As a solicitor, politician, civil rights activist, Harvard Law School-trained, and former Legal Director of Civil Liberty Organisation (CLO), the National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr Felix Morka, could aptly be described as a big brand and an anthology of a man with many distinct features.

Fielding questions from Sunday Sun in Abuja, Morka discussed a wide range of political, economic, and other burning issues ahead of the party’s elective convention, and the 2027 presidential election, appraising the bright chances of his party, the APC, winning the presidential election massively in 2027.

He also argued that the duo of 2023 presidential candidates, Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar, no longer constitute threats to the chances of the re-election of President Bola Tinubu.

Why is APC bent on crippling the opposition ahead of the 2027 presidential election?

First, I am not sure that the context of the question is even valid or justified to characterise APC’s competitiveness and election victory as desperate. What is so desperate about a political party pursuing its legitimate objective?

Contesting an election, aspiring and hoping to win are the things that the party is created for. Why the reference to desperation? What is so desperate about what the APC is doing?

APC is simply doing its job of sensitising the electorate, mobilising people in support of its political agenda. Those are elementary objectives of a political party. APC is no exception. It is the same for the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the Labour Party, or the Conservatives and parties anywhere in the world.

Competing for power at all levels through the democratic process is the definition of what political parties are. Nobody in Nigeria, certainly not the APC, is trying to stifle the opposition party. Those allegations are made casually, without any type of serious thinking or analysis.

How is the APC stifling the opposition? What is stifling about a citizen choosing to exercise his democratic liberty or freedom of association, to move from one party to the other? People have also left the APC for other political parties. Why is that not making headlines? Why should it become a headline only when people leave other parties to come to the APC?

Why should it become headline that APC is trying to stifle the opposition by opening its doors for people to join the party? How is the APC supposed to keep people from joining the party? If APC were to do that, would we not also stand accused of stonewalling, gate-keeping, and selecting those who join and those who don’t join?

Would that also not be in violation of the Constitution of Nigeria or interfering with the liberty of people to associate freely? It will be a problem if that happens. So, when people choose to join APC, we welcome them because our Constitution as a party permits us to do so.

As a matter of fact, our constitution imposes a duty on us to mobilise membership in the party. It is a responsibility that we bear. So, the suggestion that we should, in fact, be keeping people away is completely counter to what we should be doing.

We are not doing that because that is actually unlawful to do so. My point is that, in terms of 2027 we are simply pursuing our legitimate objectives to contest that election.

We are also keeping our doors open to welcome Nigerians who choose to join, irrespective of their background, whether political or from the village, the city or wherever. Wherever and whenever they come and they are interested, we welcome them.

Will you be glad if APC contests next year’s election unopposed?

That question, again, is a subset of a question I just answered. I wouldn’t react to that.

With 31 governors in the nest of the APC, is there any inducement, compulsion, or pressuring them to join the ruling party?

As a journalist, we should question what happened to your investigative capacity. Why don’t you want to investigate and publish a blockbuster on what you find to be APC’s tactics that are not above board?

I always ask this question, and nobody has answered me. How do you induce a governor of a wealthy state like Delta State, for instance, what do you induce him with, with money or with what favour are you going to induce him? That is the governor of a state that has consistently been successful at elections in Delta State since 1999.

How do you induce a governor, who was a member of a political party that has been successful consistently, to abandon that party and join the APC? The answer is simply that the party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), had lost its capacity to function as a political party to support the political aspirations of Deltans and those who seek to run election on that platform.

The party has become so divided, divisive, and dysfunctional that it was no longer capable of providing a platform, a vehicle for anyone to aspire. Is that not enough reason for any sensible person to leave the PDP? So, why do we always look for inducement and all that? Is that not a valid reason if you were a politician in the PDP Delta State?

Knowing what you know today about the PDP at the national level, will you remain there to contest an election? Who will sign your nomination forms and even present you? It is the parties that present and sponsor candidates. The PDP today is not capable of sponsoring anyone to contest an election without someone else contesting the ability to sponsor.

But is it not the APC that deliberately incapacitated most of the opposition parties?

You are throwing around allegations but I like interviews grounded in facts and reality. You should back up your questions with facts and some verifiable information. Present me with a cogent rationale for your premise, and I can answer, but otherwise, dropping allegations is meaningless to me.

What does Nyesom Wike mean to the APC in his alleged role to destabilise the PDP?

Normally, I would not have dignified that with an answer. Wike is a citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, not a foreigner. He is a freeborn citizen of Nigeria and someone who has fundamental rights under the constitution of Nigeria. He is a dignified person.

He also has the right to freely associate and express himself, and when voting comes, the FCT Minister also has the right to cast his vote by deciding how he votes. So, how he pursues his political engagement, who he chooses to support or not to support, are all within his legitimate, fundamental right to decide. Nobody can decide for him.

He decides alone, just like I decide who I vote for as well. My point is that he is a serving Minister with a right to freedom of association. Wike, the last time I checked, was a member of the PDP, not a member of the APC. I will leave it at that.

Are you also denying hearing that Wike is an agent of the APC in the PDP?

I had requested that you provide some justification for the questions you asked. I don’t know what you are talking about with your claim that Wike is an agent of the APC in the PDP. I have already answered you what I do know.

I told you that as a Nigerian, Wike is free to cast his vote anyhow he likes. That you cannot deny or quarrel with or be ready to amend the Nigerian constitution and remove his right to vote and freely associate. But to say he is an agent of APC, it is up to you to make an allegation to prove that.

Any Nigerian who makes such an allegation has to prove it. It is not enough to approximate or speculate about anything. When you assert, you must prove. Even as a journalist, if you ask a question, provide proper justification for that. If tomorrow Wike votes for APC, and announces it, I will say that he has a right to vote for any candidate he chooses.

That is his constitutional liberty. If he says that he is going to work for the APC, what I have said is that Wike is a Nigerian citizen with his constitutional right, fundamental human right, to vote or support whoever he chooses to support.

How will you appraise APC’s recently concluded ward, local government, and state congresses?

The congresses went very well around the country. It went on exactly as we had hoped that it would go. It wasn’t perfect. We had a couple of situations where Congress either had to be suspended, but overall, I think we had a very good outing.

We are glad that from the ward, local government, to the state levels, we have new executives in place now to run the affairs of the party for the next four years. We are very delighted about the outcome.

The battle In your home state, Delta, was hot and cold with some even threatening legal action. How were you able to weather the storm?

I actually participated in the congresses in Delta from the ward to the LGA and the state. I am a politician, I am a citizen, and I had to go home to join my compatriots and fellow party men and women to undertake these statutory activities of the party. It went very well. It was a good time to be home.

Like in any contests, even ones that are entertaining and wonderful like sports, people contest. Some win, some don’t, which is why it is a contest. Nobody guarantees that you will always win. So, when you win, it is wonderful; when you don’t, you are supposed to be a sportsman and accept it in good faith and move on.

But, of course, moving on can mean moving to fight another day. Sometimes moving on can also mean challenging the outcome. And if there are people who want to go to court, I hope that they will rethink it, they are also entitled to the constitutional liberty to seek legal redress.

However, as a party man, I always urge that people just take a deep breath and understand that the will of the party is bigger than the aspirations and ambitions of any individual. That is usually my counsel. But of course, as a democrat, I respect the liberty of anyone who chooses to go to court to get a review. Overall, we had a good, good one.

As a cat with nine lives, how were you able to navigate manoeuvring your way between your governor and Omo-Agege’s camp during the congresses in Delta?

I don’t understand what you mean by manoeuvring my way. Nothing has happened that is noteworthy. The former Deputy President of the Senate is an astute leader of the party.

Then, upon joining our party, the governor of Delta State assumed the leadership of the party as the leader among the other leaders at various levels in the party. I am a national officer of the party from Delta State and the national spokesman of the party.

My duty is to work with every member of the party, every leader of the party as a national officer. My commitment is to promote peace and promote cohesion in the party. We have just one party called the APC in Nigeria, and in Delta State, and we are all members of that one party.

Where do you draw the line? The Governor Sheriff is the leader of the party as the governor of our state. Everyone knows and recognises that. But that has nothing to do with other leaders in the party who play their own role as leaders and members of the party. We are all working together.

The last stakeholders meeting held in Asaba had everybody, including the former DSP. That shows that we are working together. Whatever political differences that exist or existed are natural, and our job is to work through them, minimize those differences, and bring the party together.

That is what the President, the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC), and National Working Committee (NWC) have directed, and that is exactly what all of us who are involved must do.

We have to bring the party together and ensure that we have harmony, peace, and unity, so that together we can formidably deliver the president, the governor of our state, and all those who fly the party’s flag. That is our essential commitment.

How true is the claim that NWC members are apprehensive about their possible return after the elective convention?

Do I look apprehensive? Anybody claiming that I am must be misreading the signs. I have been around my colleagues, we have been talking, and nobody is apprehensive, as you put it. We have an event coming up, and people naturally want to make sure that they tidy up their affairs, but that is normal.

It is an elective activity of the party to elect those who will serve again, just like we have done at the ward, local government, state level and as we are going to do at the zonal and national, they are just the same activity.

When you go into any kind of contests, even if it is a friendly match, you are bound to prepare, get yourself ready and make sure you have what you need. I don’t think that anybody is threatened or is in any way not calm. We are very calm, I am very calm, and hoping that I am going to fly.

Are you assuring that when they count after the convention, as the Bible says, the national officers will be complete?

All I am saying is that those members who are interested in running again are just putting themselves together to do so. That is not to say that anybody is apprehensive. I don’t think that is the accurate characterisation of the mood of members of the national leadership this time.

Why did the national leadership hand over the party to the Governors’ Forum?

Again, you are making an allegation. I don’t know what you mean by handing over the party to the governors. Did you attend the handover ceremony? When was the handover ceremony performed?

But are the governors not legitimate members of our party? Are the governors, by virtue of their office, not important stakeholders in our party, or in any political party anywhere in the world? We have the president, who is the overall leader of our party.

We have the governors who are also leaders at sub-national entities. If you are talking about a country with 36 state governors, I don’t know how you minimize their places, the role that they play, and even minimize the influence that they have as governors.

They are the first citizens of their states. They bear enormous constitutional responsibility to govern the state. So, as members of our party, where we have state chapters that exist in their domain, I don’t know how you penalise them, really. Governors are very important stakeholders, and like other stakeholders, they are important.

They deserve to be recognised for their position in the political society. Our congresses have come and gone at those levels. And as I said, they went very well because the governors played their role and were very supportive of the process.

They are also the chief security officers of the state to ensure the hitch free, smooth, peaceful process. They also played their role in helping to ensure that we have the kind of atmosphere that supported peaceful and proper conduct of our electoral activities.

You repeatedly used peaceful in your response to the conduct of the congresses. Desn’t it mean that the party is comfortable with the complaints from your founding members that they were schemed out by the new joiners?

Well, peaceful is peaceful, and our congress is very peaceful. The complaint you are talking about has nothing do with peace or absence of peace. If somebody is dissatisfied with the outcome of Congress or is dissatisfied with the emergence of a particular party officer at the ward, local government, and state levels, what does that have to do with the Congress not being peaceful?

When has grumbling become the antithesis of peace? When did grumbling become something that disturbs public peace or poses a threat to life and property? The media like sensational headlines, but there was no sensational headline from the APC congresses.

Where we had issues, we acknowledged them. We even wrote letters to INEC to modify our timeline or suspend activity. We are not in any way saying anything that we don’t know. The point I am making is that because somebody or some people think that certain persons shouldn’t have emerged does not mean that we cannot characterise our congresses as peaceful.

Sometimes what you describe as grumbling is a personal opinion that people are entitled to hold. APC is a well-governed party, and once a party has conducted its business, and it’s certified as being in compliance with its constitution, it becomes the narrative and position of the party. Nobody can disrupt that position by referring to it as grumbling.

For those who really felt that something is done that is inimical to their interest, and like you said, that somebody has gone to the court, which I said is fine because that is the place they should take their complaint to. My point is that the fact that we have peaceful congresses and people did not go away with broken heads does not mean that everybody is satisfied.

If we use that as the yardstick for measuring a successful congress, then we will never have congresses everywhere in the world. Not even in other democracies do you have that sort of outcome where every head count will tell you that it was wonderful. People will always win or lose, and the losers tend to be dissatisfied and maybe legislatively so because they have reasons to feel so.

This is why there are recourse mechanisms where they are entitled to take their grievances to and actually have them resolved. But you cannot completely dismiss the entire process as not peaceful because somebody complained.

What are the measures APC leadership is putting in place to check possible implosion due to the complaints that will trail the conduct of party primaries with the new Electoral Act?

We have standing committees to deal with all kinds of situations. We have a reconciliation committee and others headed by eminent Nigerians who have experience in managing the affairs of the country. Right now, our party is not imploding; we are rather expanding and welcoming people joining us to set the country straight.

One other point to make on the reason for their joining is that they have seen what the president is doing and would want to be part of it. Truly, when the story is all done, posterity will deliver a very wonderful assessment of the good works Mr. President has done.

You said that Nigerians are happy with many joining the APC. Does it mean that the party members will be happy if Nigeria becomes a one-party state?

Under the Constitution and Electoral Act, the two major documents of legislation and other ancillary Acts, is there a limit to the number of joiners permissible to a political party? What is the number?

As a lawyer, I have not seen that law which says that a party will stop expanding once it hits 10 or 15 million, for example. By the way, we have over 12 million registered APC members out of the over 200 million Nigerian population. Where is this claim of everybody joining the APC coming from?

Why should APC not aspire to get more Nigerians when it has only an insignificant number of the Nigerian population? What is wrong with that? I think we just need to quit this sensational penchant when we discuss APC and its membership.

Why should anybody be worried that 12 million out of the close to 300 million of Nigeria’s population joined the APC? Why are Nigerians always focusing on the APC and its activities without interrogating the opposition parties? We are not stopping them, and nobody should gag the APC.

To most APC members, the 2027 presidential election is already concluded. How true is that claim?

I don’t know who is telling you that because, as the national spokesperson, I can tell you that they don’t speak for the party; they speak for themselves. As the national spokesman, I have never said, suggested, written, or conveyed any type of information that suggested that the 2027 presidential election is a walkover. Anybody who says that is merely speaking for himself, not for the party.

As far as we are concerned, we are working very hard as a party, night and day, without leaving any stone unturned, to prepare for the 2027 election. Mr. President is working hard, governing the country, giving us results with which to campaign and campaign really hard, to persuade Nigerians and the least voters, to support us with their votes.

We have done that in the two recent elections in the Area Council and by-elections in Kano and Rivers, where we worked very hard to win, and we won big. That is what we are hoping to do in the 2027 elections.

We will campaign hard to give Nigerians reason to support our party and vote for us so that at the end of the day, when the votes are counted, we will again win and win massively. That is our commitment and whatever you hear elsewhere cannot be attributed to the party.

Does it mean that there will not be strong competition from the opposition parties?

Whether the opposition is ready or not, we are preparing. We are not preparing in relation to the strength of the opposition. We are preparing because any competition requires preparation, and accordingly, any competition requires proper, full, robust preparation. That is our goal, modus operandi, and mantra. So, it has nothing to do with the character, creed or levels of the opposition.

Judging by the confident manner you talk about victory in the 2027 election, can you beat your chest and say that Nigerians are comfortable and can vote for the APC?

Yes, I can confidently and absolutely claim that. Being comfortable with the APC is not for one individual to determine, but for Nigerians to do so. The elections we have conducted, like the off-cycle, Area Council, and by-elections, where APC won decisively, where Nigerians voted for the APC, have shown that they love our party.

They are not Ghanaians, Indians, Pakistanis, or people from outer space, but Nigerians who voted massively for the APC. The fact that they are Nigerians completely trashes the target of your question, because when people vote, you don’t second-guess the outcome.

It will become empirical evidence of existential support for the APC. Do we take that for granted? Certainly not, and we won’t. That is why we expressed our deep appreciation to Nigerians who voted for us.

As another election is coming, we are hoping and appealing for more of their support in 2027. And for the broader aspect of the question, why should Nigerians not love the APC and Mr. President, who is doing things that many of his predecessors could not muster the will to do for this country?

They are those things like tackling ancient problems that have held the country hostage and almost bedridden. They are problems that the past presidents didn’t have the audacity to confront, but this president is confronting them now with spectacular results.

The Idea that solving problems that have existed in our country, which have produced temporary setbacks and difficulties for Nigerians, will not come with pain is false. The President and other Nigerians have acknowledged it, but the idea that Nigerians are complaining that Mr President is not working is not true.

This president has addressed the complaint about the removal of subsidies and the issue of access to foreign exchange. It is nonsensical to claim that the government has destroyed Nigeria with prices and inflation that went up because of the removal of fuel subsidy.

What will you have the President and the government do? All those who campaigned during the 2023 presidential election, Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi, and Mr President, promised Nigerians that they would remove fuel subsidies and tackle the foreign exchange system.

Why is it that the man who won the election is doing that now, and the same characters are claiming that Nigerians are suffering because of the subsidy removal? Who is suffering?

The inflation that went up is dropping, and the food crisis is getting better, so that even Peter Obi recently acknowledged the crash in food prices In his alarm that farmers will suffer if the government crashes food prices.

Obi recognised that food is becoming more available, affordable, and accessible to the majority of Nigerians, yet he is still complaining. What does he want the President to do again? It is not true that Nigeria is getting worse because the country is better and stronger than it has ever been.

The economic Indicators are disclosing a foundation that is really getting properly re-engineered to carry the burden of national development. It is totally mischievous and disingenuous to suggest that this president has done anything untoward in this country.

As a matter of fact, the president deserves a second term in office. He needs to be applauded and celebrated by Nigerians by handing him a second term so that he can finish the massive good work he has started.

Are Obi and Atiku still threats or forces to Tinubu in the forthcoming presidential election?

How can they be a force or threat? They are Nigerians, free to do what they want, and we are free to do what we want. We are appealing to Nigerians to vote for us. We are not obsessed with them as they are obsessed with us. Let them continue to be obsessed with us while we continue to focus on the business of building our party.

We have done our registration. We have done very well, and now that they are required to register, they won’t do what they are required to do, but focus on the APC. Their problem is that they won’t do what they are supposed to do because they spend all their time talking about the APC.

And then when an election is called, they blame the APC for losing. We will not accept any blame for winning because we are in the elections to win, and we will win by God’s grace. (The Sun)