• ‘INEC about to bring democracy in Nigeria to a sad end’

Prof Pat Utomi is a member of Movement for Credible Elections (MCE). In this interview monitored on Arise Television, the renowned political economist speaks on the 2027 general election, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and use of state institutions by the ruling party to muzzle the opposition, among other issues, FELIX NWANERI reports

What do you make of some recent developments in the polity – the national conventions of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP); former Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso’s joining of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) an the possibility of a partnership between him and Mr. Peter Obi, and any hope that there will be credible elections in 2027? Will there be credible elections?

That is the big question. Everybody who’s a trend watcher can see that there is a deliberate attempt by the ruling party and those in power to exclude significant political opponents from actually being on the ballot, using capture of the independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the judiciary. But the Nigerian people are ready to meet them this time.

On the conventions of PDP and APC; INEC’s rush to validate the so called new executive of the PDP is a clear evidence that the commission is a parastatal of the APC and is about to bring democracy to a sad end in Nigeria if the people do not arise and take their country back. There are things that politicians do that we are against, but there are things that really set back our people but the desperation of the party that is in power is popular.

It will say, let’s go and test our popularity with the people but I will tell you that one thing the APC doesn’t want to see is the votes of the people. It does not because it knows that the pain in the country, the disaffection that has come from how poorly the people live and how angry the people have become from the misery index that is their condition. Take any misery index in the world; Nigeria is almost at the very bottom.

The number of deaths at childbirth; just take any and I’ll show you that Nigeria is either at the bottom or near the bottom. And instead of politicians who run such a country to come to the people and say, we would like to turn a new leaf, but test us out, they’re trying to prevent the will of the people from emerging.

Well, they got away with these kinds of things in the past, but not anymore because the people are ready for them if they try anything extra ordinary. Recently, they tear-gassed people trying to have a simple protest in front of the National Assembly, to say we don’t want this. We went to court to essentially challenge what happened in the National Assembly on February 17, and we are returning to court to seek a repeal of that so-called Electoral Act. Even if the courts are manipulated as they may be; we are in two courts – the court of the people and the court of law, and those courts will sort themselves out.

This could be the fire of the Harmattan on the Sahel if people are not careful. Nigerians have had enough of being intimidated and bullied by political actors, and if they are not careful, they will reap very painfully. The International Criminal Court will try them. I’m assuring you of this, no matter the state of what the world seems to be right now because I’ve been in this struggle for a long time.

We fought General Sani Abacha together and we saw what happened to him. We have reached a moment, where conditions presently in terms of manipulations by the executive branch, are worse than they were under Abacha. If we don’t do something, there will be no Nigeria to redeem. This is the state of our country right now.

You’ve often talked about the way forward, and one of the things you said in the past is that a mega party and the coming together of the major opposition figures would be needed to challenge the status quo. Now, with the announcement by Dr. Rabui Musa Kwankwaso, who is the third piece in that puzzle, coming on board the ADC, do you believe the party has a fighting chance and what are some of the challenges ahead for the coalition and is it possible to overcome them?

Not only is it possible, it is very self-evident if we have credible elections. Let’s begin by looking at the last elections and the votes of these people. Accept that the last elections were not credible, that many of those votes given to these opposition leaders were significantly doctored, but go and look at the foreign documentaries done on what happened in Rivers State and several other places. You will find out that these people have more than probably twice as many votes as they were given in the last election.

So, in pure statistics, they have more than enough votes to overtake those in power, and who came to power with less than 30 per cent of the votes of the Nigerian people. This is ultimately minority rule. And coming to power in that way, they then went ahead looking at how institutions have been abused to try to manipulate processes such that they can suppress the will of the Nigerian people.

We have reached a moment, where conditions presently in terms of manipulations by the executive, are worse than they were under Abacha

The Nigerian people, through the Movement for Credible Elections, are saying, no. They manipulated the laws so that the freedom of association in Nigeria is fully initiated by this business of whether you can move to this party, the kind of timetable that INEC deliberately foist on the system to prevent people to have the flexibility of options, and then they have come with their consensus thing and all of that. That’s fine but I tell you, it reminds me of Argentina.

Argentina and the United States were at the same level of development in 1928. Argentina with the Peronist Movement and all of that, playing the kind of games these people are playing today, brought their country to a place where by the 1990s, it was at West African level GDP and Argentina has been struggling.

That’s what these people are trying to do to Nigeria. They may not realise it, but if they get away with this mess, Nigeria will be a beggarly country in a few years, despite the endowments of this country, the resources flowing everywhere. So, the Nigerian people must say no to this. What we are doing as civil society is to create options that prevent them from getting away with what they used to get away with.

They have tried to create a situation where they say manual collating is a fallback because it’s true that’s where most of the rigging takes place. Even after INEC, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) assured before the last elections that they had enough coverage in the country and would be in a position to ensure that transmission of election results real-time takes place.

All of them use WhatsApp and if you upload, once the network comes, it will register. We are setting up our own independent IReV, and there will be more than one civil society. Once the elections take place, they are photographed, uploaded, they will report in CNN, Al Jazeera, everywhere in the world, the results of the elections, and INEC can continue to fool itself with its role as the Nigerian people have had enough.

We are setting up election marshals, vote booth marshals that will man every polling station in this country. Enough is enough. A political class cannot keep the people down. Nigeria is too endowed to be what it is because a few politicians don’t want inclusion to bake a big cake that will take care of everybody. They want to grab the small cake that is there, keep it all to themselves, and let misery rule the rest. We can’t take that anymore in Nigeria.

I’m excited you talked about Argentina, and how that country went decrepit in the 30s as an indication for what we might be. But people like you fought in the struggles against the military; your compatriot in that struggle is leading the country today as president. Where did we go wrong because the thought then was that once people who fought in that struggle get into power, things will change, but today, the same class of people and contractors that benefited under the military are the ones benefiting under this government?

You can’t be more right in the way you state it, but you know, Shakespeare said long ago that there is no art to find the heart construction in the face. So, you have to take people for what they present themselves to be, but action eventually tells you who they are. Let me go back to that 1990s season.

As the elections were approaching, as the military decided to withdraw, we in civil society, the concerned professionals, had to decide what to do. In 1998, in a meeting that took place in my office on Idowu Taylor on Victoria Island, the question was put, now that General Abdulsalami Abubakar has announced withdrawal of the military, what should we do.

And somebody like late Waziri Mohammed urged that we become a political party, take all these philosophies we’ve enunciated, and move in and set Nigeria on the course that we have prayed for. Donald Duke was very much in support of a similar process. Literally speaking, some who were business executives said we are a civil society, we have come out as citizens to say some wrong cannot continue. If we choose to become politicians, people may say that we are opportunists who have come forward because what we were looking for all the time was power.

I, with apologies to all of Nigeria, can say to you here that I backed that group. So, even though I had political experience, exposure, and all of that, even though I had accompanied Dr. Alex Ekwueme to those meetings that came out of the G34, I felt that since the majority of the professionals who we had provided leadership said let it not seem like our goal was power, I owed it to myself not to become an active office-seeking person in politics.

So, we offered whatever we could do to make sure the system worked out well. I served as Chief of Policy Advisory Board for candidate Olusegun Obasanjo just to make sure that they did the right thing and we had our fights and all of that. After that meeting in my office, Donald Duke turned to me and said, well, I’m going to go to Cross River, organise the place, and we’ll take over and we did that, successfully. We took the decision of the majority not to participate in politics, but that is the single biggest error we made.

We thought the traditional politicians would come in and give Nigeria leadership, but many of them were still too suspicious of the military. Some of them didn’t feel like Dr. Alex Ekwueme. Many didn’t want to come. They thought the military would play the Maradona game. And what happened? The black men, who were pro-soldiers, were moved into public life, and we have not recovered from that.

Would it not amount to a contravention of the law to set up an alternative IReV to announce results?

There is no such thing. It is not a contravention of any law.

But that’s outside the purview of the Electoral Act…

No. This is not about the election; it’s just about communication. We are not saying that this is official. We’re just saying this is the result as it is taking place for the world to see it. They can announce what they want, and then let the global opinion take sway. So, we will provide the truth to the world.