Chief Chekwas Okorie, Pioneer Chairman of All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA)and National Chairman, Igbo Agenda Dialogu has said that Nigerua has had 26 years of unbroken democracy but 66 years of retrogressive governance.<\/p>\n
In this interview with Ignatius Okorocha on his assessment of Nigeria as it marks 66 years of independence,Chief Chekwas Okorie said,his assessment of Nigeria at 66 is a very chequered one noting that Within that period, “we had a civil war. We have had military interruptions a couple of times. We started with a parliamentary system and now we are in a presidential system of democracy.<\/p>\n
The good part is that we can now record 26 years of unbroken democratic practice, and that is on the political side.<\/p>\n
But in terms of development, welfare of the people and security – given that the two major purposes of any government, especially with regard to the Nigerian Constitution, is that the primary purpose of government is to ensure the welfare and security of the people – government has failed woefully to live up to this sacred mandate.<\/p>\n
Our story has been that of degenerating retrogressiveness instead of progress. We are not making progress; rather, we are retrogressing. Every year we find that the year before was better, and that has been the sad story of Nigeria.<\/p>\n
Countries that we were better than at Independence are far ahead of us today, whether you are looking at Africa or Asia. So many countries that we were well ahead of are now well ahead of us, and this is as a result of poor leadership.<\/p>\n
The military set the pace, because in handing over to a civilian administration, they had made up their mind as to who they were handing over to, not who the people of Nigeria should elect. From that moment, our leadership recruitment has been that of people who have money and those who have power selecting their cronies. You don’t disenfranchise the people from their inalienable right to choose who they want and then expect development and progress.<\/p>\n
That is what has happened, and every subsequent government seems to be worse than the one before it. Whereas naturally government is a continuum – a new government ought to build on the foundation and blocks laid by the outgoing government to do better – that is not our experience. Our experience is that every subsequent government gets worse than the one before it.<\/p>\n
That, in a nutshell, is how I will assess our experience so far.<\/p>\n
Other than having a continuous democracy for 26 years, there is nothing much to show for 66 years, yet Nigeria is a country blessed with so much material and human resources. No country as endowed as Nigeria would not have done ten times better than we are now. So this is where we are.<\/p>\n
As of October 1st, 2026, we will be celebrating our 66th Independence anniversary. We will be looking at 26 years of unbroken democracy and also 66 years of retrogressive governance.<\/p>\n
What is your advice to the government of the day?*<\/p>\n
Chief Okorie said,”What I can say is that the government of the day, as far as I am concerned, is not in the mood to change the situation. I have not seen the political will to make Nigeria a better place.<\/p>\n
The worst that has happened to the country is disunity. If you don’t have unity of purpose, there is nothing that any government can put together as a policy for development that will ever see the light of the day. This country is badly divided.<\/p>\n
This government has mismanaged our diversity. In fact, the one before it, which was also an APC government, laid the foundation for mismanaging our diversity, and this particular government has taken it to a higher level. So it is difficult for many people to associate themselves proudly as Nigerians. There are many people who are not proud to identify as citizens of Nigeria, while those who accept to be Nigerians are often those benefitting from our common patrimony. That is not how you grow a country.<\/p>\n
We thought that Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s presidency, being one of those who fought for a restructured Nigeria and true federalism, would make that a priority, so that all federating units, be they states or geopolitical zones, would be able to develop at their own pace and Nigeria would experience phenomenal growth. But no, he is running the government as a military leader. In all material assessments, he is a dictator. Many people feel alienated.<\/p>\n
People like me, since last year August when we formed the Igbo Agenda Dialogue, a pro-democracy, socio-political, non-partisan association, have been educating our people, sensitizing them to renew their confidence in Nigeria as citizens. Everybody knows that a majority of Igbo young men and women no longer believe they are still part of this country.<\/p>\n
The government of the day is not saying anything new. The president we have today – it was published when he was in NADECO that he had no faith in Nigeria. He said so, the man who is now President of Nigeria. If you see our young men who feel so alienated that they are saying they want a separate country, it is not as if they are saying anything new. In fact, President Tinubu raised this idea in NADECO long before he became President.<\/p>\n
And so, the 2027 election becomes a referendum – one that will decide whether Nigerians are happy the way they are today or they want a change. It doesn’t matter what plot anybody may put in place to corner the election as in the past. I think Nigerians are determined to make a difference, to make a statement without actually resorting to violence. At least Osun State has given us a leeway.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chief Chekwas Okorie, Pioneer Chairman of All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA)and National Chairman, Igbo Agenda Dialogu has said that Nigerua has had 26 years of unbroken democracy but 66 years of retrogressive governance. In this interview with Ignatius Okorocha on his assessment of Nigeria as it marks 66 years of independence,Chief Chekwas Okorie said,his assessment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13460,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18134"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18137,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18134\/revisions\/18137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}