Former Executive Director of Nigeria’s foremost human rights group, Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO), and Poetry and Literature Teacher at Texas State University-San Marcos, the United States of America, Dr Ogaga Ifowodo, in this interview speaks on why he is gunning for Isoko Federal Constituency seat on the banner of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the rising wave of insecurity in the country and way forward for Nigeria.

BY CLIFFORD NDUJIHE

Why did you leave the Olympian height of civil society and academia for a plunge into the murky waters of Nigerian politics?
No area of human endeavor can be higher than the very society that constitutes it. If there is any Olympian height in society, it is in my view reserved for politics which I consider the peak of human activity.

Politics may be a dirty game, to use another cliché, but if its waters are murky they bathe all of us; or, put another way, we must all bathe in them. What happens in politics affects every member of society without exception, even the unborn and the dead.

If politics is murky or dirty, it is humans who make it so, stir up the mud at the bottom of the river, piss and shit into the public well. And it is humans who must clean up the mess they make of politics which ordinarily is the arena of civilized discourse.

I’m entering politics in order to participate directly in the process of bringing positive change to our shockingly misgoverned country, this time not just as a human rights and democracy activist. As an aside, I also wish to use myself as a guinea-pig in a personal experiment:

I wish to find out if the magic spell that turns otherwise humble and decent men and women into brainless and spineless individuals, into kleptomaniacs whose sole mission in government tends to treasury-looting, will work its sorcery on me too. And if it does, then I will apologise to the Nigerian people and all the government officials, military and civilian, that I have ever pilloried since I was a student leader!

What position are you going for?
I’m running for the House of Representatives in the Isoko federal constituency. The Isoko, as you know, are one of the many exploited and marginalized people of the Niger Delta whose oil and gas wealth funds the profligacy of Nigeria’s thieving and visionless ruling class.

The peculiar marginalization of the Isokos has reached the point of their near ostracisation from the Nigerian nation. Yet, they have been so poorly served by those who claim to represent them at the federal level that the Isokos are crying out for a credible and trustworthy agent of change to champion their cause. I intend to take that on with my commitment to good governance and positive change in the nation as a whole.

On what political platform are you aspiring?
The All Progressives Congress (APC), I chose APC because it is the party of change.

Why not PDP, the dominant party in your state, Delta?
Every society needs a credible opposition, an alternative social vision otherwise it stagnates or even degenerates into something worse. After more than a decade of the PDP’s stranglehold on governance, mostly through its unabashed rigging of elections, it is clear to the world that PDP is a vast and intricate election-rigging machine that boasts of not one but numerous Mr. Fix-Its.

APC is the party of that change. Moreover, I have been a consistent critic of the PDP and the role it has played in destroying the hope of our return to democracy in 1999 after the long, brutish years of military dictatorship that I couldn’t be entering politics now and join them! The APC offers Nigeria a better vision than the PDP whose 15-year strangle-hold on power has only led us further down the road of poverty, joblessness, disunity and disintegration.

As for the claim that Delta State is a PDP fortress, that is a myth. It is a matter of public record that elections in Delta State, especially the governorship and federal constituency elections, have always been very competitive, with a re-run even being ordered for the governorship election the last time.

Governorship election
The Democratic People’s Party (DPP) produced a senator, the late Pius Ewherido, and my representative in the state House of Assembly, Hon. Okiemute Essien. The Isoko people don’t feel empowered and they are ready to vote for change as they have always done.

Do you think you have a chance against battle-tested politicians of the PDP?
I do! The Isoko people want a committed, visionary and trustworthy agent of change.

If elected, what should the people of Isoko Federal Constituency expect from you?
The same passion that define my political engagement as a rights activist, writer and scholar; they should expect the same forthrightness and commitment that earned me six-months of preventive detention by General Abacha in the peak of the pro-democracy struggles.

I am uncompromisingly committed to the project of saving and changing Nigeria for the better. More specifically, I have a seven-point agenda that ranges from what I will do with constituency projects through which I can make a direct impact on the lives of my constituents, to proposed legislation in the crucial areas of corruption, electoral reform along the lines of the Justice Uwais’ report, Nigeria’s poisoned religious climate and the mortal threat it poses to our corporate existence, environmental protection etc., down to the traditional roles of oversight and advocacy.

Given the extremely divisive and dangerous role religion is currently playing to aggravate our national life, I shall propose an amendment to Section 10 of the Constitution (or whatever new section in the operative constitution) to strengthen the secular status of Nigeria by removing politics from it.

The amendment will be as follows: “In the performance of his or her duties, a public officer shall not expend funds, act or conduct him- or herself in a manner that may be reasonably construed as promoting or favouring a religion, religious belief, faith or practice.”

Political manipulation
I think that ought to be a starting point in our effort to sanitise our badly infested religious climate of political manipulation of faith.
I made a conscious decision to leave academia for politics in order to be a direct agent of change and I intend to do everything I can to be true to the highest ideals of a sane and equitable society

How do you see the worsening state of insecurity in Nigeria, especially the Boko Haram insurgency?
It makes palpable the fears of disintegration which before now were already worrisome enough! Nothing has given the nation greater cause for fear and anxiety since the Civil War than the terror campaign of Boko Haram, which grew from the unaddressed Maitatsine phenomenon of the 80s and 90s.

Rather than insist on the non-negotiability of the secularity of the nation, which our founding fathers very wisely entrenched in the independence constitution and which no one, not even the military in its countless coups and suspensions and modifications of the constitution, has dared to remove, we chose instead to placate a monster.

And now the monster threatens our very lives, including the lives of its creators. Our decision to placate rather than isolate and prosecute those who manipulate religion and poverty for political gain to goad Maitatsine/Boko Haram into alliance with the worldwide patron of monsters of the Islamic terrorism variety, Al Qaeda. The sociological explanation of contributing factors aside, I am convinced that the root cause of the problem is our failure, borne of false piety and political brinkmanship.