Godson Okoye, a lawyer and political activist, is the presidential candidate of United Democratic Party (UDP) – a party he and like minds formed in 1998. In this interview with Assistant Editor (North), CHUKS EHIRIM, he talks on his reasons for championing generational change in political leadership in the country, need to tackle properly, the country’s security challenges, among other issues.
Ambition for presidency
It is because everything has time and season. Of course, you have to be around to know the terrain before you can make a move. And, of course, I wasn’t just there; I contested the governorship of Anambra State twice before now. So I have garnered some levels of experience in the areas of campaigns. When this party was formed in 1998, I was the national legal adviser. After that, at the next convention, I became the national secretary.
Registration of UDP
Of course, you cannot operate if you are not registered. The party was registered, with the interim certificate given to us by Ephraim Akpata (the first chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, responsible for the 1998/1999 elections that re-introduced democracy in May 1999). Then the rule was that you were supposed to get at least one-third of the local government areas in the country. Local government election was the first to be conducted in 1998. And those of us who did not get that were asked to stop operating as political parties. Only Alliance for Democracy (AD), All Peoples Party (APP) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) were able to get that. So, they were operated as if they were the only parties. There were about eight of us.
Gani Fawehinmi went to court and, in 2002, the Supreme Court resolved that INEC was wrong. So they invited us and gave us back our certificates. So we have been there. So, if the history of democracy or the history of politics is written, it is people like us you should ask. It is people like us who should be celebrated and not all manner of clowns who move from one party today and jump into another party tomorrow.
It is those who have staying power, those who stay there and maintain focus that should be celebrated. I am not in politics for what I can get. I am not in politics because of the position I want to occupy. We don’t have a senator, minister, president or governor, but I have stayed the course; I have been in this party since 1998. Most of my friends are in the other parties, but politics should be played by people with sterner stuff and not the way some politicians are doing it.
That is why I am doing what I am doing. So I believe that one day, this thing could come out right, and I want to be there when it happens. What we are doing is a misconception. Some people misunderstand it. This is not a democracy yet. This is a civilian government. But people assume it is a democracy. That’s why people expect a whole lot of things. Democracy is an ideal. Not even America has gotten it right. Every country is at different points of the ladder. So no country has gotten 100 per cent of what democracy is because it is an ideal. We are all aspiring to that ideal.
Getting it right someday
Yes. We have not gotten it right. If we have gotten it right and I am in this party, I cannot because I am running for a particular office but failed to get the ticket jump into another party. It means you are being childish about it. Politics is not about contesting for positions; it is about moderating opinion, about holding the apparatus of the party that will enable people seek to take charge of their destiny. That is what politics should be.
Reason for running
You cannot stand aside and wait for it to be gotten right. You have to be part of it, to contribute your quota to make it right.
Do you win a lottery if you don’t buy ticket? You have to buy the ticket and then work towards it. Nobody was born president. Nobody was born a senator. You work towards it. What is important is that you have a platform, you have a message, you have what it takes. As a lawyer with 27 years’ experience, how can you say that I cannot aspire to rule Nigeria?
As somebody who is above 50 years, do you say I cannot aspire to rule Nigeria? Then who will? I was in the university when they said the future belonged to us. I came out of the university 27 years ago and those people who told me that are still crowding the space. For goodness sake, what are we talking about here? A generation is oppressing a generation and nobody is saying anything. If there has to be a change in this system, it must have to be a generational one, the type that took place in banking that threw up Tony Elumelu or Jim Ovia, that by the time they left banking, even before 50, they left an indelible legacy.
When they started, people must have laughed. Those in old generation banks must have laughed, saying: oh, it must be a one-day wonder. But by the time they left banking, they left something fantastic behind. That same generational change also took place in the area of media. I am sure that when Nduka Obiagbena started Thisday Newspapers, he was not up to 80 years old. When John Momoh started Channels Television, there was NTA. He was not 89 years old. Even your newspaper, TheNiche, are you not happy that those behind it belong to the new generation I am talking about?
Then you go to the entertainment industry. At a time, it used to be the New Masquerade, it used to be Village Headmaster or Behind the Cloud. But today, look at what the young people have done; their innovative capabilities have been brought to bear in the entertainment industry which we now call Nollywood.
Yes you may not like it. Talk about depth and all that. But they have been able to carve a niche for themselves. They have been able to create employment base that is rich. They have been able to create a capital base that you cannot ignore. That is what we are talking about. That generational change needs to take place in politics, for Nigeria to properly occupy its place in the comity of nations.
Confidence in winning the presidency
You see, people are celebrating Barack Obama today. The presidency wasn’t the only office Obama contested. He contested a seat at the Illinois House of Assembly and failed. He contested the House of Representatives, and failed, until John Kerry discovered him and interfaced with him. That’s how it came that he was given an opportunity to speak at the convention of the Democratic Party. So my brother, it is not about all these kinds of things. Even the man who liberated slaves in America, Abraham Lincoln, how many elections was he recorded to have contested and failed? About seven.
So if I contested the governorship of Anambra State, it is because I believed I had something to offer. If the people of Anambra do not accept my message, it is their choice and I cannot say that Anambra should burn because they did not elect me as governor. These are parts of the things that we are bringing to bear on the political setting. We need to change our attitude to power, our attitude to politics. If you come into election and you don’t win, you don’t need to destroy things or kill people. People who do that are desperate.
And they are desperate for so many reasons. They could be desperate just because they want to have their hands in the public coffers and help themselves, which is what is even happening. These two parties you people say are the big parties are two sides of a coin. They can’t face each other; they can’t stay apart. What is keeping them together is what they feel they should enjoy in government.
Issues to be addressed if elected
The issues I want to address are many. One, the apparatus of state cannot and should not be used as a machinery to grant favour to friends and relations or punish perceived enemies. If I am able to tell people, “this thing you call governance is not for your relations or your in-laws; it is something that you are supposed to use in the position of trust, to create opportunity, for a larger segment of the society”, I would have achieved a lot. This is because most of the people who have operated at that level, had done so based on the fact that “it is our own”. Somehow it is an African thing or a Nigerian thing, but it is wrong and we must correct it. The apparatus of state must be liberated from the shenanigans of politicians, for Nigeria to move forward, for there to be development.
Again, the issue of security is huge. We have seen it that a lot of things have gone wrong. If we are able to make an input on how this insecurity is resolved, that will be fantastic. Of course, you can address security. It is something that is expansive, but you can start from the periphery. Either you start from the periphery to the centre, or from the centre to the periphery. Whichever option you choose is good. You can even do a combination of both.
If you are providing security, you are going to be talking about individuals. We keep hearing that Nigeria has human resources, in the secondary school, university and all that. How have we put our human resources to secure our borders as a nation? We have not. If given the option, under my watch, Nigeria should, at least, have one million soldiers, to start to address the security challenges of this country. We should be talking about two million policemen. But the system has been operated for so long by little minds that it has atrophied.
Nigeria has the population and the land mass. So you deploy the people, train them and pay them. The money to pay them is there, but few people will pocket it and walk away. Nigeria has been ruled, for so long, by people who don’t believe in the country. And that is why the system is not working.
