The South West Zonal Caretaker Publicity Secretary of the National Extra-Ordinary Convention Planning Committee of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr. Dapo Karounwi, who hails from Ekiti State, speaks with SAM NWAOKO on the fallout of the party’s governorship primary election held recently.
Sir, you have been hearing the reactions, especially from the group of seven aspirants, to the outcome from the primary election conducted by your party in Ekiti State. How do you react to the fallout?
Incidentally, I am from Ekiti State and I was a part of the stakeholders meeting called by the election committee sent by the national headquarters of our party to Ekiti State. The meeting was held on the eve of the primary election on January 26 and seven of the eight aspirants were in attendance. The guidelines for the primaries were read out and line by line, they were discussed. Consensus was reached on how to go about the election the following morning; resolutions were arrived at and read out for the confirmation of all of us. In fact, the atmosphere was so beautiful and cordial that the aspirants themselves called for pictures and videos with the election officers, after which we left. The hours of seven and eight were slated for the accreditation of voters and about 9:30a.m. on the day of election, when the process of election had started in all the wards, we learnt that a group of aspirants with pockets of their followers were agitating in front of the state secretariat of the APC. Interestingly, many people were not even aware of it because all those old people had trooped out en masse and were already queuing at their various wards and only those of us on the social media knew that something like that was happening. The voters did not even know about it.
Why do you think they were agitating… what would the grouse now be, after you said there was a beautiful meeting the previous evening on the modalities for the conduct of the election?
They claimed that those who were electoral officers for ward and local governments were sympathizers or supporters of one of the aspirants, Biodun Abayomi Oyebanji. That was their claim. I do not know of any other ground for the agitation but what I just said is what I read about the issue.
Was there anything wrong in the selection of the returning officers, to the best of your knowledge? Did your party follow the guidelines?
For the first time in the history of direct primary election in this country, the APC introduced a reform and brought a lot of innovations into direct primaries option; and these were experimented and implemented in Ekiti State. We all knew what direct primary was until the Ekiti experience recently. I was a participant; I had experienced and participated in direct primaries a couple of times. I experienced it in 1996 when I contested and won the post of Councillor in Efon Local Government. Even in 2007, I also emerged the candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) at the time through a direct primary. The direct primary option has always been a system where aspirants import students from the neighbouring towns to come and join the queue and shore up the numbers because there was nothing to accredit or to authenticate membership of a political party. In some situations, when aspirants see that they are not going to make it, they orchestrate violence to disrupt the exercise, and that kind of situation would allow the electoral officers to write figures. That was why we witnessed bogus and unrealistic figures associated with elections that were conducted through the direct primary option in this country. This is why some people came to the conclusion that ‘direct primary is direct rigging’. Even the proponents of direct primaries, except now that we are witnessing a reform in the conduct of direct primary in Ekiti State, knew that it was easy to rig using direct primary.
People need to get the guidelines for the direct primary of APC to see the various novel innovations that have been introduced. One of them is that a certified true copy signed from the national headquarters of our party, of registered members in each ward and polling units of Ekiti State were made available through the electoral officers sent by the national headquarters. This was made possible by the effort of the Mai Mala Buni-led caretaker committee of APC, which embarked on membership registration and revalidation last year. Most political parties in this country hardly conduct registration that is credible and reliable. So, the advantage of that exercise was witnessed in Ekiti State and we benefitted from it. In my ward, for the first time, I saw the register for my ward certified from the national headquarters, given to us. In the guidelines, for the first time too, there was period for accreditation, unlike in the past. In the case of the last election in Ekiti, between the hours of 8am and 12pn, no voting, all that was required was accreditation of APC members. I got to my ward and I was asked to present my APC identity card and voter’s card because we had agreed earlier at the stakeholders meeting that the two documents must be presented together. We had mobilised people and sensitised them on this. That was the procedure across the state. When it was 12pm, the guideline says before voting proper, the number of accredited voters must be ascertained and counted in the presence of every voting member, INEC officials and security agencies. The number of the registered voters must be recorded openly before the voting starts. That was the procedure across the state. I shared experiences with others in other parts of the state and it was the same story, it was a beautiful outing in all parts of the state.
ALSO READ FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE
The aggrieved aspirants are believed to be strong, and they have been speaking and are threatening to make their thoughts count in the coming election. What do you think should be the next line of action now?
Let me clear something about politics. When we attribute strength to people in a democracy, we are talking about how many people who can queue behind you in an election or that can stand by you when the chips are down. How many followers do you actually command? Big names do not win elections. It’s about how close you are to your people? Politics is not about big names and ability to address press conferences. The big names knew they were losing the election and the best thing to do to save face is to withdraw and try to discredit the process.
The figures show that we have 183,000 plus registered APC members in Ekiti State. On the day of this primary election that looked like a general election, 107,000 plus came out for accreditation. But when the vote proper was conducted, total votes cast was 104,000 plus. About 3,000 people somehow did not return when the exercise took place. Biodun Oyebanji scored close to 102,000 of the total votes.
So, are you foreclosing negotiations with these aggrieved aspirants or what exactly are you saying?
No, not at all. I was only speaking on what it means when a politician is described as strong and has a big name. I also gave the figures so that you can see what the statistics look like and the overwhelming support the people gave to their preferred candidate and how they showed their readiness to stand by him in that election.
However, I must state that APC is a party of reconciliation. For us in APC, reconciliation is always work in progress. Days ago, the national reconciliation committee that was set up to reconcile aggrieved members across the country submitted its interim report at the national headquarters of the party in Abuja. And it is an ongoing thing because for us in APC, reconciliation is inbuilt in our system and it is a continuous exercise. So, those who are aggrieved will naturally be reconciled; they are leaders of our party; respectable personalities that we are not ready to lose. Thank God that they have said that they are not ready to leave the party despite the fact that they are aggrieved. They know their party and they are committed to their party and they want to see the party winning the governorship election. Although they made some statements that I consider not too good, I don’t expect statements like that to come from leaders who have benefitted from the party. They were quoted to have said that they would stay in the party and teach the party a lesson it will not forget. Such statement from leaders who benefitted and are still benefitting from the party was not good enough. However, they might have said it out of anger and didn’t mean it, because they are credible leaders of our party. I am aware that Biodun Abayomi Oyebanji has been reaching out to them and extending hand of fellowship and reconciliation to them. I am aware too that some other leaders of our party have been reaching out to them and trying to rally them behind the candidate of the party. I can see that in the nearest future, these leaders are not ready to leave the party and they have made this abundantly clear. They are benefitting from the party and they would continue to benefit from the party. So, I really do hope that the reconciliation and healing process would soon be concluded.
The election is expected to take place in June and you expect that before then, you would have made the aggrieved aspirants drop the idea of ‘teaching the party a lesson it will never forget’?
How can we wait till June? We will not wait till June. Of a fact, I can assure that by the end of this month, everything would be permanently resolved. Do not be surprised that before the end of this month, some of them would have bought and donated branded vehicles for the campaign and election of Biodun Abayomi Oyebanji in the spirit of APC brotherhood and the spirit of the love they have for the party; and in the spirit of the love and respect we give to the authorities and leadership of the party. These are gentlemen. We will campaign together, you will see it. It is a family affair, we are together.
and then