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Chief Perry Opara, Chairman of National Unity Party (NUP) and President of Nigerian Union of Political Parties (NUPP) also heads the West African Association of Political Parties (WAAPP) as international president. He spoke to Daily Trust after WAAPP’s summit, defending the call for the re-constitution of the electoral reform committee.
Nigeria has 50 regis- tered political parties, most of them unable to produce even a councilor in last year’s general elections. How do you justify their inc-lusion on the electoral reform committee as your association has demanded? Every registered party is a creation of the constitution. The constitution empowers Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to register political associations which meet spelt out criteria. Once such associations get registered as political parties, they should get equal treatment in all things involving them. It is wrong for a committee discus-sing electoral reform to exclude any party. It is more wrong for the Federal Government to select out of the 50 parties into that committee. Allow every party to participate; or, at least, let the parties act as a group and nominate representatives. Don’t select from among them and give some the feeling that they don’t belong. We know the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP); they are used to the undemocratic act of selecting their leaders, but the electoral reform process involves every Nigerian. What is the use of including parties that fail to make any impact at all in the political landscape? Inability of some parties to win elections adds to factors which make a reformation of the polity necessary. Look at the parties that won high posts: Action Congress (AC), All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), the PDP, and Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA). They were the parties which had members in government who used tax payers’ money to campaign.They used power of incumbency to manipulate the process. AC won in Lagos because Bola Tinubu who was governor deployed everything available. His fellow governor Orji Kalu of PPA did the same thing in Abia State. You need money, big money, where you do not have offices. Even for your views to be known to the public you have to have money. You pay as much as N6m a day for your campaign to be televised live. That is why we insist that the process must change. That is why every party must be involved in any establishment that will achieve that change. PDP has got the highest number of offices. Are you saying that it got as much because of intensive campaign or because of rigging? It did more campaigns. It was the ruling party at the centre. It had more states than any other party. It had much money in addition to state apparatus. The security agencies are loyal to the PDP president. The electo-ral officers were answerable to him. If the INEC chairman is free from any allegiance to the president and if the state INEC commis-sioners are loyal not to the president but the INEC chairman, you will begin to see a more credible electoral pro-cess. Can the reform committee we are talking about achieve this ideal? Not as constituted at present. It is inept and we are calling for its dissolution. The people there owe their allegiance to the PDP-led Federal Government. Besi-des, they don’t have the neces-sary experience. These are lawyers and teachers. You don’t call the president of Nigeria Bar Association and sideline leaders of political parties. You don’t call engineers to confront medical challenges. Political problems should be solved by politicians. But not much is known about your group, WAAPP. It’s barely two years old, 2006, and I became the international president only four months ago, January 24, 2008. How representative of the West African region is WAAPP in view of the name it bears? Other countries are fully involved. The man who conduc-ted my election is a Ghanaian, the high commissioner in Nigeria from Ghana. He was the presiding officer. The association’s secre-tary is a Togolese, and so on. I’m International president of WAAPP in the executive sense of how Femi Falana is the president of West Africa Bar Association. Your association gave out honourary awards to three Nigerians. What qualified them for the awards? Senator Grace Folashode Bent is the first woman in West Africa to become senator after an election conducted not in her home state but her husband’s state of origin. Perhaps more importantly, she achieved this for the very first time of standing for any election in her life. She is outstandingly committed and we feel we should encourage her and call other women to action. Senator Isa Braimoh is another achiever who has toured practically every country trying to uncover how great things are done. The selection committee found him competent to be honoured. Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa who is the current president of Manu-facturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), is a manger of resources worthy of celebration. We choose himbecause feel that business and politics go together.
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