Utomi: Discussing Presidential Candidacy for 2027 Inappropriate

•Says Nigeria not a functional democracy

Chuks Okocha in Abuja

Convener of the National Consultative Front (NCFront), Professor Pat Utomi, said any discussion on the emergence of a presidential candidate by any political party at the moment was politically inappropriate.

Utomi spoke yesterday on the ARISE NEWS Morning Show programme.

He said the presidential candidate for the coalition of opposition parties that was being proposed would emerge at the appropriate time, insisting it is not a point of focus for now.

He explained that the current political crisis in Nigeria was because the country had no working democracy or a political party in the real sense of an ideology-based political party.

Utomi said Nigeria’s current economic challenges were due to the fact that the Nigerian state was constructed by politicians not to serve the best interest of the people, but to encourage corruption.

He also discussed the work of NCFront with Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party (LP), and New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP). He said the political parties were focused on creating a merger that would build a strong political party in Nigeria.

Speaking on the stunted economic growth and challenges faced in the country, Utomi said while he was interviewing civil servants for his book, a respondent said civil servants did not work because the political party that came into power did not have an agenda for the government organisation in place to boost growth and development.

According to the renowned political economist, “The truth of the matter, the naked truth, is that what is happening in Nigeria is inevitable because the Nigerian state is not constructed to serve the Nigerian people.

“It is constructed to be bargaining between politicians looking to share booty, because that is what it is; you will have all this corruption.”

He explained that the reason behind Nigeria’s lack of growth, and why several multinationals were leaving the country was corruption that had been displayed by Nigerian politicians and those in government.

Utomi said, “Nigeria is not a working democracy, and part of the effort of building a strong and viable political party is to make our democracy work, first and foremost, before other people begin to think about another election.

“The problem with Nigeria is that we’ve fought in terms of elections. We go through a mess that is called an election, we say okay, let’s wait for the next one. No, that’s not how countries grow and develop. Countries grow and develop, first of all, by founding political parties.

“I can say without any feeling of wrong that we don’t have a political party in Nigeria today. What we have managed to couple together since 1999 have been platforms for machine politics where the game is about just grabbing power, rightly or wrongly, and sharing spoils.”

The foremost political economist added that by engaging in the cycle of violent elections without properly building political parties, what Nigeria had done was to neglect the development of the country, as well as neglect Nigerians, who always bore the brunt of the challenges between politicians.

Utomi said, “The Nigerian people have become so frustrated, so fed up with the way Nigerian politicians carried on that when Peter Obi said the right things, it resonated and drove the emergence of a movement that generally got called the Obidient movement around the world, Nigerian diaspora. And if you look at the resurgence of many of the success stories of the 20th century, they had a diaspora base.

“So, the Nigerian diaspora rallied very strongly around the fact that this gentleman was saying a few things right, and a campaign like Nigeria hasn’t seen in a long time happened, and it was deliberately sabotaged, whatever you say about it.

“The point remains, how do you go forward when you meet this? You’ve got to realise and take advantage in trying to save Nigeria that the majority of this country is young.”