But among the 1976 class of Ohanaeze leaders, I was the only one alive, others have died. These were the people who held important positions in Nigeria before the civil war.
Also, I founded the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in 2002 because I discovered that the Igbo people have no political party founded by any of these leaders since party politics began in Nigeria in 1923.
When I founded APGA, I was the first Igbo man to found a registered national political party. The purpose was to mobilise Igbo people for national political engagement because I strongly believe that an Igbo man struggling in Nigeria is politically inclined but some people sabotage APGA and it never lived to fulfill its mission. APGA is still there hanging in the balance.
It’s however unfortunate that the Igbo people have never had any political summit since the civil war ended in 1970. I thought something was wrong that we needed to have a political summit to address issues affecting us as Ndigbo. The proposed summit is not a parallel body to Ohanaeze. We still recognise the place of Ohanaeze as a pan-Igbo organisation. This political summit will be held in January 2026. What we are doing now is to prepare the ground for stakeholders to key into it.
Without any argument, Igbo people are the largest ethnic group in this country and I have the fact to back it up. We are second in population to the indigenous population in every state of the country. Also, we have nothing less than 25 per cent of the voting population in every state of the federation but this number, as impressive as it is, has not been explored and coordinated by the Ndigbo for political relevance.
And we felt that gap must be filled and this can only be achieved through a political summit. The Igbo people are the most geographically spread ethnic group but unfortunately, we are not coordinated into the national grid to make a political statement and engage constructively in a meaningful manner.
You claimed that the Igbo are the largest ethnic group in the country, but one wonders why this has not translated into an Igbo presidency. So, what is the place of the Igbo in the current political setting?
The place of the Ndigbo as far as national politics is concerned is not enviable at all. Our position is deplorable and that is because we have failed to take advantage of what God has blessed us with. The Igbo people are not respected. We seem to be hated; maybe envy is a better word to use. My people say, if you are neither loved nor respected then your position as a human being is questionable.
But the fact of the matter is: it is not good for any race not to be loved or respected. So, we want to put a halt to this.
If the Igbo are the most hated, can you tell us those individuals or group of people that despised the Ndigbo so much so and thus preventing them from taking their rightful position in the political leadership of the country?
The answer to this requires no research. There is a conspiracy against the Ndigbo. Let me tell you, when the war ended in 1970, General Yakubu Gowon announced the policy of no victor, no vanquish and this resonated internationally that Nigerians are ready to make peace and put the past beyond them. Gowon further announced the three policies of Rehabilitation, Reconciliation and Reconstruction. But I can tell you that between 1970 and now, there hasn’t been any meaningful federal presence in the South-East. It was only during the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari and now President Bola Tinubu’s administration that the South-East region is witnessing the federal government’s presence. But can you imagine that South-East region was neglected and starved of federal institutions?
Even as I speak, there is no federal industry or any employment initiative existing anywhere in the South-East.
Meanwhile, some people sat down somewhere and created states in Nigeria by military fiat. The military put Nigeria on a tripod and carved one of its regions into five states while others had six and seven states. The same people sat down and created 774 Local Government Areas and allocated 95 to the South-East, whereas the North-West alone has 188 Local Government Areas. Mind you, local government areas are factored into national revenue allocation.
Under Tinubu’s administration, five ministers are given to the whole South-East, limiting it to what the Nigerian Constitution says about each state having one minister; but Ogun State alone has five ministers. This implies that Ogun is equal to the entire South-East region. And who are these five ministers? Two of them are substantive ministers, while the three others are Ministers of State.
There are so many things that can make you feel that the civil war that officially ended in 1970 still continues till today by other means.
The Ndigbo are peace-loving people. We reside peacefully and contribute meaningfully anywhere we go, but rather than this attracting commendation, it attracts envy.
My message to my people is that their voter cards are more potent than an AK-47; they should use it to solve these challenges of marginalisation, lopsidedness in Federal Government appointments and nepotism without firing a shot. These are some of the agendas we are promoting and internalising.
Are you indirectly saying that the Igbo won’t vote for President Bola Tinubu in 2027?
That’s not the issue. What we are analysing is totally non-partisan. Of course, I have friends who are members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). Aside from this, I’m a very good friend of President Tinubu. For me, I have grown beyond partisan politics. I am now playing the role of an elder statesman. We are organising the Igbo people for better political engagement.
But our resolve is, the South-East would no longer be a fishing ground where you come, collect our votes and go away. How do we achieve this? Anybody who wants our votes will have to enter into a proper Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with us. The agreements in the MoU will be made known to the Igbo people, stating why we are supporting a particular candidate and that he has promised to fulfill our expectations.
We know our votes can make the difference. In 2011, the South-East alone gave former President Goodluck Jonathan seven million votes, but he didn’t do anything for the Igbo people. Consequently, in 2015 general election, we gave Jonathan three million votes, four million short of what we gave him in 2011. And how did Buhari win? Buhari defeated him by 2.5million votes, which means if we had repeated what we gave him in 2011, he would have defeated Buhari.
Who would have thought that Peter Obi would win Lagos State, Jagaban’s territory in the 2023 presidential election? Who would have thought that Peter Obi would garner 58 percent votes in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), leaving 42 percent to Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar, to share? This means that both Tinubu and Atiku could not make the 25 percent threshold. All these were achieved without a deliberate effort to mobilise the Igbo people.
Going forward, anybody who didn’t enter into an MoU with the Igbo people will not have our votes. Such a person will have himself to blame because we are not asking for money. We are only asking for equity and fair treatment. We are not asking for what others are asking for but we won’t allow them to box us in a corner.
In 2002, you founded the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) to negotiate the interest of the Igbo people. Twenty-three years after, the APGA can only boast of one state with no national spread. What went wrong?
That’s a tragedy! When it was established, APGA came on to the scene with a bang. At that time, there were only six political parties in Nigeria. But towards the end of 2002, the number of parties rose to 30. They contested the 2003 elections and APGA came third. Then, it was the third biggest political party in Nigeria. We won elections everywhere and we thought we were going to build on that momentum because not many people thought APGA would make any impact. We won Suleja Federal Constituency without fielding any candidate because on the ballot paper, it was just the symbol of the party and votes were counted for the party without any candidate.
In Lagos, APGA won Ojoo Federal Constituency and Amuwo Odofin Local Government without any candidate. These are areas we won conveniently without fielding any candidate. We thought that we could build on that momentum, so that when we now have candidates, people will vote for our party but by 2004, crisis erupted and the ruling party at that time was behind it. Our party battled that for eight years. At that time, as the party chairman, I went through the tribulations.
As we speak, the crisis in APGA has not ended. It is still ongoing. APGA is one party with the longest leadership crisis in the world. I don’t know why it has not entered the Guinness Book of Records for that unfortunate record. This is why I said it’s a tragedy. Come 2027, you will never hear an Igbo man complain of marginalisation because nobody will be capable of marginalising the Igbo.
Zoning is one of the issues the opposition coalition is grappling with, with some members opting for the South-East. Do you see Peter Obi emerging as the coalition presidential candidate?
I don’t see Peter Obi emerging as the coalition candidate. I am a very realistic person. I have just told you the political structure that will make it impossible for an Igbo man to emerge the president of this country. I don’t see him emerging as the ADC candidate except it is micro-zoned to him as a person. You would remember that Odumegwu Ojukwu was the presidential candidate of APGA because we micro-zoned it to him.
If we had gone for delegate election, the delegates from the North would sponsor an inconsequential person from the South-East and vote him in with their numbers.
You cannot compare Peter Obi’s profile with that of Ojukwu and Dr Alex Ekwueme. I don’t see him winning delegate election in ADC, PDP or APC. No, he can’t. I’m also aware that a lot of give-and-take is going on in negotiation where ADC says it will have a free and fair convention but what they do inside, I don’t know. Even within the promise of free and fair convention, they have already known who they will support.
This is what the APC did in 2023 under Buhari when they supported Tinubu. If the majority of the delegates from the north didn’t vote for him, he wouldn’t have won at the Eagle Square.
Recently, a Canadian Court described the PDP and the APC as a terrorist group, just as a former Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai, said the APC-led federal administration is a visionless and a failed government. Do you agree with these assertions?
No, that’s just a political talk. I don’t agree with them. These are very malicious comments. And for Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, he is just being a politician. They all teamed up to call Goodluck Jonathan a clueless president. They also called the late President Buhari all sorts of names. We all saw what happened when the APC was in the opposition, they never left Jonathan alone. In fact, Jonathan said he was the most criticised president in the history of Nigeria’s politics.
What’s your assessment of President Tinubu’s administration?
I will say he is doing his best. He is really battling insecurity to the best of his ability. Certain milestones have been recorded in some areas. But in terms of the economy, I really pity him because he inherited an economy that is nose-diving. He made revolutionary but painful measures to put the economy back on track. He floated the naira and removed fuel subsidy. These are measures that would take time to materialise but the impacts on the people remain very devastating because there is so much anger in the land. It is said that a hungry man is an angry man.
The best way to tackle insecurity is to provide jobs because it is said that an idle hand, is the devil’s workshop but I don’t see President Tinubu achieving that in the remaining two years of his administration. The propaganda the opposition is flying that he mismanaged the economy isn’t right because he inherited a bad economy. It will be difficult for Nigerians to return the person they feel inflicted so much pain and hardship on them. It is going to be difficult.
Having said all of that, one thing that is so much against him is the lopsidedness in his appointments. In fact, if late President Buhari was accused of being nepotistic, in the case of President Tinubu, Buhari was a learner. President Tinubu has taken nepotism to a height nobody has ever attained. How can you give every meaningful ministries, departments and parastatals to one ethnic group? This is not a malicious propaganda. The evidence is there for all to see. He has failed totally to manage our diversity. He didn’t even have the mindset to reverse himself. He is going to be called out when the race begins.
What do you make of the coalition of political leaders and the calibre of politicians that formed it?
Like many political parties, the coalition is made up of strange bird fellows. Can you imagine the ANPP, APC, PDP, the New PDP and even APGA come together under one party? What do you have in the end? All the cleavages remain.
The CPC that moved out of the APC are the core of the ADC. We have David Mark and his people there. We have people from APGA and all sorts.
They are of strange bird fellows with no ideological underpinning. Once our party becomes ideologically-driven, the issue of religion and ethnicity will be resolved.
