By Daniel Kanu
Activist and Country Director, ActionAid Nigeria, Mrs Ene Obi, has led a lot of national protests in Nigeria. She has remained outstanding for her activities in the Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room during election monitoring.
Sunday Sun tracked her down for an exclusive chat where she spoke on critical national issues, including her fears and optimism for the 2023 elections, INEC performance assessment, condemnation of failure of President Muhammadu Buhari-led government to resolve face-off with ASUU, politicisation of security, women’s participation in politics and the entrance of Labour Party (LP) in the nation’s political space. Excerpt:
Do you really have fears for the 2023 elections in view of your vantage position in monitoring elections within and outside the country?
I think its normal that there will be politicking, there will be lots of action in political activities, but we have to understand that in this particular election, we saw the primary with a difference. So many changes, but one has been used to that in terms of alliance formation and all of that, but we actually saw a lot of issues of corruption with almost all of the primaries, especially with the major political parties. We saw the hike in terms of the prices of nomination forms, we saw all of that, but we also have to be sensitive towards the issues of insecurity that is in the land, the issues of welfare, poverty in the land etc, so, we cannot say that there is nothing to worry about. Of course, elections will come and elections will hold. One of the things that I know will happen is that people’s vote will count because it is very clear now that the power belongs to the people. It is whether the people will vote according to their conscience and that is a critical issue. So, as citizens, we need to be responsible to vote with conscience and not to be the one demanding for things from the politicians because when you demand, they will find a way to take it back, to recoup. We have to worry about that, and that is why we will work on sensitization of the civil society, we will sensitize the people, we will monitor the process and all that needs to be done because the process is as important as the outcome. We will also monitor the issues of inclusivity, that people with disability will also have easy access to the poll, the aged, the pregnant women etc, will adequately be taken care of. No doubt, for that area, INEC has improved over the years, but we are happy also that we now have a new law (Electoral law) that is guarding and guiding elections in Nigeria and we are happy with the new law. We hope that in the implementation, the INEC authorities, the election body, will implement it to the core. I think elections will hold, we hope that INEC will be able to give out, distribute the permanent voters card on time to enable people collect it. It should be distributed not only at the local government level, but at the ward level for people to collect their cards and be ready to cast their votes.
You said votes will count. Could that by extension mean that you are confident that INEC will deliver in view of the preparation you have observed from the electoral body?
I cannot beat my chest to say I am confident because I am not INEC. I have watched them making good efforts to ensure things go well. I watched them in almost an impossible environment on the Anambra election. And in the Anambra election more than 1,500 persons downed tool in the morning of the election, those who have already been deployed to go to work. We saw INEC rising up to the occasion to go and look for new people to go and take over because of the fear that pervaded the environment, the insecurity. Some of the Youth Corps (NYSC) members downed tool because their parents were afraid and told them the job is not worth their life, so many of them refused to continue. I watched INEC go through that process and saw what they were able to do. The BVAS performed and where they had issues voting was prolonged, but INEC responded well. When we went for the FCT local government election, at that level, BVAS failed in many places, but moving on to Ekiti, BVAS did well and it did better in Osun which means there is a progression, getting better after each election. Hopefully, the good thing is that the machines are working and we hope that the human element can be drastically reduced. That is why the quality of the people that will man or operate the machines come into play and very important. The quality of Nigerians who are voting will also matter, the reason for a lot of sensitisation. Are you going to vote your conscience or because you are given money by the politicians? We have to all say no, despite the fact that poverty is a reality on ground. What the politicians are doing is toying with the people, using poverty as a weapon. Sadly, we are not seeing enough sanction where people are not doing well. Even those that were sentenced by the court like some governors, you see the president giving them pardon which means they are not serious in the crusade against corruption. But I am happy with the young people of Nigeria. They are getting up and I think this election will be a test, the next election (2027) will even be a bigger one because young people will claim demand for themselves and it is important that we all join hands to make sure that the election counts, that people vote their conscience, and that people are mobilised to vote for the candidates of their choice. Although, the politicians have weaponised poverty in order to achieve their strategy, it is left for voters to resist such temptation by voting those they think have the capacity, the integrity to move this country forward. Selling your vote means that you have signed to remain the way you are or even worse, so there is the need for voters to resist the temptation of selling their vote. You will have the conscience, the morality to demand for accountability if you did not compromise with the politician through vote-buying.
Let’s look at women representation in politics and how satisfied are you?
Of course, I am not satisfied about the representation. That is why I mentioned at a platform recently in Lagos that we are talking about 2023 election and the future of Nigeria’s democracy and we are not talking about gender representation. Remember that the Five Gender Bills that were taken to the National Assembly were thrown out, the reason we (women) protested at the National Assembly. We want the National Assembly to understand what the women want and only the women can best represent themselves on issues that concern them. What we have right now in the parliament is a male tenure, basically a male parliament and what we are asking for is the parliament that is inclusive because it will enrich the decisions that will come out of the place. The decisions that will come out will be more robust. There are some Houses of Assembly that do not have a single female. What it means is that for a committee for women issues you have a man to chair it and men as members discussing women issues. So who is discussing the women issues there – men? These are some of the anomalies that we think if they had listened to the Gender Bill, we can start from there to see changes to drive the women, and to correct the imbalance in their representation. The issue of women representation we need to take it seriously, the issue of people with disability, their representation, we need to take it seriously. You cannot have a committee of the youth and you don’t have young people there and I think the youth that are in parliament they have done well for themselves, we have the records and we can see in clear terms the things that they are doing. So, we need a mixture, inter-generational leadership is what will take us from where we are, we need to have inclusive environment where decisions are taken because those who wear the shoe know where it pinches.
How do you think the women can be more encouraged to get increased and better involvement?
I think 2023 is already here with us, but 2027 will not be the same, that I can tell you because mobilisation is on already and we will fully mobilise women. We encourage the women, but there are sometimes because of the patriarchal nature, a lot of even men will go and tell their wives to go and withdraw their nomination when they get pressure from their friends or from family and things like that. So, there will be a huge mobilisation from women not only to go to high level, but to also go to the grassroots, to go and become councillors, House of Assembly members then upwards. There will be a massive mobilisation. If the youths and the women come together, it is what they choose that will become because now votes are going to count. If you look at the recent elections in Ekiti and Osun you find out that people, I mean politicians were trying to bribe people as much as they can. You can only bribe them before they get to the poll, once they get to the poll it is what they vote that will count and it is unfortunate that we are reducing the dignity of people by bribing them before they vote. We are now working, encouraging and telling those who are keen to get involved in politics not to wait any longer. In fact, the journey for 2027 starts now.
The Federal Government and ASUU imbroglio has ended at the industrial court. How do you feel about the development?
I am particularly pained because of the way the Federal Government is looking at the ASUU strike, it is very unfortunate because the majority of our politicians have their children abroad. The public university graduated me at the university of Lagos and other institutions, so I can tell how proud we are about these universities. Why can’t you fund them? All the schools in Nigeria were properly funded before and one thing is that we have the population already. When you fund it well, you will get people from other parts of the world, you will be making money for the country and for the school as well, but what we have done is taking the money from the country to go and fund education in different countries of the world. You saw what happened in Ukraine when the country developed crisis. Could you imagine thousands of our students that were trapped not to talk of other Nigerians that were there. I am really pained by what is going on. The Federal Government signed an agreement with the universities they failed to honour the agreement it signed, and it is a shame that they feel okay with what is going on. We now have schools that have different layers of students, that are not yet in school. And they are still writing exams because they need to write exam. When you develop or invest in the human capital you are doing that to develop the kind of human resources for your own economy. Why is it not important to the Nigerian government to develop its economy through her human resources? Why can’t the government develop our human resources? Why can’t they give priority attention to education? All the children that we are taking abroad, many of them will go there and they will not want to come back or they go there and they are frustrated because you have not taken care of the work environment here. We are not creating or giving the enabling environment, we need to invest in our public universities because what has happened is that we are removing the carpet from where we walked through and that is a general failure of governance. It’s very unfortunate.
What do you think is the way forward for Nigeria given its embarrassing situation today?
Let me first commend the media because they have done a great job so far and I think we will continue to make sure we stand upright for Nigeria wherever we are, say the truth, do the right thing, ensure we enthrone or elect good leaders in office. The media have been helpful in their agenda setting. When it came to the new Electoral Act, when the bill was on, we worked with the media, we worked with every section of the media to make sure we had all that we needed to give. We need to continue to work together, the civil society organisations need to work, be more active, and media organisations should continue to raise their voices, we cannot be quiet. We are not holding the government to be accountable enough, so accountability is an issue, corruption has riddled this country and we need to continue to demand that the government be held accountable for the things they promised to do that they have not done. Three things about governance is that of welfare of the citizens, the economy of the country and the security and in all of these indices we are failing and so where are we? I do know that the military of Nigeria, our Armed Forces are capable of taking Nigeria out of this insecurity mess that we are witnessing, but it has been politicised. The moment you have a government that says, this has to be done everything will fall in line and this mess will stop. They are playing politics with peoples’ lives, and it’s unfortunate because it is the blood of women that they are letting everywhere. It is the umbilical cord of a woman that they are cutting left, right, front and centre. When you kill a child you cut the umbilical cord of a woman and women are not involved in decision making in the majority of the areas in this country. All of the men are children of women, now we have about 62 per cent of the young people and they are milling around the streets, some of them are wondering, they don’t know what to do with their life and we are watching them, we can do nothing and we (women) are not part of decision making. We can’t but be hopeful because Nigeria is a great country. If you see the INEC registration you will know that the youths are ready and remember that every system crashed when they went for registration because their population was massive and even at that, not all of them were captured. If you tell people to register again, I am telling you that from day one you will see what will happen with the crowd that will show up.
Before now we have been having just two major political party either the PDP or the APC, but now that LP is there, do you see something different?
I think it is important to recognise other players and I have always said it that you don’t have to even win at the centre point. We have some political parties that are only in one or two states and they are doing their job and holding their political environment strong. So people should aim not just for the centre, but to claim power at those other levels, then use their manifestoe to change Nigeria from the corners that they operate from. What is happening is that we don’t have a strong opposition because you have sometimes somebody jumping from one party to the other with ease. From what we are seeing now the entrance of LP, the Third Force, is a good development, the challenges are there, but I think they will give them a run for their money.