Shehu Gabam, National Chairman of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), speaks with General Editor, TAIWO ADISA, on the 2023 general election and need for electoral reforms, among other issues.
Your party, SDP, is older than the Labour Party and is supposed to be the Third Force many politicians have been talking about. But Labour Party overtook your party in the last general election. What really happened to your party as per your performance against the PDP, APC, LP, and all other parties in that election?
I can say that given the associated factors that characterised the elections, from the presidency to the state Houses of Assembly, we, as a party, participated fully. We had candidates for president, governors, Senate, House of Reps, and House of Assembly. We submitted the list of candidates at all levels and followed the entire processes of INEC. And you know that the presumption of every politician is that the BVAS (Bimodal Voter Accreditation System) may not be perfect but would add a lot of value and credibility to the process. As a party, we campaigned vigorously. And of course, the calibre of the candidates we fielded, we expected a lot of senators, House of Reps, governors, and members of the House of Assembly. Based on our own calculations, we expected a lot of victories. But in all honesty, we did not expect that some of the things that manifested during the elections would go as far as that: the compromises, the monetisation issue, the flaws in all of the process, the tampering of the result sheets, the snatching of the ballot sheets and papers, which are very strong associated factors that affected the performance of most of the parties, apart from the APC, which narrowly escaped. Also, the voters’ apathy also affected the outcome of the election. In a country where we have over 90 million registered voters and you have just about eight million producing the president of the country, that shows that something is fundamentally wrong somewhere. That eight million would be similar to the figure that produced President Shehu Shagari in 1979. It shows something is fundamentally wrong somewhere.
Given all these associated factors I have mentioned, I believe that we tried our best in a very challenging situation. We were able to produce senators, members of the House of Reps, and members of the House of Assembly. We have outstanding cases in the election tribunal, and we believed that based on the certified copies and documents we have submitted, we are likely to win more seats. So by and large, from zero gravity to 12 elected members I believe we have fairly done very well.
Against some of the problems you enumerated, particularly those that had to do with election management, do you think the INEC chairman should be blamed for all these anomalies?
No. I do not think the chairman of INEC is responsible for all the flaws. The executive bears responsibility for most of the flaws we have noticed. Bear in mind that INEC is not independent. We are just calling it independent; INEC is not independent. Because in the absence of a secured environment, which is under the purview of the Commander-in-Chief, INEC cannot distribute election materials and [if INEC cannot distribute election materials] there would be no election. Deployment of election materials depends on the secure environment provided by the executive.
Number two, INEC has no direct line charge in terms of funding. It relies on the executive for funding. Thirdly, INEC is not in charge of infrastructure like roads and what have you. The Federal Government is in charge. Now, if it is supposed to take INEC one hour to deliver election materials at the polling units, because of the poor infrastructure, it will take five hours to get there. So, how do you blame INEC for that? At that period, there was scarcity of fuel, but INEC was not in charge of fuel. They also relied on the availability of fuel for the vehicles to deploy election materials. INEC does not have transport facility sufficient enough to develop election materials as they rely on the transport industry, to hire them, to deliver the election materials.
INEC recruited staff to conduct elections and did not know their loyalty, political interest, and others. The Youth Corps members were recruited on the streets and trust was transferred to them. Meanwhile, the staffers recruited have their loyalty to some people who nominated them for the job. So, you cannot tell me that they will be fair because you cannot establish their loyalty. INEC is supposed to have over one million staff; they have about 100,000. So, they are grossly understaffed. And the most critical aspect of it is that all the National Electoral Commissioners (RECs) were nominated by the executive. INEC has no input in their nomination. So, where do you have the independence of INEC? I can tell you that the entire INEC process has been hijacked. It is only the name that is there. So, there is no miracle that Professor Mahmoud [Yakubu] can perform to conduct a free and fair election because the road to the free and fair election had been tampered with.
The policy of former President Muhammadu Buhari by redesigning the currency, by using the former CBN governor to hijack public funds, which is economic sabotage, has already tampered with the election even before the election. These are facts. So, for anybody who is not in the field of operation, it is easy to shift the blame on the INEC chairman at whose desk the buck stops. But if you look at the characteristics and associated factors that guide INEC’s conduct of an election, you will know that there is virtually nothing they can do. They are handicapped because they are not in charge of the security agencies, infrastructure, fuel, and transport industry. Everything has to be contracted out, but then, the contractor can betray you, and what do you do? And then you have some internal compromises with some of the staff of INEC, which the chairman also acknowledged.
And if you look at it critically, he brought unprecedented transformation to INEC. Now, political parties can do election transactions and what have you from the comfort of their offices, submit all documents, and get acknowledgment without necessarily going to the INEC office unlike before. Before, if you do that, your form may get missing but everything has now been simplified and normalised. He has cut almost 60 per cent corruption in INEC. He has done so much, but for anything that has to do with general election in Nigeria, unless we Nigerians tell ourselves the truth and we restructure the electoral process in Nigeria, we amend the Electoral Act and make sure that election is conducted on a zonal basis so that there will be sufficient manpower to deploy per zone to conduct the election. We do not need to have all elections in one day all over the country. It is not possible, because of the size of Nigeria, poor infrastructure, and all that, we are just deceiving ourselves.
You said the INEC is not independent, now that we have the 10th Assembly in place, what are the amendments you will want in place to guarantee that independence?
On this, the National Assembly must play a critical role. Look at this 2022 Electoral Act, both INEC and political parties are just experimenting it and if you do not strengthen the law, you protect the party and the process of election, you are still running a fragile system and anything can happen. Two, we must make sure we create an orientation that our security agencies should see elections as a national service to their country, not being pro-government. They must understand that producing bad leaders through a corrupt system will not lead to the enhancement of the welfare of security agencies.
We all go to the same markets to suffer the same thing. They are grossly suffering because they are allowing bad leaders to be produced. Unless we project the culture of patriotism and commitment into the mindset of our security agencies, we have a long way to go. Now, you have to allow direct funding of INEC so that they can discharge their responsibilities on national issues as early as possible, which will give them a lot of stability and refined process on some of these things we have gone through. They must also deliberate on a strong law that will help strengthen the political parties so that they can help INEC to conduct a free and fair election.
Parties are sources of leadership recruitment, and the law prevents them from doing business as such. Yet, the parties have no source of income. They were being funded before but it stopped. But you may not blame the government because that funding made party registration an all-comers affair. You had close to 100 parties. Right now, the situation is different. INEC has streamlined the process and we now have fewer parties. Now you have 19 parties and the law says if you don’t win the election you can be deregistered. So if they end up looking at those who did not win an election, you may end up having like eight political parties. So it is sufficient for the government to provide some funding to the political parties and monitor the expenditure of the funds in those parties. These parties are responsible for producing leaders and the signature of the chairman and Secretary certifies them to INEC from the president to the councillor, and then you relegate that institution? Who are you undermining? You are undermining the entire electoral process.
Apart from government funding, what other sources of funding would you advocate for the parties?
If the parties are allowed to engage in the way of raising funds and then people can assist internationally within a defined process that will prevent money laundering and all of that and one that the accountability can be monitored by INEC or any other body. INEC regulates the parties, so they can also regulate the funding through periodic reports. It will help the transparency. And when you do that and then the parties would have the leverage to run proper elections and there would not be buying of delegates. The parties would have the resources to raise their delegates without anybody hijacking the delegates. These are things that will help develop our democracy.
You mentioned something interesting about the election process, that INEC chairman alone should not carry the blame for lapses noticed in the election process. But the major contenders in the PDP and LP would not agree with you on that as they have laid much of the blame at the doorsteps of the INEC Chairman. Why won’t you agree with them?
To me, it is a clear case of the spectator and the player on the football field. The spectator does not see anything good with the player, especially if he makes a mistake but if he scores one goal. Had it been it was PDP that won, you will not hear them complain. If it was the Labour Party too that won, you will not hear anything. It is just the natural behaviour in the political environment. But I am telling you that when you look at it structurally, the enumerated factors that make an organisation independent, you will get to understand my point. How do you define INEC as an independent commission? They are not in charge of security agencies; they rely on the Federal Government for funding. They were supposed to have 1.5 million staff to guard their processes but they have some thousand. So, they are completely overwhelmed. The highest the INEC chairman does is when he meets the Security Council to brief them on what is going on.
And if the Service Chief decides not to be proactive in providing an enabling environment, what happens? INEC cannot go into an environment that is chaotic and violent. Remember a lot of corps members lost their lives and had it been INEC has a force of its own, it would have protected them. So, they rely on a secondary layer to conduct elections. These are facts. But you know Nigerians are very emotional and sentimental people and do not look at associated factors that hinder the lack of free and fair elections.
It was easy for former President Buhari to say he wanted to leave a legacy of free and fair elections but he left behind a carcass, a damaged system, and a destroyed democratic process. No responsible government will come up with such an irresponsible and traumatising policy on the eve of an election.
The agreement between a client and the bank is that such a client will have access to his fund. But public funds were hijacked, the economy was sabotaged and that led to even poor turnout on Election Day. A nation that has over 90 million registered voters ended up with over 8 million votes. How do you describe that? Look at Abia State, about 90,000 votes produced a state governor. Also in Anambra, just over 100,000 votes produced a governor where there were over two million registered voters. Is that not a shame? Go and check the statistics of other states, you will discover thousands of votes produced by their governors even when they have millions of registered voters. And we are talking about legitimacy. That was why most state governors lost the command of their states. Non-state actors were in charge of command. The system was very faulty and uncoordinated.
You mentioned that because of the size of Nigeria, it may be difficult to conduct an election in one day. How do we go about that looking at the possibility of results from one section affecting or tailoring the voting pattern of other elections what they call the bandwagon effect?
It is because of the weaponisation of poverty. If you take away that, the easy thing for you to do is to restructure the electoral process in Nigeria. We have six geopolitical zones and we are struggling with manpower deployment in the country. Now, you have to amend the Electoral Act and then allow elections to take place on zone by zone basis. If the North-West zone with seven states wants to conduct the national election, you have sufficient manpower to deploy and conduct the election there. You will be able to contain some of the recklessness, excesses of vote-buying and other vices in the state.
More so, if you reform the political party and source for funding, nobody will buy over the structure and delegates because the party has funds to take care of its delegates. They will bring people of integrity. They will not just bring people from the streets and make them delegates and buy them over. So, we have the capacity and the idea to reform but there is no willingness on the side of the government, and if the willingness is lacking, the country will continue to suffer. No justification for holding an election in a day. We are not in a hurry to conduct general elections in one day including that of the Presidential. What should be done is just to adjust the timetable based on the peculiarities of the nation. They should base the general election on a zonal basis. There is no electoral commission in the U.S. and other places because trust has been established, people have regained their independence, and they go according to the dictates of their franchise. There is this coordinated institution that is being stage-managed to rig systems and processes, take away decent people, bring in bad people, and that is why we are suffering. Criminals have hijacked the electoral process.
Will you then say that your party was rigged out, in some instances, in the last election?
Of course, all parties are victims including the APC because they went to Tribunal to challenge the smaller parties that won votes because they want to have a one-party system in Nigeria. Yes, they are the biggest rigger because they have the biggest money. APC has more people in the government and access to funds. PDP has people too in government and access to funds. Peter Obi was a former governor and former vice presidential candidate, and he has access to funds. SDP has none, our presidential candidate and others have not been in government before. So, we don’t have people to fund the party. Our operation is extremely difficult. We just worked extra hard to get to where we are today. If you look at the parties that have won the election, the only party you can give credit to is SDP.
But your party experienced some internal crisis during the election, would you say that the development affected the party in one way or in the build-up to the election?
It was a distraction but the court has resolved it. The case was struck out and the Court said that party leadership is supreme and it is the party that would decide its leaders. Members of a party have their rules and regulations. If a member of a party feels he would not abide by the rules, he is free to leave the party.
The Judge went into jurisdiction because I was in the witness box and he cited the Supreme Court judgment, saying that no Court can impose leadership on any political party but the party members, which is legitimate. And he cited that the SDP constitution has been adjudicated by the Supreme Court. So, those leaders are legitimate and the other ones are illegal. So, we are free now, though they are free to appeal if they want to. As far as we are concerned, we are one and those that are willing to work together with the party should come and we will listen to them.
You also have crises in pockets of states, particularly Oyo State, where you recently had a newspaper advertorial to explain certain issues. What is the situation right now?
The situation in Oyo is a very sad one. I have been in government and I know how government operates. First, the governor of the state, Seyi Makinde is a family friend because he contested in SDP before. What I expected from Makinde was dynamism because it was a joint structure with the support from SDP that produced him as a governor. So, I wouldn’t have expected Makinde, who understands the party, to allow miscreants to create some factions in the name of disrupting the party. It is not good for him being a former SDP man.
The least he can do is to strengthen the party to assert independence. If they want to support him, fine. But by distracting them, trying to disorganise them, of what benefit is it to him? So, those pockets of people who opened parallel offices and structures in the state illegally are the issue we have addressed. We have written to INEC and security agencies that we don’t know those offices because almost all of them are not members of the SDP. They created a faction to suggest they are members of our party but they are not. We know that we did Congress in Oyo, elected excos and their records are with the INEC and those are the ones we are dealing with. We have nothing to do with any other person. Those offices they created are illegal and the security agencies are aware. That was why we did the advertorial to set the record straight.
If Governor Makinde wants to have a united Oyo State, he needs to understand that he is the governor of all the people of the state irrespective of political leanings. He needs to provide leadership as a very young man, who is developing a strong political career in the system. He does not need to digress into creating conflagration in political parties he needs their support and stability to govern the state. He should not allow such a thing to happen without controlling it.
But the governor is a member of the PDP, why lay the blame for the SDP crisis on his doorstep?
I am mentioning this because he is the governor of the state and receives security briefs of what is happening. So, he cannot claim ignorance of it. Claiming ignorance of the matter means he does not know what is happening in the state. So, that was why we did what we did, hoping that Governor Makinde will also assist in strengthening the political parties in the state for his own good and for his future.
After he leaves office, the party will talk about him and how he coordinated the political environment in the state. SDP is the only party that has no court case on its internal operations. All others have 10; some have 15 and all that. There is no party that is as organised as SDP, today, in Nigeria. No party is as administratively competent as SDP. We rejuvenated the party and are bringing more creativity and innovations. SDP is the only party in Nigeria that has an internal studio. We transmit from the well-equipped studio all our activities globally. We have drones that can cover events. So, we have brought a lot of innovations into the party and we expect that by the next election, we can get thousands of people that will troop into the SDP.
How would you rate the early days of President Ahmed Tinubu?
For me, it is a mixed reaction. First, I have a lot of confidence that Tinubu will be a better President than Buhari. Though I may be wrong, it is my own assessment. Secondly, I also know a bit about his antecedents in Lagos and I know he likes to build younger ones and talents around. Thirdly, he likes development and innovation. The transformation of Lagos started with him, and he is lucky to have successors who believe in his idea and they continued. That is why Lagos is where it is today. Now, if at the micro level, there is this philosophy in him, if he has quality people around him, with superior conversation, he will do wonders. But I was taken aback by the recent palliative he announced because I could not believe he could key into that idea of N8,000 palliative for poor Nigerians and I was disappointed with it. When he discovered and gauged the opinions of Nigerians, he quickly withdrew it. Apart from that, it is wrong for a leader to rush to make a decision of such. He should have taken his time to consult and listen to public opinion before taking any decision, but I believe it is the aides around him that were responsible for that. If we accused former President Buhari’s palliative as a failure, why will you go into it? Actually, I don’t believe in subsidy as it is a fraud. Now, he listened and reviewed it. But again, what are you doing to reduce the suffering, which is unprecedented in the history of Nigeria? Those using N10,000 to fill their car tanks are now spending N40,000. If civil servants go to the office with N3,000 before, they now need N10,000 or above. And even the 30,000 minimum wage is not being implemented. This means you are killing productivity, encouraging corruption and fraud in the civil service because there is no way they can survive all these kind of things.
As a party, what economic policy will you favour in view of the persistent collapse of the Naira in the foreign exchange market?
First, it is about liberalizing the financial sector controlling the interest rate to the lowest for people who want to go into the market to have access to funds with low-interest rates. Two, he should make sure he unifies the exchange rate, which is the standard all over the world if he can do it. But there was a pronouncement that was not followed up because, right now, the Naira is crashing and the interest rate is getting higher. The institution that is supposed to regulate it is responsible, which is the CBN. It was a good decision by removing the governor, Godwin Emefiele. I saw that an investigation has been launched into his case. That was a reckless thing that happened. He caused the economy of Nigeria to be grounded by that singular decision under Buhari regime.
Now, if the president wants to have an overhauled economy that can bolster confidence domestically and internationally, he needs to seriously put together economic experts that will give him analyses. He needs to bring all those that are responsible for economic sabotage to book. The cartel must be dealt with decisively. Those who used the CBN for profiteering and racketeering of our currency, those who enjoyed the era of a dollar, converted it to Naira, and became billionaires overnight, shortchanging Nigerians through round-tripping must be investigated. Some of the rumours we had were that just one person owns 20 Bureau De Change because he has access to CBN and they allocate millions of dollars to him every month. He virtually made billions of naira every month to the detriment of the country. Their names should be published for Nigerians to know. The other area he needs to also open up economically is infrastructure. If I am to advise the president, he should build legacy projects by creating super-highways in the six geopolitical zones that are linked to Abuja. Through that, he is opening the economy, creating massive jobs, and bringing in a lot of investors. You give each company the number of kilometers to cover and they will bring toll gates to generate revenue and maintain those roads. That will be a fundamental legacy to leave behind and he can accomplish it because he will bring in so many experts, like concessioning company with the standard mortgage. Every company must comply with the monitoring and supervision from the Ministry of Works and Housing. And within a short period of time, within two years, He can accomplish that. Go to Egypt and see the miracle of roads by Arab Contractors, which are owned by the Military of Egypt. In less than 3 months, they can construct up to 100 kilometres for you to international standard, and they work 24 hours with the highest quality. Why can’t we do it in Nigeria even when we have the resources? This is just a matter of leaders putting their hearts together, putting aside partisanship, and looking at the national benefits and national legacy they will leave behind. I don’t know and don’t think Tinubu is looking for money right now but looking forward to leaving a legacy that will make Nigerians remember him forever. If that is what is in his mindset as I am thinking, then he should go for legacy projects; he will reduce this bad infrastructure, and open the economy through the six superhighways spread across the federation of Nigeria.
Tinubu should also open the ICT. I saw the report that Nigeria wants to support Google to help create one million jobs. Let me tell you one thing that we don’t know or we are playing with. Nigeria has a population of over 200 million. If you look at the workforce of plumbers in Nigeria, we are complaining of the shortfall. If we decide as a nation to float a joint project with the states and train five million plumbers, people are building every day, houses are being maintained every day, and the five million will even be a shortfall.
Now, you can say, let me train eight million plumbers nationwide and then you give them the kits they need after graduation. You also decide to train 10 million electricians in the country. So, you can see that this is a self-sustainable project. You have empowered them. You have created jobs and have taken them out of the unemployment market. If you train 10 million carpenters, can you imagine the number of people you are providing employment for? If you partner with the states to expand the agricultural base, they will specialise in one form of agricultural products or the other, and you can imagine the quantum of foodstuffs that will saturate the country and you will export. You have to liaise with the states to achieve this. Set some funds available and crash the cost of fertilizer for them as well as farm rice too. Now, you have declared a food emergency and have not crashed the cost of fertilizer, no agricultural equipment you brought, and subsidize for farmers, how do they deal with that?
Part of the crisis we have in the breach of security is because hunger has saturated our homes unlike before when there was a surplus of food. Before now, if you go to Maiduguri, you will see hundreds of trucks traveling to neighboring countries. This is not happening again despite having fertile land. So, for me, he must put his policies right. He must get people that are right-thinking on those projects; otherwise, I am sorry for him with the kind of bad system he has inherited. I don’t think he can perform any miracle except if he takes a very tough decision. He should look for quality people that will help him to succeed.
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