Against the many petitions at the election tribunals, the candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the just concluded governorship election in Kaduna State, Dr. Jonathan Asake, has urged the judiciary to rise up to the occasion, show what is right, and follow the wish of the generality of Nigerians. He spoke on other issues in an interview with VINCENT KALU.
You were a participant in the just concluded 2023 election. What is your take on that election?
The 2023 election was below the expectation of most Nigerians. Their expectation was that there was going to be an improvement in the process. More so, the electoral act that provides for a direct transmission of result to a central sever was signed into law after serious pressure on the president by the civil society organisations. So, Nigerians believed that this election was going to be freer, more credible. But contrary to that, after the first election, which was the Presidential and National Assembly, it showed that the so-called BVAS was not used in most places, and where it was being used, it was not even properly used; the results were not transmitted to a central sever.
So, we were back to the same old method of massive rigging and even worse. The rigging even took a more digital dimension. That is why I said that it fell below the expectations of most Nigerians. If you look at the mobilisation, the campaigns and what Nigerians were expecting, it was not the result that Nigerians saw that was being announced by INEC. I can conclude that we are still expecting the one to come that will make it right for this country.
At what point did INEC get it wrong?
INEC got it wrong because its present leadership ab nitio didn’t show any sincerity or commitment to doing things right. That is the truth. The electoral act is clear; the process is very clear, and it would have given us the most transparent election we needed. Even by this transmission of result alone, INEC was determined to subvert the process and it has been shown by the results that were announced, and by the actual votes cast as obtained by those in the situation rooms of most of the political parties.
INEC has proved that they were never in the first place committed to conducting a free and fair election, and that is what we have today, and that has taken Nigeria many steps backward because if we didn’t get it right in 2019 and we are not getting it right in 2023, then I don’t know when we will get it right because the will of the people is still subverted. The only thing Nigerians are being told is that if you are not satisfied with the outcome of the election, go to court. That is insensitive and an assault on the sensibility of Nigerians. When they tell you to go to court, they know that the court is not there for you. Even the judiciary is being subverted in the present setting. It is unfortunate.
From what you have said, will this not dampen the morale of people coming out to vote in future elections?
It can, but the whole thing can be revived and redeemed if the courts rise up to the occasion and show what is right, and follow the wish of the generality of Nigerians. People are in court now and all the facts and figures are clear before everybody, but if the court decides to continue where, for instance, a person in fourth position is pronounced as a winner (we have had that in history,) if they have also hijacked it, then, I’m afraid that the morale of the Nigerians generally will fall low and people will develop the usual voter apathy.
Even people that campaign for offices, instead of wasting their resources, having rallies, having town hall meetings, racking your brains telling Nigerians the beautiful programmes that you have as a candidate, going round communities and convincing Nigerians that you know how to fix their problems, will just prepare, put on their rigging machines, put their resources where they can set up their rigging machines and rig elections and are announced as winners. Look at what happened in Adamawa State, a show of shame, when somebody can announce a governorship election, which he was not supposed to do. We have got that messy and shameful situation in this country. If this thing is not properly addressed by the court, I’m afraid that the nation is drifting towards a horrible state of anarchy because where there is no justice, you are inviting anarchy.
Are you saying that the future of the country lies in the judiciary?
That is exactly what I’m saying. We have had the stretch of campaigning, where Nigerians have seen all the candidates, which is a normal process in a democracy; where candidates have campaigned and tried to convince Nigerians what they can do, tried to tell Nigerians what the problems were and they can solve the problems, particularly, Peter Obi of the Labour Party, among the presidential candidates. Everybody knows all over the world that here was a candidate that exempted himself; he talked to every group, to individuals, to town hall meetings; he talked like a patriotic citizen, he talked like a statesman. It was just not campaigning, he was telling Nigerians where the problem was, and telling Nigerians that here was a leader that understands the problem and this is how to solve it. There was no sentiment; he was speaking to Nigerians irrespective of religion and ethniciety, irrespective of region, and most Nigerians came to the conclusion that Peter Obi was the man that would take Nigerian out of the woods.
Because of the messages of that man, many Nigerians became interested in the process of electioneering; many Nigerians confessed that they had never voted in their lifetime. I met people like that, but because of the messages coming from Obi, they went and acquired their PVCs for the first time and trooped out en masse to vote for the man, who has consistently said that Nigerians cannot continue to be a consuming nation, but a producing and exporting nation. He promised to engage the youths meaningfully and also the women. When it was time to vote, they trooped out and voted for him, but it was not announced and that remains a mystery.
The campaigns took place, Nigerians participated, and expected to get the best and that their votes would count, but they never got their votes counted. Thank God that democracy has other stages, which is the judiciary. People are aggrieved and they have taken their cases to the courts. It is left for the judiciary to save Nigeria. If there is any time in the history of Nigeria that the judiciary should rise to the occasion and save this country from drifting into a failed state; a state of anarchy, it is now. I’m calling on every member of the judiciary that is in one way or the other participating in this process, to please save this country from becoming another Rwanda; from becoming like other nations that have gone this way because of injustice. That is the crux of the matter now, but if the judiciary misses it, then, I’m afraid.
When analysis was done state by state on how the governorship candidates stood, there was high expectation that you were standing tops in Kaduna State. What happened?
My own case in Kaduna State has a lot of complexities. The first one is that before the election, we kept hearing, and particularly the APC and the PDP were making jest of us that we had no structure and we were present only on social media. So when they saw people trooping out en masse to register in support of the LP; and when they saw the support groups of LP mobilising people to get their PVCs, and they moved to say that we didn’t have structure.
After the election, I came to the realisation that they were talking about the structures of rigging. We didn’t realise that. We didn’t realise that the structure is also for the protection of votes. We didn’t have any structure to protect our votes, we depended on INEC and their BVAS machine, and the direct transmission of votes to the central sever. We depended on that. We said, when you vote, you don’t have to hang around the polling units. We thought that the process has become so reassuring; that INEC has assured us that the machine will be used to accredit us and after voting, the result of the counted votes will be transmitted real time to the IREV. But we found out that the structure that they were telling us we didn’t have was the structure to protect our votes or the structure to rig.
In my own case in Kaduna State, with the coming of the LP in that state, the PDP used to have their stronghold in the southern part of the state, which is made up of 12 out of the 23 local governments in the state. With the coming of the LP, the entire Southern Kaduna and even substantial part of northern Kaduna turned to the new party.
During the voting, we didn’t have agents in most of the polling units. Of course, we needed a lot of resources to have them there. There was no cash to pay the polling agents and to make transfer was difficult, as the banks had network problem. You send the money to the agent for his meal and transport, and the money doesn’t get credited until after the election. Those are some of the challenges, but you found out the other parties had cash to give to their agents and other logistics of moving here and there. Where did they get it from? We have the voters on the ground, but we didn’t have what it takes to protect our votes and to do other things.
Will you challenge the election before the tribunal?
Certainly, on the ground that the Electoral Act was violated. Once, you told us that there was going to be direct transmission of results. In my state that has 23 local governments, 255 electoral wards and 812 polling units, if I have to have an agent or two in each polling unit, you can only imagine the number and some of the agents, you have to mobilise them; they have to eat food in those places, they have to take bikes to those places where they will man. If you don’t do that, the agents can compromise. But when you said that you have a central server and results are going to be transmitted real time and that was not done, then the Electoral Act was violated. That is the ground that this whole process should be nullified among other grounds we have raised.
During the electioneering, nobody heard these killings, kidnapping and banditry, but immediately the elections were over, there has been a resurgence of killings in Southern Kaduna and Benue State. What could be attributed to this?
We have been saying it over and over; I personally have continued to cry out, but it seems very clear all the time that this present APC government is foisting an agenda on the nation; an agenda which supports this kind of mindless destruction, killings and displacement of people from their ancestral lands. So if this thing stopped during the electioneering, there was the fear that from all the parameters like I said earlier that Nigerians were going to chase away this government. Since Nigerians couldn’t achieve that and the government is coming back, so the sponsors of these atrocities, who are still in pursuit of their agenda said, we have bounced back and they couldn’t stop us, so let us continue with our terrorism so that we can achieve our agenda. The agenda is the displacement of people and taking over their ancestral lands. Taking over peoples ancestral land in order to change the demography – is it cultural demography, is it political demography, is it economic, etc. Let us not be in doubt of this. For instance, if the LP had won, you would not see this violence anymore even before swearing in. Nigerians are still in for a long walk if the judiciary doesn’t rise to the occasion because an evil agenda is being plotted against this nation. It has not stopped and it will not stop until the will of Nigerians is upheld.
The will of Nigerians can only be upheld when the votes count; when the votes of February 25 are upheld by the judiciary. If INEC is part of that agenda, the judiciary can stop it. The judiciary can live with the will of the general people of Nigeria. Nigerians like to stay together, Nigerians want to progress, they want to see development; they are hardworking and committed and they love themselves. However, the few that are in pursuit of this evil agenda are the ones using ethnicity, religion to cause confusion and to divide and rule. I pray that the Judiciary will live up to expectation and stop this nonsense.