 Very good morning to you and thanks for joining us. This is the run-up. My name is Nyamgul Aghaji. And my name is Uche. Uche Chuku Onoda. Well, it's going to be a very interesting edition of the program. It's a made-in-edition, but we know that you have been there and participating in this program and finally it's here and we're happy to have you join us. We couldn't start a little bit earlier than now but hopefully. Next time it's not going to be like this? Yeah, but when you were coming, what was your experience like on the run? The traffic was very, very crazy, especially on the Third Mellon Bridge. It was really packed. At some point it's like when you have an enemy, the first, the best thing to wish them is, may Lagos happen to you. But let's hope that it doesn't happen to the other people who might need it and sometimes people get fired because of the traffic in Lagos. But this is the run-down and we're hoping that on the program, we are going to be addressing issues that people who need to listen will listen to and make some adjustments that will make our country better from here on out. Well, our first guest this morning is going to be the Director General, Labour Party Presidential Campaign Counsel, Dr. Doyin Okope. He will be talking on the prospects of the party and the skirmishes regarding the recently published list of the members of the campaign council. That will be the first guest that we'll have. And we will also be joined by one of the recipients of the recent awards conferred on deserving individuals by President Mohamed Abouhari. His name is Obanago Ibrahim. He's arrived Lagos from Kogi State for greener pastures but ended up with only a security job. In spite of the fact that he was a qualified teacher with a national certificate in education, his story is quite interesting and inspiring at the same time. There is also one more guest that we will have and trust me when I say the youths, celebrities and all are catching the political bug. But our intention is to always discover mostly young Nigerians who are still in the closet as it were and bring them to light. If you stay with us, you'll get to know who this is but for now, let's give it a hush-hush. We'll take a short break and when we return, we'll do the interview with Dr O'Coupé. We have as our guest Dr O'Coupé who is the director general of Labour Party's presidential campaign organization. We are so honored to have you join us on the show today, sir. Welcome to the program. Thank you very much. God bless you. First of all, we congratulate you for retaining your position as the DG of the presidential campaign organization. You have been there. There are some lists that came up and all that and then you still retain that position. We're so happy for you. Thank you. So right now, the campaign has started and one of the first things we're hearing from your party is that there may have been a mistake in the list that came out. So can you throw more light on that before we continue? Well, you know, there's a lot of difference between a mistake and errors. It may be semantics. Definitely there were some errors of omissions. There were some errors of commission. And I would have been surprised if we really didn't have such things for such a list that came up to about 1200. But the party and the campaign organization, we are putting hearts together to clean out and attend to the issues in general. Also there were issues about so-called two lay girls, campaign coordinators, all those things. We've listened. We are politicians and we are a different set of politicians. We don't force our way. We've done something. A couple of people, I mean, many people have had issues with it. We are listening to everybody. And we're going to take this into very major considerations. And shortly we will publish an updated list, a new one. We've seen some of these. Well, I know you wouldn't like the word problems arising from other political parties where they make some mistakes, appoint some people. Some of them are dead already and they're still inside a list that should be for the living and all that. We expect that the Labour Party should be intelligent than this. We'd be worried that there are some things that really are not the way to look. This is a human organization. And we also have interfacing problems. This list is put together by quite a wide range of centers of influence across the nation. Then the party, then the campaign organization, et cetera, et cetera. So these errors are not... They can be avoidable. There's no doubt about it. But for which we are profusely apologetic. Profusely apologetic. But also, you must understand that we are an organic movement. And in an organic movement, you know, one of the side effects is what we have just seen in our make-up. But we're going to take care of it and we're moving on with our program. One of the problems, one of the complaints of one of a chieftain of the Labour Party, I think the public's secretary or so, was that you in particular shouldn't have been the DG of the campaign council coming from the south and the presidential candidate also coming from the south. And if you're retaining your position and still seeing how you can adjust one or two things, is it going to affect you or how you are addressing that particular issue? You must understand that the Labour Party is a young party in terms of national prominence and national competitiveness. You cannot compare it with far more established institutions, working institutions like PDP or APC that have had tons and tons of, you know, turnover of campaigns and all that. And they've had, you know, they've made constitutional provisions that restricts them into a certain way of appointing officials. The Labour Party, we came to the Labour Party, I was already the campaign manager for PTALB. So naturally when we got into the Labour Party, you know, I had to, I mean, Labour Party was new to him completely. So I had to continue in that position. Before we got to the Labour Party, the Labour Party has already gotten a structure. They've gone to their convention and by the dictates of their own constitution, they've already elected a national, you know, their complete national working committee which is headed by a Christian. So do you understand? So, you know, that was not, you know, we did not have the opportunity like PDP of actually going to a convention where everything is open and available to you. You decide, okay, we'll give this one to the North, we'll give this one to the South. We didn't have that luxury. The compliment of national working committee was already on ground. So we came in, you know, PTALB and myself and others, you know, other supporters, I was his campaign manager. We had gone around the country together in PDP. We've done so many things together. So I still remain his campaign manager, you know, even while we joined Labour Party. But really speaking, the issue that Arab and B, who was the public secretary, raised, they're quite unfortunate because he seems to be a spoiler. He's like a dog in the manger. He's the only person talking like that. We went for a political event that, you know, a press conference where the list of the PCC was made public. I only addressed the press conference. I did not announce any of these names. And, you know, that press conference was presented over by the national secretary of the party who publicly announced that he was representing the chairman of the party. And when I finished my press conference, you know, and I sat down, the microphone was given to the national organizing secretary who has the power, the constitutional power to array and conduct all the affairs of the party with relationship to elections. He was the one who read out the list, not me. It has nothing to do with me. Be that as it may. Some of the contending issues are in the policy right now. Muslim-Muslim ticket for some parties and the others, national president and the candidate coming from one zone and so on. And now Labour Party and someone is talking about you being sad. I want the candidates. Yeah, no, no. I want the candidates. So you just... I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm trying to make a point, sir. Yeah. Do you think, even though you called the person who raised the issue a spoiler, do you think his points that he raised may be valid in some way? For other parties, that's what I give you the background. The Labour Party is... on the larger political scene in Nigeria is new. And how we came about to be, you know, to clinch the presidential candidacy is also fortuitous. You know, the party was already in place. They've had their congresses and conventions. The National Working Committee had been selected, elected, so to speak. So, you know, it was for them to now pick a presidential candidate. There were so many candidates, all the other candidates, you know, who could have been Muslim or Snowdener, et cetera, et cetera, step down. All right? For Putaubi. So it was an inadvertence development. There was nothing the Labour Party could do about it. But the more important thing that is important on the national scale is that, you know, because the chairman, the DG campaign had totally of no serious relevance in terms of government, you know, forming government. You know, we're just, for instance, me, I'm just a campaign officer. No more, you know, nothing else. I'm just a campaign officer. By the end of February, when the elections are over, my job is done. You understand? But the critical issue is that when you're planning to rule the country, then you've got to pay very serious attention, you know, to the sensibilities of the country, you know, and things that happen within the policy. So the president must come from the north, if it does, or the south, and the vice-president, vice-versa. And there must be a partnership either a Christian and a Muslim or a Muslim and a Christian. So do not compare the Labour Party with the, you know, with the other parties. No, not the other parties, with the aberration of the APC of picking a Muslim ticket or the incongruous situation in PDP where a Northern candidate or a presidential candidate intends to succeed another, you know, Northern presidential candidate. With Labour, we have, you know, all our hands are clean. Okay, let me not bring other parties, unless it's absolutely necessary into this conversation right now. But are you being fair to Labour to call them a young party? They were there before the APC. No, no, I said in terms of upscale national politics. Labour Party has never ever presented any presidential candidate in the last ten years of this status. They've presented a governor. You know, governor presidential candidate. Governor is provincial. All right, presidential candidate is a different, is a different ballgame altogether. There are 36 governors in the country. There's only one president. Is a different ballgame. Okay, let's look at what, okay, this is the time that is absolutely necessary. Let's look at the APC, for instance. They came in in, like, 2013, the way other parties that were existing and they merged together. Are we looking at a possibility of a major because that major gave them that kind of force that enabled them out as sitting president. The major is the political debacle right now because they never had a true party. They had a special purpose political vehicle. All right, we are not contemplating a major. But what I can announce to you here and now, and for a fact, is that I promised before and you know, it's still going to come alive. We're going to put together a grand political alliance in the country. We're going to have an alliance of liberal, of all the other top parties besides the APC and PDP. We're going to form a grand alliance including NNPP, including SDP, including PRP, including ADC. We're coming together in an alliance. An alliance that not necessarily says that president candidate of A must have done for president candidate of B, no. But you know, an alliance that fosters the political fortune of the component parts of the alliance nationwide. For instance, INEC has actually published the candidates of each party. We don't have the spread. There covers the whole country, for instance, in the Senate. Ditto NNPP, Ditto NNPP, etc. We can come together and say whatever we do not have a candidate we will back any candidate that is a member of the alliance. Do you understand? We will come up with that. I was coming to that because people are worried. That answers the question of whether we're going to have enough men. In the National Assembly, whether we have enough men in the National Assembly to promote the presidential whatever he requests of National Assembly and his policies, the passage of his bills, etc. We will have enough people. But it goes beyond just the National Assembly. For instance, when you go to every single polling unit, you need to have an agent and all that. People begin to get worried. When we talk about structure now, that is what they're looking at. What are you going to do to address that beyond just trying to make sure that the people in the National Assembly that you don't have in your party are going to support it? We may be a young party. People may think I use the word deliberately think or assume that we have no structures. We already know the number of polling stations in the country and I'm telling you, take it from me. I am saying it. We will have no less than 10 people in each polling station across the country across 176. Efforts are already underway and I don't like to keep its unnecessary secrets. I can tell you that we are well past providing over 40% of that arrangement covering over 40% of that. It's not a problem. It's not a problem for us. It's not a problem at all. It's peanut butter. Sometimes when we talk highly about the Labour Party we tend to talk about the fact that Nigerians have keyed into it willingly, without being coerced or without being bought over. Another guarantee we are getting victory because no other political party in the country has that. And guess what? We are being backed and the strength and the force of youthful Nigerians, for whom we have come out under this platform to fight for this government to take back the government from those who are present custodians and give it to the young people to run their affairs of themselves and take their destinies in their hands and by the grace of God we are going to succeed in doing that. Mark my words. So these people you are talking about four or five or ten people in the polling unit that has really been members of the Labour Party? Are you banking on Nigerians who are just people? We on our own we on our own are making arrangements for no less than ten persons per polling unit. Now in that grand alliance if other people come up with their own, so the number increases from 10 to 15 to 20 in different areas. Let me tell you believe me sincerely we are not joking with this election and anybody who takes us for granted will be struck by lightning I mean I'm talking about lightning and political development that is what it is. This is a robust movement this is a it's a tsunami there's no way you can prepare for a tsunami. When you hear that it is coming you have only one choice vacate because people pride themselves in structures alright? You know it yourself sir wherever a tsunami passes do structures stand they don't stand you know what is coming is what we have never seen before and I'm telling you we are riding on the tide of this gigantic gigantum movement and we're going to overrun the existing parties for a fact I mean can't you see that everybody both left and right PDP do not they don't criticize or attack APC. APC does not attack PDP. All of them are attacking labor and here we are not so important what the hell is it? Why? Well Nigerians will be wondering how you are going to do that it's interesting yes we've seen we cannot be explaining we've seen a lot of things but the the resource of what we plan underground Nigerians can see it do you understand? You don't have to go with an army to a war to know whether this army will win or not when you begin to see bumpings and demolitions and advancements you know which army is going to win yeah for a party that is credited with the slogan we know they give shishi we hope we are thinking will it be possible to maintain this tempo people are assuming that we Nigerians may be bad we will be corrupt too alright but because you know we play along you know whatever whatever goes with us but you know everybody has come to the realization that this is not going to all go well for our future and the future of our children if it is just that fast that financial fast of one day many Nigerians have made up their minds to do it look we had rallies all over the country and the did give of campaign of the presidential campaign for Labour Party I am telling you I mean Christian I would not lie we didn't give anybody shishi to run this event and I am telling you those who try to play catch up with us spent billions alright so if they need 200 billion to do this election we can win it with 2 billion that is just how bad it is people are tired people want to change you can't bribe them any longer you can't pacify them any longer the young people are fed up to here and they will do anything and they know that we are sincere and for goodness sake we are also lucky that the the guy who is at the hem of the affairs is somebody that is competent, capable has integrity has proven capability and ability so everything is working well for Labour Party whereas other parties are tumbling, fumbling without us without any input from us I have never publicly said anything against any of the parties I have never done anything reputiously but God is working for us ok the worry of some people is that while we say like you rightly said the youths are fed up a lot of people are fed up with the things that are going on without necessarily laying a blame on a person or a group of persons but now knowing the information we have from INEC for instance the new registrants a lot of these people have been disqualified because of double registration not a lot, about 2.5 million not a lot out of 96 million it's not a problem this 96 million will be shared by a lot of other candidates especially four candidates as we see because we have the APC we have the PDP, we have the NNPP and then we have the Labour Party let me share this let me help you does that not worry you when we are on top what should I worry let me tell you what you do not know you know the electoral what you call the register for those who can vote from the last election to now has increased by more than 50% alright voting population less than less than 40% of them normally vote now this new increase 80% of them are the young people and women who have decided to back OB now the PDP and the APC from common sense are not likely to get new voters there is nobody who had gone to voting station to register and get the polling what you call it the voters card you know that didn't go with some form of passion determination or anger and who are you angry against is the existing formations on ground that they are angry against so 70% of those new registrants are going to vote against these two political parties to vote in favor of the new obedient movement this election is watch my mouth a work over interesting some people say that there will be sentiments in this election there will be at this city there will be a lot of things we've heard from the west which you are from the west as well we've heard from the north also we've not seen this before we actually have for the first time and Ibo candidates in the election a euro bar candidate in the election I mean I'm talking about those who have made a serious impact and two northern candidates in the election it's never happened like that before so and also we know that the country presently is divided very strongly between Christians and Muslims the multiplicity of factors that we call me in this election multiplicity of factors some of them are unfortunate but realistically all the elements of the multiplicity are totally mixed in our favor all okay let's hope that your optimism will translate into something I'm a scientist and I'm a realist everything I've said I've backed with logic I've told you those who are voting the old voters they were used to voting for PDP or APC the new people who want to register do not want to vote for APC or PDP and there are more than them so it's common sense what I expected you to tell me is that we do not have much penetration in the north I will admit it God is on our side I told you we have October November December January February even if we crawl from Cardinal to Carno to Sokoto we are going to get there the the northern masses and elites will join this train mark my words what gave you that confidence the Nigerians the price of bread in Sokoto is it different from Lagos or Enugo it's not the insecurity in the north is even far worse I mean it's worse than those in the south the impact of the economy today is worse the northerners are worse hit so those who have voted in the north before because it's my person it's my child's man what did they get for it for the last 15 years what did they get for it nothing except suffering pain and poverty do not let us assume that people have no sense assume that if people do not go to school they don't have sense it's crazy people are sensible I spoke to northerners who said look we are not going to make a noise we are not going to shout they know where the butter and where the bread will be buttered you just wait well we've seen that when they were having primaries and a lot of people promised heaven and earth to the candidates and when the elections came those candidates didn't have one vote that's why I keep saying we hope for the best when the time comes let's come a little bit personal before we wrap up on the segment of the show you have traversed the terrain as it were you started out from NRC I think and then UNCP that was progression and then at one point you even were an aspirant of PDP governorship elections now you are in LP of all the plethora of parties the way you have said it is as if when I was in NRC NRC SDP make a distinction because there are a lot of young people who are now from what you are saying think that Kupa was jumping from NRC to UNCP the concern is that you know the political terrain having had experience very very correct so why did you now of all the political parties decide to pitch your tent to my leader I followed Peter OB we left PDP together because of the unjust nature of their proposed presidential primaries then it did not give a chance it was over monetized and hypocritical they have decided where the party was going to go the party was going to subvert its own constitution by refusing to rotate the presidency according to what the constitution provided so what shall we be doing there nothing when Peter OB decided to leave and join the Labour Party I followed Peter OB to the Labour Party you talked as if it does not matter what the ideologies are I would like to know the ideologies inside the Labour Party that is not true I know that Peter OB sat down when we left PDP we sat down and we looked at who which party best suits our political inclination we had two of them SDP and Labour Party we could not find immediate accommodation in SDP so because Labour Party is a platform to support assist production to support workers so that came very close to what we wanted so we went to the Labour Party when we say we want to increase we want to shift the country from consumption to production Labour Party is the only party in the country today or then that had something similar to that because Labour Party is made up of people who are engaged in the production processes so that's why we went there it was a natural inclination we went towards where we felt that our ideologies came fairly close it was not an irresponsible decision or just a jump into the fray for every opportunity that a politician has they should be talking to our people as well so let's talk to Nigerians you talk to Nigerians what your expectations are what you think their role should be as well before we get to the election month proper thank you I don't want Nigerians to take my word for it I'm a politician like you said but let us critically look at it there's no Nigerian today who does not have fear in his mind existential fear because of the hardship the pain that we're all going through whether you're rich, whether you're poor you are not insulated from the harm that we have we're not safe in our homes we're not safe on our roads everything is so bad and people took a decision some time ago and that basis of that decision was on expectation that somebody's body language was enough to save the country apparently it has proven that that is not true this time around I am charging Nigerians to be careful do not vote on sentiments do not vote on the basis of religion do not vote because of hatred or love for a particular ethnicity or any group vote on who you can trust this election is about trust is about integrity if you cannot trust people if people have been given opportunities and they have shown no capabilities at all or they have demonstrated lack of integrity we can't give them another chance we are in dire situations and these dire situations requires a square peg in a square hole Peter Obie is the man for this moment and Labour Party is the party to back up in an election, God bless you okay we've been talking with Dr Doen Okukwe famous Doen Okukwe and today is here talking about Labour Party and why he is in the Labour Party and why you need to queue behind them well it's been a pleasure having you doctor on our program today we hope to hear more from you and your Labour Party Shishi or no Shishi good luck to you I will always ask Nigerians to go and verify whatever I can say this and that go and verify thank you very much that will be all on this segment the show continues in a moment stay with us