A public affairs analyst and security consultant, Dr. Ody Okereke Ajike, has said that the outcome of the 2023 elections has shown that Nigeria has moved more towards candidate-centred politics instead of party-centred politics.
In an interview with VINCENT KALU, the legal practitioner noted that the failures seen during the past general elections were not only those of INEC, but were failures of the entirenational governance systems, including the national security agencies and the entire government. He spoke on other issues.
Many people have pooh-poohed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), over the conduct of the general elections, especially the presidential. What are your views?
INEC has serially been castigated by majority of Nigerians across all walks of life for not living up to substantial public expectations of an independent electoral commission. INEC promises of organising credible, free, fair and transparent general elections were not kept. I wonder if why this happened is a mystery or a puzzle in spite of all the promises made by the commission. Further, we need to understand that our democracy does not only rest on the commission, but rather it rests on all the co-equal arms of government. What happened to Nigerians was a failure of the entire national governance systems, including the national security agencies in organising a general election and that constitutes a breach of public trust. So, when the majority of citizens complain of the elections, they are actually complaining against the entire government of the day.
The major grouse was its promise of transmission of results real time from polling units, but which was never done. What’s your position on this?
INEC failed in that key area of real time transfer of results to the iREV platform as they equally promised. I had earlier mentioned about public trust and its attendant breach and I believe it was premeditated as many people have suggested. The claim by the commission that non-transference of election results were due to cyber attacks is untenable. I agree the cyber space is a domain of unpredictable attacks, which attribution is difficult to ascertain in most cases. However, with issues of this nature, INEC should have been prepared to secure and deploy efficient firewalls to deny access to unethical hackers to this critical national infrastructure. Lack of public trust has swollen to heights in Nigeria and what we see is a situation where the citizens’ do not believe or accept what the government tells them.
Don’t you think that the enthusiasm that Nigerians showed in coming out to vote would be dampened in future elections?
Yes, there will be increased voter apathy in Nigeria. These elections presented an opportunity to sustain increased voter participation and political socialisation in Nigeria. We had about 23 per cent voters’ participation and this is awful compared to the huge resources devoted for these elections and as it is done in Nigeria every four years. We recorded a huge turnout for voter registration but witnessed a diminishing number of voters. This could be issues of public distrust of government because there is an amazing mismatch between the expectations of the people and the shrinking supply by the government. Voter apathy will grow and if the judiciary does not step in to do justice transparently, a lot of Nigerians will exercise diminished faith in our electoral process going forward.
The atmosphere is still tense since the elections. How do we overcome this?
Election is a process that starts from canvassing for nomination by aspirants, to the nomination of candidates by political parties through electoral campaigns to elections and ends at the courts. In addressing the fallout of the 2023 elections, the courts must be fair to all and ensure justice for all. It is right to state that, judges who take oaths enter into a fiduciary relationship with citizens. Our courts must then interpret or implement the rules by seeking to give legal effects to both the letters of the constitution, which is the original public meaning and the spirit of the constitution, which is the original function or purpose of the provisions. When the original meaning is not sufficient to resolve any controversy, our courts must employ good faith constriction and avoid any form of opportunistic abuse of discretionary powers. Currently, only the courts can reshape and restore public trust as the last structure within the electoral process.
The election has further widened the division in Nigeria. Going forward, what suggestion are you going to make to the president-elect on how to cement the differences?
All around the world, there has been a growing influence of nationalism. So, I am not surprised though the causes of ethnic divisions in Nigeria are different from the causes of heightened nationalism in most parts of the globalised world. We must also understand that ethnic demarcations are very apparent in Nigeria. More so, in Nigeria, it is inadequate government, poor quality of education, weak technological penetration and weak industrial base that exacerbate ethnicity and religion. It is also pertinent to note that, heightened ethnicity as currently witnessed represents the destruction of political credibility by the Buhari’s government, coupled with dwindling national economic prosperity. People get excited and hooked to their ethnic groups for purposes of prestige, identity or as a desired channel for extracting socio-political and economic gains or a form of solidarity against perceived or apparent marginalisation. Another very important factor is to analyse the purpose of political power by certain ethnic groups in Nigeria. For some groups, political power is just for prestige, while for others, political power is for an expanded access to socio-political and economic prosperity, while for others it is a means of propagating ethnic salience or superiority. So we can all see that there is evidentially values gap which requires to be closed.
For the incoming administration, there is a lot to do for national integration. No country can prosper or be secure if the population is internally disintegrated. No economic gains can be achieved and political instability will be the bane of the country. The incoming administration must construct an overarching strategy that will integrate Nigerians through politically conscious and economic development programmes, committed investments in education, rapid industrialisation and technological advancement, structured and effective social safety nets, formation of a government of national unity, establishment of a credible political power rotation structure, establishment of a credible peace building infrastructure across all geo-political zones and an integrated policy for national development across all geopolitical zones. None of these is determinative on its own because they all have to be integrated to achieve a united and prosperous country.
Even though PDP and Labour Party have gone to court to challenge the declaration of the APC as the winner of the election, the war of words is between Tinubu camp and Obi camp. What’s the reason for this?
It is true that most of the major political parties and their candidates are currently at the election tribunals. However, at the outset of any new electoral law, there are usually judicial challenges because the law is actually put to test for the first time. We recall this happened after the 2011 General elections. As a country, we have made a lot of progress in our electoral activities. The predominance of Labour Party and APC as regards public and private conversations over the petitions shows the quantitative support base of the Labour Party in Nigeria today. Labour Party is the only credible political party of choice nationally. It also goes to understand that, there is a new revisionist power base against the status quo. As I said earlier, we have increased political socialisation and this happens anytime that political credibility has been destroyed and this new power is flowing from the bottom upwards. This is an interesting time in our national development.
What lessons should be learnt from the 2023 elections, where political giants were literally crushed by hitherto unknown persons?
The 2023 elections actually produced fundamental changes in the electoral complexion of Nigeria. We have governors who lost elections to the Senate like Dr Ikpeazu of Abia State. We have national chairmen and strong party leaders who lost in their polling units, wards and local government areas. We have tight-sitting National Assembly members who lost their deposits in their senatorial zones and we have active people-centric senators rewarded with re-election like Dr Orji Uzor Kalu. It is not a mystery how these fundamental changes transpired. It shows that people are more interested in who does what in their name and are ready to reward competence and performance. It also shows that citizens are geared more towards candidate-centred politics instead of party-centred politics. It is trite to hold that changes are evolving but I am afraid that voter apathy may truncate these fundamental changes going forward.
Post election crisis of parties have been unprecedented within the parties like APC, PDP and LP which are busy suspending members. Why is it so this time around?
In Abia APC, it is all about blame avoidance and scapegoats. I strongly believe that the APC should evaluate why a lot of their leaders were not in support of their governorship candidate. They should actually blame themselves and not outsource the cause to their leaders. They have taken the wrong steps of suspending their leaders, charging them with antiparty activities. This could be a masked struggle for sharing of political offices because, some of their leaders with a Tinubu win may want to retain or return to appointive positions at the centre. For me really, it is so poor a strategy to suspend all those leaders now. They should be doing an internal audit of themselves and their party. For the PDP, suspending their national chairman is an event that its occurrence was delayed for so long due to the internal wrangling orchestrated by Governor Nyesom Wike. The Labour Party challenge has been properly situated with suspicious external subversive and covert actions of the APC. Their intention could be to destabilise and weaken the party by any means possible and see how this could adversely impact the party at the courts.
You’re from Abia. What agenda can you set for the governor-elect, Dr Alex Otti?
For Abia State, I will avoid a Manichean analysis of good and evil, even though with Alex Otti, we have witnessed the period of the cleansing storms. However, a technocrat and a politician who really wants to serve and reposition Abia State, has been elected as governor. In Asia, leaders like Alex Otti are called “Technopols” as technocrats and politicians. They drive institutional reforms and economic development to the maximum and Alex Otti is well natured, measured and trained for the kind of developmental blitzkrieg Abia will witness going forward. Alex Otti has a track record of governance turnarounds. The New Abia under Alex Otti is expected to be peaceful, prosperous, a period of great creativity and productivity that will raise living standards and quality of lives of the people through knowledge intensive leadership. This is the finest time and a new period of building.
My agenda for Alex Otti is that he should strive to make Abia State accountable to the people. This is the most precious need of Abians. They need an accountable state. Alex should pursue an excellent integrationist political and socio-economic development policy with a focus on education, and I mean education with a technical bias, provision of infrastructure and renewal of existing primitive infrastructure, key concentration on the redesign and extensive redevelopment of Aba, Umuahia, and other key towns in Abia, creation of an Abia investment framework for economic modernisation, develop a digital infrastructure for technological development and innovation in Abia. If he tackles these areas in four years with the kind of determination he possesses, Abia will be a paradise of economic prosperity and modernisation.
An integrationist political and socio-economic development policy will impact all areas of the state like security, agriculture, entrepreneurship, social enterprise, justice, productivity, healthy adherence to rules, law and order and happiness of the people. This is because Abians are charged to effectively work together to produce prosperity and a secured state.
With the huge liability he is going to inherit, including salary arrears of civil servants, do you see Otti succeeding?
Yes, there are huge challenges, but Alex Otti is not a man given to panic. But let us remember that Otti has rebuilt technically dead institutions in the past and engineered turnarounds within the financial services market and adjacent sectors. Within the financial services sector, institutions do not grind to a halt; they snap. But his official records of turnarounds are there for all to see. I acknowledge that Abia State has huge unpaid salary bills, high levels of indebtedness, weak and/or nonexistent infrastructural base (both physical and social infrastructure), among others. It is indeed a tall order for Alex Otti, but our age of modernisation and rebuilding has come. That is why I christened this time as the finest time and a new period of building.