------ Doyin Okupe, former Senior Special Assistant to President Goodluck Jonathan on Public Affairs.
He also speaks on his corruption trial, Sowore’s trial, the Buhari administration, and why his party, the PDP, cannot provide effective opposition to the ruling party.
Excepts:
Q) It is about five years since your party, the PDP, was voted out. What is your impression of the current state of the nation?
Okupe: There seems to be tension everywhere and virtually in every area of our daily existence.
Q) Can you expatiate? Why is there tension?
Okupe: Reasons for tension are obvious. The recent Sowore court drama has created a lot of fear and bad blood among citizens in the country. The assault on the rule of law and the fear of the emergence of totalitarianism are issues heating the polity.
Q) Sowore has accused the government of ineptitude and poor governance. He wants a revolution. How should the government have responded to his call for protest?
Okupe: His call for a revolution should simply have been ignored. At the time he made the call he was merely filibustering. His call was a mere attention-seeking and rabble-rousing escapade.
Q) The government says it was treason, an attempt to unsettle or dethrone the Buhari regime.
Okupe: The courts are competent enough and the institution empowered by the Nigerian constitution to make a decision on that.
Q) You are a PDP chieftain. How do you rate the APC/Buhari administration so far?
Okupe: I am no longer interested in rating or criticising Buhari or APC government. One is that the government has no tolerance for criticism and has not shown any evidence of taking advantage of copious beneficial resource materials, criticisms and advice thrown at it from various segments of the society.
I am more interested and wish to devote my time and energy towards educating the upcoming political class and the general public on non -partisan issues that have bedevilled our polity for years and have resisted solutions. I am also interested in helping to rebuild PDP so that it can be remodelled, rebranded and better suited to take over governance from the present incumbent APC.
Q) It is almost five years since the APC dethroned your party. The APC has repeatedly claimed that it has rescued Nigeria from the path of destruction on which your party placed it for 16 years.
Okupe: The APC can claim what they like. The taste of the pudding is in the eating. Nigerians now know better, even non-Nigerians too. All indices and parameters for assessing government functionality and effectiveness are there for everybody to see. The only misfortune here is that approval or disapproval by the electorate based on their rating of government performance cannot be reflected electorally largely because of an absence of free and fair elections and judicial interference by the government.
Q) Are you saying the last generation elections were not free and fair?
Okupe: No argument. Most of the recently held elections in Nigeria have not been free or fair. In this saga, the electoral umpire is also culpable notwithstanding the outward facade of purity or innocence the leadership of that organisation puts on. It’s not me just saying this. Local and international observers have repeatedly and resoundingly echoed this position.
Q) But there are many people who believe that the PDP was too weak and disorganised to have won the last presidential election.
Okupe: Absolute fallacy. After the Port Harcourt Convention, the PDP became a highly mobile, resilient and unconquerable fighting machine. Only the massive rigging machinery of government with the connivance of INEC and security forces could have subdued and defeated the pdp.
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