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By Christy Anyanwu
Chief Kunle Uthman is a legal practitioner who was called to the Nigerian Bar as a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria in 1985. He holds the traditional title of Jagunmolu of Ibesheland in Ikorodu, Lagos State.
His political career commenced in 1995 when he was appointed personal assistant to the Minister of Transport and Aviation in the Interim National Government of Chief Ernest Sonekan and later personal assistant to the Minister of Power nand Steel during the regime of Gen. Sani Abacha. He later returned to legal practice and established a law firm, Kunle Uthman and Co., Barristers and Solicitors.
Babatunde Raji Fashola later recommended Chief Uthman and his appointment was confirmed by the Lagos State House of Assembly as Commissioner in the Lagos State Judicial Service Commission, a position he held under that administration and a part of the tenure of former Governor Akinwunmi Ambode. He also held other appointments as a member of the Committee on Policy Control and Planning Regulations and the chairman, Legal Committee that drafted relevant regulations in respect of the regulations and Habitat Law in Lagos State, among others.
In this interview with Sunday Sun, he spoke about the elections, why he wants to contest as Lagos State governor, his plans for Lagos and lots more.
What is your take on the elections of February 25?
First and foremost, I think we should congratulate INEC for the innovation of the BVAS because most of us have acknowledged the fact that on the day of the election the BVAS was quite effective. That is a major development from the mode of voting. The issue now was, how to do with the aftermath of the election because election is a process which also involves announcements of results. It seems like INEC got it wrongly this time around because the presumption and the assurances that were given prior to the election was that the results will be transmitted directly to the severs and the human elements of carrying from point A to point B will be completely eliminated and that was what made everybody to believe that the process of voting, collation and announcing of results will be free of any form of interference because the issue in the past results are database from the polling booths to the point of collation and to the point of announcements. INEC even went ahead to assure us that this time around , they don’t need any of the university professors to be involved. They said they are going to have their own control room which will be manned by them and they will give accurate results. What is playing out now apparently is a diversion from the promises and from the provision of the electoral acts. We are now back to the same modalities as it was in the past. This is not very nice and it has cast aspersion on all that INEC has been able to achieve. But for me, I think it’s important that we will now have to hold our guns and wait and allow the process itself to evolve to the point of conclusion. We should not show any form of electoral violence, abuse, confrontation, fighting, queries, threat or litigation or whatever, in respect of this result. Let’s wait. This 2023 election is a defining moment in the history of our country. We have never had it as rough as we have it now. We are hoping and pray that this election will produce a set of leaders who will be able to navigate us from this point to a better point. To speak in terms of faith, we are trying to elect Moses and Moses’ everywhere that will collectively lead us to a land of progress and return us to the rightful position that we are in the committee of nations. For me, INEC, the BVAS, the voting process was to a large extent effective except for those areas they couldn’t vote for logistics reasons and they have since voted. So, we should just wait until later, maybe at the state assembly’s and gubernatorial elections that are bound to be at the pulpit. This is my views.
But some Nigerians are not happy about the election results. Some are calling for the cancellations of the elections, going to courts etc. Are you of the opinion that they should go to court or cancel?
The right to go to court is a human right. If anybody feels that he’s aggrieved about certain contingency, he or she is free to go to court. Going to court should not be a threat on any. Any party that feels they have a good cause to go to court, they should go to court, they either win or lose. But we should not do things that will truncate the electoral system. Cancellation is not an option. Number one, the country has spent a lot of resources in organizing this election. The election to a large extent was well conducted, but when you are talking about cancellation, it should be in those areas that have issues. Those hot spot areas. Maybe they fought. Maybe there were disruptions, maybe there was ballot snatching and I believe that those are minimal instances and INEC has a record of those places. They can go back there and do those elections again. But to cancel the entire election, it is not going to augur well for this country because it will not be possible to organize another one. You will find injunctions flying everywhere stopping INEC from organizing elections. What happens on May 29th when they supposed to hand over? The constitution does not assume a situation like that. A vacuum will be created and we will find ourselves working in the dark and being subjected to the personal determination of people who are not participants in the election but they are guiding it and making unguided statements regarding this election. Cancellation is not an option.
Going forward, would you say INEC is ready for the governorship election on March 11?
INEC, are they ready, is not a question that can be answered. What we see in the election is that we need to psych ourselves and believe that INEC will improve on the shortcomings of last election. We also need to understand that we are first and foremost Nigerians. The brotherhood of nationhood should guide us. This idea of attacking people from other tribes or from other faith brings us to the level of sub-human. First and foremost, we are Nigerians and we are governed by the constitution of the country. So, the Igbo man is a brother of the Yoruba man, the Yoruba man is the brother of the Hausa man and Tiv man. We are all one family of a nation. So, it’s going to be sad, if we continue this nonsense that we are doing by attacking one another. It an election, let the best person emerge. This is not an INEC problem now, it’s a social welfarist problem. We all need to sheath our swords and we all need to now believe that INEC will improve on what they did the last time and they will give us a free and fair election because belief is important. If we all go to the election in doubt then it will be difficult, but if we all tell ourselves, INEC is not an organization belonging to other countries, it’s our Nigerian organization and we can see being active participants, there’s a vast improvement in what happened in this election in terms of technology than what happened in previous elections. So, for me, we are going to campaign, we are going into the nooks and crannies of the states, and everybody will do that , go to other states convince the people that you are the best party and the best person will always emerge. We should learn to be gallant winners and gallant losers. Only one person can win. This question of its either me or nobody is not the right attitude towards the franchise process.
You are contesting under SDP as a governor of Lagos State, why going for the office of governorship in Lagos State?
The only office I can aspire in this Lagos State is the governorship. I was a commissioner under Fashola; I was a commissioner under Ambode. I was responsible for drafting the megacity law in this Lagos State; I was the chairman of the committee that drafted it. I was part of the team that drafted the policy, regulation and building control in Lagos state and I know that building should never ever fall in this Lagos State. I’m a legal practitioner; I practiced law for 38 years, being a member of the board of benchers which is the highest level any lawyer can attain. I’m international legal practitioner, I have been to all continents of this world and I understand governance. Because as a young man, I was a personal assistant under Chief Ernest Shonekan government in the Ministry of Power and Steel, so I understand power. I know why we don’t have light and I know the reasons we don’t have it and the way forward. I was also personal assistant in the Power and Steel ministry. The first one was Transport and Aviation. I understand transport, I know that transport is not road and I also know that Lagos State government is not doing the right thing. They’re not concentrating on what they should do. This governor has wasted away our resources in the last four years and I believe that I will offer my people a better system of government and this government is the one that has an ostentatious mentality. They are very deceitful. Fashola started the rail project eight years, Ambode started the rail four years, Sanwo-Ou continued for four years going to 16 years. And that rail is only from CMS to Okokomaiko. As a matter of fact they said they are building it to Mile 2. This is the only country in the world that three government of the same political party will do that short distance for a period of 16 years. How much have they spent in building it, nobody will give you the figures because they have been borrowing and borrowing for that project and up till yesterday, they have not launched the project. Also we must develop water transportation in this Lagos State because we don’t all need to be on the road. The state is surrounded by water everywhere. CMS to Ikorodu, Ijede, Badagry, and Epe is all water, so we need to carry the human traffic on water as to ease the pressures on our roads. Our primary schools are not well-funded. Our hospitals is a shame. Our government has converted teacher’s training school to universities, and it shows they have no understanding of education. The first quality of education is, teacher’s training colleges, it is the pool from which teachers are trained because they give them NCEs and they are proud of it. Polytechnic is where some specialized professionals are trained, engineers and accountants, we don’t have maternity hospitals for our women and our children. All we see is money come to the state and money disappears. I believe that is an aberration. There’s a company owned by Bola Ahmed Tinubu, it is called Alpha Beta. This company collects a chunk of our revenue regularly and it is wrong because we make the money first and foremost. And we have a revenue collection agency. So, I understand the problem of Lagos. Also, Lagos State is not a megacity. Megacity by the definition has functional hospital, good roads, good educational system, well developed tourism, peaceful secured environments. The state is not secured. Nobody can move at night and it has got worsen after this election, where people are tribally attacking each other. People who have been here, are being attacked because they belong to a party that won an election. This is wrong and I believe that I’m one person who understands government and governance. I will change this narrative when I become a governor and make Lagos far better state than it is now.
From all you have said, you worked with Fashola, Ambode, that means you are part of APC?
No. I was in what you call Lagos State Judicial Service Commission, it’s a specialized agency. It is that commission that is responsible for the appointments, discipline and regularizing the affairs of judges in the states from the customary courts to the high courts. But before and while I was there I also did a lot of jobs for government in terms of its development and in terms of its policy control. Again, I was never a member of APC . I was never a card carrying member of any political party before I joined the SDP. While I was in their government, I was there as a technocrat and bureaucrats, but not as a politician.
APC is winning the presidential election, are you satisfied with the results?
I don’t believe there is any Nigerian alive who is satisfied with the result. As I explained to you, what we were told is not what INEC is doing. What we are promised is not what INEC is doing. The way and manner this result is being collated gives room for suspicious. What we are told initially is that it goes through the sever by now we should have the results. For us, it’s an abnormal situation. They have defeated what the BVAS was set to achieve. If after the result was sent directly to the portal, there was a collation in INEC office and the result could have been released, everything, maximum 19 hours, they are still dramatizing. By that they have corrupted the process that has led to the suspicious by people and it’s an illegimate frustration. For me, I’m not happy. I don’t belong to the school that says you throw away the baby with dirty water, they have not done excellently. Well, they have done commendably well; we have to make the best of where we have found ourselves now. If anybody is aggrieved and he feels strongly about what he feels, he knows exactly where to go.
You said aggrieved parties can go to court, but everyone says the court is corrupt, the Supreme Court is corrupt, and nothing good can come out of the courts, even some lawyers are of the same opinion?
I actually sympathize with people. I also know that it’s the conclusion they can reach because they don’t understand the operation of the legal system as it is .There are matters that have been decided in the recent past on the basis of technicality because the law is a science . When people say the judges did this, they did that, they don’t have a proper understanding or technicalities of legal procedure. Judiciary is corrupt; I don’t belong to that line of thought. If anyone believes the judiciary is corrupt, there’s a process to deal with corrupt judge or judges. Supreme Court is corrupt that is nonsense. It can never, ever be corrupt because the Supreme Court is peopled by the best among us in the profession. They have gone through the figment of the court system; they are the last hope of justices. That is why it is called supreme, Meaning it is the highest court in the land. The people can interpret their judgment within the contest of assumed corruption because they don’t understand jurisprudence of the law. They want to interpret law as it ought to be. The jurisprudence of law says law must be interpreted as it is. Nobody has come out to give us clear proof that we have a corrupt court system because we don’t have one. We have one of the best in the world. We may have a few people who are mischievous in their behaviour, who are not doing what they have to do, but I believe Nigerian judiciary still earn a pass mark far, far above average.
Your party, SDP, didn’t do well in the last election ; does it mean your party didn’t campaign well enough or what?
First and foremost, politics in Nigeria is extremely expensive and most of the political parties that did well powered it on the people they have empowered. Example, APC, they have governors, they have Senators, and they have Houses of Assembly, House of Representatives people who, of course, will donate to the political party. They showed the sign when they sold their form for 100 million and there were so many people who queued to buy at that price. Such a party has much more than enough to fight the election. Not only them. The same thing applied to some of these other parties that performed very well. For us, in SDP, there’s no governors, no senators, no House of Representatives members. What we have are people who believe in the destiny of Nigerian nation and believe that there has to be a change of the narrative. For us, an election is not a do or die or must win like some of these political parties are displaying. Our presidential candidate, Prince Adeyemi Adebayo canvassed all the nooks and crannies of this country, participated in the debates, but of course, he didn’t have all the finances because the political process is still corrupt. People have to need money from this point or the other before they can get their vote.
