Pat Utomi, a management expert, is a Nigerian professor of political economy.

Utomi has been involved in politics, running for president in 2007 and 2011.

He has also been involved in various civil society initiatives. He is a columnist and has hosted a TV show called: ?Patito?s Gang.?

While some critics question his motives, Utomi remains a prominent figure in Nigerian politics and academia.

In this interview with Sunday Sun from his United States of America base, he spoke passionately about Nigerian politics, his proposed Shadow Government, the way forward and lots more. Excerpts:

Prof, you have been abroad for some time now, hope you have not Japa?

No. I will return on 12th of June next month.

Is it mainly because of June 12 celebration in Nigeria calendar or what?

Funny enough , I bought my return ticket months ago and besides the fact that it will be convenient because I traditionally have an invitation to speak at an event, MKO Abiola residence, and I thought that since my flight will arrive in the late morning it will be convenient to just go from the airport to the Abiola residence before I head home.

You recently formed the shadow government, which action the DSS has gone to court to challenge? Has the court served you on this?

Like I said, I have not received anything. But they are slow in acting. First, I formed this government in 2008. Why are they waking up today? I suggested the idea of Shadow Government after the 2007 election as a way of deepening our democracy in helping to generate rational public conversation in matters of policy that government is pursuing. Helping raise the voice of citizens relative to those policy choices and the offering of alternatives. When the election began in 2008, one concern that some of the senior opposition leaders had was that people were worried about how many seats in the cabinet. There are so many parties in Nigeria that this would become a distraction from the goal which is to deepen democracy. So, we left it at that time. After the 2011 elections, the idea came up again. The person who was working in the leadership of the progressives after the death of Chief Antony Enahoro was Chief Olu Falaye. We had a long discussion on the subject and after a while we started and the meetings took place in Lagos. As I pin-pointed out, at the time, one of my big concerns was health care. And the person who we invited to be our health care expert was Dr. Leke Pitan. He was very useful in giving us prospectivee on health care. The person who was the Shadow Person for Power is still playing that role till today, Dr. Jerome Okolo and so on and so forth. There is no big deal about it above beyond getting people to become more focused on different parts of activities of government so that they will have expertise on those particular government activity . This new excitement is strange to me. It is a testament about the deterioration of our democratic ethos in the country.

The last time I checked, you were a member of the Labour Party. Have you left the party?

I have been trying very hard to focus on party dealings, I?m trying more to coordinate activities of different parties, in composition , I have been working to stimulate growth in several different parties. So, I want to leave that here for now.

Just wanted to know if you also carry them along in this Shadow Government deal, if you have supporters?

Yes, there are Labour Party people in this Shadow arrangements, there are people from SDP, there are people from ADC in it and several other parties.

You once contested for the presidency in 2007, but recently you declared that you won?t contest for any election again, many could not reconcile this with you forming a Shadow Government, how do you look at this?

Just to say to people the office is little or no interest to me because the kind of scroudrels that fill that space are so focused on using politics for their self interest and feel everybody is like them. They think the reason everybody is in the arena is to grab the resources of the nation. I want it to be clear that I?m not looking for anything. I have been asked to be a minister before I turned it down. The last person who did that was President Yar?Adua and he went the extra mile. Two hours, he was talking to me to persuade me to join. And I said to him, it?s not because I have anything against being in office. But because in Africa, I?m training. I have degrees in political science and all that. I know that one of the biggest challenges we have in Africa is what is called the corporatist state in post-colonial Africa. And what does this mean? It means that in African politics, there?s a tendency to look for a strong voice of opposition and drag the voice into government. So, as to rubbish it or to weaken it. And that I did not want to be a victim of incorporation. And that I wanted to be somebody who offered an honest view to advance the good of all. And President Yar?Adua said to me that he respects my view, but that he believes that I will still make a greater impact from inside. It was on a Friday , he closed work that day and we went to the house, his residency in the villa. I now said to him, look, I?m a patriot. You can wake me up at anytime , at 2:00a.m, ask for my views and I will give it to you honestly. I told him that what he needed to do was to find seven good people and bring them in. You can count on my advice. Let those hustlers who are looking for jobs, they can contract awards. Let the seven good people man certain critical ministries. That all these hustlers who are looking for jobs can have contract awards. I emphasized that the seven people will make the government work. And Yar?Adua said, okay, why don?t you find me those seven good people, come along with them and I will back you. At that point, I was ready to back off my position. And I said to him, but I can?t give you seven names just sitting here. Let me return to Lagos. I will write down the seven names and send. I went back to Lagos wrote the seven names and I gave the envelope to Steve Oronsanye. And that was the last I heard. Yar?Adua took ill shortly after. And the rest is history. But I was told by somebody very senior that he probably never got that envelope because he thought I snubbed him at the time he was dying, which is not correct. I didn?t snub him. This was what happened. In Nigeria, whenever you want something done well for the good of society, aaah! Because of what he is looking for, not everybody is looking for something. Tinubu, the President of Nigeria, when he was governor of Lagos, I was leader of his cabinet retreats. I used to go and retreat with his cabinet.

And for a fact, let him tell you how much he paid me. I used to do that for companies and I would charge companies N20 million, to run a retreat, but for the Lagos State government, I charged nothing because I thought it was my citizen?s duty. As I used to call it (which is why he calls me citizen). That?s his nickname for me.

So, if I did all I did for him, when he was governor, including incurring the anger of President Olusegun Obasanjo whose policy team I was chairman of, when he was candidate, but who got very upset when he heard that I was helping out Tinubu the way that I helped, which is why I didn?t end up in the Obasanjo government. Many people called me, was it Waziri Ibrahim, Oby Ezekwesili, saying that Baba is very angry with me for joining AD. My response was: I am not AD. I am a citizen, I?m contributing my meat to Lagos State. And I am glad that Bola Tinubu cannot show one naira he ever gave me for doing that work.

Many believe that people like you should have helped to resolve the crisis in Labour Party, why is LP still in turmoil with people like you and Peter Obi still in the party. What are you people doing to end the crisis?

There is no crisis in Labour Party. In every Nigerian political party, you?ve got people who are really agents, people from outside trying to cause dissension, they have their mission because that?s what they are paid to do. So, the best thing is to ignore them. I?m not an official of the party, so I?m deliberately chosen partially because I believe that the next engagement is not going to be about this party. But it?s going to be an agglomeration of activity of parties. Which is why I created the Big Tent from the very beginning. And the Big Tent was designed to be a bigger party. To include people from more than one party. Even though it would move into a party that is backing candidates running for election. In the last election, one of the stimulators of the concept of the idea was that there were several very senior people who did not want to be in a party, but wanted to be active in determining the outcome of elections. And they were incorporated into the Big Tent. So, it is that concept of the Big Tent that I continue to work on. That is why I am slow to identify with a particular party. Because, again, it?s very interesting, if you look at the history of opposition politics in Nigeria and the role that I have played in it, that should be understandable. People forget sometimes that I am the very first presidential candidate of the ADC. That was the platform in which we consent professionals trying to engage when we decided to become involved in partisan in 1999.

We collectively agreed not to enter partisan politics after our struggle as civil society against military rule. We thought that it would send an impression that our intention was personal power interests. So, we generally revolted not to become involved in forming a party as some of our members have suggested. That meeting took place in my office which was on Idowu Taylor in Victoria Island, Lagos. I recall clearly standing outside after the meeting and Donald Duke said to me, okay ooo, una sabi, I am going to go and organise my state. That?s how he then went and organised with Liyel and Bassey, the takeover that was effective in Cross River. If at that meeting we had agreed that we should go into partisan politics we would have done that for several states. But at that meeting some people argued that we don?t want to give the impression that all the struggle against military rule that we were doing it because we are interested in office.

And this is why we chose not to participate in 1999. So, when we saw the way things were going with the PDP, some said that we should rescind the position, which we did. By 2004-2005, when we then decided that we should go into partisan politics political economy.