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By Chinelo Obogo
George Ashiru is the chairman of African Democratic Congress (ADC), Lagos State chapter, and in this interview with Daily Sun, he says that the political landscape in the state is shifting against the All Progressives Congress (APC). He explained that with the Labour Party and Peoples Democratic Party structures now in ADC, the 2027 election results in Lagos will be unpredictable and shocking.
He also spoke on the Electoral Act amendments, zoning, funding and the party’s strategy for taking on the ruling party.
The Electoral Act of 2011 was amended, and it caused quite a lot of controversy. One of the amendments is that for primaries, it will now be consensus and direct primaries, replacing the indirect primaries we previously had. What do you make of this?
Two most critical things that everybody is concerned about are the conditions for the transmission of results. What we want is an unconditional electronic transmission of results, not discretionary. Discretionary, in this context, means that INEC must be mandated to provide all of the provisions required to make electronic transmission possible within its budget, satellites, and all forms of communications equipment and so on. We have places in the world with remote areas, jungles and mountains like in the Himalayas, in Nepal and elsewhere and once they have the right kind of trained personnel and the right equipment, electronic transmission is possible, even with just a couple of additional billions added to their over one trillion naira budget.
I think perhaps they are doing what companies that manufacture antiseptics do when they say “99% effective” . That extra one percent is to prevent litigation. So when you find a situation where INEC is not able to transmit electronically, they cannot be taken to court. They have created a caveat that protects them in case transmission is not possible.
But the problem is that the possibility of abuse now increases significantly. You can then have situations where the political atmosphere at a particular polling unit is influenced by external factors to force officers not to transmit electronically, even when they have the capacity to do so and they will simply say, “After all, the law allows it.” That is one of the reasons a lot of people are not happy with that provision. It leaves room for the manipulation of electoral officers at the polling unit level.
On the issue of primaries, I really do not see the purpose of the National Assembly deciding at this point how parties conduct their internal affairs. Parties should be given the option of choosing from all available methods. We vehemently oppose the idea that only one method is imposed on us, when three have traditionally been available. It was completely unnecessary, and it gives the impression that the National Assembly may have been guided by external interests. The ruling party uses consensus for almost everything it does, that is their modus operandi. And they know that it is usually primaries that create crises in other parties.
The most difficult primary of all is the direct primary, because it is very expensive. Everybody becomes a delegate. If you have one million members, you have to ensure that all one million members have access to participate. So it is, in a sense, a poison chalice. Consensus, on the other hand, is difficult in a party like ours, where you have many strong competing interests and people who want to test their strength through primaries. So essentially, they are saying: choose between the devil and the deep blue sea, with no middle ground. That is not palatable as far as the vast majority of parties are concerned. That power has been taken away from the parties.
A party’s constitution should be able to indicate how it wants to conduct its own affairs. The Supreme Court has made it clear that parties’ decisions about their internal affairs are more credible than external interference in those decisions. It is an internal matter. The most important thing is corporate governance ensuring the right people are in leadership positions and that they are doing their jobs properly. Every other internal matter should be decided by the party’s own constitution. We should be able to constitutionally decide how we want to choose our candidates. We do not need that to be decided by a ruling party that controls 70% of the National Assembly.
There have been questions around zoning and if your presidential ticket is going to be zoned to the north or to the south? Has there been any conversation within the party around the issue particularly at the national level?
As a state chairman, I have been more focused on the kind of candidates we put forward at the state level. I really do not want to get into that conversation until I am required to cast a vote at our next meeting. I do not know that zoning has been formally placed on the agenda of any of the meetings held so far. However, I do know that within the coalition, the leaders are having that conversation. They must have had some understanding that led them to decide to come together under one party and there must have been some unspoken agreement. And I am in ADC as ADC. I have been a state chairman here for four years. They came to our party, so they must have reached some understanding before deciding to join ADC. How that understanding translates constitutionally is what remains to be seen.
The party’s constitution currently does not contain any provisions about zoning, and I do not believe any party’s constitution does because it would arguably be illegal. It would essentially be telling Nigerians that they must choose between options they may not want. Every decision must ultimately be made by the majority of the party’s members. If the party wants zoning, the six states will have their input, and then the national leaders will consider it and make a decision. But if it is imposed without the consent of the members, it will create division.
You have been a party chairman for more than four years. What strategies are going to be different this time around to deliver a strong result?
Let me give you some interesting statistics. The ruling party in Lagos has never won a presidential election in Lagos until they entered a coalition. They only won when they went into a coalition with the the CPC which brought Buhari in. And as soon as that dynamic shifted, they lost Lagos again. That tells you that Lagos has always been contestable. Abubakar Atiku lost in his own home state but won Lagos. Goodluck Jonathan won Lagos. That is the opposition dynamic as far as Lagos politics is concerned. Lagos has always been open.
What happened over time is that the middle opposition parties began to lose relevance either because they were not properly organised or because they suffered internal crises. Once that happens, the ruling party has a free run in state elections. But the difference now is that we have the last two major opposition parties as part of ADC. The party that won the last presidential election in Lagos which is Labour Party and its supporters are now in ADC. The critical leaders and members of the PDP have also joined ADC. So you now have the best of everything under one roof. The results will be extremely unpredictable and could be shocking in the direction of ADC.
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Funding is always a major factor in elections, and the electoral act has increased the official spending limits. How do you look at that?
When you set up a strategy to go to war, you first think about your troops, the equipment required and the budget. If you do not have the troops or the resources, you do not go to war. Once we have our political strategy fully developed, the resources will be mobilised to support it accordingly. Whether the electoral act allows ten billion or one billion naira, we have always been able to campaign in very effective and independent ways. Candidates must stick to the official spending ceiling, but the party is not restricted in the same way.
Resources are not only financial. Part of the resource is the people. Let me refer again to how Lagos was won at the last election. Labour Party’s presidential candidate won Lagos without significant financial resources. There were no paid polling unit agents and even those who were there were not paid until after the election. Yet they won. How much money was spent compared to the ruling party?
People in Lagos feel a patriotic duty to vote. It is not always about money. Voter apathy is usually triggered when the ruling party introduces violence, then people feel it is not worth the risk, and that sentiment is often deliberately targeted at non-indigenous residents. But even indigenous Lagosians are affected because everyone lives alongside everyone else.
What concerns us more than money is security. What is our budget for protecting our voters? What is the plan? That is not something I can go into in detail publicly, but I can say that those conversations are ongoing. We will ensure that the federal government fulfills its duty to protect all voters and residents, and we will also take additional steps to protect our own members at the polling units. We will also ensure that international observers are present wherever we believe the election is at risk of being conducted unfairly.
Is there any conversation between your party, Labour Party in Lagos and PDP in Lagos about a form of coalition at the state level?
The critical leaders and candidates of those two parties have already joined ADC. The founding chairman of PDP in Lagos, members of the Board of Trustees, the people who ordinarily influence candidate selection are already here. People like Bode George, who is widely regarded as the leader of PDP in Lagos, still has to be engaged, but that conversation cannot happen meaningfully until after primaries have been held. You cannot bring a candidate to a coalition conversation until you have one. And given the legal disputes ongoing in some parties, it would be premature to make commitments on unstable foundations.
What is the state of your membership drive in Lagos, particularly at the grassroots level?
Our membership growth has been extraordinary. I will not give you a specific figure because the process is ongoing, but I can tell you that we set up a membership mobilisation committee just last week. They were inaugurated in Abuja, and their mandate is to fast-track additional mobilisation. We have just ordered another 100,000 membership cards for Lagos, out of 400,000 we have requested nationally. That alone tells you the level of optimism we have about organic growth.
We have hundreds of support groups legally recognised by the party and representing critical interests. Some of them are politically active; others simply align with our values and are mobilising on our behalf, conducting civic education and encouraging voter registration. Every single day, a minimum of 10 groups send us names of people they want incorporated into our various leadership structures. That is evidence of the unusual growth this coalition has generated.
We also now have, within the party, all of the elected members who were previously in the legacy parties. Four members of the House of Representatives and one National Assembly member all five from Lagos have joined ADC. We already hold four out of 24 seats in the House of Representatives, and we are focused on retaining those and winning the remaining twenty. The voters who gave those representatives their mandates are still in this party. They are still available to vote accordingly, with the added benefit of the broader network we have built over the past three and a half years.
Our chances are extremely high, and you can tell the ruling party is nervous. Every time we hold a meeting and they hear about it, the police are sent to shut it down. No other party is experiencing that kind of targeted disruption, and no other party is doing the kind of grassroots mobilisation we are doing. Every weekend, without fail, there is a stakeholders’ meeting somewhere, with 80 to 100 people gathered. We do not even have candidates and yet people are coming.
What is going to be your selling point to the electorate?
Our selling point is knowing what the electorate wants and giving it to them. They are the ones paying taxes. They are the ones feeling the impact of service delivery or the lack of it. They are the ones experiencing the abuse and the hardship coming from government, and they want change.
There would be no coalition if people were not unhappy. There would be no agitation for change without widespread suffering. According to Newton’s first law of motion, an object remains at rest unless acted upon by a greater force. People do not want change if they are comfortable. The fact of the matter is that people are uncomfortable across the country, and this coalition is a direct response to that discomfort. It is not the product of one person’s ambition. It is a response to the yearnings, the cries and the frustration of ordinary Nigerians asking when the suffering will end.
