Professor Patrick Okedinachi Utomi is a professor of political economy and management expert. He was a Presidential Aspirant in 2007 and 2011 Elections. He is the founder of Centre for Values in Leadership and one of the principalities behind the emergence of a political movement that brought the biggest party in Africa down.
In this exclusive interview, Professor Utomi shares with us all the gives and takes that gave birth to the All Progressives Congress; the key players and several economic thoughts that will put Nigeria on the trajectory of greatness.
-Professor, you were born in Kaduna in 1956 and you started your primary education at St. Thomas, Kano and moved to Our Lady of Fatima. What was growing up like for you?
Childhood was fun; those were truly the years of innocence, not just innocence for me as a child but innocence for a generation-for our country. Those were the years of trust, where a village raised a child, where somebody saw you doing wrong in the streets who you’ve never seen spanks you and says “when you get home, tell your father that so and so person spanked you for doing something wrong”. And so I grew up with a sense of being secure-of a safe world.
As a 9 year old, I traveled from Zamfara state to Onitsha all alone. I took a train from Gusau, got to Kaduna and changed trains, got to Enugu got off the train and entered a bus as a 9 year old boy. Today, a 24 year old man is going for NYSC, his mother follows him, calls for police on the other side and all kinds of things. This is a death of innocence we are dealing with here. As a child there was freedom to explore; very rascally and at the same time very dutiful and obedient. An altar boy who got to our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church 5:30am every morning to serve Mass.
Those were the days when United States of America had a young vibrant President called John F. Kennedy and the priests at our Lady of Fatima in Igbuzor were Americans. They encouraged us with the excitement of a Kennedy. Believe it or not at age 7, I read books about American Presidents. I had a rich, colorful childhood.
-You graduated from high school at 15 and the entry for University then was 17. What were you doing before you gained admission to study Mass Communication at Nsuka?
Well it wasn’t as smooth a direct entry track from I graduated high school, I went to the University. There was 2 years in between because of how early I graduated but I actually never intended to go to the university at all, it was not in my game plan. The time I was growing up, there was a great excitement about a new area that was opening up and that area was aviation, everybody wanted to be an airline pilot. To make matters even more complicated, one of my school mates as soon as he finished school Cert in January by February he was in America in a flying school, by November he was back in Nigeria a commercial pilot.
Every evening after flying to Benin or wherever it was he took the F27 to, he would come and pick me up in his sports car and we will drive around Surulere. So, I started dreaming of becoming an airline pilot, I stopped thinking about going to the University but my father obviously had other ideas.
So, he said he will encourage me to be a pilot, “however, you know the best friends you make in life are friends you make on campus, so why don’t you go to the University for a year or two and make friends”. He said. It seemed very reasonable since I was so young, so I said to myself “I’ll go to the University for a year or two and by the time I’m 19 I’ll be an airline pilot.” So, I took the concessional entrance examination to Universities and lo and behold here comes admission to the University of Nigeria.
My plan was to go in for two years and have fun. I got the form, closed my eyes put down the pencil and what it touched turned out to be Mass Communication. So, I filled the form, put down Mass Communication take the entrance and somehow I passed.
Immediately after the civil war, many people around the world had written books, journals to the University of Nigeria to help them build their library. The University could not afford librarians and in the case of my department, the HOD suggested something, “Look if you students can organize yourselves, I can give you the keys to the library and you take care of it.” Nobody wanted to take up the responsibility, so I went to the HOD and I collected the keys and now am accountable to the place. What do I do next? That was the question I asked myself. So, the sense of responsibility takes over, if I’m not there nobody gets the chance to use the library.
Just to be sure people get the chance to use the library I was not sleeping or eating or in the class-I would be in the library, and since I was there, there was nothing else to do, I began to read all the books in the library and my life changed completely. Instead of going to a flying school, I went to a graduate school.
-You professional life has been very fulfilling, in fact you were appointed by President Shehu Shagari as a Special Adviser when you came back from the US in the 80s. What was it like; I mean you were young then?
Yes. I was young, I was 27 then. Actually I didn’t expect to be appointed to anything, very amazing story about the position which I was appointed. Because of my views expressed through the media and other platforms, people were curious to know my position on some policy issues. I had made some commentaries around taxation, a gentle man who happens to be a good friend of the Vice President at the time, Alex Ekwueme and the Chairman of his committee of friends, Chief Bayo Kuku was saying somewhere that he wish he could get hold of me and someone told him he knows me and they fetched me and they asked me if I could prepare a paper on tax policy and I said “why not am a consultant, you pay, I work”.
So Chief Kuku asked me how much is the money and I mentioned an amount and he walks to the back of his car, he comes out and gives me the cash for the full consultancy. So, I did it very quickly and I did it well. When I finished I asked him if there was any more consultancy, he laughed and said “whenever you are broke, come”.
One Friday, I got a call from the SA to the Vice President and he said the Vice President will like to see me tomorrow. I went to his house and when I got there, he was making conversation on a number of policy issues and just in the middle of it he says “by the way yesterday, President Shagari approved for you to replace a Professor who was a special adviser to him on Political Affairs.”
So, I told him I will think about it and I went off. As I was driving home in Surulere, on getting home I met a classmate of mine and I told him I just had a very strange conversation this afternoon and he said what is that? I said President Shagari had just approved for me to be an adviser. And he said what did you say to him? I said I will think about it and he said let me park my car and go with you and tell him that you’ve finished thinking about it. Of course I didn’t do that but I eventually communicated to the SA that it sounded like an interesting proposition. That was how I became an adviser.
-You managed Volkswagen Nigeria for ten years, you were vice-chairman Platinum-Habib Bank, and you have pioneered a lot of successful organizations. In what ways have these responsibilities shaped the eye with which you see the world?
In very interesting ways. My position in Shagari’ administration was truncated by a military coup some months after. Just before the coup came, I was becoming very frustrated already with policy ideas that I was churning out, desperate to find things that will move the country forward. I hardly slept at a point. Funny enough almost the same kind of issues you are talking about today, corruption. So, every morning I will tell the Permanent Secretary in charge this is what and what we should do and he would say “if we do this, that ministry will complain, if we do this, we are stepping on that person’s toe”. One day, I went and I asked him, “Mr. Perm. Sec. is there anything we can possibly do?”
I was reluctant after that experience arguing everyday with the Perm. Sec. what can be done. I literality said to myself, I will not return to public life, until I am certain that the environment will enable me to make a difference, so that I don’t end up in office without the power to do anything.
Interestingly, in recent times, one of the things that have happened is that I have been asked, first example is late President Yar’Adua. He invited me to Abuja and he said to me, what is wrong with Nigeria? And I told him Mr. President if you ask me that question what you’ll get is a six hour response. So, I began to analyze Nigeria, he listened without interrupting, he didn’t fall asleep, he was listening intently and when I finished he said, “Prof that’s what everybody says, that a few people understand Nigeria and its problems as you do. Why don’t you come and let us solve these problems together”.
I said ok Mr. President, you know there is nothing you’ll ask of me that I won’t give you my opinion, I’m a patriot, you can call me 2am and say you have this issue what do you think about it. But I am reluctant to accept public office, but if you really want me to serve in your government what you must do is appoint seven first class people and am willing to be number eight. And he said “why don’t you give me the names of those seven first class people?”
I found seven remarkable people from different parts of Nigeria that I put on that list: Fola Adeola, Oby Ezekwesili, Nasir El-Rufai and four others and I sent it to the President through Steve Oronsaye. I didn’t hear from the President and shortly after that he announced his cabinet members and we never got to see again till he passed away. There are schools of thoughts; some people believe that President Yar’Adua never saw the list. I think that if President Yar’Adua had lived he would have been a good President.
- Professor Utomi, if you are given the opportunity to serve under President Buhari, will you take it?
You know how many delegations I have received on this subject, of people who say to me, you know you always refuse to serve, if you don’t do it this time, just shut up. Again, my conditions haven’t changed, there must be enough serious people, but I think there’s seriousness generally speaking. The question is how do we strategically position the business of selecting people? If it is a matter of shuffling and playing games-my person, your person, that will be sad, but if we rigorously pursue good people and they think I am a good person, I will be more inclined to come forward this time. Even though ideally I would have wanted two more years to finish some legacy things that I’m doing, but if I have to forego them as sacrifice to serve on this occasion, I probably will be inclined to do that.
-You ran for President in 2011 under African Democratic Congress, a party which you founded. Why didn’t you run this time?
Some corrections, first of all I ran in 2007 under the ADC and it was not so much that I founded the party. What happened was that the Concerned Professionals, a group that I was part of that fought for democracy decided that I should run in 2007. The idea was to set an agenda, how our country should be run. So, we were working on registering our own political party the Restoration Group. Again, there we encountered the first challenge of the system- we were not willing to bribe anybody, we can’t preach one thing and act differently.
We were approached by those who founded the ADC, and they literally gave us the platform to run, that was the first run in 2007. After that run, I saw what a big mess it was, how little Nigerian politicians are willing to actually engage on political issues. I traveled round this country; I went to every state in this federation by road campaigning.
One day, I got a call from Chief Anthony Enahoro and he says to me “we need to build a big movement of progressives” and I said yes that is what I have been rooting for. Bring together all the progressives to one party, have a big strong party. So, I became very active again because my primary goal in politics that point in time was to build a two party system in Nigeria, two strong political parties that can engage one another competitively and change governments from time to time.
We began to run round to get things going for the Mega Party Movement, on one occasion I traveled out of the country in one of my occupational hazards-General Buhari always says, “do you live in this country?” I travel quite a bit and I used to say to him I can’t make an income in this country. The truth of the matter is that people like me, who don’t know how to give bribes, find it difficult to do business in Nigeria. I try to earn a good part of my living outside of Nigeria.
I came back one day from those foreign trips and Chief Olu falae said to me “look while you were away, we thought we should have somebody that everybody can relate to and accept not someone who is controversial. And so we have appointed you chairman of the party” I said oh dear, really? Ok. If that is good for all. So, I became the chairman.
One day again I traveled out of the country, am arriving, as soon as am landing my phone is ringing, it’s Wale Okunniyi. He said they have decided that the strategy to use is to get all the presidential candidates into one room and then step down for each other. And he thinks it’s a skill that I have, “so we decided you are going to be the presidential candidate of the party, so that then you’ll bring the other presidential candidates, you will get them to step down one for the other.”
My clear strategy was to get everyone to step down one after the other for General Buhari. Nuhu Ribadu was at the meeting, Fola Adeola was at the meeting, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, Tony Momoh all these people. The final night when Shekarau, the governor of Kano state was running under ANPP, he had come from Kano for the meeting when we all gathered. That was the day the bomb blast in Minna took place, General Buhari had campaigned that day in Minna, so he couldn’t make the meeting that night.
Buhari team then said he will come the next day. Shekarau flew back to Kano, came back the following night because he had to campaign. So when he came, he came early, he and I were sitting and talking and I told him about my plan to pressure everybody to step down for General Buhari, let him become the symbol everybody can rally round.
Shekarau asked “have you had a private conversation with General Buhari” I said no. He said “he’s very stubborn he may not agree” I said no, am sure he will agree, I have had many conversations with him. We waited and General Buhari never showed up and I was very offended.
One of those who wasn’t very cooperative in that process was Bola Tinubu, who I have been very friendly with for many years. And there seemed to be this game with him and Chief Falae. I will say to chief Falae “Tinubu says he has no problem with you, why don’t we just come together and do this thing.” Chief Falae will tell me, “I have no problem with Tinubu, in fact the last time we came to Abuja, he stepped out of his car from the owner’s corner for me to sit” and then I will say that is good.
I will rush down to the other man, after a while I got tired of running between Falae and Tinubu. And I said ok, what is the meaningful strategy? Instead of this business of our continued to pretend that we can do this thing, I will just join the biggest opposition party which was ACN. So I joined the ACN and I kept harassing Tinubu.
One day Tinubu called me and said ok, he’s going to see General Buhari, let’s go. That was around 2012. I told him I have had so many of those meetings, but please go when you succeed I assure you I will be a frontline follower. People don’t understand that these political things cost a lot of money. I told Tinubu you can go; when you succeed I will follow immediately.
One day he came and things went well with General Buhari and I said fantastic and I plugged in along and pushing because that was what my whole engagement was about, build this movement. Thankfully all that resulted to what we have. Had we done it right in 2011, Nigeria would have been much further than where it is today.
Without Tinubu there would be no APC, there’s no question about that. I’m not just a member of the APC, I literally wrote the manifesto of APC-it was written in my house with three principal authors, myself, the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo and and Wale Edun.
-“Today is the day Democracy came to Nigeria” those were your words the moment General Buhari was declared winner. Why did you say that, we’ve been practicing democracy for sixteen uninterrupted years now?
The day that one party can unseat another that is in power, you have a democracy. People now know that they can change their government.
-What should Nigerians expect in the first 100 days?
Well, I’m not the one that’s going to be making the decisions, so I can’t say much, but in terms of what they are going to be expecting; they are going to be expecting outlines of policies that will move people away from the mystery index location that they are in right now and that can be done.
In my opinion, it’s not going to be easy, expectations are high but it will be done by a sincerity of purpose. Just start by plugging the leaks in the system, then deploy the excess of resources that are free by plugging the leakages and provide opportunities for the poorest of the poor. Make everybody send their kids to school by simply giving free food to a child that wants to learn.
-Isn’t that going to cost us a lot of money?
Not at all. The money NNPC waste is more than enough to provide that. Stop these ministers from running around in ten car motorcades and governors from chattering airplanes to come from Asaba to Abuja, that money will feed a lot of kids. A lot of them are hungry and if you provide food, they’ll come to school, you develop their minds, teach them well, you’ve saved a generation.
-You have worked so hard to make all of these things a reality; do you believe President Buhari will deliver on his promises?
You see, it’s not about the person, it’s about the movement; it’s about an idea whose time has come. You need a symbol-Ronald Reagan emerged from this kind of process and just his inspiration of the American Spirit brought out this we can from young Americans and what it birthed is the .com revolution and the 20yr olds saved their country.
That’s what am hoping will happen, when a Buhari says “no, you don’t steal”; says to a young person on the streets who thinks he’s hopeless “you can” and he’s inspired to be patriotic and do something magnanimous and this country is reborn. That is what I’m hoping will happen.
-The outgoing administration was largely about chronic capitalism, where the rich got richer and the poor poorer. As a political economist, how can we drive an inclusive growth?
It’s very important that we do that. Inclusive growth could happen in many ways, first my view is that what you think of as economic growth currently is just rent seeking behavior in which you find people who say they are very successful business men and all they’ve done is extract rent from the system.
In this classic chronic capitalism you erect them as heroes of enterprise and they go around feeling good, buying private jets, how many jobs do they create? The kind of entrepreneurial people’s capitalism that I’m hoping for to come from our system will empower young people to create jobs.
-Lee Kuan Yew transformed Singapore from a third world country to first in a single generation, what lessons can we learn from him, looking at the kind of rot in the system right now?
Honesty and political leadership. I tell people many times, there is nothing Lee did that we did not do in this country. The only reason we did not get a result is that Lee was transparently honest; he was a patriot who cared about his country. Our Nigerian politicians are looking for their own small empires rather than nation building.
Let’s make sacrifice for our country instead of being obsessed with the size of our bank accounts and get people who think to do things. If we can manage to put square pegs in square holes, manage a cabinet that brings the best of the brightest of our country, manage to inspire our youths, the Singapore story will be a joke compare to our own story.
-“To serve is to live.” You said that, Nelson Mandela even though dead proved that to be true, the same with Martin Luther King Jnr, Mahatma Gandhi and Lee Kuan Yew. Are we going to see a service driven Buhari or something else?
I think we are going to see a very honest leader. Lee Kuan Yew was an intellectual genius; he became Prime Minister and led his country at age 35 when all the juices were flowing. It’s going to be a different kind of thing with General Buhari, but he can project confidence and if he has the right people around him, that confidence as projected will translate into nation building, but if he has the wrong people around him, we are back in square one.
-You have a passion for the dignity of the human person and the spirit of enterprise. I presume that’s why you founded the Centre for Values in Leadership; in fact your guiding principle is “Add value wherever you are.” How much value has CVL added to Nigeria since inception in 2004?
Well, it shouldn’t be in my place to talk about the value, I believe that people should do the talking. Typical example, yesterday a gentle man walked in to see me and he said to me “where I am, my career has done remarkably well, you may not know this but it all started with a statement that you made at one of those workshops twelve years ago. You said that we are created to be co-creators with God moving creation towards his perfections, that a young person who becomes an entrepreneur is a co-creator with God.” He says that his whole life changed that day.
This is what we have done with CVL, the number of young people who we have touched; who will never be the same again are uncountable. But even more powerful for me is a statement by Margaret Mead that “you should never underrate what a small committed individuals can do to change the world. Indeed that is the only thing that ever has changed the world” a group of small committed individuals. One of the things that we do at the CVL is to churn out groups of small committed individuals.
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Petra Onyegbule is the founder of Tiny Beating Hearts Initiative (TBHI)
TBHI is an advocacy group with an objective of reducing neonatal mortality with special ocus on Preemies. The initiative was inspired by her daughter who was born at 25 weeks. Petra was one of the strong voices that started rallying support for President Buhari long before the cause was popular. She is a force to be reckoned with and one of I AM NIGERIA #Gamechangers2015.
-Who’s Petra Onyegbule?
Petra is a Nigerian, of Kogi extraction and a very passionate Nigerian.
-How does it feel to be a voice for the voiceless? Is it fun or frustrating?
It’s very very frustrating because of one reason, ignorance. The people that you are a voice for don’t understand why you do the things you do. Sometimes there’s a misconception on your motive and when people start casting aspersion on your motive, it can be very demoralizing because you know you sacrifice a lot and you give up all of you and you go the extra mile because you are thinking of people who are not as privileged as you are. The same people see you as one of those people who are against them and it can be very frustrating.
-You gave a moving and inspiring speech at TedxGarki this year about Preemies, what is it all about and who inspired it?
The inspiration was and still my daughter; she is the reason why I am very passionate about Nigeria. My daughter was born at 25 weeks and she was really small and sickly but for the dedication of the staff of National Hospital Abuja and the fact that we had resources at our disposal to easily meet with the demands perhaps she wouldn’t be alive today.
The truth is that not everybody can be as fortunate as she is and I think it’s a misnomer in a country where people have to pray for luck for children to be able to live. People should have access to quality health care; children should be given the right to live.
Nigeria signed up for millennium development goals and this is 2015, other countries have moved on to sustainable development goals but we are far from achieving the millennium development goals. And I tell people that “unless and until we reduce neonatal and infant and child mortality rate mothers will continue to die.” This in my opinion is unacceptable.
-How best can we address this issue, is it through policy or advocacy?
There’s no one approach to this problem. Health care is a continuum; there are different stages of involvement of parents, government, healthcare providers and the society at large. Yes, you need advocacy and policies to solve this crisis and not just the policy promulgation but more enforcement. We have many beautiful policies in Nigeria but we have to ensure the right enforcement.
-Isn’t that where people like you come in?
Again it isn’t just about the government, it’s also about people being watchdogs and insisting that government does its part. You need proper engagement at all levels.
-I presume that led to the establishment of Tiny Beating Hearts. What’s your organization’ objective and how far so far?
After I gave birth to my daughter, she was in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the National Hospital and the first few days were very edgy. Any telephone was call scary. So after a while I realized that it was going to go either of two ways; either she survives or she doesn’t. Before then I would go to Google, always checking out how babies born at 25 weeks survived and then I would see millions and millions of results and then they were all from developed countries.
And I said it’s not possible that I’m the only one who has given birth to a premature baby and why are Nigerians not telling their stories? When you tell your story you inspire hope in somebody that her baby can pull through. So I said to myself “I’m going to break this thing, whether my baby survives or not I will tell the story to let people know that they are baby like this that are born every day.” In fact from my research I discovered that Nigeria has one of the highest numbers of premature babies in Sub-Saharan Africa and some of these babies actually survive and we don’t share the stories.
Tiny Beating Heart is all about raising awareness for this issue. If I knew the things that I know now even if my baby had come premature perhaps she would have come at a later date when her organs would have developed more and I would have been more proactive about her size. Prematurity comes with a lot complications and one needs to be proactive and take charge of the situations even as healthcare workers do.
So we raise the awareness and then we advocate for people who don’t know what prematurity is really about for them to get a bit more empathetic to the plight of both babies and mothers. The road is very traumatic and the advocacy at this stage is for more of society to join hands to end this scourge.
-You were one of the people who insisted that the 2015 Presidential election was either Buhari or Buhari, even when it was an unpopular call. And you took your campaign from Facebook to the streets and places of worship why did you all of that?
Again it comes down to my daughter Ruby. I was sharing with a friend on one of our trips that not everybody is Petra and not every child is going to be Ruby. So what happens to the millions of babies that are born to the non-Petras; that are born to parents that are not educated and without recourses to take care of these babies? How many babies can you really say “please Facebook friends, the parents of this baby born in this hospital do not have the money to care of their baby?”
So for everybody to have the opportunity to get some of these basic things, we had to do what we have to do. I had to say this thing doesn’t end on Facebook, we had to go to the streets and make people to understand that it’s not about Dr. Goodluck Jonathan as a person but it’s about the fact that he supervises a very profligate system, he supervises a system where everything just went and that it was not sustainable in the long run and the earlier we kicked him out, the better for us.
Some of us saw this thing very early and the call began as far back as late 2012 to say look it has to be this person because of his antecedent. And it’s very important for a leader’s body language not to tolerate impunity that in itself was the reason why I said it was either Buhari or Buhari.
-Speaking of Impunity, we all know what Politicians are capable of. How are you sure President Buhari will not bend?
Life is all about risk taking and risks have to be calculated. Am I sure he will not bend? As at today, I’m 90% sure and think that’s high enough. President Buhari will not bend, because you don’t learn to be left handed at old age.
-Elections are over and politicians have started politicking, are you disappointed with the signals we are getting so far?
Yes and no. No because I expected some of them, yes because I thought that the PDP had given this warning enough. During the electioneering process, people said APC was going to crumble; people said the APC was a collection of strange bird fellows, I expected that APC should have said we would do whatever it takes to proof these people wrong but they’ve shown that they were all about just getting power.
They didn’t go further to think of how to manage the success and how to ensure a balance of interest because there are many interests in the APC and unfortunately they are not aligned towards the same cause from what we have seen so far. Yes I’m a bit disappointed but again am a realist, I didn’t expect it would be rosy all through.
-Don’t you think the president being the head of the party should weigh into this crisis?
On the NASS issues I’ll apportion 70% blame to the APC and 30% to the president. When he said he was not interested in who emerges, I thought that was a politically correct thing to say. But if you say that kind of thing you have to follow through. The message I got was if your party is interested in something and you say you’re not interested, it means you are standing aloof from the party’ position and you really don’t care and that got me disappointed because you cannot stand aloof.
If people had stood aloof during the campaigns, perhaps we won’t be where we are today. You can’t stand aloof and even if you think it’s a good thing for the three arms of government to have its independent, I think experience and wisdom should be used to get all factions together. And being the head of the party not particularly in position but also in age, I expected he should have been able to get all these groups together behind scene and suggest a viable option.
That’s why I said I blame the APC because they had two months to get their acts together as far as NASS leadership was concerned. They probably went to sleep and took some people for granted and I blame the president for staying back and showing lack of concern.
-Mrs Onyegbule, we are days into the 1st 100 days and nothing is happening. Are we or are we not gradually easing back into the old experience?
I have a very different view on ministerial appointment. I don’t think countries run because there are ministers, I think countries run because there are systems and I don’t think there’s nothing going on, I actually think a lot is going on. I see that a lot is going on. Before now there were fuel queues around the country and the queues have disappeared without any Minister of Petroleum.
So what exactly are we talking about?
We have technocrats, we have Permanent Secretaries and people seemed to forget that this man is an old man. So, he’s coming with wisdom of age, his experience and antecedents in the past to governance. What we may term as slow may actually be wisdom and wisdom is mostly slow because you want to consider and reconsider but it’s almost always right. I think Nigeria needs structuring, who needs 36 Ministers from 36 States? What we should expect from the president is to get the right people into the right places.
-How confident are you in this President?
If I wasn’t confident I wouldn’t do all that I did. The sacrifices were enormous and not just financially but otherwise. Every Saturday I was awake early to get the campaign bus from Victoria Island and go all through to Oshodi to pick my crew members. After that we will go talking to people, if I wasn’t confident in the fact that Buhari will do it I wouldn’t waste my time.
-You once said on your Facebook Page that if your boss, PMB does not perform after 4years you’ll throw him out, do you still hold that view?
Of course. That is one thing with working with your conviction, you don’t owe anybody any loyalty, you only owe your conscience loyalty. For the fact that I worked on my own terms we will throw him out if he does not perform. We didn’t bring PMB because we love his face, we brought him in to fix the things that are bad and if he does otherwise we will push him out.
-As a game changer, if you had the chance to advise the president on a national emergency. What would that be and how can we possibly address it?
I think it’s wicked for any woman to want to bring life into this world and for the woman to die while doing that. I also think it’s very wicked of society to make that woman go through pregnancy for 9 months or 5 months in my own case and then you have that baby and through the agony you lose the baby and there is no system to support you.
If there’s any emergency of which there is like power which affects us all, I will pick health. People should be able to go into hospitals with an assurance of quality healthcare.
One way to do that is to ensure that whoever will take a position in his cabinet never should use private hospitals, never to Jet out of the country on Medical Tourism, unless it’s proven that our hospitals cannot handle the issues. We can’t be paying you and you’ll be using our money to buy services outside, it doesn’t make sense.
-Petra Onyegbule, one last word to describe Nigeria.
Nigeria is a potentially great country and I love the fact that we are very malleable. And anybody who is not a Nigerian should at least live in Nigeria for sometimes to see the beauty that Nigeria is.
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Adaora Onyechere is a broadcast Journalist with Daar Communications Plc and also the co-anchor of Kaakaki on Africa Independent Television (AIT). She is the CEO of Signature Heels.
In this exclusive interview,Adaora talks about her journey as a journalist and a social entrepreneur.
Tell us about yourself?
My name is Adaora Onyechere. I am from Imo state, okigwe local government area to be precise. I am born to Chief Ike Onyechere (MFR), my Mom; Dr. Mrs. Love Onyechere is the honorable Commissioner for Women Affairs and Youth Development in Imo State.
My Dad is a bundle of talents; he is an author and also a publisher. I am a bit of my Dad and my Mom, but when it comes to strength and energy and talking, I got that from my mother and I got the conservative writing skill from my father.
I work for AIT; I’m one of the anchors of Kaakaki-the African Voice. I am first an entrepreneur, before a broadcast Journalist. I am a mother and I don’t just mean one child but a lot of children. I have a foundation where I carter to displaced kids.
I lived most of teenage life in England; I came back to Nigeria in 2009.
What was growing up like for Adaora?
That’s a very deep question. I grew up in a lot of places, we moved a lot as a child. My father worked in an oil company, when we were growing up. So, we shuttled between Port-Harcourt, Owerri, Lagos and Enugu. With regards to that, I went to four secondary schools. So, I have a lot of Alma Maters; everybody claims I am a bit of them. Maybe because they see me on TV now, but when I was nobody no one claimed that (laughs), but I finished from Owerri Girls Secondary School.
Immediately after I had to stay at home a bit. I tried to see if I could settle into a Nigerian university, but it didn’t work out quite well. I left Nigeria very early as a child. I went to the UK. I did a diploma in law as a foundation student and then I told my dad “this is not my calling”. I don’t think I want to do law; reading and rereading other people’s judgment cases to analyze my life. But I’ve also been told that I will make a good lawyer. Maybe, sometime in my early forties or there about, I probably might dabble into it.
I studied English major and broadcasting minor in my first degree. I worked with a lot of television houses in the UK. I worked with BBC channel 4; I anchored a show on Ben Television called “Nollywood Review.” I was also, a lead actress in a soap Opera called “If Only”, which was used to raise awareness for HIV/AIDS, in sub-communities, in the counties of west England. For me, my life is an embodiment of art and craft.
Who or what inspired your love for Journalism?
I don’t know if it was somebody that inspired it. I love to put some of my thoughts on paper, and I talk to people a lot. There’s a difference between when you are a talkative and conversational. There’s never a dull moment with me. I realized that wait a minute, once I walk into a room the light goes on bam. Like everybody says “ah she’s here now”.
I realized that for me, if I ever wanted to do anything television, one am a shy person, which doesn’t reflect, or doesn’t come across when you see me on the street. I’m a very shy person. I‘m very sensitive, and fall short between dramatic and energetic. I thought I would do well, perhaps as a talk show host for social activities and social life and relationships and analyzing the home front but I never thought I would do politics. Politics was never in my agenda; in fact, I used to think that politicians were perhaps, outside lawyers, the worst exaggerators on the face of the earth.
What I understood was that television is the most powerful tool for mental hypnosis, in the sense that if you watch something on TV two times, it’s bound to sound and look like the truth to you. I watch Oprah and I see her bring her spirit into her talk show. Her spirit in a sense that she is not a make believe talk show, she is an artist of her experience. If Oprah could come from all of that, because I went through quite a lot of things in my life and I think that could actually be her personality, it could inspire me to stay strong in the profession.
Talking about the inspiration for the profession, I think writing and my personality have always been a television factor, but I never thought that I would do TV, because I had a speech defect when I was growing up. I think believe, passion and talent go a long way. if you have talent and you have no passion, the talent will die before it even starts, but believe in the passion for it grow, for you to nurture it is a whole total mentality that you have to experience.
What is the inspiration behind Signature Heels?
When I thought about Signature Heels, I thought of it at a time when it was supposed to be a personal agenda. I wanted to look very Afro-centric, so I would wrap my own ear rings, my shoes and bags and people would say “I like what you are wearing, where did you make it?” and I am like, I made it , “it’s like how much?”. This is something I made to wear.
I had not thought about putting a price to it and then they ask “how much” am like N1500. And I would pull the ear ring in my ears and give the person who liked it and I would have some money in my pocket. Then I go home and I will think wait a minute, so you mean I just sold something I made out of sheer curiosity.
Also, I realized that over the time and space, we have begun to westernize a lot of our thinking, our culture and our wardrobe. We have moved from a time when we would see women naturally tie wrapper and feel confident and beautiful to a place where they thought or they think western apparels were more in vogue than being African. And on the other hand, the people across borders are thinking oh, Africa is a land of uniqueness and beauty and when they come here, rather than come and wear those contemporary clothes they are used to, they come here to buy our materials, they come here to invest in our ideas that are just home grown, meanwhile we want to look like them.
So, I just thought maybe because of the power and the tool of the media-it has a way of driving the mind to think of what it sees often and that’s why you find a lot of our younger generation wearing more trousers, wearing more leather skins and painting their hair. It’s not because they don’t know where they are coming from but because this is for them what is most societal acceptable.
I don’t disagree with growing with time, because this is the 21st century. But at the same time, I disagree in loosing who we are and I think that’s what inspired me to really go into Signature Heels-to have a sense of Africa on everything. Most importantly to be able to collaborate with other African countries to also retain their
cultures and also think of a way of exporting our ideas. I thought it would be a powerful tool to be able to take a Tanzanian raft material and put on a Nigerian design and export it to Germany or you have like Ukwu-Ose material (a material that is endogenously Igbo, and it means a tale of pepper) to wrap a shoe or an iPad and somebody buys it and says “what is this?”. It’s fabrics on electronics that is the fusion of the idea.
Signature Heels is just a baby now, the strength of my idea is to make Signature Heels a walk-in one-stop African shop, where you find everything from all over Africa in the shop.
Your bags and shoes are handmade, that means you source your fabrics locally. How do you do that?
Well, it’s really difficult because of the stability and the unstable market. Prior to the time when the demolition in the FCT wasn’t really as avid as it now, you would find material hawkers. And I prefer to patronize people who were struggling to make a living, because you are putting a pay check to their struggle, than people who already have shops like this; who have been able to build capital over time; who have a base.
What happens is that the people are not just selling that for a living, it matters to them that you are patronizing them because you are also going to encourage them to keep recycling culture. But over time, a lot of them have withered because there is no place for them to stay and hawk.
As a young and a successful woman, what word of advice do you have for the women?
A lot of women when you ask them, they will say “I have a lot of dreams but I don’t have capital” or they will tell you “I come from a poor background” or they will tell you “I am not educated” or they tell you “everybody I go to, want to sleep with me” that is the usual line that you hear.
My word of advice for women is that your passion can fuel your talent, in the sense that I make all of these. This is just one part of me, am also a poet and I would want to record and I would want to mass produce my cds and give it to students but it needs capital. For me to be able to get the capital to produce I invest in my passion time, and I collaborate with people who understand what passion is and we come out with this. It builds the virtue; the virtue is the value which is money and then the money which becomes capital feeds and helps to produce the cds which are products of my poetry. You’ve got to realize that nobody was born to help anybody.
Everybody on the face of the earth is determined by destiny to find an innate ability to survive. Now survival does not mean to hustle-to hustle and to work hard are two different things. To hustle is to have something that keeps you in existence which is just for you to get by. To work hard is to invest time in something that fuels passion which is enterprise.
For a lot of women out there who are looking for sugar daddies and boyfriends to carter to them. Those sugar daddies and boyfriends were not born to carter to them.
So therefore, when they complain that they sleep around to earn a living, it’s also based on the fact that they have predetermined that they will not make use of what God has given to them. For every human being there’s ability, there’s an innate source that fuels your drive. There’s something that is got to awaken your passion.
Is Adaora married/why?
No am not. Well, it’s not a question of why it’s when. Because if you say why, it would seem like I haven’t gotten a plutoria of advances or suitors. My life is a box of fireworks. Marriage for me is very much in the pipeline, it’s very much around the corner. The fireworks are buzzing already but whether it will happen it will happen.
I have seen too many divorces, because a lot of younger people are marrying for the wrong reasons. They rather have the ceremony than the institution. You have people investing in weddings rather than investing in themselves to build themselves so that they are able to sustain their marriage. A lot of us have this misconception that marriage solves all problems, in fact what you see while you are dating somebody multiply it by 25 when you marry the person. If you tolerate a relationship, you’ll endure a marriage.
Marriage for me is an institution of honor, I rather get it right and late than go into it as much as I could early enough and get it wrong. People have to understand that a marriage supplies the emotional energy to be the best you can to your children and your society.
Describe Nigeria in one word.
We are a nation filled with different people, different tribes, and different culture. Regardless of all the bickering and rivalries, we will not be without one another.
Our strength is in our unity and our weakness is in our division. Nigeria is the symbol, the synonym, the sign, the strength and the energy of what it truly means to be a family. Nigeria is a family and we are not afraid to love.
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Japheth J. Omojuwa is a graduate of Economics from the University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Ogun state; he’s a Social Media Expert and many other things. He speaks on the role Social Media played in the just concluded Elections.
-Mr. Omojuwa, you are a Blogger, a Socio-economic and Political commentator, a Social Media Expert, a Mentor
and a whole lot of other things. How do you juggle round all of these?
I delegate as much as possible, not to mention I prioritize a lot. I am able to take each day as a whole and maximize the
minutes and the hours. I love doing all I do and I love doing them excellently well but time will never be enough for one to do everything alone so delegating becomes a natural order. I try as much as possible to manage my time well too.
-It would not be out of place to say people like you won the election for General Buhari, long before the election was conducted as a result of your vehement campaign on twitter and other Social Handles. Why a GMB and not a GEJ?
The reasons are quite many but the most obvious is the fact that status quo had to change. The incumbent had lived through its usefulness. They were just okay with power; they mostly did not have an idea about the essence of power. The corruption was unprecedented, the foreign exchange earnings were a record high, yet the depletion of our foreign reserves was just as unprecedented. The Excess Crude Account is gone. We were told to accept insecurity as the norm. They missed out a chance on an early rescue of the Chibok girls, they insisted on lying with respect to the power situation. They were clannish, parochial and overly obsessed
with picking enemies. They had to go and thankfully, most voters agreed.
-A lot of people say President Jonathan deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for accepting defeat long before the result was announced. What say you?
Go and read the history of those who won the Nobel Peace Prize and tell me if they won it just because of doing their regular job or something they were expected to do. Let us not cheapen the Prize, it is not for jokes. President Jonathan deserved commendation for conceding, that was a new one for a Nigerian President, and we both saw how he was praised and commended for that.
The Nobel Peace Prize is a different proposition altogether. His failing with the Chibok Girls alone is a permanent argument against him for what remains a prestigious prize. We came about this Nobel Prize discussion because his supporters crafted a quick agenda for same, but all of us cannot afford to drink out of that stream of delusion.
-You and other extraordinary Nigerians have worked hard to put a 72 year old general in the highest office in the land.
Do you see the general keeping his own end of the
bargain?
Nigerians have done their part and must continue to do their part by keeping their government on its toes. The onus is now on the General to do his part. I am hopeful that they will make change happen and anyone who can see can already see that even before he takes power, certain contractors and government officials are already adjusting. Fingers crossed for the coming days.
-Everyone’s eye is fixed on May 29th, what should Nigerians expect in the first 100 days?
I’d rather we keep an open mind and watch the first 100 days unfold before us. The days are here soon enough, there is no need speculating over what is here within days.
-Social Media played a key role in this election, and people like you deserve a lot of credit for that. Do you think General Buhari can put up with criticism from that quarter when it starts coming?
That would be his question to answer. But he knows better than to try to clamp down on social media. Nobody can win
that battle and it would be in his interest and that of everyone in his government to just let social media be. Do your job and letsocial media be.
-We need a strong opposition to build a virile democracy,
and just recently we saw a Tsunami of defection from PDP
to APC. How unhealthy is this to our democracy?
Very unhealthy but we will attain equilibrium eventually. Politicians will leave the APC for the PDP later and the movements will rise again towards the next election. The PDP will pick up some strength in the course of this administration. It’s a forming political ecosystem and I believe these movements are normal for now. Eventually ideologies will be formed at both ends and the movement will reduce drastically.
-The name Omojuwa is becoming a household name in Nigeria, how do you feel about that?
I am not aware of Omojuwa being a household name in Nigeria, so I don’t feel any differently from how I felt say 5 years ago. I am not conscious of things like that.I just look to get on with my life and do my bit of contributing to a virile civil society. I am a believer in the power of the individual
and I believe in the protection of individual rights. There is no time o look back on what has already been done, especially as there is a lot more to get done.
-Mr. Omojuwa, where do you see Nigeria four years from now?
At a much better place. Most Nigerians will be much more proud o call themselves Nigerians in 2019 than most do today. Corruption would not be as popular then as it is today. Infrastructural development would have advanced. Reforms would hopefully have advanced and in certain sectors already bearing fruits.
-One word to describe Nigeria.
Amazing!
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Tope Fasua is a political analyst and a renowned economist. He has pioneered a successful enterprise across three continents, Africa, Europe and United
Arab Emirates. He’s the founder, Global Analytics Consulting Uk; a philanthropist and a youth advocate.
He shares on what the present administration can do to lift millions of Nigerians out of poverty; the effects of globalization and Nigeria’s place in a flat world.
-You’re the CEO of Global Analytics Consulting Limited with offices in the UK, UAE and Nigeria. What is it like doing business in Nigeria, given that Nigeria is ranked as one of the worst business destinations?
No! It’s a very wrong concept. When I hear that I want to believe that there’s a psychology to it; to put Nigerians off
from doing business in their own country, while other people come here to do business. If it was so bad, we won’t see many foreigners falling over themselves to come here and do business.
It’s totally wrong to say Nigeria is one of the worst places for doing business and I will tell you why. In the US and UK, all of those places are economics that have reached a certain peak and it’s difficult for an upstart to come and just get something done. In fact, those who are actually making a lot of difference there are maybe, if you like some of those tech start ups. And for everyone Facebook, Twitter, Instagram that you see, five thousand, ten thousand people fell by the way side.
You cannot just walk to the US and say you’re starting a business like you would in Nigeria. Nigeria is where some of the gaps are; in the whole of Africa, Nigeria is where you have some of the largest population with a very good cash flow. I have done businesses in different countries; I am telling you Nigeria is one of the best places to do business and it compete fairly well with places like Dubai if you ask me.
-In view of the recent political permutations in Nigeria, what should Nigerians expect from General Buhari led government?
I think Nigerians should expect what Nigerians want to make happen, in which case it’s not about sitting back and say “Buhari has promised let him go and do it” it’s about what we do, it’s about how we make it happen. I personally am not going to be sitting down to just say “now we’ve voted for him or whatever the case maybe let him go and sort it out” , it’s my call, it’s my time. If he fails, I have failed.
-I hope you’re not saying this because you are a member of the APC?
See, it doesn’t matter. The PDP forced us to join parties because of sixteen years of gross mismanagement, therefore we realized that and we had to do something. I am not necessarily politically inclined but all of us are political animals. In which case, if you dig deep down you’ll find that politician in you and at the end of the day, everybody plays politics- it’s all about how you manage people, how you lead, how you deliver on your promises, how you take people forward and for me certainly I do have a lot of those attributes.
Some people can decide to hibernate and go into a cocoon for the next four years and be on the other side plotting the failure, naturally that’s going to happen but that’s their own cup of tea, I just happen not to be one of those. I believe that Nigeria needs change and change we are going to get and I believe that to a large extent this next four years is going to be prosperous for us.
I live on the cutting-edge of economic thoughts. We can’t be thinking in a straight linear fashion when things have gone digital, the kind of challenges we are dealing with now are not the cut and dry kind of issues. When I wake up in the morning that’s all I read, that’s all I think about, and I have fine-tuned my ideas in that regards. What happened is that Buhari did not win; I think that the people of this country won
and therefore the people of this country will dictate how the economy rolls.
-Speaking of the people what should they expect in the first
100 days?
I think we are going to see a drastic cut in government expenditure in terms of what the government spends on itself; I think we’re going to see a scenario where when they are coming in they will declare their assets. Of course it’s not going to be easy; we are going to see some fight backs. Hopefully they’ll be able to re-energize EFCC to do its work; hopefully we are going to get a lot of recovery of assets of stolen money, here and there or maybe misappropriated funds, let me not use that word stolen money.
-Our economy needs technocrats to drive growth, well not the kind of growth that will keep the poor poorer and the rich richer. What kind of economic team are you looking forward to?
The word technocrat itself can be a fraudulent word because a lot people come and they say “ we are technocrats” and they put their noses in the skies and they don’t actually see what is on ground and they come with this arrogance of “I
have been abroad or I have gone to the best schools or I have got a PhD” and so on. What we need are patriots.
The question that you asked, you put this very question together perhaps with some divine guidance because you
talk about technocrat on one hand and growth that does not reflect on the lives of the people. What our technocrats have
been selling to us including Mrs Okonjo-Iweala is growth that does not include the people and it could be very easy to
include the people in the growth of this nation. In fact, until you include the people you’re not going anywhere. We don’t
want some technocrats that will come and tell us some theories they learnt in some place, what we need are patriots who can fix this economy and let me tell you, it can be done.
The only thing that will move the economy forward now, all things considered is for the government to define unemployment from the level of secondary school graduates to say that anybody that leaves secondary school must have a job--a light kind of work. And God have mercy there’s so much work to be done. Coming to the office today, the kind of dirt on the streets, the kind of dumping grounds that we passed and there are people who can clean that.
One way to move this country forward is for us to advertise to the world that now we are ready to run a country that’s going to be the cleanest and the safest and the money will come. If we do so, we will be putting money directly in the pockets of our young people. Get our young boys and girls on the streets light work. The idea is to put money in their pockets. Every streets could do with 10-20 people, 3-4 hours shift daily, with this plan you can easily create 1.5 million jobs in this country and if you say one graduate should supervise 5 people or ten people you can easily create either 200 or 300 thousand jobs for our graduates and pay them at
least N50, 000 monthly.
In an economy like ours, private sector is not charged with the duty of creating employment. Government first! In the
north we have desert encroachment, what do you need to do? You need to do tree planting; you need to do irrigation,
that’s mass labor. Private sector will not do tree planting for you, government has to chip-in in order to create the standards. If government employs 800, 000 people as a result of this that is a plus for all of us and there is a lot of work for everybody.
A clean safe environment means that businesses will be able to do more, businesses can open longer and in fact,
we should be talking about the 24 hrs economy. No young person should sit at home waiting for jamb-if jamb does not
answer you, get something doing. If we do this 1, you’ll reduce crime, 2, you’ll be putting money directly in the pockets of young people, and by so doing you’ll be creating a new class of people.
We are talking about diversification; you are not going to diversify with mouth. If there is a local textile industry in Aba
manufacturing shoes and there are local guys in Aba sewing it well, why are some of them not growing? They need someone to buy from them. The people, who’ll buy the N2000 shoe made in Aba, are these boys and girls. When you put money in their pockets, that guy manufacturing shoes in Aba will sell more and when he sells more he will improve his processes.
-Mr. Fasua, you have built a successful business across
three continents, if given an opportunity to serve under Buhari’s government will you take it?
I will and I will do it for free! I can do it and I’m ripe enough to do it. In fact, I won’t even wait; if I can I will talk to the
necessary people. It’s not a matter of pride, these ideas I’m propagating are unheard of. I’ll be glad if am called to serve and if they don’t call me, I will give my ideas for free. If they don’t accept any of these ideas they’ll fail, I’m telling you.
If they get advice from the hawks I see floating around the scene now; they’ll come and say “oh we have infrastructure deficit of 100 billion, let’s go to the World Bank and borrow 60 billion” they are finished! If it is about awarding contracts, they are finished. What we should do now is to reinvent our economy by focusing on the youths, how? Retooling most of our educational institutions and I say #bringbackourpublicschools.
-Social Media played a huge role in this election; in fact you are one of the few big boys who went all out online irrespective of your business interest challenging young people to give a 72 year old general a chance, why?
Because with the information at my disposal I knew we had reached our tetras end as far as PDP was concerned. I staked everything I had to say look this wasn’t the way to go
and I pushed for a change. I knew that we couldn’t continue
to sustain the level of brigandage and open looting that was
going on. I knew the economics was wrong because it was
all about chronic capitalism; I knew that we couldn’t continue
to run an economy base on bailout for the rich. These big
guys have taken Nigerians for a ride, you bail them out and
next time you see them buying all sorts of things. That’s the
reason chiefly I rooted and still rooting for Buhari, because
hopefully we will get the opportunity to get things right in this country, the wickedness was getting too much.
-All over the world, there’s a global conversation turning into innovation, as we speak the world is flatter than it was ten years ago. Where’s Nigeria’s place in this?
Regarding that one, Nigeria is finished! There are 400 Americans working in Instagram, serving almost a billion
people, when Facebook bought Whatsapp for $19 billion,
it had 55 employees serving 450 million customers. How much did they cash out? The young CEO Jan Koum who had 45% stake got $6.8 billion, his friend Brian Acton, co-founder got $3 billion, the other 55 people who were the early employees who had only 1% stake got $160 million each. Ambassador Victor, where are you there? You are there to use Whatsapp. Don’t talk innovation as far as Nigeria is concerned. What we need to do is, first go back to the root; it will give us time to think of where to come in.
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