Executive Director, Centre for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution, Comrade Idris Miliki Abdul said politicians and political parties should be blamed for the inadequacies that characterised the 2019 general elections. In this interview with Wale Ibrahim in Lokoja, the rights activist, who monitored the election as a domestic observer, bared his mind on critical issues raised by the just concluded electoral processes. Abdul also took a swipe at the Kogi State government and the state House of Assembly over plot to remove the Chief Judge of the state.
As one of the domestic observers in the just concluded general elections, what is your assessment of the performance of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC?
One thing that is paramount is that law and the constitution empowers the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, the rights to conduct elections every four years. This was what INEC has done by conducting the presidential, National Assembly, governorship and House of Assembly elections. However, there were challenges here and there pre and post-election activities. Election is not just what happened on the day of election. Political parties are also stakeholders in an election. Political parties are the ones contesting elections; they are the ones that fielded candidates. What happened during the primaries conducted by the political parties and what happened to candidates that emerged without other stakeholders’ input may affect the conduct of elections. Some people will say it is the internal affairs of the political parties, but the law empowers the political parties to conduct elections, which must conform to the provisions of the constitution of the party.
On election day, there were challenges that has to do with internal logistics. You should be aware that there are two categories of workers in INEC. There are those appointed or political appointees and there are conventional staff, the civil servants, and for the two of them to work together posed a lot of problem, and the election was initially postponed. There were lessons to be learnt in that postponement. There were tensions and that postponement reduced the tensions across the federation.
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When the elections were eventually conducted, INEC complied substantially with the electoral act. And what is compliance? There were materials, the card readers were made available. Though, there were delays, it is not as if there were no materials. INEC was the one that says accreditation must start by 8.00 o’clock and not the law. The laws allow INEC to prescribe 8.00 o’clock to start. We observed that there was a delay of about two hours. But in Kogi State, INEC did very well because election materials were made available at polling units. I drove round the town and observed that by 7.30am to 8.00am, people were already at their polling units and ready for elections.
Other critical stakeholders are the political parties that enjoyed some level of immunities but failed to organise seminars or road shows to educate voters. Candidates themselves failed to educate the electorate on how to vote or how not to vote. There was nothing to show that they sensitised people on election. One wonders what the political parties used the colossal amount of money collected during the primaries for. The political parties in Nigeria have failed woefully. I don’t know why people think that it is only INEC that must do everything. What about other stakeholders? What about civil society organisations? Did we do our job? Did we conduct seminars? I am sure you participated in some of our programmes we organised. That is what political parties ought to have been doing. INEC was also organising fora, meetings, sometimes political parties would not even come and these are the people that go out to contest on election day and distort the process, sponsor thugs to carry ballot papers and boxes, to carry electoral materials and shoot people. Is it the INEC that go about shooting people? It was not even the civil society organisations that shot the people. It was not the journalists that were shooting people or carry election materials. They were all politicians and the political parties’ members and their supporters. On the basis of that, we have to commend INEC for complying with the provisions of the constitution. During the just concluded elections, it was observed that there were many fake security men and there was connivance between the police, politicians and government officials because the security men gave cover to thugs to disrupt electoral process. I condemned it in totality. We need to overhaul our security architecture on elections .We need to also look at the political party structures; the way many political parties are being registered in this country. People are just registering political parties as if they are registering company. We have 91 political parties. I am a man who believed in multi-party democracy. But we like to recommend that political parties should form alliance at a particular election. This is because there are many of them that cannot definitely win governorship election. But if they come together, just like what happened the other time, where parties formed alliance to defeat a sitting president in 2015, it’s easier for them to make impact. It was an alliance between three political parties that gave victory to APC. Why can’t they say that we are not strong enough to win governorship election, let us form alliance so that we can support one candidate? The most unfortunate thing is that most of the political parties do not have membership. If you go to their secretariat and ask for their register, they can’t give you because they do not have one. If you are a registered member of a political party, you must pay dues. Today, everyone that wants to go for election just look for a political party platform to contest. It is very unfortunate that political parties are registered not to win election.
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As an advocate of peaceful election, what do you think can be done to stop violence and killings during elections in the country?
It is very unfortunate that violence has become part of our elections. You can’t stop it outright because a lot of things are involved, but it is for us to look at how to reduce it to its barest minimum. First, we shall continue to engage the citizens. We should be able to know the causes of violence, while both national and international agencies must support those working against the menace and take proactive measures against it. In 2011, we saw across the country the many people that were killed in post-election violence .We also discovered in 2019 that many people also died. We learnt that resources were not released to do a lot of work for non-violent election. Why do you need to go and kill your brothers because of election .Why do you need to kill your sister. Why is it that the politicians have not been engaging the citizens on education and enlightenment? This is condemnable. That is why we are saying we need to structure our political party system. In fact, party primaries must be transparent and other stakeholders must be involved to monitor and observe what is happening in the parties. One thing that is very important is that every political party that fielded candidates were not forced to do so. People were not part of the process of how candidates emerged, but were being asked to go and vote during elections. The CSOs goes there as observers, the journalists went there to write stories and INEC goes there to see what was happening. I think it is all about political structure, the mode of registration, mode of party primaries. You must be aware that election is not a do or die affair. Everybody is a participant. To cap it all, it is a game. Election is a contest and in every contest, there must be a winner. You must know from day one that you are a mere participant. You are not there because you must always win. There are other participants who are equally qualified like you. Why is it that it must always be me syndrome? We cannot continue this was. There must be awareness to reduce monetization in politics. We must also know that politics is about service and not business. That is the contradiction we have seen; politics is service and not business that you have invested in and you must make your money.
Does it mean that our electoral law is weak because no offenders have been brought to book nor tried for once?
Our electoral law is not weak. Whichever law you put in place, it is human being that is going to operate it. When you have people who are very desperate and not ready to respect the provision of laws, we will continue to find ourselves in this mess. We have been amending the law. We have amended the electoral law two or three times, but we still have this crisis. But that does not mean we will not get there. We should look at what happened during the 2019 general elections. Thank God President (Muhammadu) Buhari has not signed the amended electoral act. It is expected that the National Assembly has to take it back for a proper review and incorporate some of these challenges.
The issue of vote buying has now become the order of the day in Nigeria. What is your take on this?
It is rather very unfortunate that people are selling their conscience to vote for failures. The money which could have been used for infrastructural development is being shared and this has largely been responsible for the lack of concrete achievements in some states. Though they may think that yes, this is our own share of the loot, but several projects which could have been beneficial to the generality of the people of a community will not see the light of day. Politicians have also seen this as a four-year ritual to share money to buy votes and will not perform because they have settled the electorate. We should begin to ask ourselves; why are we here in the 21st century when vote buying and selling is done publicly. Let everybody search his or her conscience in order to move the country forward.
What is your take on the faceoff between the executive and the judiciary in Kogi State and the recommendation that the chief judge of the state be removed?
The whole process was wrong and unconstitutional. Neither the executive nor the House of Assembly has the constitutional power to remove or sack Justice Nasiru Ajanah. The House report that purportedly indicted the CJ was a tele-guided report. The state House of Assembly could not have recommended his removal when there is subsisting order of Kogi High Court of Justice. By the provision of law, it is only the National Judicial Council, NJC, that has the power to sack a judge after he must have been found wanting, not the state House of Assembly.
