Nigeria should not have more than four parties —Outgoing Ondo REC, Agbaje

In this interview with JACOB SEGUN OLATUNJI, Ondo State Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Mr Olusegun Agbaje, who leaves office this week, speaks on general issues affecting the conduct of elections and the secret behind the successful completion of the governorship election in Ondo State and his five years’ service with the commission.

WHAT has been your experience in working with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) over the past years?

Well, a journey of five years is quite a long one, but I will that say so far so good, I give all glory to God. It has not been very easy and it is not a very smooth one, particularly coming from my background in the area of security where I was used to. In fact, when this appointment was initially made, I was almost saying how do I fit into INEC’s job coming from a security background? But by the time I started in Kogi State, I began by learning from people and carrying them along. All my life, my way has been to learn from everybody, even from the drivers and stewards. I learn from everybody; I don’t look down on people by saying this one is not good or things like that.

When I started, I carried them along and tried to know things that I didn’t know. I didn’t say because I was the boss in Kogi State, I must know everything; it was not like that. I allowed everybody to play his or her role then. Where necessary, I put some sort of mechanisms together. But as I said, INEC is a particularly different environment; all we can just say in terms of INEC and election is that election in Nigeria is a very serious business. Like my Honourable Chairman would say, it’s quite different from what you see in other parts of the globe. I think we are a peculiar set of people in Nigeria and that makes elections very interesting.

In what sense?

It makes elections very interesting in the sense that what people in other countries will not see as a very serious matter, it is a very serious matter in Nigeria. For instance, the issue of faith in the establishment that is going to carry out the elections is very important. In many countries, it is allowed that once you finish the elections, the person taking the result to the next stage of collation can do it without any security escort. But here in Nigeria, hardly can you say you want to take result to collation centre alone. The supervisor in that area will want to do that with many security or other party agents following him. In other countries, they see it as normal and that it is your job to do. In other places, they don’t even provide vehicles for you; you are to either wait on the roadside to use a commercial vehicle or go through personal vehicle. You can also wave down a police vehicle and ask to go along with them and if they allow you, then you are lucky. But here it is not like that. That is an area that we have to improve upon. We need to improve in the area of faith in the commission or in the agency carrying out the elections, because where faith in one another, we cannot believe ourselves. We need to have faith. Political party A should have faith in political party B; party B should also have faith in party C; and they all should believe that the umpire (INEC) is going to do a good job.

In your five years of service, you served in Kogi and you have also conducted governorship elections in Osun, Kogi and Ondo states. What were the challenges you faced during the five years and how did you overcome them?

Well, the challenges are quite numerous. But I will say that the staff members that I worked with were the kind of people that one could just go to sleep and allow them do their job and one will get a good result. It is very good when you have good people to work with you, so that you have less shouting to do and less directives to give. Once you have a good management team, the basic thing to do is better planning. When you and the management are walking on the same way, rather than when you are working to succeed and some of your management team are talking to politicians here and there and so on, then there will be success.

But when you cannot even get your Administrative Secretaries to key into the system to go the same way with you, you will have problem. However, if they agree with you, you will have fewer challenges. Even if the challenges come, you will just find out that they are things that are quite surmountable and that has been the planning, planning and planning and God too has always been by our side. Here in Ondo State, we did a lot of prayers and fasting last year for the governorship election to succeed.

So, it is not only physical voting or collating, because if you don’t pray you will have people that will want to spoil the work for you, like we had here last year. I believe it is the act of God and His grace that just kept us through. When you also have a boss that believes and trusts you and a commission that you can say this is my own commission, then all challenges would be surmountable. I called the chairman the first time when I was pressed. I just took my phone and I said, “Sir I heard so, so and so thing; that is not the true position, by tomorrow I would email my response to you. “The second time, my Administrative Secretary just called me one Sunday afternoon and asked whether I had seen the newspaper, I said I had seen it but I had not read it. He drew my attention to a particular page and I went to read it. I just called the chairman and told him. He said that he was in Kaduna and I said ‘sir, I have read so, so and so story in the [paper] and this is what it is about and this is my take. By tomorrow morning before 12 p.m., you will get my response again.’ Before I could even respond, he had directed his Chief Press Secretary to issue a release again.

So when you have somebody like that, you too will want to impress him to make sure that what people want to spoil could not be spoilt. Not everybody wanted us to have a peaceful election in the state, not

everybody. But to the glory of God, the election was held successfully and all the stakeholders embraced the outcome and no litigation in whatever form.

You will be leaving office on March 3; would you say you are leaving the commission a fulfilled man?

Of course, yes. From the start till now, it has been from one success story to another. I successfully conducted three governorship elections in Kogi, Osun and Ondo states. Two of them, the opponents challenged the results but the results were upheld at the courts and the recent one in Ondo State, the opponents accepted the outcome. I have to be grateful to former and present chairmen of the commission under whom I served and the wonderful staff I worked with. They are wonderful people.

All I have to say is to thank God and thank all the staff I worked with in the states that I served.

My words of advice to them is that they should keep the flag flying and should continue to do all those things that will contribute to the growth and development of the commission, which will  take it to greater heights among the electoral bodies in the continent and the globe.

As an insider for five years, what do you think can be done to improve the activities of the commission?

The simple answer is proper funding. The executive arm should address this area properly. Though the commission is on first line charge, but more still needs to be done in the area of funding.

Yes, we have other areas like the judiciary, education, security, health, the National Population Commission (NPC) and the National Assembly, among others, which also require serious funding, but priority has to be given to INEC in order to deepen the nation’s democracy. If we have a stable and institutionalised democracy, then other sectors will be stabilised as a nation.

What is your take on the views on one party state and multi-party state ahead of the 2019 general election?

To me, there is nothing wrong in the multi-party system being practised in the country now.

But I must say that the number of the political parties we have currently is not the best; is it leading to wasteful spending by the Federal Government. As of today, we are having over 40 registered political parties while several ones are coming on board. This is going by the number of political associations that had submitted their documents to INEC for registration as political parties.  I am afraid that at the end of the day, we may be having over 100 political parties. Come to think of it, the names, colours and the logo of all the political parties must be printed on the ballot papers. Apart from the fact that this will be too costly, it will be difficult for most of them to be recognised. What of the cost of printing the ballot papers for the elections?

For me, we should not have more than four political parties that will be manageable. Let all other parties be collapsed into the four while others that think they cannot fit into the four should go and sleep. Most of the political parties, after registration, you hardly hear anything about them; they cannot even win a councillorship seat in any state. Some of the politicians will only go and get registered and

be waiting for the bigger political parties to consume them.

What is reaction to the report that the management of INEC in Ondo State compelled all the staff to make compulsory contribution towards your send-off?

That report is false and should not even be given a space in the media, because it was malicious. The truth of the matter is that it is a tradition in Nigeria to celebrate a colleague who is leaving an office on transfer or retirement from an organisation like ours. I could recall that when I was leaving the service, it was organised for me and the same thing happened in Kogi State where I once served.

A send-off party was organised for a staff and they agreed to make voluntary contributions.  Some people responded promptly, while some refused. But on the day of the party, it was colourful.

What they did was to disallow those who refused to contribute to participate in the activities. They were on the windows as onlookers Alas, when the next one came up, they were the first set of people to make their contributions. So, this time round, the same thing is happening.

But, I have to point out here that some of those behind the false allegations are some of those we disciplined because of their unholy alliance with politicians during the last governorship election in the

state. When we got reports against them, we invited and investigated them and those that were found wanting were disciplined while those found not to be involved were either retained at the state headquarters or returned to their stations. So, people should disregard such rumour.