The National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress, Felix Morka, is a human rights lawyer, urban development specialist, and founder, Social and Economic Rights Action Center. In this interview, the Harvard Law School-trained politician speaks on numerous political and economic issues in the country, especially the chances of the APC retaining the Presidency beyond the 2027 general elections. Excerpts:
What is the situation in the APC Delta State chapter, some people claim that it is in factions, especially with Senator Ned Nwoko joining the party?
Members of Delta State chapter of the APC are very proud and happy to be associated with the party. Although the state has been under the PDP since 1999, every Deltan knows that PDP has been vicious in the way they have governed the state. Delta State is, by all measure, one of the richest states in this country, if not the richest, with a highly educated population. However, it is highly underdeveloped, because good governance has been held at bay by the ruling PDP.
Since its founding in 2013, the APC has been building its strength and growing exponentially in the state with each passing political season. We came very close to winning the 2023 election under the leadership of Senator Ovie Omo-Agege as the governorship candidate. However, that didn’t happen, following the verdict of the Supreme Court that awarded victory to the PDP.
But we recorded remarkable success in that election. For example, in Delta South and Central senatorial districts, APC produced the two senators. In Delta North, we would have won that election, defeating the PDP as we did in Delta Central and South, had then incumbent Senator, Peter Nwoboshi, not been incarcerated on bogus charges and allegations, trumped up by former Governor Ifeanyi Okowa and other elements in the PDP.
The Senator was later acquitted of those malicious charges. APC also recorded significant victories in the House of Representatives and the State Assembly. The truth is that the party is waxing stronger, and I am very confident that come 2027 it will prevail, in not only retaining Central and South senatorial seats, but also winning Delta North seats as well.
More importantly, I am confident that we will win the governorship contest and bring good and effective governance to the good people of Delta State. Deltans are sick and tired of the hopelessness of the PDP administration in the state. They are tired of the corruption, and the mindless pillaging of the resources of the state. In Asaba, the state capital, 10 minutes of rainfall is enough to shut down movement of any kind due to the total lack of road and basic drainage infrastructure.
There is nothing, infrastructure-wise, to show for a rich state like Delta with the highest allocation of federal revenue in the country. Yes, there is politics in my party like any other party in the country. It is not free from tensions and high competitiveness. Every political season brings all of those elements as expected in a political party. But our system of internal democracy is strong both at the national and state levels. That is why, despite all said and done, every season, we manage to build, incrementally, in strength, irrespective of the challenges that we face.
“I do not doubt that by 2027 Nigerians will embrace this president and hand him another opportunity to continue this massive transformation of our dear country”
If there is more unity than division in the APC Delta State chapter as you claimed, why are there factions including you who are in Omo-Agege’s camp?
Delta APC is one and we stand united. Dissent or disagreement among some leaders or members is not to be taken as indicating the existence of factions in our party in the state. Delta APC boasts of eminent leaders and highly committed members who represent competing visions and interests.
Contestation around vision and interest can be conflictual, but can also be creative. That gives the party the diversity and colour that has continued to attract new joiners both from within the PDP and among independents.
As the national spokesman and member of the National Working Committee of our great party, I am a member of Delta State APC, and the other leaders you mentioned, including Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, the Deputy Senate President of the 9th Senate, Aviation Minister, Festus Keyamo, Senators Ede Dafinone, Senators Joel Onowakpo, and Ned Nwoko who recently joined, all are highly respected members and leaders of Delta State APC.
We don’t have any factions in the party in the state and we don’t recognise factions at the national headquarters of our party. The idea that when you have individuals or leaders, with strong personalities, strong views and opinions about the party or disagreement about how things should be done means that there are factions is wrong.
It is perfectly okay for people to disagree sometimes: what matters is that they agree when it becomes imperative to agree for the common good of the party. Factionalising the parties is not something that we take lightly. Anyone who factionalises the party obviously is liable to be sanctioned under the Constitution of the party. But as far as I know, we do not have factions in our Delta chapter.
How true is the claim that APC has become a rigging machine and now hand in glove with INEC?
Those claims are arrant nonsense. APC is a political party like others in the country, established to engage democratically with our citizens and prospect during elections, field candidates, campaign like others do and allow the will of the people to dictate who wins or who loses.
APC is not in the business of rigging elections. We don’t do that and any suggestion in that direction would be mischievous and misleading. That is just not true. However, I understand that opposition parties are very quick to make excuses for their own failures, poor performances, and the internal combustion consuming and denying them the facility to compete and compete properly or favourably. But it is also disturbing that when APC loses elections, and the opposition parties, whether LP or PDP, celebrate, nobody accuses them of rigging. It is utterly ridiculous that when we win, it is suggested that we rigged the election. That is double standards and deeply unfair.
Every party in an election hopes to win. Nobody goes into an election hoping to lose. If you are planning to lose an election, why even compete? Elections are like participating in any sport. You train, and work hard, hoping that you win, but sometimes you win, and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes APC wins and other times it loses. How come when we lose, we don’t accuse others of rigging, but when we win, we hear this nonsense? That is not democracy, unless the opposition parties wish that APC would, somehow, sabotage itself by not campaigning or governing well or simply withdraw and tell INEC to hand victory to the opposition without a contest.
That would not serve the best interest of our democracy. If that is the kind of democracy the opposition is looking for, they are not going to get it because it is not the idea of democracy. It is not the essence of democracy, neither is it anywhere near the objective of a democratic process.
Rather than waste their time spreading falsehood, they should focus clearly on what is their first problem, which is disciplining themselves, organising and governing themselves responsibly. They have shown a gross incapacity to govern themselves. And when you can’t govern yourself, how do you inspire the confidence of the electorate to entrust you with the instrument of governance. Why would anybody trust you to govern a state or a country when you cannot govern your small political party?
No political party is bigger than the country, or any state of the federation. If you cannot manage your affairs, by even deciding who your national secretary is, or convene a meeting without people throwing punches, why should Nigerians, at any level, entrust you with the power to govern them? They are just giving excuses for their poor performances. We are not bothered by that.
We will continue to compete within the boundaries of democratic norms, strive to justify ourselves and hope that Nigerians continue to vote our party into office. We will continue to innovate and improve on our democratic record. We have created a progressive institute for our great party and are now embarking on an unprecedented programme to digitalize our membership register. These initiatives are designed to put our party steps ahead of the opposition parties and improve our service to the Nigerian people.
Is there a crack in APC, because former President Buhari, ministers, and governors like Rotimi Amaechi, and el-Rufai are all complaining against APC?
What crack? There is no crack in the APC. We have tens of millions of members of APC in the country, but you just mentioned a few individuals. Exactly why should the personal opinions or views of a few individual members represent a crack? Sometimes, the media tend to overstate issues and create the appearance of a problem that does not exist. But there is no crack in APC because it is a democratic and progressive party where individuals are free to express their opinions.
Even if an individual is disappointed with the party, so what? How does the disappointment of certain individuals constitute a crack? Have you never been disappointed with someone in your family, social club or church? People get disappointed even with their religious leaders. Sometimes the pastor will say or do something that worshippers don’t approve of, but their dispositions don’t mean there is a crack in the church. It is their opinion. It is a democracy where people have free speech and are entitled to their opinions. When they do, take it for what it is, an individual expressing himself, especially individuals that may be affected by whatever grievances they may have.
When people express their grievances, it does not suggest that there is a crack in the party. They are exercising their democratic right. I don’t share that notion, and I don’t think that we have any cracks in the party. Some of the individuals you mentioned are highly respected members of our party, and are free to express dissent at any point, express their grievances or disappointment as that is within the limit of their constitutional liberty.
In a few months’ time APC will be 10 years in power at the federal level, why has it become so difficult for Nigerians to accept the ruling party?
I don’t know when you took the opinion poll that confirmed that Nigerians have not accepted APC. An election was conducted in 2015 APC defeated the PDP, then ruling party for 16 years. Again, an election was conducted in 2019; APC defeated the PDP and other parties that contested. Another election was conducted in 2023 and APC defeated the PDP, LP and the other opposition parties.
Let me remind you that the electorate that voted APC, former and current presidents, are Nigerians. APC presidents were elected by the majority votes of these Nigerians who are the electorate. The closest we have come to conducting an authoritative and definitive referendum on APC, will be the elections.
If anyone else has conducted a referendum somewhere to decide that Nigerians are not accepting APC, it is up to that person. We haven’t seen that. However, there is no country in the world with universal acceptance of those who govern; there is no history of any democracy, no democratic space in the world where any government is universally accepted. Anywhere it happened, then, it is not actually a democracy; otherwise, the right to dissent, disagree and belong to other political parties would not exist.
It would mean that the country has completely morphed into a unitary system with universal acceptance of a government, sponsored by a political party and elected by the electorate. Acceptance of a government is not a yardstick and constitutional mode for the selection of those who govern. It is done via an election by votes cast. In any case, both the former government of Buhari and incumbent President Bola Tinubu have been relentlessly trying to solve problems that generations of leaders have continued to kick down the road.
This current government has decided that a lot of the problems Nigerians respond to, especially economic challenges, created from the beginning of the Nigerian state must be tackled head-on.
No government before this current one has dared to implement bold measures to reverse the generational rot that has brought our economy to its knees. All the previous governments simply romanticised about it, but never had the guts to do anything to fundamentally transform the economy, because they are not popular policies.
They would rather kick the can down the road for the next generation of leaders. But President Bola Tinubu said no, we are done with this pretentiousness, we must confront and tame the elephant in the room and set the country straight.
No one said it was going to be easy or popular. For example, President Tinubu told Nigerians during the campaign that he was going to remove fuel subsidies.
Coincidentally, Peter Obi of LP and Atiku Abubakar of PDP also promised they were going to remove fuel subsidies. They also all promised to harmonise the dual exchange rate, among other policy initiatives. They campaigned publicly that they were going to do all that.
This president is implementing a bold and unprecedented programme of economic reform and doing so with remarkable success, so far. I do not see how Nigerians have decided that they are not accepting it. Of course, it was not easy because those reforms brought with them some pains and challenges which were largely expected, and in fact, were some of the reasons that previous governments didn’t implement the reforms quite apart from the fact that they lacked political will to do so.
But this government decided to push through because failure to do so would have catastrophic repercussions for the country. Nigerians have realised now that the reforms were inevitable for our country’s survival. That is why they have rebuffed all the efforts by the opposition parties to incite them against the administration. They refused to be incited because they had seen where this was all going. The majority of Nigerians are liking the direction the policies are headed. Ultimately, it is going to make our country by far stronger and more prosperous than ever before.
Your confidence level shows that if the 2027 presidential election is conducted today APC still win?
The 2027 election will not be conducted today. It will be conducted in 2027, and of course, I am very confident that by then Nigerians would see the fullness of the enormous value that the reforms of this administration have brought. The exciting outcomes are becoming manifest already and will continue to be visible until 2027. I do not doubt that by 2027 Nigerians will embrace this president and hand him another opportunity to continue this massive transformation of our dear country.
Without accusing you of being an Ostrich, is the APC government aware that Nigerians are suffering?
I have answered that already. I mentioned that the reforms had to come with some level of discomfort and pain. Part of what I think the media also need to do in this system is to enlighten Nigerians about the reforms. In your own establishment, if and when changes become necessary to be made, usually not everybody will smile at management meetings where tough decisions are taken because it may require some people to adjust here and there. However, people who are used to their comfort zones typically do not like to adjust. Renovation of any kind is not always a pleasant experience. The outcome may be fantastic, but the process may not be. While people may dislike the process, they always embrace a great outcome. That is the nature of life. We want to eat an omelette, but don’t want to break the egg.
The pain of the reform is part of the justification for it and what makes the benefits even more valuable. This is true of any country that has made progress. Anyone expecting reforms in Nigeria to be pain-free and cost-free doesn’t understand what reform is and I don’t think Nigerians are that naive. We should not continue to overstate the problem. Let us also encourage our people to endure for better and more prosperous days.
Yes, some Nigerians are suffering and every responsible government would like to completely make everybody happy and make life easy for everybody. That is the purpose of the government. That is the goal of the government. But it is always a work in progress even in the most advanced countries of the world. Every country goes through systems of change periodically. That is normal. So, when it comes to our country, we shouldn’t be expecting the government to snap its fingers and make everything beautiful overnight. We all want Nigeria to be beautiful and easy to live, where there is reward for hard work and punishment for bad behaviour, but it is all work in progress. Quite frankly, the people who complain the most are people who are on fixed wages, otherwise anybody who is engaged in any productive venture today, is doing okay. If you are growing rice, and rice is costing N80, 000 a bag, somebody is earning that money.
We need to begin to conscientise our people to move into those areas of the economy that harbour more opportunities for contribution when you create value and actually earn a reward.
“If there are rumours that the governor of Delta State is planning to join APC, I regard it as rumours and I don’t discuss or give credence to rumours”
What is the relationship between the party and the presidency, and is the Federal Government running on APC’s manifesto?
For your first question, nobody is handing down any order to the party’s leadership. We have a leader, the president of the Federal Republic, who has his own role, duties, and rights as well. He performs his functions as both president and leader of the party.
You made reference to el-Rufai describing it as a one-man show, but has he become the sole author of APC’s experience? Everybody can express or may express a personal opinion, but they are entitled to it.
For the second leg of the question, the party manifesto is a guide offered as a system of promise to the electorate about what the party plans to do if elected. The government, upon its inauguration, would usually fashion its own objectives for governance. That is the way it works everywhere.
The Renewed Hope Agenda is, in so many ways, a fine blend of our party’s manifesto and ideas that the president has brought to his administration. Once a government is elected, the agenda of the government is what matters, which is why, both at the party and in the administration, our interest is to seek the implementation of the Renewed Hope Agenda of the president, which was a fine blend of the party’s manifesto and other visionary ideas that this president has brought to his own administration that we support fully.
We are very happy with the president’s charter in the Renewed Hope Agenda, and we are very committed to supporting the Agenda’s implementation.
What is your take on the speculation that your governor in Delta is planning to join APC?
As a person I don’t discuss rumours. I don’t give credence to rumours. So, if there are rumours that the governor of Delta State is planning to join APC, I regard it as rumours and I don’t discuss or give credence to rumours.
What are the areas you would want the APC-led Federal Government to improve on?
The scope for improvement is always large in any democracy, especially on the economy and electoral democracy fronts. There are many areas I think this government, like any democratic system, may improve. They are already working hard to improve in some of those areas. Earlier, I mentioned to you that the current reform of this administration is throwing up and opening up enormous opportunities that Nigerians may look into. If you notice, many more people are talking about going back to the farm, taking up opportunities even if at subsistence level. And those who are inspired are taking it to scale.
I hope that the administration will, in fact, do more to point Nigerians in the direction of opportunities that we are creating. We need to do more to expand access to information about opportunities for useful and productive engagement for our people in particular. We need to really expose them to the enormous opportunities that are available to create value and create wealth without a whole lot of capital.
The government is doing an incredible job opening up those areas, but we need to guide our people more aggressively and encourage them, especially our young people, to venture into some of those areas to produce value that can transform their economic circumstances.
It is not always about paid employment, especially in an economy that is undergoing reforms. There are many things they can do for themselves that can take them out of the labour market and bring them closer to pursuing and realising their own economic transformation in the circumstances.
I would encourage Nigerians to keep faith with the administration and our party because in the fullness of this reform, we would have laid a solid foundation that will allow us to address some of the dire challenges so that people can come out again and live their lives without constantly looking over their shoulders to support a future of massive growth and sustained prosperity for all Nigerians.
What is your confidence level for the Anambra governorship election?
We are very hopeful for Anambra because the state government has not served the people well. We are definitely hopeful that the good people of Anambra will entrust the state into our hands to get some of the dire challenges to a level that people can come out again and live their lives without looking over their shoulders all the time.
Yes, primaries have always been the problem, but we will be fine. Every election is a challenge. Every primary election or contested election is tough and complex. But we are getting better by the day and will work hard to ensure that we have a smooth sail in Anambra State, and hopefully go into the election as a united party.
