The Founder of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Chief Chekwas Okorie, says former and current governors of South-East states have failed because of their inability to tackle insecurity in the region.

In an interview, the former presidential candidate of the United Progressive Party (UPP), called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to probe the past government of Muhammadu Buhari and recover the nation’s looted funds.

What’s your view on FG’s condemnation of the EU Observer Mission’s report on the past election?

I have followed the reaction of the Presidency and the INEC to the EU Report. I have taken my time to study that report over and over. That report didn’t say anything that many Nigerians are not aware of. My take away from that report is that it makes many salient recommendations. There are 23 recommendations, and it also highlighted six of those recommendations as what would help to deepen our democracy going forward.

So, what I expected, especially INEC to do would be to tell them that we have noted your observations and we would look into those ones that we find that we didn’t do well; we will do our best to address them in future. The EU was not only the Observer organisation, even though they seem to be the most influential of them all. Others wrote their reports, while others are still putting together their final part of their reports. Most of the things said there were things we witnessed here.

INEC made promises and in a situation like this, their promise should be their bond. Nigerians were very enthusiastic believing that the electoral body would live up to its promises; the Buhari government provided INEC with all that they needed in terms of funding and other logistics, they never complained of lack of money. The critical aspect of the promises that they failed and that made many Nigerians to have very serious doubt as to the credibility of the managers of the elections is the promise to transmit result in real time and having the same result uploaded again in real time on the Irev, which should enable Nigerians, including those who were not in Nigeria, to have access to the results as they were coming in. These things failed, and it created the impression that some other things happened behind the scene.

I would have liked to see both the Presidency and the INEC taking the EU report in good faith and considered what to do with the recommendations made. I didn’t see anywhere in the report, where they recommended that the election didn’t meet up the requirements to stand as an election and therefore should not be considered as a legitimate election to bring a new government both at the centre and at the state level. There was no such recommendation.

As for those who lost, especially the main opposition parties that seemed to be celebrating as if the EU report is a judgement in itself that can nullify the election, I think they are celebrating for nothing. What the Observer Mission did was to make recommendations; they didn’t mince words, and they didn’t use harsh words either. I have seen, especially the PDP tender the report to the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT), which may be the reason the Presidency reacted the way they reacted believing that the opposition may latch unto it and have advantage at the tribunal. But I doubt that very much, whether what they tendered would account for anything because that tribunal is there to look at the election, the results, votes, who won and who didn’t win and whether the election substantially met the requirements to stand as an election. I believe that this election has been won and lost, but comments are bound to come up, which are supposed to guide our future actions.

The February 25 presidential election was close to a perfect election in the sense that there were so many upsets that today we have eight parties in the National Assembly represented. Many people, who would have been simply recycled without firing a shot on the account of the money they accumulated, lost to the people who were politically inconsequential before the election. Those elections have been allowed to stand, but to now have the NASS election reported as meeting the requirements of most expectations of Nigerians, while the presidential election being delayed in terms of the results coming in on those particular platforms created serious doubt.

The fear of the outcome of the first election turned the second election in March into a very violent outing. That is another aspect that has to be looked at, whether it would not be better for all our elections using technology to hold in one day.

President Tinubu is being applauded in some quarters for the reforms he is carrying out. How do you react to that?

I join those who have applauded him over the reforms he is introducing because this is where his experience as a former governor and not just a former governor, but somebody who has presided over a state like Lagos that is bigger than some countries in Africa. He saw how blocking of leakages of revenue could turn around a state. He must have been watching all of these things while he was angling to become the president, seeing for himself a lot of leakages that could make Nigeria self sufficient in funding its infrastructure without having to borrow as we have borrowed and put ourselves into this difficult situation we are now.

I’m not alone here. The business sector, the manufacturing sector, the international investing groups , the World Bank, the International monetary Fund (IMF) have joined in commending the president for the decisions he has taken early. I hope that trajectory is sustained along the line of what will help Nigeria to grow quickly.

The removal of fuel subsidy has generated a lot of ripples. What is your take on it?

This is something that so many people have clamoured for over a long time. If former President Muhammadu Buhari had the political will, he would have done it long ago. In the course of the campaigns leading to the election we are discussing now, there was actually no presidential candidate that didn’t say that he would remove the fuel subsidy. I remember that Peter Obi said it wouldn’t stay a day longer than necessary, and Atiku Abubakar did the same as well as Tinubu. There was no candidate that didn’t campaign on that.

If Nigerians foresaw that its removal would put them in such a situation that it would be better to continue the scam called subsidy, they would have said it in their voting pattern, but they voted for it. I was one of the earliest persons to say that the statement, ‘petrol subsidy gone’ was not in Tinubu’s inauguration speech, which he later admitted. It shows his passion for its removal.

What is really the complaint now? And I also join in that aspect that the palliatives that ought to ameliorate the impact of this subsidy removal, if there would come at all is too slow in coming and it has not been spelt out on what to expect. I expect the president to spell it out in due course. He has enough senior advisers approved for him to do that even though one would say that ministers have some roles to play in implementing all of those things but it is still within his purview to spell out his areas of intervention of what people would look forward to. The pain is very much on the high side but I also know that it won’t be for too long.

You said people were scamming Nigeria through fuel subsidy. Why can’t these people be arrested?

That is the real issue. The anti corruption agencies we have, especially the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the police in particular have not lived up to expectations and that has also given room for the military that was sent into those areas to monitor and then stop oil bunkering, in case those people doing it had superior arms than the police. Instead, what we started hearing was that some of the military personnel became part and parcel of it. I don’t see how this whole thing would happen and we would not be able to trace them. We take it as one of the challenges of the president.

There must be a very thorough investigation going for years. If possible, cover the years of Buhari’s administration, even though it is the same APC, so that the president can recover some money that would enable him to execute his laudable projects more seamlessly. He shouldn’t shy away from doing that. When Buhari won election in 2015 to emerge the president, I led a delegation of UPP then to pay him a courtesy visit in his Defence House. One of the recommendations we made to him was that if he would have the political will to recover 25 per cent of our looted funds that he would not need to borrow money to carry out the promises he made during his campaigns; I called him to recover all recoverable. He was as enthused by his expression as he was responding, but that was not what we saw when he had the opportunity.

The EFCC has been so bastardised ; people in power would nominate their person who would be loyal to them to head it. The agency has been used to even cover up crimes. Sometimes, I don’t understand the type of litigation that they carry out that in the few cases they have taken to court they lost out. So, may God give Tinubu the wisdom and the courage to really fight corruption.

Honestly, there are people who think that he cannot fight corruption effectively, especially his opponents. But I think he can.

Are you suggesting that the president probe Buhari to recover looted funds?

Yes, he should probe Buhari to recover our looted funds. He should even go back to 1999, so that it won’t look as if it is Buhari that is being singled out. He can set up a panel of highly respected patriotic Nigerians or a judicial panel of inquiry, but whatever they are able to unearth will be submitted not to EFCC, but to a very strong team of lawyers who are knowledgeable and patriotic in the area of litigations so that they can litigate properly, because some of the cases are thrown out on want of diligent prosecution. Right now, what happens in the country is that people steal not what they need, but they steal what they need to defend themselves should the the need arise.

There was a time the South-East was the safest region in the country. Right now, the security situation is worrisome. How can this insecurity be tackled?

You are right; it is such a very painful thing. I’m in the East as we speak. I was invited as one of the leaders to a meeting at the Imo Government Lodge at Abuja for this purpose with the five governors and some members of the national assembly. I would have been there, but I got the information very late.

Our governors have failed us. Those who were there when all these things started failed us, and the current governors who emerged on May 29 are failing as they are yet to agree among themselves on the synergy that would be needed to address this matter. Rather than sit back and issue statements and release orders, ordering market people to go about their businesses, I had thought that there should be a major summit that would involve for instance: Market association leaders, artisan unions; transport union leaders, leaders of oil marketers association, and others. These are the leaders who make things happen, who will call their association members out and urge them to take the risk and defend themselves or they would be out of business as this may never end anytime soon. Traditional rulers will be included and town union leaders. Not those who live outside their domain, but people who know what is happening and they are home with their village people. Time has passed when we used to say they were Fulani herdsmen. These are our sons and daughters, evidence abounds everywhere. This is as far as the states in the South-East are concerned.

I’m disappointed in the Federal Government in matters like this. I wouldn’t know why they chose the option to rendition Nnamdi Kanu in the manner that they did, which is so very scandalous. Whereas we now have this young man in Finland, causing this trouble that people are having here, and the Nigeria government cannot use diplomatic channel to go to the Finnish Government. Even if they say in their country, they protect people’s right of expression, but there is also a Treaty on cyber terrorism, which Finland is a signatory to. It may not only involve going to Finland, but reaching out to all our allies that we have good relationship with – the US, UK, France, etc so that this guy would be stopped. What about those who are owners of the platforms that he uses to make his broadcasts? Why can’t they shut his accounts? The federal government right from Buhari to this present time, even though this one will say he is yet to settle down, is insensitive to what is going on in that region.

What do you mean FG is insensitive to what is happening in the South-East?

Yes, right from Buhari. The impression we have here is that the Federal Government feels that we might as well decimate ourselves, but they are wrong. They don’t know that what affects one part equally affects the other. There is nowhere economic growth in one part of the country will not positively impact on the other parts of the country and vice versa. It is unfortunate that the impression is there, and the type of attention that ought to be given by the Federal Government is lacking.

What do you expect Tinubu to do on the Nnamdi Kanu matter?

Nnamdi Kanu’s release is very central to resolving the insecurity problem we have in the South-East, especially with regard to the issue of sit-at-home. Because even the criminals who are enforcing this, who are not members of the IPOB are also hiding under the guise of non-release of Nnamdi Kanu to justify what they are doing. Whereas Nnamdi Kanu’s own organisation has since distanced itself from it, the thing still continues. If he comes out, we know we’ll be able to isolate the real criminals and genuine agitators for self determination because these are two different kinds of people.

I’m passionate about the issue of Nnamdi Kanu. This is a young man that cut his political teeth under my tutelage. I was the one that approved his appointment as the chairman of APGA in the United Kingdom in 2002. I saw at close quarters his passion for his people to have a respectable place within Nigeria; he was not talking of Biafra then. We began to relate very closely until the trouble escalated to this level.

I was one those that suggested even when he was first arrested (Google will bear me out) that the way to resolve Nnamdi Kanu was by political means, and not a matter of the court, and it is not by force. Nobody listened to me, and today, the court has come out to say that he is discharged and acquitted and that was not done by the government. Now, what is happening is that the matter is at the Supreme Court, held by the government. There is no reason he should remain behind under lock and key even while the matter was going on because the judgement of the Appeal Court ought to be obeyed even while the other one is going on at the apex court.

Secondly, the president of a country has a special presidential dispensation that he can exercise to douse tension in a country that he is ruling. The constitution of Nigeria has provided an executive president in a presidential system of government. That special dispensation is to resolve matter like this. We have seen very high profile cases where government entered nolle prosecui and withdrew the matter. This one is very easy for President Tinubu by relying on the judgement of the Court of Appeal to release this man. I don’t mind if he has to invite him or set up a team to have a conversation with Nnamdi Kanu and get him released. If you can be saying that you want Nigeria to grow and a critical section is losing billions of naira every week, and you pretend that it doesn’t concern you. Honestly, Tinubu will win over 80 per cent of the hearts of the Igbo people, both the elite and the ordinary people if he takes that political action to release Nnamdi Kanu. (Saturday Sun)

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