Utomi, who revealed this on Wednesday night while featuring on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme, said that Nigeria has not had a political party since 1999, rather, the country has managed to create platforms that enable what he described as machine politics from which politicians grab power for state capture.
A professor of political economy and management and former presidential aspirant of the Labour Party, Prof. Pat Utomi, has said that there is a move to form a new political party that will wrestle power from the hands of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
Utomi, who revealed this on Wednesday night while featuring on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme, said that Nigeria has not had a political party since 1999, rather, the country has managed to create platforms that enable what he described as machine politics from which politicians grab power for state capture.
Utomi, who was a member of the APC, also said the government of former President Muhammadu Buhari did not want Nigeria to work.
Asked if the move is to merge the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) and the Labour Party, Utomi said, “It is actually a really clean start. We have to start from the premise that Nigeria has not had a political party since 1999.
“Let’s be honest with ourselves, what we have managed is to create platforms that enable machine politics from which we grab power, usually for the purpose of state capture.
“If you want to test that, check how much the quality of the life of Nigerians has improved since 1999. In 1999, the political class managed to build a certain coalition of accommodation to keep the military out and share the spoils of power in Nigeria and somehow did not manage to create an alignment with the people of Nigeria to improve the quality of their lives.
“This is why Nigeria is deteriorating, becoming the poverty capital of the world, becoming the centre of widespread violence everywhere.
“Look at where India and Nigeria were in 1999 in terms of boot violence in politics, the quality of life of people and where Nigeria and India are today. In 1999, India was completely bankrupt, foreign reserves could not accommodate three weeks of trading.
“What has happened since 1999 is that India’s politics has managed to focus on rational engagement at a developmental stage. Looking at the numbers today, India is speeding past the so-called miracle economy of Southeast Asia. Nigeria on the other hand has been traveLling in the reverse direction.
“What better explanation can there be than the fact that Nigeria has not managed to organise structures for political participation that can focus on the Nigerian people and lift their lives.”
Utomi said that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) did not work according to his plan because “they didn’t want it to work. They departmented from the get-go”.
He added that those who didn’t want the APC to work according to his plans were “the people who captured the state”.
He said, “The Buhari government did not want the state to work. They wanted to share it with their friends.”
Asked if the Labour Party he supported in the 2023 general elections did not also work according to his plan, Utomi said it didn’t fail.
“That is why we want to calm down now, design and put in place a real political party with clear ideas of how you will become part of it, what you will do in it and therefore you accept to do or not to do it before you come into it.
“Where there will be a clear agenda, a party plank that the day you arrive in office, everybody from permanent secretary to level 8 officer knows what they must do every day to move Nigeria to a certain level. You don’t do it, you get fired.
“This business of just arriving and looking for how much money to transfer to your accounts or to transfer to another person’s account will not be there because you are very busy implementing what everybody has talked in public space and agreed with, and civil society is holding you accountable, serious media is holding you accountable and the whole society will know what you will do next and if you don’t do it, they will ask why.
“Not to get there and enjoy yourself and generate hubris - 50 car motorcades and all that. That is not how to govern a people who are dying in the poverty capital of the world.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?