By Chukwudi Nweje
Dr. Yunusa Tanko, the 2019 Presidential Candidate of the National Conscience Party (NCP), and the spokesman of the Peter Obi / Datti Baba Ahmed Presidential Campaign Organisation in the 2023 election has said the All Progressives Congress (APC) rejection of the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU-EOM) report has exposed the double standard of the APC as a political party.
He queried why the APC that celebrated the EU-EOM in 2015 when it gave President Muhammadu Buhari’s victory a pass, now condemns it for rating the 2023 election as a sham.
He also spoke on other national issues.
The European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) recently presented its final postmortem report on the 2023 general elections, what is your take on the report?
We must commend the European Union for their courage to come out with that report but at the same time, we must put it on record that the Situation Room, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the International Republican Institute (IRI), all American-based nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) were firm in ensuring that they came out with authentic reports on the 2023 general elections, particularly the presidential election. Although we think they were economical with the facts, we believe they were courageous enough to present the report, considering that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) collected so much money from the organisations and yet conducted the sham election we saw.
The EU must be commended for their courage for presenting their report which represented the true picture of what we saw during the 2023 general elections.
Do you think the samples on which the report was based are a fair representation to make such a conclusion; the Special Adviser to the President on Special Duties, Communications and Strategy, Dele Alake, for instance, thinks the report was a hatchet job targeted at Tinubu, even as it relied on a few instances of disruptions in less than 1,000 polling units?
The samples represent the generality of the view of most Nigerians. There is no gainsaying that even Alake and those representing Tinubu know that in Lagos State where the Labour Party (LP) won despite the sham result allocated by the INEC, people were being profiled and attacked based on their ethnicity. It is clear; as we speak, the INEC is still uploading results so what other samples do you need to represent the interests of the Nigerian people,
I believe the EU-EOM had good coverage of the election, don’t forget that it cuts across the six geopolitical zones of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, which gives them a good observation of the 2023 election. Remember also that the EU-EOM gave a pass mark to the 2015 election that brought President Muhammadu Buhari, so why is the APC now complaining because the EU-EOM said that the election that brought President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is a sham? There is nothing like the report being a hatchet job, they are hard facts, and even a newborn knows that the 2023 election is flawed.
The report made some recommendations including removing ambiguities in the electoral laws, and establishing a publicly accountable selection process for the recruitment of INEC officials; what are some of the ambiguities you see in the Electoral Act 2022?
There are lacunas in the Electoral Act 2022, even though some of them are deliberately put there by the National Assembly to protect the interests of their members. Firstly, one would have preferred a situation whereby the state elections, that is the House of Assembly and governorship are conducted first in that order before the National assembly and the Presidential election in the same order; it is the highest hierarchy of the election that should come last.
Talking about the adjudication of election petitions, one expects that nobody should be sworn in until the judicial processes are completed; the judicial processes are part of the electoral system in Nigeria and that makes it possible for a false person who is sworn in to make use of the full instruments of the government to advance his cause in court.
We would have preferred a situation whereby the judicial processes are exhausted before anybody is sworn into any elective office.
Apart from the order of elections, what other lacunas do you observe, and what is wrong in conducting the highest ranking elections first as was done on February 25, 2023?
We need to look at the processes of appointing the Chairman, National Commissioners and Resident Electoral Commissioners of INEC because they are the base of our democracy. When you have an umpire that is selected by the government in power, the likelihood is that the person will do the bidding of the one that appointed him. We must also balkanise INEC into three, the legal, the delineation, and the electoral parts, which should be independent of each other to be able to deal conscientiously with the election, delineation, and legal matters which INEC must deal with. This will strengthen the credibility of the electoral system and prevent the kind of embarrassment we face presently where INEC is corruptly enriched to return their appointees to power.
You spoke about concluding the judicial processes before the inauguration, what happens if this is not concluded before the handover day to a new administration, would that not create a constitutional crisis?
We need to put in place the legal framework to make sure this does not happen. It will help to institutionalise leadership and take care of the issue of legality. If petitions are hanging over the head of a leader returned elected at the election, it would not allow him to concentrate on governance. Moreover, they will use taxpayers’ money to the disadvantage of those challenging them, and that also creates crises.
What about the recommendation on the real-time publication of and access to election results; what Nigerians witnessed during the last election was that INEC failed, some would say refused to upload the presidential election results from the BVAS to IRev, what is your interpretation of what transpired?
The issue of INEC is the most insulting and shameful act of the election because prior to the election, INEC gave all sorts of rules and raised the hopes of Nigerians that the election will be credible but INEC eventually dashed all those hopes. Worst still, INEC went to court to nullify some of the rules they gave, it is like being in a football game and after the game had started, you shift the goalpost and set new rules; that does not show fairness and it is what INEC did in the 2023 election. There must be strict laws to deter INEC from repeating such things so that when the Commission promises to upload the results, a cardinal point in the election process as established by INEC must do so. The judiciary must also not indulge INEC to continue doing what it does.
What are some of the instances where INEC nullified its rules in court?
You may recall that the INEC Commissioner, Festus Okoye had said before the election that the IRev and posting of election results are part of the Electoral Act 2022 and are mandatory yet, INEC took LP to court and got a verdict that INEC is not required to post the election result in real-time, which is a constitutional and Electoral Act issue. INEC is taking its laws to court and challenging them, it is unfortunate and shameful.
What should be done to protect stakeholders like vulnerable groups, the media, women, and others?
Many Nigerians want to come out and give their report of what happened during the election and even appear in court as witnesses but they are afraid. Some of the media men that testified at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal to what they witnessed in the field during the election were treated as if they were biased. I can tell you that some media houses were bought by the government prior to the election. Some of our people were denied from ventilating their views on some media platforms. We need laws that would prevent anyone from using the instruments of his office to perpetuate themselves in power, but rather laws that allow people to ventilate their positions according to what they see, these will enable Nigeria’s democracy to mature.
The Labour Party has told its members to be ready for a rerun election, what makes you think that there would be a rerun when the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal is still sitting, is that not a departure from the position that LP won the 2023 presidential election?
LP’s position is in anticipation of some of the prayers the party made at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal. Some of them are that the falsely declared votes ascribed to Bola Tinubu and the APC should be subtracted, that Tinubu should be disqualified because he was not qualified ab initio to contest the election and that if there should be any rerun election, it should be between the LP and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). We are of the position that if there should be a rerun, it should be between our principal, Mr Peter Obi and possibly Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. Our position is that INEC did not meet local and international standards in the way it conducted the election. Most of all, what the LP is asking for is that Peter Obi should be declared the winner of the February 25, 2023, presidential election based on the fact that by the time Bola Tinubu who was not qualified to contest the presidential election is disqualified, Peter Obi is the only candidate who meets the criteria of winning 25 per cent of the votes cast in 24 states of the federation and also he is the only presidential candidate that won 25 per cent of votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.