The national chairman of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), Alhaji Falalu Bello, a few days ago, while addressing a press conference in Abuja, spoke on how the Justice Mohammed Uwais Electoral Reform Committee can transform Nigeria’s electoral process, the merger call by former vice president Atiku Abubakar, among other salient issues. TAOFEEK LAWAL was there. He brings these excerpts.
Many Nigerians believe that a lot was wrong with the conduct of the 2023 general elections. What steps should we take to reform our electoral process?
The PRP, though not agreeing that the 2023 general elections were devoid of irregularities, congratulated President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and all other elected leaders in states declared winners by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and affirmed as elected by tribunals, Appeal Court and the Supreme Court. Notwithstanding the congratulations to all elected leaders, we as a party, feel duty bound to point out what were wrong with the elections from the primary elections that produced candidates for the 2023 general elections and the recent off-season elections in Bayelsa, Kogi and Imo as well as some of the judgments on these elections. As the electoral process is far from being perfect and requires further reform and if democracy is to survive in Nigeria, the PRP is asking the executive arm of government headed by President Bola Tinubu and the legislature under Senator Godswill Akpabio and Rt Hon. Tajudeen Abbas to have the courage of jointly doing the late President Umar Musa Yar’Adua style by admitting flaws in the electoral process, which most Nigerians see, by continuing with the reform which Yar’Adua started through the Justice Mohammed Lawal Uwais Committee on Electoral Reform in Nigeria.
That INEC should be made an independent, non-partisan, impartial, professional, transparent and reliable institution by ensuring that all appointments to its board management are not done by executive but as put in Uwais’ report. It (INEC) should be relieved of political party registration and made to focus on elections only and its funding should be a first charge on the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the federation. Also, propositions of Uwais’ on elections disputes, electoral offences and widespread corruption in elections should be upheld by having Election Offences Commission to work independently in the arraignment and prosecution of electoral offenders inclusive of INEC, adjudication of Presidential, National Assembly, governorship and states’ assembly elections should be concluded before swearing in of winners. The rules of procedure should be amended to shift burden of proof on election malpractice to INEC with petitioner to only establish mismanagement. Also, corrupt practices in both primary and secondary elections should invalidate such elections.
And to avoid the current practice of winner takes all, the issue of proportional representation should be considered. Positions in government which heat up the policy and make despots of presidents, governors and even the local government chairmen should be looked into. We should allow winners of at least 2.5 percent of parliamentary seats be in the executive, allow women to occupy at least 30 percent seats in both legislative and executive arms as well as give people living with disabilities representation also in the executive and legislature. We also want to call on the judiciary to do some introspection and possibly cleaning in response to the exposition we recently heard from the likes of retired Justice Dattijo Mohammed of the Supreme Court and some of the verdicts coming from the Election Petition Tribunals.
Last year, a former vice president and PDP presidential candidate during last year’s general elections, Atiku Abubakar, called on the opposition to come together through merger or forming alliances to dislodge APC from power. Will PRP be part of this and what is your take?
Let me be very clear on this (mergers and alliances). PRP originates from NEPU which is a 74-year old party. We have been a political party in Nigeria since 1979, that is some 45 years. We stand for certain principles and we are not going to merge with any party that doesn’t believe in what we believe in. We are on the left of the structure, we are not on the right. For me PDP and APC are two evil sisters, part of the same coin, left or right, head or toe. What is the difference? It’s 25 years that the PDP and APC have ruled us collectively and we have seen what they did. Is it not the same Atiku who was vice president in PDP government? Is PDP different from APC in real sense? For me, it is the same ultra capitalists in this country governing the nation. I’m not saying we should not move as a party, we are a party of the left. I’m not saying this is going to continue. Today, China has the highest number of billionaires in the world. So we should move and change. But when you are going to bed, you should go to bed with somebody that you can sleep with well otherwise before you know, he would push you and you are going to break your hand.
We are who we are. We have remained consistent as a party. We were deregistered. We fought up to the Supreme Court to get our registration back. We believe there should be left and right in Nigerian politics and we are of the left and that is not to say Socialism as we know it or Communism as we know it is gold in the world. That is why we say China today has the highest number of dollar billionaires in the world because sometimes they do mixed economy.
Won’t you consider the merger considering how your party performed during the last general election?
Merger with who? Try to understand what I’m saying. If the Young Progressive Party (YPP) comes to me today and they say they want to merge, we have some principles that are alike. What do we have in common with the PDP except that we are political parties?
How about the NNPP and the Labour Party?
Labour Party ideally should be our partner. They came here (PRP national secretariat) last year (before the general elections) to talk with us but they are talking about one person being the presidential candidate. We shouldn’t look at the presidential candidate rather we should look at what to be done to bring ourselves together. For me, Labour Party is a natural ally if they change. We are not talking about any person. Not about me, not about Kola Abiola (PRP presidential candidate). For us, PRP is a platform that is available for every Nigerian to contest and is not for a particular person. It’s available for whoever that may want to join us but we should be clear.
Are you saying Atiku’s proposal will not be considered?
Why should I be in PDP circle? I don’t believe in what they believe in. In fact, I even asked the INEC chairman why he wanted to force me to be in PDP. I don’t believe in what PDP stands for. And truly I don’t. I know Atiku Abubakar. We have known him since 1984 as a person and that is a different matter whether I like his politics or I like him. But politically, what do I have in common with PDP? In PRP, we have formed government in Nigeria. You have seen us in action we don’t believe in what they believe in. Should we start to believe in what they believe in, No! But we believe in alliances, we believe in mergers.
However, we should merge or form alliances with people of like minds and not just with anybody. Our party is a party of the future. You cannot kill an idea but we will survive and we will thrive. We don’t have money here, we are only managing poverty. We are not managing riches because we don’t have riches. We have those who peg their form at N100 million. We took N10 million from Kola Abiola and that is because we had to do primaries in 36 places, otherwise, we won’t take it. For Houses of Assembly, we collected N100,000 only because we wanted to bring young Nigerians on board. 67 percent of voters in Nigeria are young people and these are the people that are shut out by PDP and APC. Why should I join them? They (PDP and APC) are taking the young people out of politics but we are not. We not only provide them with platform, we also make it affordable for them. We may have been prevented from winning but it is a matter of time. If care is not taken, this country will see fire. We are the poverty capital of the world today. How long this will thrive, nobody knows.
So we are not against mergers, neither are we against electoral alliances. In history, go and read it. The late Balarabe Musa, a former governor of old Kaduna State was a product of alliance between PRP and the defunct NPP that time. Electoral alliances in PRP are nothing noble, we have done it before, we’ll do it again but based on principles. Not because Atiku wants to be president. He can go and be president, that he has been trying for long. That is beyond spiritualism and that is between him and his God. It’s God that gives power. But we are not going to be party to any alliance with anybody that doesn’t believe in what we believe in. We won’t go into merger just because we want to prevent Bola Tinubu from becoming president. It will be done based on principles.
There have been calls for restructuring so that we can move forward as a nation. What is your party’s position on this?
We said we believe in true federalism. Go and read our principles. And indeed, true federalism will solve the problem of anarchy, IPOB and whatever we are going through. It is there in our party constitution. Why do I have to waste my time talking about restructuring when I say I believe in true federalism? True federalism will solve the problems of this country to a large extent. Maybe some people are lazy but what is the problem? The North, which did not have petroleum products in the First Republic, survived, thrived and did well with agricultural produce that can be produced even now. If we concentrate on onions alone, we can generate billions in export every year. This is a product which grows in very large quantities all over northern Nigeria. The oil we are talking about is not given to those in the riverine areas alone. We now know that there is oil in other parts of Nigeria. So we should allow regions to manage their resources.
The other day we saw the governor of Zamfara bring gold in a bullion van to former President Muhammadu Buhari, didn’t we? There is gold in Ilesa being mined illegally with no benefits to the people from that part of the country. As a political party, we believe in true federalism as a panacea for solving our socio-economic problems in Nigeria. If you believe in it, come and join us.
How do we tackle insecurity which is now taking a dangerous dimension in our country?
Don’t make mistakes about it. The wanton crimes you find all over whether it is Boko Haram, banditry, kidnapping or the IPOB that is preventing that man from coming out of this village unless he prays ten times a day will continue. The bandits are not coming from Mali, the Boko Haram people are not coming from Chad, the IPOB people are not coming from outside of the South East. I’m not saying that is an excuse for crime, but poverty propels crime. And unless we check what is going on in our country, believe me, we are in trouble.
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