2019: We must insulate INEC from Presidency —Yagbaji, ADP chair

As the face-off between the National Assembly and the Presidency for the amendment of the Electoral Act persists, national chairman of the Action Democratic Party (ADP), Sani Yagbaji, has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to exercise restraint, just as he expressed concern over what he perceived as the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) sympathy for the Presidency and by extension, the ruling All Progressives Congress, (APC). He spoke with TAIWO AMODU in Abuja.

THERE was so much frenzy when your party was to be unveiled. The news out there then was that a mega party to challenge the ruling party was being formed. Almost a year after, the narrative has since changed, leading to the impression that ADP was a mere flash in the pan. What is your take?

Of all the parties that were registered at that time, I think the only party that is growing is ADP. There is no other party that you can compare its growth rate with what is happening in ADP, in terms of people joining the party in the country and all over the world indeed. The fact that you aren’t hearing so much about us in the newspapers, I think is a strategy we have adopted. Yes, politics is about fanfare, noise making and what have you, but beyond that, there is the need to do most of the things that aren’t supposed to be in the open because remember we have a sitting government that you want to unseat and remember also that you have a previous government which was from another party.

So, we have to be very strategic in our approach to issues. We have to go under the ocean like they say. We have to act like a submarine that will come out to take by surprise the party that we want to push out of the political space. The All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have outlived their usefulness as far as the Nigerian and its development is concerned, as well as in terms of how we are seen in the global economic setting.

So, this is why we are, if you like, strategically silent, but we aren’t actually silent. We come out to say things when necessary so that we put records straight and give Nigerians hope that all isn’t lost. We can still take back this country. We can still give Nigerians that confidence that, yes, there is a credible alternative that at the right time will occupy the space. Like you know of course, nature abhors vacuum and a vacuum is being created as far as performance is concerned, as far as a party that you can say represents the aspirations of the people of this country is concerned.

This is why probably you may take the fact that we aren’t on the pages of newspapers as much as expected. But like you know, today the social media is the most effective medium to really reach millions of Nigerians, the voting community of youth and women who are the ones that are terribly disappointed about what is happening. They are angry and are looking for a way to really assert their positions and aspirations for the country. We are very vibrant, effectively engaging millions of Nigerians on the social media.

The forthcoming governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun states afford you the opportunity to prove your mettle and prove cynics wrong. How prepared is your party?

Even two days ago, we had a meeting in the South-West, that’s the zonal meeting and it was about our preparations to really tell Nigerians that the hope for a progressive Nigeria that people are looking forward to is here. The only way we can show it is by demonstrating that, yes, we have what it takes. We can win elections. And when we win, what we will do in Ekiti State between that time and 2019 elections, people will say ‘yes, these guys are really ready and understand the aspirations of the people of this country.’ We aren’t taking it lightly. We know what it means to us; we know what it means to Nigerians. We know what it means to the polity and we know what it means to really restore that hope in democracy because people are becoming so disenchanted that even the Deputy Senate President said coup is possible in Nigeria. So, you can see how despondent Nigerians have become; that people’s confidence has gone as far entrenchment of democracy is concerned.  But we know, and we are going to prove it that, no we have gone past that stage; that Nigeria has come of age. We shouldn’t be talking about military take-over in this country anymore, but it is happening because of the hopelessness of the situation. So, we are here to restore that hope to say we have had enough of military intervention. But what is happening can make people to begin to lose hope when a governor can carry bulldozer and bulldoze the building of his opponent, just for saying something different which is what democracy is all about. We don’t have to agree. We can disagree to agree. That’s the beauty of democracy, but if people in power are behaving like gangsters, as if we are in a banana republic, then, of course, people can get frustrated. But we are saying all hope isn’t lost.

There are two areas that this government has said it has fared better since coming on board: fighting insurgency and corruption. We have seen Boko Haram abducting over 100 students in Dapchi in Yobe State and we have also read the Transparency International rating of Nigeria in terms of fight against corruption. Can you give us your own appraisal of its performance in these two areas?

When APC leaders were campaigning, they gave Nigerians the image of personalities that really have not translated to something concrete in terms of programmes. We were overwhelmed by the propaganda which was used to package Buhari as silver bullet that you don’t have to think about anything. Once you mentioned Buhari, it is like a magic wand that makes things happen. It is just now that we are taken aback and shocked that a government that we gave total support has disappointed us. I don’t know if any government has ever had that kind of landslide victory in a contest as we had during Buhari’s emergence. They went to slumber once elected. Maybe they forgot that they were elected to run the affairs of this country. You can see that from that point, anybody that knows what he is doing, knows little about governance will know that they have lost it. They have nothing in the kitty for Nigerians as answers to their problems that they even campaigned that they were going to provide solutions to.

Today, three years down the line, International Monetary Fund (IMF) is telling us do the needful, do the most basic things in our financial system. They are wondering directors could not be appointed for the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), or they cannot confirm members of the Monetary Policy Committee. It tells you that the government you have is not a government, but a rag tag organisation, people that came together like an army of occupation coming to grab. For what reason? They don’t even know. No wonder, all the things they told us they would tackle have remained with us. In fact, if there is any government that I think is very corrupt, if you mention Buhari administration you don’t need to look further. Every index you want to look at in terms of measurement of government performance, we are in retrogression and they keep telling lies to Nigerians that we are out of recession and what have you but in the standard of living of the average Nigerian nothing has changed. If anything has changed, it is more killings, more hunger, people losing jobs and everything that you can say are the basic requirements of human existence have gone done. We are in more abject poverty than we were before. We are in more serious attacks than before. A government that cannot guarantee basic needs, that cannot bring you back together as one people, that government isn’t worth its name. So, what I am saying is that this is the most fraudulent government that you can ever have that sold dummies to Nigerians. Now, it is coming to light that this is a fraud that has been installed as a government.

If you can have over 100 students kidnapped into slavery and you are talking about Libyans enslaving our people when same slavery is taking place right under our nose and we don’t have a government that can protect us. The same government that campaigned that it was going to bring back our girls not only fail to bring them back, it even worsened the situation.

I don’t even know whether Buhari has good advisers. How can the president go to Kano to attend a wedding ceremony when daughters of people that voted for him are in captivity and the parents are mourning? The president who is the father of these girls will now go with 22 governors to attend a lavish wedding. How do you reconcile all these? I know he has put himself in a serious predicament because the countdown to the Goodluck Jonathan administration was after the kidnap of the Chibok girls that the international community now passed a vote of no confidence, which is what is happening today. Nigerians have passed a vote of no confidence in Buhari’s administration because it isn’t that they cannot do it, it is that they don’t even have the empathy for us. It just shows that there is a complete disconnect between the government and the people. So, the point I am making is that it isn’t only that they have failed, even the international community is now looking beyond the APC government because it has nothing to offer.

Let us talk about the perceived loss of impartiality of INEC as we approach 2019. The alleged underage voting in recent Kano and Katsina states is cause for concern, coupled with the hasty conclusion of the team set up by the commission to investigate it.  There is equally the controversy trailing the amendment of the Electoral Act, which reviewed the sequence of the forthcoming general elections. Are you convinced that INEC remains an unbiased umpire?

You see, it is very difficult question to answer. You know why? Look at the process by which INEC as a commission is composed. The selection of the chairman and its national commissioners is faulty. It doesn’t subject itself to free and fair conduct of election by such people because he who pays the piper dictates the tune. So, we are asking for a revisit. Some ingenuity in how those people that we call INEC personnel, especially at that level of chairman and commissioners, the Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) how they are appointed. It isn’t like Europe where people are independent-minded.  Again, there is the question of how nationalistic, how altruistic, how committed our people can be in our environment as a developing society.

Can we have independent minded people who will do things maybe like the one Professor Attahiru Jega did?

What I am trying to say is that you have to look at the condition under which people are operating before you can say, we can have a free and fair election. So, I am saying that Nigerians we have a duty to ourselves, to serve as the watchdog. Every individual that is interested in development of democracy in this country should be a watchdog over these people that we have as officials of INEC. They are human beings and the records of people in government in this country, especially developing countries, leave so much to be desired. So what is happening gives us a lot of concern, more so, when the same INEC is now saying the timetable that indicates that INEC is probably doing somebody’s bidding, regardless of what the law may say, the law has given it the right to order the election the way it wants. But INEC is an umpire. It is supposed to be impartial and to create a level playing field. Anybody that is in INEC today knows that if it conducts the presidential election first, knows by so doing they will have sent other parties into irrelevance. This is a situation where the president is like a umpire and that it dictates what it wants, regardless of what somebody is telling you, especially if he is a newly elected president that has a backing of the law to seek a mandate for another 4 years, you can imagine what he will be doing. You want to tell me that INEC officials don’t know this! So, if they are really independent people that we expect them to be: to be impartial and the need to have a government that will take us out of this quagmire, they would have agreed to a free arrangement of elections.

But what is unfair in having the presidential election first? There have been pronouncements from eminent lawyers that the constitution and the Electoral Act vest INEC with the powers that the National Assembly is trying to usurp or take from the commission?

But who puts the law in place? Again, the National Assembly put the law that they are now interpreting, isn’t it?  So if the National Assembly comes up with a different law that is interpreted to mean that now, you have to do it in a way that is fair to everybody, then so be it. If you are interpreting the amendment as it is, yes. The National Assembly isn’t begging INEC to go and do something that is unfair. They are giving them a law that will say, ‘do it this way so that we have fairness in the system.’ So, they have to obey the law and that’s what INEC itself is saying: that if there is a new law, they are ready to abide by it. But the issue now is that people expects President Buhari to sign that law and if he is a statesman, if he isn’t hungry for power and wants it at all cost, he will do the needful, to show Nigerians that he isn’t desperate for power. At his level, he knows what is fair and what isn’t good for the country. We expect him to sign the amendment into law; it is a litmus test for him.