Chief James Ocholi, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) is a house hold name in Kogi politics. Ocholi is currently one of the governorship aspirants in Kogi State on the platform of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). The primary election to determine the CPC flag bearer that would contest the December 3 governorship polls in Kogi State holds next Saturday in Lokoja, the state headquarters. If he clinches his party’s ticket, he will be one of the leading contenders for the coveted Lugard House. In this exclusive interview with Francis Ottah Agbo, the legal luminary bares his mind on Kogi politics and his chances in the election.
You are one of the governorship aspirants filing out for the Congress for Progressive Change primary election in Kogi State next Saturday. What are your chances?
Kogi State is 20 this year because it was created in 1991. In the last 20 years, Kogi instead of flying is still crawling and this is unfortunate. There is no piped water in Kogi State. All the neighbouring states like Benue are doing better. Go to Zaki-Biam, Otukpo for example they are notorious for yam production and rice mill respectively. In Kogi, our markets are shrinking because government has not improved or created any market to attract traders the way we see in Otukpo and ZakiBiam. When I was a school boy in Bassa Local Government, there was a market known as Sherie Market. Lorries from all over the country came to the market to ferry goods to areas of need. And the market women and young men at the time took advantage of the market to carry loads, load the lorries with goods and they paid for this service. This helped to boost the economy of the area. Today that market is dead because the bridge linking the market got destroyed and the state government refused to reconstruct it. In all sectors or segments of the state, such hopelessness abound. But there is hope if the people vote for me.
Governor Ibrahim Idris who is on his way out is the first governor to have continuously without break, enjoyed about nine years as governor with nothing to show for it. Governor Idris squandered the golden opportunity to transform our state. Nine years in the saddle is enough to fast track development in the state.
Lokoja, the capital city of Kogi remains a glorified village. Lokoja has the potential of greater development for three major reasons. It has the human and material resources to propel development in the agrarian state. Secondly, it is close to Abuja, the federal capital and I thought this should have conferred some advantages on the state with proper leadership. Of course, it was the first capital of modern Nigeria. Yet of all the states created 20 years ago, Lokoja remains the most backward state capital. In fact, without sounding as if I want to spite kogites, Lokoja is like refuse dump. I say this out of concern. If you visit other state capitals, you see good roads, dualised roads and time tested infrastructure. But story of Lokoja is that of failed promise and dearth of critical infrastructure.
If this is the case in Lokoja, you can guess what is the situation in the rural areas and the satellite towns. Even in the government house, known as Lugard House and precisely the auditorium, the AC are not working, the place has been taken over by reptiles and cockroaches. The past nine years of Idris are wasted years. This is the view of majority of the people of Kogi State.
The state is in need of transformation. We are blessed with abundant human and natural resources that have not been harnessed. Out of the 38 solid minerals that Nigeria has, 18 of them are found in kogi in commercial quantity. So we don’t need to rely on oil to survive if Kogi were to be alive. Oil producing communities earn derivation. If the minerals have been harnessed, the host communities would have benefited the way the Niger Delta states are enjoying. The Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) tapped is about N100million per a month. There are states that earn in billions.
It means that the governor must look inward and reason beyond the box because the federation account may not be enough to develop the state after deducting over head to pay personnel, to run the ministries and so on. In a nut shell, to think beyond the box, the leader must be visionary and it is that vision and purposeful leadership that I will bring to Lugard House if I win the primary election of the CPC this Saturday and go ahead to win the general election by December 3, 2011. Kogi needs a leader who will insulate himself from petty politics, remove himself from the nitty gritty of payments of money and harnessed the resources of the state to turn it into eldorado.
Recall that of all the states in the federation, none has the benefit of tourism like Kogi. Lokoja was the first headquarters of Nigeria before the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorate into Nigeria. That was where Lord Lugard, the famous Governor General of Nigeria was. Lokoja is where the cemetery where the colonialists were buried. All the Europeans that died at the time especially those in the North were buried there. Visit that cemetery today, it is an eye sore. You know that Europeans cherish and honour the departed for the services rendered to the people of Nigeria and government of England. Those buried there are honoured by the Queen of England because they came to Nigeria as ambassadors to humanity. Look at where the ambassadors are buried!
Dubai is what it is today not just because it has oil but because it leveraged on oil and tapped into property development and tourism in Dubai and these brought them to limelight today. Kogi can do the same. How many states in the country have a confluence? Just two and one of them is Kogi State precisely in Lokoja where both River Niger and River Benue join. What has our leaders done with the confluence that God in His wisdom bequeathed to us? If the past governors had leveraged on it, it would have turned the state into a tourist hub of the federation.
A visionary leader would tap into this advantage and aggregate the human minds to put the state on the map. But this is what is lacking and that is why we are regarded as one of the poorest states in the country. So if I am elected I will empower the poor with view to reduce poverty, create a peaceful environment, entrench qualitative educational system, sound health care delivery and entrench probity and accountability in governance. The summary is that I will bring on board, purposeful leadership to take Kogi to the next level.
What makes you think you are an embodiment of these qualities?
I am not too sure whether I am an embodiment of these virtues because no man is an island. I only possess the heart to develop Kogi State. It is the heart that will help me aggregate the human minds drawn from different backgrounds, different ethnic groups and different professions to get the job done. By virtue of my job and interaction, I have made friends from different strata of the state to quickly put together this winning team that will get the job done if given the mandate. Right now, my campaign is headed not by an Igala man but by a gentle man from Ogori Magogo and the finance director of the campaign hails from Bassa. So I am looking forward to the opportunity to aggregate these minds to engender development in Kogi State. The leader does not need to know every thing. A good leader should be like a good lawyer. All the lawyer does is to know which authority to use to prosecute his matter and his ability to get same at the right time. As a good leader, I know the minds to aggregate to move the state forward.
But you have never been in government. Your opponents believe you can not make a good leader because you are inexperienced.
I have played various roles in Kogi State Government at various times. I was Secretary of Appointment & Contracts Review Committee. The committee did intensive review of policies and contracts including chieftaincy titles in the state between 1991 when the military ruled Kogi and the civilian regime of Prince Abubakar Audu. I was also involved in conflict & crisis resolution in the state. There was ethnic dispute in Kogi Poly and I was a member/ secretary of the Judicial Panel of Enquiry set up to quell it. I was also a member of the now rested Family Support Programme in the days Colonel Paul Omeruo, former governor of the state. I have been very active in the bar in my state. Incidentally, I am close to all the power elites in Kogi, it is either I am their lawyer or I am against them. I have been legal adviser to the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP).
But you have not held any position in the Legislature or in the Executive Arm of Government….
That is not a handicap. I will use my private sector background especially my success in the bar as the experience to offer visionary leadership. If the private sector is working then we must make Kogi work.
Do you have enough money to match the money bags that are already spoiling for war?
Kogi State has become an interesting political field. We had had elections in the state where money dictated the pace and the winner. But in the last election, money didn’t dictate the pace. The current member of House of Representatives representing Yagba Federal Constituency did not have a dime. He ran on the platform of Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). He fought the incumbent who had the support of the PDP, the state government and Federal Government of Nigeria. But he lost because the people had decided that the PDP man would not return to the green chamber. Rather they opted for the ACN candidate even though he had no money because in their view, he has integrity and track record of service than the PDP man. So when the die was cast, PDP rolled out money, but public spirited people who are not members of ACN raised money for the poor chap and as I speak with you, the guy is in the House of Rep.
There is a slogan going on in Kogi State right now: Don’t vote for the party. Vote for the candidate. This slogan is close to the heart of the people every where in the state because party politics has not benefited the electorate. Rather it has underdeveloped the state and created insecurity in the land because mediocres, thugs and parasitic politicians who parade themselves as godfathers hide under the banner of the party to plunder the fortunes of the state through frivolous financing and outright diversion of funds through offshore accounts. This leaves the masses poorer. So the people have discovered that voting for the party does not put food on their table. Political parties in Nigeria are basically the same because they are mere vehicles that take politicians to their seats. The parties don’t have any rigid ideological divide and this is the more reason why I said the parties are basically the same, what is different is the personality. This is where my strength lies.
This is not to say that we shall not raise funds. I may not match the money bags billion for billion but I can assure you that the people have spoken in clear terms that money will no longer count.
How far have you gone to entrench the slogan in the poverty- stricken rural areas?
We have set up different structures working from different perspective. It may not be politically sagacious for me to disclose the details, but we have identified the different strata of society and what informs their reasoning, decisions and opinions. These structures are in different phases, the youth, women, elders and elites have their own and they have been reaching people across board. As I speak with you, we have more than 10 campaign outfits. Some of them don’t work together but the result of the work cumulatively would soon materialise. When we resume full campaign by September 27 as stipulated by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the campaign would go up in full flames and the effect of the grassroots mobilisation that our mallams, pastors, market women, Okada riders and youths are doing would yield dividend and the PDP would be in for a shocker!
Why did you choose to run on the platform of the CPC?
I was in PDP for more than 12 years. I even took part in the first primary election of PDP which took place on January 9, 2011. I left PDP in January this year because I discovered that there was insincerity of purpose in the Kogi State chapter of PDP. The people who were at the helms of affairs including the governor are not interested in getting candidates that would move the state forward, they were considering personal interest- is this man my in-law? Would he make my daughter his First Lady? Would this person cover my track or otherwise? So the issue was not the state and the people but their personal interest. Once I identified that, I knew I was not going to fit into the brancket and I left. One thing they have forgotten is that even the governors that handpicked their successors fell apart with their former godsons either because they naturally grew out of their shelf or because the godfathers were over bearing.
All the PDP care to do is to take aspirants to administer oath on them so that when they emerge they do the bidding of the godfather (s) and if the fellow decides to be a man of his own then oath should catch him. I can not take oath for any body because it is ungodly, undemocratic and anti-people. So long as oath taking was and remains the method of deciding a successor, the interest of the state is swept under the carpet. I told my self that if I must provide purposeful leadership then the process with which I emerge is very important and that was why I left PDP. Oath taking as a yardstick for endorsement was not what our founding fathers bargained for.
If you clinch the CPC ticket, how do you intend to check the influence of Prince Abubakar Audu?
Prince Abubakar Audu is a spent force. He is living in the past; his days are gone. He is no more in power. The period for Audu to rise and shine has gone. T o be honest, at the time Audu became governor in 1999, he performed in the first two years and afterwards, Audu suddenly became a tin god. He saw every body as inferior to him. In fact Audu became a terror like Emperor Napoleon Bonarparte the great, lost human relations and punished civil servants and that was why he was rejected at the polls in 2003 when he sought re-election. He was one of the first incumbent governors to be defeated by an ordinarily citizen. Though both of them- Audu and Idris rigged the polls but it was clear that the people disowned Audu. That election left a scare of thuggery on our land. Thuggery was alien to us but the duo of Idris and Audu popularised it. You can fool the people some times but you can not fool all the people all the times. The young people will not allow themselves to be used as thugs again. Parents and guardians should resist any attempt to make their children and wards thugs.
Politicians who need thugs should use their children and brothers and not innocent people. If Audu had retired from active politics, he would have honour because we are in an era where world leaders are within the ages of 40 and 50 years. If Audu fails to play from the background as an elder, I would retire him from politics and we live to see this after the December 3 polls. It is true that he may emerge the ACN candidate but it is the people that have the final say.
Luckily for us, our election is the only one on December 3 and we believe INEC would deplore all its manpower to Kogi to conduct the election. We shall write memo to this effect to INEC. We want massive media coverage of the election, enough presence of local and international observers in Kogi to monitor the election. Proper policing of the polling units and collation centres will stop the PDP and ACN from rigging. If INEC gets it right in Kogi, it will get it right in the other states where elections are to be conducted in 2012.
You are an Igala man and your kinsmen have been ruling Kogi since 1991. Do you intend to support people of other ethnic groups who want to rule the state?
Yes. If I am convinced that the person can deliver, why not. I believe in zoning because credible people abound in all parts of the state. I advise my brothers and sisters in Kogi West and Kogi Central to keep reaching out to people and one day one of them shall lead the state. My vision is for all to be happy and that can only happen if all the ethnic groups are happy with the union called Kogi State.