Dr. SKC Ogbonnia is a former presidential aspirant of the All Progressives Congress (APC). In this interview, he speaks on the state of the nation, President Bola Tinubu’s performance and the need to restructure the country’s election management body. FELIX NWANERI reports
What is your take on the state of the nation vis a vis the performance of the President Bola Tinubuled All Progressives Congress (APC) administration?
The wonders of Bola Tinubu during the 2023 elections were so incredible that many had suggested that the man had magical powers.
This is a man, who, despite being a beneficiary of Nigeria’s most flawed presidential election, went on to assume power with ease, while the opposition kept moping as if somehow power is suddenly ‘served a la carte.’ And, apparently emboldened by the way he became president against all odds; Tinubu began his presidency with impunity and continues to reel out recklessly bold policies in defiance of commonsense conventions.
Tinubu continues to assume, and understandably so, that mere hope is a strategy. The worst wonder is an apparent taboo: he made good his promise to build upon the policies of his predecessor.
The predecessor, of course, is no other than Muhammadu Buhari – a man who at the time of his exit had no close second in the ranking of Nigeria’s worst leaders. Little did the world know that it wouldn’t take up to a year before Tinubu would surpass Buhari as nation’s worst president ever. Today, every index of development is pointing downside.
A telling example is the purported removal of the fuel subsidy by Tinubu which has resulted to a situation where the citizens of Nigeria, where the minimum wage was N30,000 before it was recently increased to N70,000 are paying more for fuel than those in the United States of America, where the minimum wage about N3 million. The unemployment rate is raging to 40 per cent. Inflation is at all-time high. Insecurity is also at all-time high.
The nation’s currency has depreciated by over 300 per cent since Tinubu assumed power. Tens of millions of more Nigerians have been pushed into abject poverty. Even as Tinubu secretly reinstated the fuel subsidy, the outlook remains hopeless.
The President’s supporters are of the view that his policies have placed Nigeria on the path to recover. What do you make of that claim?
His government is as confused as it is clueless yet many Nigerians still cheer him on. Even though millions are dying from acute hunger and other forms of hardship because of his policies, no one seems to care or complain.
Members of the legislature, particularly those of the opposition, who are supposed to checkmate him are also cheering him on.
The labour unions have become all bark and no bite. Not even under the military regimes did Nigerians endure naked misrule as they now do under Tinubu. But, in all these, the objective fact is that most Nigerians are inflicted and thus held in bondage.
Aisha Buhari, at a time of the gross misrule of President Muhammadu Buhari, once asked: ‘Where are Nigerian men?’ Today, as Tinubu has become worse than Buhari, I am asking: Where are Nigerian men and women? Where are men and women who are ready to extricate themselves from Tinubu and hold him to account?
Some Nigerians, mostly young people, some time last year, tried to hold the government to account through the #EndBadGovernance protest, but they were tagged divisive elements. How would you react to that?
The #EndBadGovernance protest in Nigeria against the gross misrule of President Bola Tinubu has come and gone. Not surprisingly, instead of concrete solutions for a better future, the president remains busy jailing innocent protesters and misleading Nigerians on how he foiled a plot for a regime change.
Yes, for the government, any opposing view is either treasonable felony or secession, coup plot and consequently, a threat to Nigeria’s democracy but those in government are the real enemies of the country’s democracy. Let me explain.
True independence or neutrality of INEC is more attainable in an environment, where two or more independent parties can checkmate each other from acting contrary to the stated objectives
Recall that former President Muhammadu Buhari drove the Nigerian economy to the rock bottom. Then consider that his successor, Tinubu himself, has already shattered the very rock of the bottom to crash the country to the deepest low.
Follow that with the fundamental fact that bad governance is historically the biggest threat to the Nigerian democracy.
You are a founding member of the APC alongside the likes of President Tinubu, and you once aspired for the party’s presidential ticket. Are you saying that you are disappointed with the party and the President?
Clearly, this is not the Tinubu that some of us had admired and cheered to protest against bad governments and demanded revolution in the past. The man at the Aso Rock is far from the defacto opposition leader we followed to form the All-Progressive Congress (APC).
This is not the character that prompted me at the time to pen that ‘if dynamic opposition is the life-wire of a democracy, it is very fitting then to name him (Tinubu) the saviour of Nigeria’s current democratic journey.’
Sadly, this version of Asiwaju is polar opposite to his old self. But given the common knowledge that bad governance is historically the biggest threat to Nigerian democracy, it is time for the APC, the legislature, as well as the masses to see the needed change.
Having fulfilled his lifelong ambition of becoming president; now is Tinubu’s turn to emulate a good American example for a change.
He can equally take a page from former President Goodluck Jonathan, who resisted the temptation of rigging the 2015 presidential election but instead made history by surrendering power to us in the opposition. As at then Jonathan was viewed as ‘clueless.’ Today, despite the perceived cluelessness, Jonathan has emerged as a hero of democracy.
When you talk about surrendering power; are you saying that the President should resign or that he should forget about a second term?
Tinubu’s ready answer, of course, is for Nigerians to wait till the 2027 polls for any thought of regime change. Of course, he would want us to wait forever; after all, neither him nor any member of his family feels the crushing pain.
But Nigerians must not buy him any more time. The records show that his government is by far the worst in the nation’s history. He has already proven why a vast majority of Nigerians rejected him at the election that brought him to power.
While he carefully planned how to gain power by any means, it has become very clear that he never planned how to govern.
Thus, his main preoccupation since assumption of office has been how to sustain power by any means and continue to exhibit ostentatious lifestyle while at the same time subjecting millions of Nigerian masses to abject penury and despair.
Talking about 2027 and the possibility of unseating the APC-led administration; do you see the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), conducting free, fair and credible elections?
It is a common knowledge that the root cause of Nigeria’s problem is lack of good leadership. Yet, the leaders appear to make no serious efforts towards concrete solutions. Instead, they make the leadership process so deceitful, dishonest, and deadly.
To that end, politics is abandoned to a small clique of the corrupt class. However, the most shameless in the Nigeria’s leadership process is the INEC.
As the name suggests, INEC was envisioned as an independent organisation in line with item F,14(2c) of the Third Schedule of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution (as amended). This section states unequivocally that any of its members must ‘be nonpartisan and a person of unquestionable integrity.’
The constitution also vests the appointment of principal INEC officials with the president of the country. Unfortunately, most of the appointees have been neither nonpartisan nor independent. Such open partisan and dictatorial grip of INEC has been a major reason Nigerian elections cannot be mentioned in the same breath with the term ‘free and fair.’
That is a major reason potential good leaders but who have no connection to the corrupt class always shy away from politics. However, instead of placing the blame squarely where it belongs, the INEC chairman is typically the scapegoat.
But a salient factor that has not received adequate attention in the contextual analysis of INEC is that, besides its chairman, the other principal officers who represent the electoral body from the national to the ward levels are typically the sympathizers or card carrying members of the ruling party.
To that end, even where the INEC was able to produce a semblance of a free and fair election, the opposition usually hides behind the partisan shade of the commission to occasion a flood of conspiracies to wash away the credibility of the election.
This distrust only goes to undermine the sanctity of the elections, deepen the depth of the disrepute commonly associated with the country’s democracy; and consequently, drive good people away from participation.
What do you suggest as the way out?
To improve the system, Nigeria should explore a multi-party electoral commission. A multi-party structure, with members nominated by the different political parties, will strengthen the needed checks and balances within the electoral commission itself.
This approach should extend to the recruitment of electoral officers from the national down to the ward levels and polling booths. A multi-party structure can restore confidence and ensure trust throughout the width and breadth of the electoral commission.
Don’t you think that such arrangement might end up creating more problems?
This proposal is not entirely new. It parallels the position of the main opposition party in the 2007 election, the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), where Emmanuel Eneukwu, its National Publicity Secretary at the time, and who is currently the Deputy National Chairman (South) of the ruling APC, canvassed for a review of the electoral laws to include members of the different political parties in the leadership of the national election commission.
The multi-party electoral model is the core of the American system, which remains a paragon of democracy. Members to both the federal and state election commissions are drawn from the country’s two major political parties.
The apparent political equipoise profoundly promotes internal checks and balances within the system. Thus, even if where a questionable character is nominated to an electoral commission in any of the states, the opposition party would reject or counter such nomination accordingly.
The partisan balance within the U.S. electoral system, more than any other factor, accounts for the widely celebrated vitality of the American institutions. It also accounts for why and how President Donald Trump could not succeed in his asinine scheme to compel some state electoral bodies, including those controlled by his party, to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election in his favour.
Is it really about the composition of INEC or politicians playing by the rules?
Perhaps, Nigeria has explored various strategies over the years to checkmate partisan maneuvers within the INEC. The electoral body has recruited members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and university professors to assist in recent exercises.
There were equally past efforts, for example, the 2008 Electoral Reform Committee (ERC), which proposed, among other things, that a neutral body, particularly the National Judicial Council, should appoint all the INEC officials, including its chairman.
The ERC also called for the members of INEC to include representatives of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and the news media, among others. The idea of a neutral electoral body is superficially attractive. But recruiting people from a cadre of pliant Nigerian institutions and expecting them to be impartial is no different from perceiving a stench as an aroma.
Not surprisingly, the university recruits are always accused of partiality or being wholly subservient to the parties in power either at the states or the federal level. Constituting INEC with officials, who have clear party identification, offers best compromise.
Unlike other institutions, the political party has the potential to provoke steadfast allegiance from the people, far more than tribe, religion, and even more than blood relationships, especially in Nigeria, where prebendal politics dictates the content and character of socio-economic wellbeing.
True independence or neutrality of INEC is more attainable in an environment, where two or more independent parties can checkmate each other from acting contrary to the stated objectives. This proposal is no rocket science. But it is clear the problem with INEC is wilful.
