Associate Professor of History, lawyer and immediate past Head of Department of History, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, Tunji Ogunyemi, speaks to DARE ADEKANMBI on the clamour for a third force, INEC’s readiness for 2023 elections, zoning debacle, among others.
Given the internal combustion in the APC and PDP, people have again raised the issue of a third force. With election one year from now, do you see the disgruntled politicians in both parties coming together on a neutral platform to challenge the two parties?
It is not only about whether it can be achieved, is it that a third force is here already. I would not like to use the phrase ‘disgruntled politicians’ that you used. I will rather call them patriots who are interested in getting out of a group of deceitful people to do the right thing for fatherland. Who are the patriots? These are people who are have seen the truth concerning the deceitful leadership in their respective dominant political parties, APC and PDP and are coming out as relevant critical mass to leverage the opportunity of a pan-Nigerian solidarity to establish a third force. An allusion to this was made by the respected governor-elect of Anambra State, Professor Charles Soludo. This is a signal to the fact that a third force already exists.
Election in just a year from this month, do you think they can still realise this?
Even one day in politics is like one year. Forget the issue about elections being so close. How close was election in 2015 when APC was formed and yet it defeated the party in power? So, the shortness of time does not restrict political alignments. What it can just do is that it will require more efforts from these patriots who will leverage the Soludo Thesis and begin to do the needful. I won’t go further than that.
Do you see INEC as being ready for the elections?
INEC is not ready for 2023 elections, but Nigerians are ready and Nigerians are superior to INEC. I said INEC is not ready because of two reasons. One, the Electoral Act has not yet been properly amended to suit the requirements and realities of Nigeria’s political context. Two, the budget for INEC is still a thing that is subject to executive fiat and control. Were it to be in a better clime, INEC’s funds would have been a first-line charge from the federation account from which it can draw to do national elections. But now, it is still part of a federal budget and as long as it is part of the national budget, the political economy or if you like politicking concerning federal budgeting shall apply. I tell you that Nigerians and if Nigerians are ready, nobody can stop them.
INEC is so optimistic the election next year will be transparent, especially with the introduction of electronic transmission of results from the polling units to the collation centres. Are you optimistic in this direction?
I am utterly optimistic that INEC will apply the electronic principle as far as it is practicable and in most cases it is practicable in eight out of 10 constituencies in the country. It is only in the extremely remote areas in the North-East and North-West of Nigeria that electronic transmission of results may have some difficulty. But then, in more than two-thirds of the federation, electronic transmission of results is practicable. I will like to say INEC wants to go missionary this time, if you like, aggressively to ensure that e-transfer of results which is more efficient shall be applied. I trust INEC will do that.
INEC says it is determined to monitor spending by candidates to ensure they comply with the limit set in the Electoral Act. Do you see them achieving this? Are the limits set in the law, for instance, N5b for presidential and about N1b for governorship elections realistic?
It is not realistic and completely not in sync with the value of the naira and the reality of the economy. Nigeria is a huge country with almost 924, 000 square kilometres. That is four times the size of Great Britain. We also have a population of approximately 200 million at the last estimates. If anybody wants to contest in Nigeria, he will need to be relevant in 774 sub-units of the country, that is, 768 local government and six area councils in FCT. It is practically impossible for a presidential candidate not to print 30 million posters and each poster, with colour separation, is about N37, but even if it is N30. And he will print such posters in Igbo, Hausa, Kanuri, Yoruba attires, meaning it will be in at least 27 attires of the major ethnic groups in the country. When you multiply that by 30million, it is already more than N2billion for posters alone. The candidate will do an advertising brief of about four months and aired about seven times on radio and on television with one exposure being between N75, 000 and N150, 000. That is another N3billion for advertising alone.
There are people who are called foot soldiers such as party agents and even agents against agents because your agents can collaborate with the agents of other parties to rob you. So, there will be a policeman for a policeman and at least three agents per polling booth. If you pay your agents N40, 000 and the opposition is paying them N100, 000, do you think they will support you? For anybody to contest as president of the country, the fellow will need a minimum of N30billion. What is contained in the amendment to the Electoral Act is not realistic. Over the years, candidates have found ways to short-circuit the law by permitting their political parties to spend the extras for them. Political parties can spend an unrestricted amount of money on their candidates, but it is only the candidate that is prevented from spending more than N5billion for a presidential election. They will just divert what they have into the spending of their parties and claim they are not the ones doing the spending. After, the parties will be doing the spending on behalf of the candidates.
So, the provisions on spending limit can easily be circumvented and of course they have been circumventing the law. They said nobody can donate more than N10million. What of if the person donates through his proxies N10millioon in 1,000 places? So, that law is not implementable. It is part of the utopia in our system. INEC should concentrate more on the veracity, authenticity and the veracity of election results, rather than nosing into how much a candidate should spend or not spend.
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INEC has been crying out that time is running out on a new Electoral Act which it said ought to be in place 12 or 14 months before the elections…
President Buhari was ill-advised to withdraw assent to the amended electoral bill. He should have signed it and then send an amendment to the National Assembly immediately. Don’t forget Buhari is a politician and so he is an interested party. In eight out of 10 times, he will play to the gallery to look at what is in it for him before he signs the bill. And with the kind of the Attorney General of the Federation that we have who knows very little or next to nothing about national consciousness, national balance, particularly when it comes to fairness and equity, you can be sure that, that kind of spurious advice will come to the president who will most likely do what he has done. This is one of the sore areas of this presidency; a presidency that does not key to the side of the people and prefers to stay on the side of the elite. I think Nigerians should be wary of such a presidency and of levying that kind of liability on themselves in the next election.
From all indications, the APC might pick its presidential candidate from the South. But the PDP, which has said its ticket is open to all, is being speculated to be looking in the direction of the North. Should the two parties go hemispherically like we had in 2015, what do you foresee?
I foresee a stalemate. Don’t forget that the North votes based on what is called herd mentality by which they say they have the votes. That is the language of the North. And this time round, Nigerians, particularly from the southern part of the country, for the first time, are talking on issues that have to do with restructuring and equity, where equity means that the presidency must come from the South and where restructuring means that power must be devolved from the centre to the regions or the states. These two things the majority of the North does not support.
Yes, the North does have the votes, but it does not have enough votes to bulldoze its way to the presidency because it will never get the two-thirds. So, a stalemate is what I foresee. I know for sure that the PDP has extremely wise people and the APC is not short of wise people and both of them will most likely go for southern presidential candidates. But if the PDP or any party decides to go for a northern presidential candidate, that party has already announced its own obituary and Nigerians will sing nunc dimitis for such a party in 2023. That is the truth. Except if people don’t have any honour at all in the Southern part of the country, that is when they will say that another four years should go to the North because Section 14 subsection 2, 4 and Section 147 sub section 3 of the 1999 Constitution as amended recognise equity and the sharing of political power in the country. So, it is a constitutional issue. We may not like it because it does not allow meritocracy. But who says that it is through merit that leaders are selected and elected? Leaders are selected on the basis of either agreement by the units or qualification that is superior to some other person. The United States has the finest eggheads in its universities, why was it that it was Donald Trump who won a presidential election in the country? Politics is about who gets what and where? It is not about morality or about mathematics because politics is not mathematically calculable because it based on passion and sentiment. It is not a thing you add two plus two and get four. A person may be helping you and very pleased with you, but when he gets to power, he may be your enemy. The North will be doing itself a lot of favour by generally conceding the political leadership of the country to the South in 2023. It will rubbish itself finally if it wants another northern candidate.
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