Why Tinubu, APC are afraid of 2027 elections –Tokunbo Pearse

•Electoral act is to make Tinubu win by hook or crook

A public affairs analyst and Convener of Reset Lagos Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Dr. Adetokunbo Pearse has said the fear of losing the 2027 election made President Bola Tinubu to hurriedly assent to the 2026 electoral act, which he claimed most Nigerians kicked against.

According to him, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has performed abysmally low that Nigerians are waiting to vote them out.

In an interview with VINCENT KALU, Pearse noted that the APC has waged a war on credible election, and wondered why it is afraid of transmitting election results in real time, when it has 30 out of 36 governors, and has a far majority of members in the National Assembly, and in the states Assembly.

What is your position on the Electoral Act that has been signed by President Bola Tinubu?

President Bola Tinubu and his hatchet man, the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, are both enemies of Nigerians in their actions over the last two years or so.

This issue of the electronic transmission result directly from the polling unit was an issue that gave the 2023 general presidential election a very bad name; a very bad image because it really nullified the credibility of that election because candidates like Peter Obi of the Labour Party and Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, both of them claimed that the results that they got from the polling units in the wards showed that they had won the election, but when those results got to the Coalition Centre manually, it was changed to favour the president now, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

But the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said the reason they accepted those results, even though it was done manually, was because the law allows for either electronic transmission or manual transmission where there is no way to transmit electronically. Either is what the law says. And that is what caused the problem for both Atiku and Peter Obi because the law allowed it.

Therefore, the argument from then on was that we have to change the law to read clearly so that there’s no ambiguity at all. It has to be only electronic transmission of the results from the polling unit directly to INEC server, not by hand.

Because we vote by hand, all the results are collated by hand, but the result, the final result should be transmitted electronically.

That was the reason the issue went to the National Assembly to revise that law to make it clear.

So what we have now, which was signed by the president yesterday or so, and which was approved and organised by the Senate president, was back to square one.

Now the argument against what he has done is that there are some places where you cannot transmit. This is not acceptable because it’s a bloody lie. The truth of the matter is all the agencies, the federal government agencies that have authority on the transmission, on the strength of our communication system, have said that if you have two gigs, it’s enough to transmit electronically, and we have three gigs in most places. And we have internet connection in every place in Nigeria. That is on record. Sometimes, when you want to transmit something, they will say, ‘waiting for Wi-Fi.’

Yes. You wait, but the result is already there. You post it, and when Wi-Fi comes to INEC, it will see it. So, there is really no excuse.

What has happened now with this quick signing of this bill is a part of the plan; it’s a continuation of the plan to rig the election for Tinubu to return in 2027 by hook or crook.

The first plan is that they would have only one party. The APC has tried everything through Wike to dislodge the PDP. We are still in court today. He is planning so that PDP shouldn’t have a presidential candidate. Have you ever heard of a thing like that? Their plan is that there will be only one presidential candidate; one political party. This incestuous political move, which is destructive to democracy in Nigeria and insulting, and is also an attack on Nigeria’s free speech, free will, and independence.

What will be the assessment of the international community on Nigeria when the country is still talking about this issue in 21st century?

Please, don’t talk about developed countries unless you want to call Ghana a developed country. Ghana, Kenya, and there is no country in African now, except a few we shouldn’t be comparing ourselves with, unless we want to call our self a banana republic. Most countries in Africa now have overcome this issue.

Based on data from the Nigerian Communications Commission and NIGCOMSAT Limited, here is the status of network coverage for Nigeria as at the end of 2023: – 5G: 11.8 per cent; 4G: 84.19 per cent; 3G: 89.42 per cent; 2G (voice, SMS): 94.14 percent and NIGCOMSAT-1R (rural connectivity): 100 per cent

The above is from a government agency (NCC) and a government-owned company (NIGCOMSAT) that successive administrations (including the incumbent) have relied on for network coverage information, especially when they are eager to announce the successes that Nigeria got because of their ICT policies and action, so it can’t be waived off as opposition research or private sector data.

Anyone that says INEC Nigeria can’t transmit real-time election results in 2027 is clearly perfecting the act of rigging the upcoming general elections in advance. We know, for a fact, that results change between polling units and collation centres in order to achieve pre-determined, rigged results, so this is not an admission of lack of coverage but a war on credible elections.

It’s obvious that this administration, beginning from the days of Muhammadu Buhari, has no interest in representing the interests of the people. They’re just there to hold onto power for themselves and their friends and colleagues. And that is why we must vote them out.

All countries are doing things to improve their democracy. This Bola Tinubu presidency is doing everything to destroy our democracy so that we have a one-party state in Nigeria. He’s destroying multi-party democracy. And the way he’s going on, he is inviting the international community to intervene in our election, which, by the way, we welcome as an opposition party. All we are saying is that the election should be free and fair. We are not talking about Christian genocide. We are not talking about insecurity in Nigeria. It’s against Christians. No, no, no. Insecurity in Nigeria is insecurity for all of us, even though in some parts of the country, the Christians are getting the worst of it.

Therefore, that’s already attracting the international community. For the one that will be free of ethnicity, free of religion, free of anything, is this question of proper and credible election.

That’s a democratic issue, which all over the world, people will be looking at. And this is what will eventually outdo Tinubu in 2027, because the international community will not stand for it.

Let me remind you, the elections we had in 2024 in Edo, in Ondo, and other places had the same problem. Wherever we have results coming from the polling unit, which we have a copy of; in Edo, we had a copy of the results, whereby our PDP candidate was leading by far. All of a sudden, it got to the coalition centre, where INEC is in control by itself, not supervised by our agents. Now, the results changed to favour the APC candidate. The same happened in Ondo.

This is what we are fighting against. This is what brought about the job for the National Assembly to change this rule to favour Nigerians so that we can vote and our elections can be credible.

Already, Nigerians have deemed the 2027 election conclusively unacceptable and that it is not credible based on what we are seeing now. The international community has also seen it as not credible, President Tinubu and Senate President Akpabio are working to make the election not credible.

Don’t forget that just a few months ago, we had the same issue with the tax bill, whereby some results came out of the National Assembly. When it got to the Senate President, the results were changed to favour what the president wanted; and this is what is going on with this electronic transmission of results in real time.

I remember that when they had the first ruling to amend the 2022 Electoral Law, Senators like Victor Umeh, representing Anambra Central, came up and said about 85 per cent of his colleagues voted in favour of direct time electronic transfer of results, and then all of a sudden Akpabio went backstage and somehow manufactured a new set of results.

The voices of Nigerians have been altered, have been polluted, our interests have been diverted. I want you to keep in mind also that we have a constitutional crisis right now and it’s going to blow up before the 2027 election, which is what Tinubu is planning so that there will be no election because if there’s an election, he has failed so badly in his leadership of this country

Don’t forget that in this round of talks about this electronic transmission of results, the House of Representatives, voted overwhelmingly for the transmission of results real time.

That is why the other day, they were shouting that the APC party is a thief, is a bloody burglar and robbers politically, and they should be discarded.

So, what I will propose for now, at least, is for the House of Representatives to impeach the president.

It happened even in America. You know that Clinton was impeached, the same thing with Trump by the lower house. Let it be on record that his activities, his behaviour, his attitude to governance is so negative, so bad, so destructive that this man should be gotten out of office.

What do you think the APC should be afraid of since they have 30 governors and the majority in the National Assembly as well as in the states assembly?

Well, the party is afraid of the people. APC knows that this next election is not about party affiliation, and it’s not about governors. All that is a show, they know where the deal is. The deal is election. Have you read my analysis of what happened in 2023 presidential election?

In 2023, APC had 22 state governors, Tinubu won in only 12 of those states. PDP had about 12 governors, Atiku won in only five or six of those states. The most dramatic of all examples is Peter Obi, who had no governor at all and won 12 states. He won Abuja and also Lagos, where Tinubu  is the king. You should know that having those governors doesn’t mean anything; it is just for show, to give the impression to people who don’t understand what’s going on to feel that oh, they’ve already won the election since they have 30 state governors, which means that they’re going to win in 30 states. No, not at all. You know that.

APC knows that people are very dissatisfied with them. It knows that the cost of living has gone up, likewise inflation; the rate of unemployment is up. Everything bad about Nigeria is up, and everything good about the country is down, and they always lie to cover their problems; they know that they’re lying, and they know that people are not deceived and that people may not vote for them.

Voter turnout in 2023 was only about 28 per cent. Out of 90 million people registered to vote, only about 26 or 27 million voted. Now, in this coming election, they know that the voter turnout may be even lower than that or if it is high, it should be because people want to come out to make sure that APC loses the election all around.

People from Akwa Ibom are already telling me that they are going to do everything possible to make sure that Akpabio does not return to the senate because, in the first place, he has no business in the senate. He did not even run for senate, so how could he have won election for senate? The same Tinubu rigged the election for Akpabio, and the INEC commissioner, who manipulated the results for Akpabio is in jail.

You see what is going on? They are showing their own hand now; they know that the people will vote against them. Even if it’s just a minority of people who come out to vote, 80 per cent of them will be voting against APC, and then, Tinubu is gone. That’s why he’s trying to manipulate and control the electoral system. Already, he has the chairman of INEC, who is doing his bidding in every way. Now, they’re talking about deregistering the ADC.

They want to deregister ADC and then undermine PDP. But if PDP contests this election with one leg, we will win the election, because it’s to be against an already destroyed APC. And they know that.

Can you imagine Wike’s mission that he made clear to us in PDP, is that we should not field a candidate for president in 2027. What does that tell you? Can you see how afraid they are?  They are so scared that they don’t want to go for election, they just want to go for ratification so that they’ll be the only one contesting against themselves, because they know anybody who contests against them, they are bound to lose.

The people already have signed off on that; that this administration must go. It’s a continuation of the Buhari disaster. It has now deepened everything, deepened our disunity, and deepened poverty all across the country. We have never been more divided like this. Our security system is so bad that the Times of London last year, or March, 2024, was saying that the way we are going, we are going to become a failed state; technically, a failed state, the way we are going.

And that is showing every day. They just cover it up with lies.

The government knows how to manipulate information, but it’s not going to last forever.

The president has everything on ground going for him. Besides the governors, there is also the City Boys movement, where all the young people are working to make sure that Tinubu gets re-elected. Is there any hope for the opposition?

Like I said before, if you find APC in control of the National Assembly, and you find APC in control of the judiciary, and you find APC in control of INEC, then why do you think APC is still afraid?

If all these youths you mentioned say they are going to vote for APC, it’s a lie. It is propaganda; that’s why they have manipulated the electoral acts so that the election will be in their favour. If you have all these people in control as it appears to be – the judiciary, INEC, security agencies, all of them are under control of the government then why are they still afraid?

They’re afraid because they know that they are not really in control of all these. All of these people we talk about, and their families, all of them go to the same markets that we all go to. All of them have to travel under a system where to go from one village to the other now is a risk.

In the north, I don’t think that Tinubu would have 20 per cent of the vote.

And he knows it. He has divided this country like never before.

Don’t forget that there’s hardly any institution in the north that agreed with his tax policies. And he never bothered to explain.

Everything he’s doing is to empower his ethnic group, just like Buhari did. And they know that the only way they can win the election, therefore, is to rig the results of the election.

If Tinubu comes to town today, he probably would have a lot of people following him, but at the end of the day he will be defeated by the grace of God.

With the way you’re talking, are you suggesting the opposition should boycott the election?

If we boycott the election, he will just swear himself in as the next president in 2027. What we should do is to call attention to all the ways he is manipulating the election. The manipulation of the result from the polling unit is really the crisis in the way he wants to win the election. My own recommendation is that we don’t boycott the election to leave him to go and have his way. We should just call attention to it.

Just as it is being done now where people are leading revolts all over the place, a protest all over the place, which is good. We will call the attention of the international community, the election observers coming from the United Nations; coming from everywhere to Nigeria, and let us make sure that whatever he does; whatever APC does, we would have the proper results of the election. That’s what we’re saying – let us have the results of the election as the Nigerian people are voted, and not by the way it has been manipulated and stolen by the APC as they stole it in 2023. You know 2023 is another good example, and we are not sure that anybody won that election. If you look at what happened with the question of two third of the states and so on and so forth; are you supposed to win Abuja before you can say you won? All of those questions are still there.

All we are saying is this; to overcome all the controversies, let us insist on proper results of the election. That’s where we will stand.

We will not say we are not participating in the election. If you do that, that’s what he wants.

He wants a crisis whereby he will say, well, nobody said they shouldn’t, but it’s a free world. Why didn’t they come to participate?

We have experienced that before in Lagos, PDP, when we decided to boycott some local council elections. They just ignored us, went, and swore themselves in. They won everything.

My advice is that we are not going to boycott the elections.

Nigerians, we just vote and vote them out. Vote our conscience, and make sure that our vote counts.

No matter what, we will put pressure both from inside Nigeria and outside of Nigeria to make sure that the votes count, and we have a credible election that is going to be announced.