A lot of people have viewed the determination of the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, to challenge the victory of President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the February 23 presidential election as a contravention of the Peace Accord signed by all parties. What is your take on this?
The signing of the Peace Accord, I think, is to avoid a resort to violence. Though I have not read the terms of the Accord fully, I think basically it is about avoidance of violence after the elections. And since no one would know what would happen at the election proper, I do not think the fact that a party has signed a peace accord should preclude such party from challenging the result where it truly feels aggrieved.
In challenging election results, while it is not a fashionable thing in most democracies, considering the stage we are in, it may be part of the developmental stages towards getting our acts together. With time, the volume of election petitions will drastically reduce if not totally removed from our electoral system. But for now, we will still have to be contending with it.
But some people have been saying that the fact that President Goodluck Jonathan did not approach the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal in 2015 means that Atiku doing it in 2019 is a retrogression for the country’s democracy. What is your view on this position?
Well, that really may be there that what President Jonathan did was statemanly. He should be emulated. However, the odds were so much against President Jonathan then and Nigeria was actually looking for a change. I do not think the same can be said about the 2019 election. The circumstances are not the same. The percentage of hope that Jonathan had in 2015 was far less than the percentage of hope held by Alhaji Atiku Abubakar on the 2019 election.
As someone who has served as a Resident Electoral Commissioner in two states for many years, how do you feel when you organise an election and a party goes to court to challenge the outcome? Doesn’t that impugn the credibility of the election you have conducted?
It depends on the grounds; if the ground is, maybe, something that has to do with the candidate. For instance, the ground may be on the whether the candidate is qualified or not, it may be that he does not have the requisite qualifications or that he has committed violence or done other things that are bad. That is between the candidates. But where the ground is a complaint against the electoral umpire, it calls for concern. So, it is not a one-way answer; it depends on what are the complaints. If the complaints are about the conduct of the electoral umpire, one would feel that he has not done enough until he is absolved by the tribunal or the court as the case may be. But where it is a complaint against a contestant who has been declared the winner, for instance, on his qualification or what have you, then INEC will remain neutral and will not feel any burden, because the law says INEC on its own cannot disqualify any candidate. But where the other has evidence or facts that would disqualify an otherwise qualified candidate, then that is between them. It is not a reflection on INEC as a body.
and then