By Divine Nwakanma
Founder, Household of God Church and former Presidential candidate, Reverend Chris Okotie, has reiterated his call for an interim government, noting that for Nigeria to move forward, there must be an urgent restructuring in which power has to return to the people.
In an interview with Ray Power 100.5 FM, Okotie said this is the time thathNigerians must come together as a people If we want our nation to be sustained in this corporate existence.
He said: “We must find the solution now, where our democracy is no longer governed by political parties, but by Nigerians themselves. That’s what I was referring to as Aboriginal democracy, taking democracy back to the people. Government, from the people, for the people, with the people, as a mechanical instrumentality for the crystallization of the new Nigeria.”
He noted that the presidential system of governance has actually failed Nigeria woefully.
“It has polarized the polity. It has balkanized the Nigerian society. It has fractured the whole confederacy of the Nigerian brotherhood. It has exalted or elevated corruption to an institution of Byzantine complexity. I reiterate very clearly without any ambivalence or equivocation that it should be jettisoned.
“What we have seen in our own experience, is what I call partisanism. Instead of the classical definition of democracy, which is government of the people, by the people, for the people, what we have had is government of the party by the party and for the party.
“This partisanism has excluded many Nigerians from the democratic process. It has excluded Nigerians from apprehending the dividends of democracy. What we have had is the exact opposite of that process; a false verisimilitude. It is not true democracy, because democracy by itself does not really include voting. You see, the concept of democracy was developed by the Greeks and it is not about the political parties. It’s about the will of the people. How the people can decide for themselves how they want to be governed?
“And within the concept of the federalism that we have here, we have seen that there are so many agitations borne out of suspicion. It is because federalism based on what I call terminal terminological inexactitude, which in itself is a falsehood. The constitution itself is nicodim, mostly contrived and imposed upon the nation.
” And so the concept of democracy that is in enshrined in our constitution is deceptive, because federalism involves the manipulation of centrifugal and centripetal forces and how they interact. But that’s not what we think.”
Okotie said our democratic process has merely favored some people, politicians particularly, while the Nigerian people have just not benefited from it whatsoever.
On what to do to remedy the situation, he said: “What we must do is to enter into an interim government that will rectify all the aberrations and the abnormalities within the Nigerian society. Politically, if we get into and when we do get into an interim government, then all these issues can be resolved. There’ll be restructuring. Our democracy will then take a sound footing, but for now. I do not think that this process has really worked out for Nigeria.
“Now you may want to ask: How do we set up of an interim government when those who can change things are probably the ones who do not even want it changed?
“That is the irony of that situation. That is why we cannot expect any external government, any subsistent government to change the rules because they will not enter into a place where they kind of schemed themselves out of the the realm of power. It’s not going to happen. So the kind of interim government we are projecting is where Nigerians can come together and decide how we want to be governed. People want to know how they’re going to control their resources. We want to know what kind of parameters will be set in, in this association.
” The truth remains that there is no subsistent government that will look into the provisions of a national conference or a contract because they know it will work contrary to party expectations or definitions. So we need to temporize. We need to have some kind of a hiatus where all the political parties go into some kind of a nuance and the Nigerian people can come together. That can only happen in an interim government, because an interim government is like a surgical theatre where you deal with all of the fundamental issues that have worked contrary to the unity of our nation. And that’s what I’m saying, that if we proceed now and go to the next regime change we are just postponing the evil day. It’s like seeking to embrace an elusive phantom.”