By Chukwudi Nweje
Prince Adewole Adebayo, presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 2023 has taken a post-mortem review of the off-cycle governorship elections in Bayelsa, Kogi and Imo States and stated that INEC was transparently dishonest in conducting the polls. He also discussed other national issues.
What is your assessment of the off-cycle governorship elections that were just concluded in Bayelsa, Kogi and Imo State, what were the issues for you?
The issues for me and the SDP was that the elections raised more questions than answers and even the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) appeared to be self-contradictory. These elections were supposed to be very simple; there were just three states, not 36 and they have narrow constituencies with few local governments. Bayelsa has just eight local governments, Imo has a little more than that and Kogi is 21 local governments. It should be quite easy to conduct the elections but what we had was that before the elections were conducted, some result sheets were flying around and we drew the attention of INEC to that and they issued a statement. Accreditation by INEC’s own record were uploaded to the IRev by BVAS but the results announced by INEC contradicted what they had on the IRev. We brought all these to INEC’s attention, our agents at the polling units were amazed to see that places were few people came out to vote had magical numbers declared as result. We have brought all these to the attention of INEC in compliance with the law. The SDP believes in the legal system, the INEC and the institutions. We wrote to INEC to review the elections, most of the INEC commissioners were not in Kogi, the INEC Chairman was not there, and some of our leaders in SDP were not there, all we have are the reports we received. The figures that we saw that had some of them marked complete in their system were not final figures because even after the results were declared, the IRev was still synchronizing several days after the declaration of result; this does not bring credibility to the process. The aim of the SDP is to assist Nigeria and Nigerians to get a government of the people by the people and for the people; it doesn’t mean that we have to win every election, what we are saying is that the institutions must work and INEC has a window of seven days after the election to review the exercise otherwise what we have is a system where people take it for granted that INEC is not serious about electioneering or credibility and is just wasting everybody’s time. We are open-mined, we want to do what is right within the law to review what happened in each of the sates, particularly in Kogi State where it is evident from even INEC’s own contradictory report that everything went wrong that could go wrong.
You say it is not about winning but about the system working, election observers and civil society raised similar concerns on the conduct of the election as you have, what would you do if at the end of seven days INEC does not do anything of reviewing the process; in February after presidential election, you alleged that the three leading parties APC, PDP and labour Party all cheated but said you will not go to court, will this off-cycle governorship election be the same?
I am not the candidate in the governorship election but we supported the candidate of the SDP. In frustration, I believe he said that if Nigeria is not serious about elections and INEC can be so transparently dishonest and disorganised that there is no need for him to go to court. The party has met, reviewed the process and said it would give INEC an opportunity to do its review too, we want to believe that INEC also wants democracy and a country that works and INEC being the entrance institution in to government, we want to make sure that INEC makes politicians who come to power know that the institutions must work so we will give INEC opportunity to review it, if it doesn’t, then we will go to court. Our party leadership has said they will go to court but we are doing our own with an open mind, we are not desperate to win, we want to win within the law. We go to elections with a victory speech or a concession speech but what we have found out is that what INEC announces as result is not result in compliance with the law and regulations set by INEC and for that reason, INEC is creating an opportunity whereby someone could do anything in their name and they will say they can’t do anything about it. Under the new Electoral Act 2022, INEC has seven days to do a review so we are giving them information and observers have been very cooperative with INEC and saying the same things we are saying. If the review is done well, and even if it does not favour us, we will accept it, we are SDP, we are law-abiding but if the review is not well done, then we will take the extra step of approaching the judiciary to look into it and we are making sure to narrow our claims to things that we are sure of and can prove.
Do you have concerns about elections in the three states or is it just Kogi State that you find more tempestuous?
We have a problem with all the elections not just Kogi State. Look at a state like Bayelsa where the governor who has been declared winner of the election said that in some parts of the state, BVAS was boycotted or bypassed. If the winner of the election can say that about the process of the election, it should draw the attention of INEC. We are not saying that INEC is hopeless, I don’t think so. I believe that INEC is a human and necessary institution and I have confidence that there are good people working in INEC. I don’t have a problem with INEC, I have a problem with the process INEC used in declaring the result in Kogi State. We took every step to warn them about the problem in Kogi State, about the voters register and other things including staff of the commission ab initio and INEC said they will look into it. In the course of the election, we warned them about the problems of over voting and factious numbers but it appeared that the Returning Officer was not interested; he even threatened to have our agent removed. We have written INEC stating what happened and we gave INEC all the options and citing all the laws that require them to do a review but INEC has not replied. We are putting fate in the system, we believe that we need INEC, we must have an electoral umpire that people can believe in. Nigeria cannot be so unfortunate that we don’t have 20 people who can run elections in the commission. There is no alternative to democracy, we have tried every bad alternative and come back to this same electoral system. I want Nigerians to believe in INEC and that elections can work and the only way to do that is to continue to interrogate INEC no matter how difficult it may be. We don’t mind winning and we don’t mind losing, we want to make sure that Nigeria is a country where the republic endures and democracy is respected.
Why is it that Nigeria’s democracy always throws up bad crop of politicians?
I think some of them are not in it for the democracy but for the power and they want the power for their own self preservation and use, so even some of those who go to run institutions like INEC are just people looking for a job. If you look at the recent appointments made by the president, you will find politicians who have shown desperation in looking for power now asked to go and adjudicate elections. These are some of the things causing problems for us, it is not that democracy is difficult to grow on our soil. In INEC, we need to rescue the institution from disparate people who see it as a money making venture.
What would you come up with in terms of innovative and policy changing ideas to turn the tide?
Three things we need to do are firstly, we need to have good political parties, maybe parties that look more like SDP where people don’t want to break the law; you can see that nobody has accused us of breaking the law. Secondly, you need patriotic people who go there to serve and thirdly, when things go wrong, we don’t condemn the entire system, rather we pinpoint problems we can correct. We as SDP are using this opportunity to say that we are not there to grab power for SDP at all cost but to correct the errors. There is no country that does not face these challenges from time to time.
You contested and lost the presidential election in February, where does things stand for you politically today?
I will make sure that the government gets the maximum support of the citizens, we will also criticise them in the so many errors they commit daily and we will prepare our people for the culture of democracy and having alternatives and opposition.
What should I do now? Will I go and join the APC when I don’t agree with them and 99.9 per cent of their policies. I won’t; we will continue to be where we are in the opposition and respectful to the government and make sure that the system works.