Mega party: I’ve had conversations with Atiku, Kwankwaso, Obi, others, says Utomi

A political economist, Prof. Pat Utomi, has revealed a plan by some opposition leaders to come together and form a new political party that will challenge and possibly displace the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

The Labour Party chieftain, who was a guest on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Wednesday, also disclosed that he had held discussions with some of the presidential candidates in the last election including Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso over the possibility of bringing all the opposition together for this new party.

“I talked to several of the presidential candidates in the last election about this track we are traveling. I have had conversations with Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, I have had conversations with Engineer Rabiu Kwankwaso, I have had conversations with Peter Gregory Obi and people like Ralph Okey Nwosu of ADC and some of the people who probably constitute the base,” Utomi said.

“I had said to them, it is not about you, it is about Nigeria, it’s about the ordinary people in the street, it is about truly moving from this business of sharing from trickles of oil sales to how we can become one of the most productive economies.”

Utomi, who said the new party will be a clean start, lamented that there has not been a real political party in the country since 1999.

“It is actually a clean start. You have to start from the premise that Nigeria has not had a political party since 1999 and let’s be very honest with ourselves, what we have managed is to create platforms that enable machine politics from which to grab power usually for the purposes of state capture,” he said.

Utomi further said, “We want to calm down now design a real political party with clear ideas of how you will become part of it, what you will do in it and therefore you accept to do or not to do before you come into it.

“It is where there will be clear agenda, a party plan that the day you arrive in office, everybody from Permanent Secretary to Level 8 Officer know what to do every day to move Nigeria to a certain level, you don’t do it you get fired.”

The APC which displaced PDP from power in 2015 after 16 years since the nation returned to democracy has remained at the centre and with more elected office holders that any other party since then.