The presidential candidate of Action Democratic Party (ADP) in the just concluded election, Yabagi Yusuf Sani, has said that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) can never succeed in conducting a credible election when the appointment of its chairmen is vested in the president of the nation.
In an interview with VINCENT KALU, the Jakardan of Nupe noted that even though his party didn’t go to court to challenge the outcome of the election, it has hopes that the judiciary will do what it is right.
What is your assessment of the just concluded 2023 elections?
It is a milestone. As you know, elections are the barometer by which you measure democracy.
Does it mean that you are satisfied with the conduct?
The INEC itself is not satisfied with its own conduct of the election, how much more myself? If you go by the preparation before the election, it was supposed to be the freest and most credible, peaceful election we ever had in this country, largely because of technological advancement, innovations they brought in, and also the legal framework, which was put in place.
Some of us were over ambitious and the commission was carried away by the technological innovation and the legal framework. They were expecting a paradigm shift in the sense that these were new innovations; things that were not there before, and by experience, people thought that when you bring in these new changes or things, they would change the whole scenario from what it used to be and what people can be happy with. We didn’t think that whatever can go wrong will go wrong; we forget that these things were man-made and even the system itself was not fool-proof in the sense that it would not fail.
It was the first time we were putting the Electoral Act 2022 to test. I will blame us for believing so much in what INEC was saying. Did we take into consideration the fact that this thing is an exercise where the stake is very high? Elections are about the highest stake exercise in a country because that determines everything about the country. We took it for granted that an organisation like INEC can supposedly handle such a big exercise with such an overwhelming interest.
Don’t forget that it’s not only Nigerians that are interested in what is going on in the country when it comes to elections; even the foreigners, they want the election to go one way or the other and some don’t want it to succeed for their interest. So, we didn’t factor all these things into consideration towards the preparation for the election. Otherwise, how do you explain that the most important aspect of the election, which is the presidential election, should be the one that failed woefully? How do you explain that to anybody that you were able to do the one you can call inconsequential when you compare them side by side with the presidential, which is the main issue? That is why I said it’s a milestone. It’s a journey. We are where we are now, the rest is up to us to learn bitter lessons and use it to strengthen the process. We also have to believe that this is not something that you can just take for granted; that you have the chairman of INEC promising heaven and earth and that would be all it takes. No, you must go beyond that by interrogating and subjecting the people that are there and they must be put under some kind of checks to prove that these people can actually stand for the occasion.
Then you have a situation where one person is appointing every person in charge of that organisation. This one person, who is also an interested party, is the president. You are appointing a referee to officiate an exercise in which you are on one side of the context. The one contesting is appointing the referee and even the linesman. When you talk about the judges, who appoints them? When you talk of the police, who appoints the IGP? Who appoints the military heads and who appoints the RECs? It is Mr. President and you want to have success in the election when he is actively involved? He has active interest. How can INEC succeed?
How do we get it right?
We must tell ourselves and also tell each other the bitter truth that the underlining conditions, environment under which we conduct elections are not ideal, not right. Look at the game of football or any game for that matter. How can an interested party or an active participant determine the umpire? We are just fooling ourselves because our environment is not economically viable. Many people are not economically dependent, and to add another dimension to it is the level of poverty in the land; people are just at the mercy of the oppressors. So you can see the environment under which we are conducting elections. We are just deceiving ourselves. You have the umpire under the active participant, and you have others almost reduced to beggars – poverty-threatened Nigerians, battling to even find one square meal and you want that person to decide for himself. He is looking for N100 to feed and somebody is offering him N1000.
What we can do is to change what we can change immediately, which is addressing our constitution and removing all these things and let INEC be truly independent. That is a very important area we must look at. It is not something that we should continue to overlook. How can we have credible election under this kind of environment? I don’t blame INEC people; the problem is that he who pays the piper dictates the tune. If you tell me that it is the National Assembly that gives them money, okay, does it mean that the members of the National Assembly are not interested in the elections? Or how did they get into the legislative chambers?
President Buhari said credible elections were one of the legacies he would leave behind. What is your position on this?
Did he achieve that? Do you have a government that has responded to important matters in this country? In which aspect of our national life can you say this government has achieved anything? I may not know much like a press man, but can I be reminded of any aspect of our lives that this government has achieved something? Are there some things on ground to show that he has achieved anything from his three-point agenda of corruption fight, insecurity and the economy? Even the mad man in the street will tell you more if you want to hear that there is nothing on ground in all that the president promised to achieve. If he says he has achieved something, where are they? Is it inflation? Is it unemployment? Is it infrastructure development? Is it corruption? Is it in insecurity, restiveness, or is it the brain drain, that they now want to make a law that people especially doctors should not travel out of the country? Which one? Tell me.
But if the APC, the ruling party didn’t achieve much, why did Nigerians return the party to power?
Have you forgotten that the country is under a state capture? You know it yourself. The party behaves like an army of occupation. It is like when you go and conquer people who don’t have freedom; Nigerians don’t have freedom. If you are not battling with hunger, you are battling with insecurity, even as the constitution has guaranteed freedom. There are two things there in the constitution: Firstly, there is a contract between the government and the people. The people will give the government their resources and allegiance, and for those two things they have given to the government, they expect in return – welfare, improvement in their welfare and security. As far as the people are concerned, they have given them their resources and allegiance, but they cannot get in return anything that resembles what they have given to the government.
Some political parties with their candidates have gone to court to challenge the presidential elections, but you didn’t go to court. Is that an acceptance that the election was okay from the angle of your party?
People who went to court are saying exactly what I would have said. Even though we didn’t go to court, it doesn’t mean that we accept the result. It is just that we have put our trust in the judiciary, hoping they would live up to expectations. One suit is just enough. It doesn’t need so many suits for the judges to know that this election should in one way or the other not stand. It has happened in so many places.
Following the outcome of the elections, the issue of so many political parties is at the front burner. Some analysts argue that any party that didn’t perform in the last election should be deregistered. What is your view on this because if it is applied, your party may be affected?
Not only that it may affect my party, but it is undemocratic. Democracy, even the constitution of the country allows people to come together and pursue their common interest. You conduct an election that is flawed, which everybody that assessed it concluded that it was below the minimum standard. No party, even the ones that claimed to have won one position or the other has said that the election was okay.
If you say on the basis of this election that you are going to deregister parties you would not be fair to yourself because the election was not on a fair kind of environment. That is not the solution we are looking for. If anything, you want as much as possible, let the political space be vibrant. We don’t want a situation that we’ll find ourselves in a one party scenario. Government is not spending anything on the parties unlike before when it was giving parties subventions. It is no more. So, it is a plus for democracy to have more parties.
The nation was further divided after the election. What suggestions do you give to the incoming president on how to heal the country?
The first thing is to have an inclusive government; it shouldn’t be just about APC. They should allow other political parties to have a say on how the country is governed. There is enough to go round for everybody. That is by way of consolidating our democracy so that people will begin to have confidence in the democratic process. If you go by this winner-takes-all syndrome, it will adversely affect the psyche of people as far as democracy is concerned. They would look at it that you must have huge money and how you get that money nobody cares; it is go and steal as much as you can and during election you come up and buy everybody.
He needs to concentrate on how to improve the revenue base or generation. To start with is to plug those financial leakages, especially in the oil and gas sector. You already have low hanging fruits in that sector; there is so much, both vertical and horizontal, that you can do in terms of expanding the revenue base or capacity of that sector, if it is properly managed, if corruption is reduced to the barest minimum and the money we are making doesn’t go into private pockets; you don’t have all your officials becoming thieves, with everybody stealing without anything done to them.