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By Agatha Emeadi
Chief Mike Nnanye Ajegbo, a lawyer, has been part of the constitution making process of the country since 1988.
He was in the Constituent Assembly in 1988/89. In 1994/95, he was also in the Constitutional Conference and was in the Senate as the Chairman, Senate committee on Judiciary and Legal matters.
Again, he was in the Political Reform Committee of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and, therefore, feels strong about the 10th National Assembly that will soon converge.
In this interview with Sunday Sun, he also spoke on the birth of a new Nigeria, political equation the Labour Party turned around, among other issues. Excerpt:
Many believe that the presidential election held on February 25, was mired with controversies; while some are condemning the process, others are totally commending it, what is your take?
If you want to look at any system, we should look at ‘before, during and after.’ Before, did all Nigerians believe the Independence National Electoral Commission (INEC), which was yes and no. Yes, at the beginning, in the sense that when they came, they were doing it right; but towards the end, in many places, they did it wrong. So, now is ‘after’, if you do not interrogate what happened ‘during’ that made many people unhappy, you can never get it right in future. Whatever the outcome will eventually be, it is important we interrogate what happened, and that interrogation is being done by two of the candidates that participated in the election; they are the candidates of PDP and that of Labour Party. At the end of the day, the court will decide and whatever they decide will be what it will be. One thing I will not do is to fall into temptation of trying to do the job of the judiciary of interpreting the law. The job of the judiciary is to look at the facts and then interpret the laws. The election presented a set of facts, so they will juxtapose those facts on the law and then come up with a decision. As a lawyer, I cannot do that, it is the job of the judges to decide while the job of the lawyers is to present the facts of the case. There could be one or two results after the presentation of the facts of the case, the courts can say that the facts presented, even if they are true, are not enough to cancel the election or the facts as presented is enough to cancel the election or thirdly that the facts presented could mean that another person won the election. That is the job of the court and Nigerians should leave the court to do their job.
You said, Nigerians should leave the court to do their job, but the outcome of the election has put INEC on a tight rope, in fact, people have lost confidence in both institutions based on past events; what do you think?
Do you know the purpose of law? The purpose of law is to regulate the affairs of men, if there are no laws, life would become brutish, so whatever the court says, whether we agree or not, we just have to accept it especially coming from the Supreme Court. But that is why it is important to interrogate what happened so that all things that went wrong can be corrected in future elections. But we should not anticipate what the outcome of that interrogation will be. We should leave it for the courts.
Take Imo State, for example, you know what happened that saw the emergence of the present governor, in fact, the governor was nicknamed ‘Supreme Court Governor,’ this particular case in mind is one of the reasons Nigerians are held back about the verdict of the Supreme Court?
What most people do not normally understand about the workings of the legal system in Nigeria elections with electoral laws is that he who asserts must prove. Have you ever thought to look at what happened because if you look at what happened, they must have made some assertions which were not contradicted by the other side, so the Supreme Court was taking a decision based on the facts before it; the facts before it may have justified their decision, I am not saying they did, I am saying that before they make the pronouncement one way or the other, they need to look at the facts. There are some local governments which the lawyer for the number four person said they were not taken into account; and the lawyers of the other side did not insist and make sure that those things were not taken in order. Secondly, they succeeded in saying that in some areas, there was over voting and were not challenged; in fact, at times, people lose cases because of the fault of the lawyers and not because of the facts of the case. Then and again, another thing people must understand is that it is the election tribunals that look at the facts, not the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. What the Court of Appeal does is to look over what the election tribunal presented and either oppose it or accept it; then the Supreme Court overlooks what the Court of Appeal did and not going to look for fresh facts; so if the man succeeds in pushing into courts those areas they said that were not taken into account and it was not challenged, then succeeded in reducing the votes of other places, suddenly he comes tops; but that does not mean he won the election, rather, it simply means that his lawyers succeeded in doing something and the lawyers on the other side did not contradict what they were doing. So, you do not blame a known lawyer who knows the facts and says what this people did is wrong. They were not judging the case based on people’s feeling, instead based on what was before them and that was the issue. A lot of times, we throw jabs at the Supreme Court, meanwhile it is the lawyers. The Supreme Court looked at the figures in addition and reduction and, therefore, took their decision. The winner of the election is the person with the highest number of votes, with the 25 per cent of votes casted in 2/3rd of the highest local government areas.
Do you still have confidence in INEC after the last election because most of the figures were allegedly altered at collation centres…?
(Cuts in) Who is INEC if I may ask? INEC has its people at the headquarters, they have engaged staff in each state, local governments, wards and polling units. It is after the system has been interrogated that we now know where the problem came from. For example, some of the things I have looked at, one can see corrections fluids on them, cancelled pen and can then say this is wrong at the polling unit; but mind you Prof Mahmood Yakubu was not there. The main problem with Yakubu and his team was that they said results would be uploaded from the polling units which did not happen. What then was the issue why results were not uploaded as Nigerians were meant to believe. That is what Nigerians are waiting for the court to interpret. Again, were there enough areas that they were not uploaded from the polling unit to make a mess of the votes cast; nobody knows the answer until we gather all these facts and that was why the Court of Appeal gave Labour Party and PDP permission to go and look at these things. Therefore, we should not speculate, instead let us wait patiently until these things are sorted out.
Do you think that the entrance of Labour Party into the political process has changed the narratives in Nigerian politics?
I do not have to think, but that is exactly what has happened. Their entrance retired a lot of politicians in the Southeast, made a major ride in Benue, changed the equation in Plateau, Nasarawa, Lagos and then took over Abuja, so they changed the game plan. Do not forget that before this time, the story was do not mind them, LP does not have structure, they are social media party, the issue now becomes what is really structure? What people misunderstood about politics and politicians is that the majority of the people that vote do not belong to any political party. It is less than 10 per cent of the population that belongs to political parties, so when they feel shortchanged by government they move to another angle. So, people want to understand things in that context. Being a member of LP, PDP or APC is not something all Nigerians are part of as most of them do not really care about politics, but they care about who rules them and that awareness is beginning to grow. It was Labour Party’s stronghold; they helped grow awareness.
Some critics are of the view that without restructuring Nigeria, even with the best of leadership will fail to deliver, do you share in this view?
I do not agree; but we will have a better Nigeria if it is restructured, if there is good leadership, a bad constitution can work being operated by a dedicated and good leadership; it will work at least to some extent. And during that process the leader starts amending the constitution. Obasanjo succeeded to a large extent under this constitution, Jonathan was also succeeding under the same constitution, but the accusation about Jonathan’s administration was corruption, not that the constitution was not working, when the issue of the constitution became paramount was in 2015, two things happened at the centre. The leadership in a way was out of touch, I might say that probably because the president was indisposed for some of the time, so he lost focus. And this being the presidential system, the bulk stops at the table of the president. Again, the president does not have a philosophy which he instilled on his lieutenants; each of them went their separate ways and the issue of constitution became paradox with less supervision; some of them went their ways and that is part of the problem we have in Nigeria. Therefore, we need to really work on that constitution, why I feel strong about it is because, I have been part of the constitution making process in this country. I was in the Constituent Assembly in 1988/89; was in the 94/95 Constitutional Conference and was in the Senate as the Chairman, Senate Committee on Judiciary and Legal Matters, I was in the Political Reform Committee of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
After the presidential election, in Lagos State, we saw offensive altercations between the Yoruba and the Igbo. What can you make out of this?
As far as I am concerned, all that were an idle talk. The majority of residents in Lagos State are Yoruba, so anyone who is winning election in Lagos is getting votes from the majority of the residents. The Igbo people constitute a large portion of residents of the state, but I am not sure they are up to 50 per cent, they are much less than that. Two things happened in Lagos why Obi won; first, do not forget that Lagos had the most sophisticated crowd in Nigeria who were able to descend because they were not happy with the governance in Lagos. For whatever reason, then suddenly they saw in Peter Obi and his Labour Party a different style. Afterall, they have not been happy with the governance, but the other parties like PDP never won. So, why is it that suddenly Labour Party came and won Lagos, people must ask themselves what happened? With a look at the voting style, in most of the places LP won, they do not have Igbo there. So, how can someone say it is the Igbo that voted for Obi to win? Though, whenever something goes wrong, somebody is accused. That was what happened.
The same aggressive allegation is surrounding the Labour Party governorship candidate, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, whose mother and wife are Igbo; what have you to say about this?
I do not see anything wrong with where his mother and wife comes from. The truth is that, he is an indigene. I know him personally and he speaks Yoruba. Has he told anyone that he does not speak Yoruba? That he studied abroad is that the reason he does not speak Yoruba? This is politics, any game could be played.
What do you think about the ‘Obi-dient’ wind of new change, a new Nigeria?
I have always believed that the younger people should take over. This wind blowing did not start from Nigeria, it started a long time ago, from outside Nigeria. First, the world has become a global village, there are intellects who see what is happening in Russia, China, New York and People in Nigeria can view it. Younger people are getting better and more educated. The life in Nigeria is going down not going up, therefore, young people are exposed, they want better life, so, if they see that something is not good, what they want to do is to change it hoping that what will come will be better; and that is what all these are. The most interesting thing about it I see is that there is empirical evidence that we are not getting it right so they see this every day. I give you, an instance, because I go to London very often, when Queen Elizabeth was alive, if they are driving from the country home to town, the only way you would know the Queen is passing is she rides in three cars and no siren, whenever their cars are coming lights change to green and when they pass, it turns red and they continue; then the ones that are by the sides waiting, will turn green and continue; no one will notice the Monarch is passing; their rider stays in front just in case anyone is breaching the traffic, so they could stop them. And that has not made her less of a Queen. But here in Nigeria, the road would have been closed for an hour or two before the gentleman passes, followed by the retinue of entourage; and that has not made the man much more powerful. His powers are derived from the constitution. Actually, the whole problem started from the fact that our political parties are weak. In a developing country where there is no good and stable institutions, it is difficult to succeed, but in developed world they always succeed because they built institutions that can withstand the test of time.
For the incoming president, what message do you have for him?
Honestly, when you do comparative analysis of the three gentlemen that contested for the presidential election, you can call them good, better and best. Whether we like it or not, one of them would rule this nation and we hope that person will be good. That is why I chose that basis of comparison, I did not say bad, worse and worst; I did not say so; people like us are on our way out. The issue is whatever we are fighting for these younger ones, I voted for Peter Obi because I believe he will do a great job. So, if he did not get it at the end of the day, we have no choice than to accept whoever that gets it and we pray the person is good. So, if we start by condemning them, I do not think it will be fair, what we will condemn is their action when they start, whether it is good or bad or help the country. Right now, they could not be judged because some governors ended up doing badly while some did well. Take for instance, both Tinubu and Obi were former governors, so what we need is to see them on the bigger stage, that is where we will start judging. But like we are saying about INEC, the election is not to be said because nearly everybody was disappointment. But with our disappointment, is it grave enough to upturn the election or not? As for people being disappointed, yes, they were. I voted for Peter Obi and I would have loved to see him declared as president, but INEC has declared somebody else and Peter is challenging that declaration in court; so, after the interrogation, if the malpractices were big enough to annul the election or take it away, so be it.
As a stakeholder in Nigerian politics, what do you expect at the 10th National Assembly?
Interesting! The duty of the National Assembly is defined by the constitution and the lawmakers are not supposed to be involved in executives. That National Assembly members are getting involved in the jobs of the Executives by becoming contractors is part of the problem because many people do not understand the job of the National Assembly. The first institution of governance is the National Assembly to make laws, followed by the executive who executes the law made by National Assembly and the third is the Judiciary. The constitution is very clear. Quoting from (Section 4) which says “Powers of the Federal Republic of Nigeria should be invested in the National Assembly which shall constitute of the Senate and House of Assembly. The National Assembly shall have powers to make laws for the peace, order and good government of the federation or any part thereof. This is their job and not contracts.
Did you people focus on this when you were a Senator?
After our set in 1999-2003, the whole system became problematic.
Why? Let us know when we started getting it wrong?
We started getting it wrong out of the big fight between OBJ and the late Dr Chuba Okadigbo. That was when this republic started dwindling because PDP had the majority in the Senate and had a manifesto as a party, it was on the basis of that manifesto that we were all elected, including Mr. President. We had 2/3rd of the Senate and the PDP caucus decided that Dr Okadigbo should be the president of the Senate, but for whatever reason the former president did not want Okadigbo to be the president, so he broke the ranks of PDP and brought Evans Enwerem to be the Senate president. He got votes from AD, APP and PDP and when these votes were merged together, they had more votes than the PDP and that was how Enwerem became the Senate president. It is democracy, if other parties give you votes, they must be compensated and they got the chairmanship of Senate committees, so the Senate from 1999 did not work in accordance with the manifesto of the PDP while people voted us into power. We now had to start amending the way things are done, so it broke the issue of party politics; party was no longer supreme and that is what led to most of the problems of Nigeria till tomorrow. As we do not read history to do proper analysis, people didn’t understand what happened there, then the next problem was the arrival of money politics. In the same vein of problems, President Obasanjo having been head of state as a military man, was more comfortable governing the country with the state governors than the National Assembly that was supposed to be doing it with him. The implication, therefore, became that the state governors now have to take over the state Houses of Assembly and the party machinery in the state, so by 2007 people who were going to the Senate and House were former aides to the governors or something around the governors. They would send their aides there, as they finish their tenure, the aide will come out and they take over, though some did not do that and that was how we lost it.
