By Chukwudi Nweje
A group of pro-democracy activists under the banner of Think-Tank for Democracy (T-TD), yesterday stated that the just concluded 2023 general elections remain the freest and fairest election since Nigeria returned to democracy in 1999.
It asked Nigerians to shun the ethnic coloration and profiling which the outcome of the just 2023 general election has assumed and focus on important issues like how to address the rising poverty, unemployment, insecurity, separatist agitation; and the skewed power distribution approximated by the 1999 Constitution.
It stated that the task before the incoming administration of President-Elect Asiwaju Bola Tinubu is to rally all Nigerians around him and proffer solutions to the myriad of problems weighing Nigeria down.
It said, “The over-dramatisation of identity politics of the ethnic hue will only lead us to the road to Kigali. There are distinct class questions such as poverty which has no ethnic boundary that should border us. We must as much as drift away from ethnic politics for its toxicity and inclination to violence…
“Our country is plagued by many problems. These include poverty, unemployment, insecurity, separatist agitation; debt overhang; corruption, poor infrastructure, and skewed power distribution approximated by the 1999 Constitution. Indeed, the polity is badly divided, and it needs healing.
“The incoming administration of Asiwaju, Ahmed Bola Tinubu needs to address these problems. It needs the support of every Nigerian to do so; it requires honesty of purpose; it must assemble the best and brightest in the land to do so beyond an assemblage of party partisans.”
A statement read by Prof Sylvester Odion Akhaine on behalf of the group noted that despite the perceived shortcomings of the polls it remains the freest and fairest elections since Nigeria returned to democracy in 1999.
It further said, “The recently concluded 2023 general elections were underlined by electoral problems that are not new to our landscape and have been central to electoral reforms in our bid to overcome them and bring transparency to bear on the quality of our democracy. They include killings, snatching of ballot boxes, intimidation of voters, vote-buying, and tampering with results. While these blighted the merit of the process, they by no means surpass previous electoral malfeasance.”
It urged Nigerians to focus on deepening of the new innovations introduced by the Independent National Electoral commission (INEC) in the 2023 electioneering season which made the 2023 polls significant.
The group added, “To be sure, there are noticeable positive developments in the process that we should run with and further transform. One of them is the magic of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) to the effect that it negates every act of over-voting and moderates the inclination towards over-voting and outright manufacture of election results. This should be deepened to allow real-time declaration of results which is the point at the issue of those aggrieved with the just concluded process. The massive interest shown by the younger segment of our voting population is tonic for our democracy, and this must be canalized into concrete formations to harvest future opportunities. The path of political wisdom dictates the embrace of the remedial mechanisms that the organic law of the land provides to address disputations arising from the electoral process.”
On the interim government agitation, the group identified two diverse groups, one which wants to resolve the bottlenecks to true democracy and another which wants to truncate democracy.
It said “Truly, a segment of the pipers of the interim government contraption feels the need to resolve the national question before proceeding further in our democratic march in ways that clear, once and for all, the bottlenecks to our democratic growth and national development. Chief Afe Babalola and Pa Adebanjo belong to this school of thought. Other proponents of the interim contraption are doing so in other to ambush our democracy.”
It vowed to resist any imposition of an interim government and warned that T-TD will not allow a repeat of what happened in 1993 when the military annulled an already completed election process.
The group asked those aggrieved with the outcome of the election to take their petitions to court and avoid overheating the polity.
Earlier, Debo Adeniran, Executive Chairman of Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership who represented T-TD Chairman, Prof Lucky Akaruese noted that T-TD is an ad hoc platform of pro-democracy activists who played a frontline role in the anti-military of the late 1980s and 1990s and who wish to intervene in the post-election currents in the country underlined by the call for an interim government.