STEPPING UP TO THE PHAROAHS OF NIGERIA:
Chekwas Okorie and the 2015 Presidential Election
By Ugorji Okechukwu Ugorji
On Tuesday, February 10, 2015, I flew from the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja to the Murtala Mohammed Airport, Lagos, on my way to a meeting with the brilliant and consequential public intellectual, Dr. Chidi Amuta. The flight was on Air Peace, which I gathered is a new outfit. I found its planes and crew quite impressive. After I picked up my luggage in Lagos and headed out to where the taxi cabs were, a remarkable thing happened as the taxi drivers and their agents engaged in the hustle of who would take me to a destination yet unknown to them. For whatever reason, I chose one of them and proceeded to give him a business card, more commonly referred to in Nigeria as a complimentary card.
The man looked at the card I gave him, which he held in his right hand and what he saw made him drop my camouflage-colored luggage, which he had picked up with his left hand. He threw his hands up in the air and gave me a hug with a shriek in his voice. I was somewhat surprised as I cautiously returned the hug to this strange man who appeared to know me from somewhere.
"You are working with Ojeozi Ndigbo," he asserted rather than ask.
"Yes," I replied with a smile of seeming familiarity.
Then he said something that belied his hustle. "I will take you wherever you want to go for nothing."
I asked him what he meant. In what was clearly an Owerri accent of the Igbo language, he told me that as the Director General (DG) of the Chekwas Okorie Presidential Campaign Organization (COPCO), my money for the fare to my destination in Ikeja was not acceptable. He would take me there for free, he said. I did not know he was Igbo when I chose him, for he was dressed in what looked to me like a Yoruba-styled jumpa suit made from blue-dyed Jankara cloth, with fluent Yoruba to boot. It was in his owner-operated Toyota Camry that he told me where he hailed from in Imo State. He said he liked what Chekwas Okorie was doing and saying as a presidential candidate in Nigeria's upcoming elections now postponed to March 28, 2015.
First, he took me to a nearby hotel, and after I had checked in and dropped my luggage, he drove me to Dr. Amuta's office on Asenuga Street, Ikeja. Chukwuma refused to accept the N4,000 fare from me but I begged him to at least allow me to give him a tip. The man's gesture returned me to my days of childhood at Lorji, Mbaise (over 40 years ago), when folks readily did things for one another without expecting a payment.
Just as important was the fact that the encounter with Chukwuma justified my decision to join Okorie's mission and share in his vision. The happenstance also took me back to Wednesday, January 21, 2015, when the presidential campaign of the United Progressive Party (UPP) hit the streets of Owerri, Imo State. The occasion was the formal kick off for the upstart campaign. Greeted by an excited and enthused crowd of men, women, and youth, Okorie stumped the grounds of the gathering with his Vice Presidential candidate, Barrister Bello Umar.
The event was also my formal outing as the DG of COPCO. I had the honor of formally introducing the presidential candidate to the over 20,000 people gathered at the campaign grounds. In my remarks, I stated that there were three major candidates for president in Nigeria, namely Chief Chekwas Okorie, President Goodluck Jonathan, and General Mohammadu Buhari. This was how I framed the contest moving forward and all objective measures across the country have since then consistently placed Okorie as the third leading presidential candidate. Senator (Dr.) Ken Nnamani recently reminded me jovially that there is no prize for the third place finisher, but we are only getting warmed up – with an unexpected time extension to work on winning the whole shebang.
In his brief remarks, Umar urged the crowd to "vote for a visionary and not a dreamer. Vote for real change not change of musical chairs. Vote for Chekwas Okorie. Not only CAN we bring about real change; we WILL do it." Umar spoke highly of the characteristics of Ndigbo and said he was pleased and honored to be among us for the flag off of the UPP presidential campaign. A Highlife musician belted out a number in Hausa language to honor the V.P. candidate.
When Chief Okorie walked up to speak, his first remarks were in the form of a question: "Are you better off today under this government?" The crowd answered in the negative. "Are you better off, I ask?" And the crowd yelled "No." Okorie told them that the president's transformation program has failed the ordinary people of Nigeria. "If a man has been telling you that he is doing transformation for the past 6 years and you are more miserable after six years, what he has been doing is transgression against you. Is it not transgression?" he roared, and the crowd responded "It is."
On the other hand, "the APC tells you it is change," Okorie said. "But how can you change from one side of a coin to the other side of the coin and call it change? Is it not the same coin?" Some young men in the crowd shouted "Obu the same coin" (meaning it is the same coin). Okorie urged the gathering to reject the coin and its two sides, and choose a different path - "the bold path of the tiger; the revolutionary path of the UPP." In essence, Okorie is the 2015 Moses come to lead the people away from the Pharaohs of PDP and APC.
The Exit Clause
Why does Okorie think the UPP is revolutionary? "We are the only party calling for the inclusion of an Exit Clause in the Nigerian constitution. There is no such thing as an indivisible and inseparable nation in the present times. Inseparable and indivisible are languages of the 20th century." He explained that an Exit Clause will allow units of the nation to go through an internationally observed and recognized process to leave the union if it feels badly treated by the nation. "When the nation's leaders know that any part of the country can choose to leave, they would be more circumspect in how they treat every group. There will be more fairness, equity and justice to prove to groups that they are better off staying in the union," Okorie said. He went on to point out that in places such as Ethiopia, United Kingdom and Canada, the Exit Clause concept has helped create meaningful national cohesion and not splintering, as some people fear would be the case with such a clause.
Okorie's Exit Clause idea is rooted on the knowledge of nations in the world where such a clause has worked well for the citizenry. The idea was also part of the submission of the Igbo delegation to the just concluded national conference convened by President Goodluck Jonathan.
The writer, Dr. Ugorji O. Ugorji, is currently the Director General of the Chekwas Okorie Presidential Campaign Organization (COPCO). He can be reached at dr.ugorji@gmail.com.
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