In this interview, the founding chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance and current chairman of its Board of Trustees, Chekwas Okorie, is full of praises for President Bola Tinubu’s economic reforms. He speaks on the crisis in APGA, the 2027 general elections and why the northern APC political leadership would be moving out of the ruling APC. Excerpts:
What is your view on the state of the nation?
Nigeria is experiencing something quite different from what it has been in the past few years, even though it is the same All Progressives Congress government. But what we’re experiencing under the administration is in one way positively different, and very negative on the other side. The positive side is that I can point to certain policies of the government that are really progressive and audacious as well. The issue of fuel subsidy removal and harmonisation of the exchange rates were things that shook the economy to its very foundation.
However, the president was resilient; he is determined to drive it so that at the end of the day we will get the benefit of a stable economy. I’m beginning to see the wisdom in what he did, not that we the ordinary people have started feeling comfortable, but there’s nothing as good as being able to experience stability so that even if you’re in business you can make some projections and your projections will not alter within a twinkle of an eye.
So, in the area of the economy, I can see efforts being made to promote agriculture, which is the key thing that is needed to put food on the table. I foresee an improvement in the prices of staple food items as you enter this planting and subsequent harvest seasons.
In the area of security, huge funds have been allocated to the military and they are getting more audacious in their confrontation with the insurgents, especially in the north. Governors, maybe because of increased allocation of funds, are beginning to take certain responsibilities.
Still on that positive side, I’ve seen a government that is gradually without really calling it what many people in the north would not want to hear, which is restructuring. He is gradually restructuring the economy, especially some aspects of fiscal federalism in the area of taxes and the VAT that follows. You can see the Customs and other revenue generating agencies are meeting their targets and improving on those targets. In the area of investments in infrastructure, I can tell you that the Minister of Works, David Umahi, who is a square page in a square hole, is leading a near revolution in road infrastructure in Nigeria.
“President Tinubu has in fact surpassed his predecessor, Buhari in terms of nepotism; in terms of sectionalism. His attitude to the diversity of our country is the poorest since independence. We have never had it this bad that we now look at Nigeria as a Yorubanised country”
There are many other positives. People have forgotten how long it used to take to have a Nigerian passport issued to you, but some changes have come that have made it seamless to use technology to overcome all of those bottlenecks that we used to experience in the past.
Now, on the negative side, honestly when you don’t have a sense of belonging, it tends to cancel every other thing. Like somebody who is in prison, nothing matters to you except to gain your freedom. So, even if they are giving you the best of three square meals and an air conditioned room in prison, it does not matter to you. What you want is freedom.
So, President Tinubu has in fact surpassed his predecessor, Buhari in terms of nepotism; in terms of sectionalism. His attitude to the diversity of our country is the poorest since independence. We have never had it this bad that we now look at Nigeria as a Yorubanised country.
Some people talked about the Fulanisation of Nigeria under Buhari, which was bad enough, and some of us spoke out against it, but now this is worse. I don’t want to go into the details because they are all out in the open, it may take us a long time of this interview reeling out all the important critical sectors of the economy and the security held by just people from one particular section of the country. If any appointment is going to be made, you can bet that before it is made that the name will be a Yoruba.
There is nothing as divisive as ethnicity. Ethnic sentiment is the greatest problem we have in the area of uniting this country as a nation. Ethnicity is far stronger than religion because people of the same religion still tend towards their ethnic loyalty than their religious affinity and that shows all the time, and that is what we are seeing now.
Unfortunately, as the build-up to the next election, which started earlier than I expected, I can tell you that the major drivers of the realignment of political forces are first of all digging in on their ethnic stronghold before even inviting others to come and join them. Let me not mention their names, but time will come when you will see what I’m saying.
People are now beginning to prepare for the next election by first of all consolidating on their ethnic stronghold before extending a hand of fellowship to other Nigerians to make up the number. If that is the way we are going to prepare, these centrifugal forces will tear Nigeria apart. The contest itself will be a question of who comes from where and who speaks what language. If we don’t have an electoral system, particularly now that the National Assembly is talking about amending the constitution, we will be in trouble.
According to the Debt Management Office, by the third quarter of 2024, the country’s external debt was N142trn. People are asking, where is the $20 billion which the Federal Government said it saved from fuel subsidy?
At the point of merging the exchanges, obviously the naira plummeted so low that the exchange rate skyrocketed from what it was at the time the debt profile was calculated to a new rate, not that more money had been borrowed, just that the value of the money that was borrowed in naira terms had increased by more than 400 to 500 percent.
Borrowing is not the problem, what is the problem is what that borrowed money is used for. If it is used for infrastructure development, if it’s used for education; for agriculture, for regenerating ventures that will bring in revenue, expand the economy, it is a good thing to borrow.
Borrowing is not even easy for countries that are insolvent. Just like an individual cannot just walk into a finance house like a bank and demand to be lent some money. He must be creditworthy to be able to attract loans. So Nigeria attracting loans attests to its creditworthiness.
Unlike before, Nigeria has been up to date in its debt obligations. It has been paying all that is required to be paid, the principal sum and the interest as they accrued. Nigeria is almost today a massive construction site; very laudable projects are going on. We are noticing improvements, they might be slow but they are all the same.
The refineries are beginning to spring up; even moribund ones are coming back to life. These are areas where money is being spent on; roads are being constructed. When we talk about borrowing, look at our budget; the budget performance for 2024, which is the budget year to be credited to President Tinubu is unprecedented, we are not having up to 60, 70 per cent performances in capital projects and over 95 per cent close to 100 performances in recurrent expenditures.
It was not like that before and there are prospects of improvement in budget performance. What has been the bane of this country is having hefty budgets and low key budgets and poor performance. The questions will be where the money has gone to or what type of projection did the managers of our economy make that they will make a huge budget and there will not be revenue or even execution of projects to match them.
New areas of revenue mobilisation are being generated. Under this government, we are beginning to see some aspects of restructuring that our brother from the North didn’t want to hear, but they have embraced it. Look at the brouhaha over the tax reform, only for the same people to say that we have now studied it to say, and it is the best thing to happen to Nigeria.
So, I have no problem with borrowing. What I have a problem with is what it is used for.
Our foreign reserve is growing. The reserve of a country underscores both in the stability of its currency and the foreign exchange stability.
Economically, this government is on the right path, there is growth though it may be slow.
What used to happen, which is the steady decline in economy and quality of life, is not what we are experiencing now. In fact, many people have not taken cognisance of the fact that the sub-nationals are beginning to do things that they were not bothered to do before. They’re beginning to look inwards; they only go to the Federal Government for the necessary support. I’m from Abia, but I live in Enugu State and I can tell you that what is happening in Enugu is unprecedented.
In fact, you begin to wonder where the governor is getting the money from, but on a closer look, the governor will confess that the Federal Government is collaborating with them to be able to implement some of the projects. Enugu State produces bitumen, which is required for its road infrastructure. The raw materials required to produce bitumen are here and that is what the government is doing.
This is the way I look at the issue of borrowing to our economy.
The revenue generating agencies are meeting targets and going for higher targets. The other day, FIRS met their target of about N22 trillion in 2024, and they are now targeting N25 trillion in the current year. All the revenue agencies are setting higher targets for themselves.
I’m not saying things are perfect, but the kind of attitude we saw in recent times, especially under the Buhari administration, is changing fast. We now have an EFCC that is proactive. We never heard of internal cleansing or checks in the EFCC. It was as if every personnel of the agency were a saint, and people out there were the criminals. We now know that there are so many corrupt people in the agency and they are being fished out and dealt with. It is unprecedented. So, we have to encourage the government where it is doing well and point out where it is not doing well.
This government has failed in giving Nigerians a sense of belonging. It has made Nigerians to be more conscious of their ethnic background. Ethnic sentiments we have in Nigeria today are unprecedented. Ethnicity in Nigeria is far stronger than religion that used to be our problem.
Right now, political office holders and other stalwarts of the PDP and Labour Party are defecting to APC. What does that portend for the country’s democracy?
We are going to see more defections. This is not unusual. It has become a culture of our political class. Whenever we are approaching the next general elections, there will be realignment of political forces. The only difference now is that based on certain consciousness, which is the extreme ethnicity being promoted by the current government. The build-up to 2027 seems to have started a lot earlier.
We cannot forget so soon that a huge chunk of the PDP led by Senator Bukola Saraki moved away and called themselves New PDP and joined the merger that became APC. APGA had two governors at the time, the then Governor Rochas Okorocha took a good chunk of the leaders of the party in Imo State to APC. Buhari, who was a member of the ANPP, where he contested for the presidency twice and lost and formed CPC and used it to contest another election and failed, now moved with all the members to form the APC. This thing eventually crystallized into APC, which they used successfully to challenge the ruling PDP.
Now, former Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, has gathered the CPC members, recalling them from whichever party they belong to and they are forming their own, telling them that there is something new in the horizon for all of them. Many of them have, of course, answered the call and they are building up. Another group is also forming their own.
The northern political elites are leaving the APC. Whatever El-rufai says today, the truth is that Salihu Lukman, who used to be a stalwart of the APC and so many others in APC are leaving.
The way you framed the question was as if everybody else is moving into APC, but it is not so. The chunk of northern APC political leadership would be moving out because they feel betrayed, they feel they were the ones who made Tinubu to succeed in his election, and they had been abandoned as it were. So, they are pulling out.
I can tell you that they have gone very far in their conversations with the Social Democratic Party by my good friend, Alhaji Shehu Gabam. Atiku and his followers and many are regrouping. Of course, they are reaching out to other people who are even in other parties. They have not chosen a party to use, but that will happen by the second quarter of this year. These three major groupings will merge and come up with a political party that will now pose a major challenge to the ruling party. It is only the South East political leaders that seem completely confused, and they are not doing anything to the best of my knowledge.
Then what is the fate of the South East in 2027?
South East people have shown political naivety and lethargy in this build up, but sometimes Igbo people are late comers, but when they come late, they may overtake. It has happened in so many areas both in economy; even in education. However, they are gradually coming to the realisation that their zone cannot continue to be a fishing ground for other people after they have formed and consolidated. We are beginning to at least consult ourselves and before the second quarter we would have mobilised.
Unfortunately, the platform that could have engineered that mobilisation would have been APGA, but sadly, the Anambra State governor, Professor Soludo is not looking beyond Awka. Even when they cornered the leadership of the party, they took it back to Awka. You cannot hear them talk about APGA in any other part of Nigeria. It’s only in Anambra State, which they are struggling to retain right now.
I’m not leaving APGA again; it’s the party I founded. All these former governors used the party and when they finished with it as a cash cow, they became former governors. Rochas Okorocha is a former governor, Obi is a former governor, Obiano is a former governor, and Soludo may be a former governor anytime soon, but there is no former founder. So, I’m founder for life and that is why I have to remain here and see that it’s recalibrated and used for the purpose it was founded and this is for political engagement.
The Middle Belt is almost lying fallow; they are waiting for the right kind of engagement, and it’s a major political block in Nigeria. The South South is also as in disarray as the South East now. So, there’s still room for another force, the third force to spring up. I think 2027 will be an epic encounter.
“The chunk of northern APC political leadership would be moving out because they feel betrayed, they feel they were the ones who made Tinubu succeed in his election, and they had been abandoned as it were. So, they are pulling out”
Do you think that all these political forces will be enough to push out the APC, with all the machinery to win elections on the side of the ruling party?
Like I just said, 2027 will be an epic encounter. If the APC plays its card well, it may engage in a manner that will benefit it, but if the president thinks that he is all powerful, as he has all these factors of control under his beck and call, then it may fail woefully because all of these factors you referred to were in the control of the PDP in 2015, and what happened?
APC had all these in their control too in the 2023 elections. Could APC, including Atiku, have believed that Peter Obi could spring up from the Labour Party, and defeat Tinubu in Lagos, including his Bourdillon Street, Ikoyi, Lagos, where he resides? Could you also believe that Peter Obi would win 58 per cent of the total vote cast in FCT, leaving Tinubu and Atiku the remainder to share? These things are not any assurance that victory will be theirs.
The only thing politicians need to do and Nigerians in particular is to put in sufficient pressure on the National Assembly to come up with the legal framework in the new electoral law that is being amended to introduce basic things.
Firstly, nobody can win the presidency of a multi-party democracy like Nigeria without winning 50 per cent of the vote cast plus one. No two ethnic groups or three can meet the 50 per cent of the votes in Nigeria. There are too many ethnic groups. What does that mean? For you to meet it, not only that you will campaign nationwide, your government will be all inclusive and if you are not able to meet it, then there will be a runoff. That runoff is all about coalition, it is all about MoU that you define and agree on power sharing.
What happened in 2023 was an aberration because you have a situation where Tinubu, who won to be the president, had about 8.9 million votes, while Atiku and Obi together had 13.5 million votes. In other words, the number of people who didn’t want Tinubu to become the president was 13.5 million, while those who wanted him to become the president were 8.9 million. A person with minority votes became the president because we are running a system, where they tell you 25 percent of two thirds of the federation and it became even contentious as to what definition means to the federal capital territory.
All multi party democracies do exactly what I have told you. If that was what happened in Nigeria, there would have been a runoff between Tinubu and Atiku. Tinubu could still have won, but he could have conceded more shares to the other parties that would have come and helped him win. So, it is not a matter of whether we are pushing Tinubu or not, it is a matter of having an all-inclusive government in which every part of Nigeria will have a sense of belonging whether it is the opponent of Tinubu that would win, nobody will be in a position to corner everything and practise nepotism.