Less than two years before the 2027 elections, Political-Economist and presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in the 2007 presidential election, Prof Pat Okedinachi Utomi, has warned that the country doesn’t need an 80-year-old president to govern it at this critical time.
Utomi, in an exclusive interview with Sunday Telegraph not only criticised premature commencement of campaign, which he referred to as a symptom of the political class’ obsession with primitive politics, but ruefully lamented that every election held in the country since 1999 was a fraud, lacking legitimacy.
“Not only is Nigeria suffering from this obsession with politics but obsession with primitive politics. The political class is so distracted that it is impossible for them to think about the problems of the country and solve them. Campaigns for 2027 started in 2024…No country can make progress if that is the culture,” he said.
In his view, the on-going coalition of politicians, reminiscent of what the All Progressives Congress (APC) did more than a decade ago, was good for democracy, and the opposition politicians should be lauded for this, because “Nigerian politics has always been too fragmented. The more you can create two, three strong political parties, the better for the Democracy.”
He, however, expressed the need for the politicians to focus on principles rather than arbitrariness and castigating the coalition, because “a certain shamelessness has entered Nigerian politics…” urging the ruling party to wait for the coalition’s policy alternatives which they are yet to advance.
On the kind of President Nigeria deserves in 2027, he said: “I don’t think an 80-year-old man should be President of Nigeria. I will turn 70 in February next year. I’ve already ruled myself out, that at 70, I’m too old; I will not accept a cabinet position. I will not. So, if you are 80 and you are out there, in my personal value system, something is wrong.”
· Read full interview here
