Desmond Mgboh, Kano

DR Akilu Sani Indabawa is a leading member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and a governorship aspirant in Kano at the just concluded general elections. He was a Special Adviser to the President Goodluck Jonathan on Political Matters.

In this interview, he reflects on the general conduct of the 2019 elections, concluding that it fell short of the standards set in 2015 by the Attahiru Jega-led INEC in a number of ways.

He also called for the establishment of an agency to tackle election offences in the country just as he sought for reduction of the number of political parties to a reasonable size.

Dr Indabawa claimed that Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, did not lose the elections to president Muhammadu Buhari as was presented to Nigerians by INEC. Excerpt

Sir, you participated in the 2019 general elections. May we know your assessment? Did we measure up to the heights attained in 2015 under Jega? Did we measure up to where we were when President Yar’Adua admitted that his own election was flawed?

For me, the standard set by our government, the Peoples Democratic Party government under President Goodluck Jonathan on credible elections have not been met. In fact, we are going backwards. Jonathan set up an election management body headed by someone he had never met or seen in his life. From Adam, he had never seen Jega, he never knew him. Two of us were unofficial guarantors for Jega – Ambassador Hassan Tukur who was the PPS and my humble self who was a colleague to Jega in the university. We vouched for Jega though Jega never asked for this job. In fact, he never knew that he would be considered. He never lobbied anybody, but people who knew what Jaga could do, knowing his credibility and knowing how he cares about politics of principle and fairness in this country, vouched for him. Jonathan picked him, gave him all the support and he introduced this Card Reader thing and that revolutionized the way elections were being executed in this country. The 2019 election, in my opinion, has fallen short of those standards set by Jonathan and PDP. I am proud to be associated to that project. I was the secretary of the Inter-Party Committee on Electoral Reforms under President Jonathan as his Political Adviser. We did a good job, submitted our report to President Yar’Adua when Jonathan was Vice President. And the Uwais Panel relied on our report for 90 per cent of its recommendations on electoral reforms. It is very sad that one recommendation we made, which was turned down by the National Assembly, was the recommendation that we should set an Electoral Offences Commission. We set up a sub-committee under the late Senator Aruwa with Barrister Ahmed Gulak as Secretary to that sub-committee. And they came up with a beautiful submission, which the main committee, made up of all the political parties adopted, including a draft bill for the establishment of Electoral Offences Commission. If the National Assembly had accepted that recommendation which was direct from our submission – the Inter-party Electoral Reforms Committee headed by Jonathan with me as Secretary and adopted by Uwais committee, today all the hues and cries about electoral violence and so on would not have been possible because if you have that commission in place, they would be on duty. So, APC has messed up elections in this country and frankly speaking, I don’t think I will have any confidence in the electoral process until I see a change.

 

The issue of selective use of the Card Reader in this election; to what extent did it take away some of the credibility of the exercise?

On the surface, it did a lot of damage. But you see unless we have the full facts, you can’t say much. We have to wait for the official report of the election management body first… because whatever you will say, will be based on speculations. I don’t have the facts, I don’t have the statistics. What I have are speculated reports here and there. Somewhere Card Readers have not been used, somewhere they have been used. So, I am waiting for the official report from credible election observers, not all these rag-tag election observers that parade themselves everywhere. When they give their reports, I will then compare it with what INEC will give as its official report on the conduct of the elections. Then, we will be able to interpret what happened.

 

One of the issues that came up in this election is the concept of supplementary election. It almost threw some states into confusion. How do you see its role in the present elections?

Supplementary election, by this name or whatever name, I think it is part of the amendments of the Electoral Act 2010 as amended. The only thing is that in politics, nothing happens by accident. Interest drives actions. So, maybe in the past people had interest in free, fair and credible elections like my former boss, President Jonathan, and would not want to invoke those unnecessary provisions that would now irritate Nigerians and mess up the whole process. People who are interested in something else other than credible elections are using it all over the place today. But in fairness, the law provides for it. It says that where the margin of victory between candidate A and B or party A and B is lower than the number of cancelled votes, then the cancelled votes must be repeated. Those who cast these votes must be given the chance to vote again. Now if there are in excess of the number of margin of victory, then it means that they can decide who wins at the end of the day. It is a fair provision for me, except that it is being misused.

 

From the way the supplementary election has been used so far, do you think we should look at it again to see what can be done to improve … as it nearly threw some states into outright breakdown of law and order. 

I think for me, it is not the issue of the provisions of the law. It is the implementation of the law. It is the people who implement the law that devise shortcuts to victory. And you see as I said earlier, in politics, especially in this country, nothing happens by accident. People plan, and plan and they try to calculate how best their interests can be achieved. Let me give you an instance, from what I heard –I don’t know if it is true – a lot of places where votes were cancelled, the cancellations were not supposed to, in the first place, even contemplated, but because there were interests. You can get returning officers to cancel particular results. You can’t blame the law. The law says that if the margin of victory in the votes is lower than the canceled votes, then there should be a re-run.

They call it supplementary election. Those, who can cancelled the votes should be people of integrity.

For me, it is not the returning officer that declares the results of the governorship elections that is more important. The most important people, in my view, are the returning officers at the ward and local government levels. These are the most important people because they are the ones who normally would decide which votes to admit and which votes to cancel. If you don’t have people of high credibility, then you have a lot of problems. And what I gathered so far, most of the cancellations so far were at the level of the wards and local governments. And even agents of the political parties got involved in this mess. You send your agent and he compromises you.

 

Recently, in Osun State, a court had ruled that the returning officer has no powers to cancel the result. I think that is mainstay of that judgment. Again, because you were part of the background to our present electoral law, what is your take?

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Well, the Osun judgment is a landmark judgment in deepening electoral reforms in this country because it restores hope to those who feel cheated at the polls. Certain things that are weird and out of this world sometimes happen in this game of politics. Here, you are leading with some wide margin and then because somebody who is very intelligent realizes that he can manipulate the law to his advantage, knows that you can cancel so many votes in order to even the scores, he might just in the spirit of cancellation and so on and so forth. In my view, what the Osun judgment did for me and for Nigerians, is to say that yes the law has made provisions for these cancellations, yes the law says that where the margin of victory is lower than the cancelled votes, you should cancel, but you don’t have the unilateral powers to use it anyhow. You have to have valid, objective grounds on which you cancel votes. But the bottom line, as I said earlier, is the credibility and integrity of the officers that were assigned to take those decisions at that level as well as the uprightness of the parties themselves competing at the various states, as well as the agents.

 

The number of political parties that contested the 2019 elections, over 90, might have been responsible for the challenges that trailed the exercise. Would you recommend we trim the number in future elections? Also, what is your remarks on the criticism that most of the lecturers that played roles in this elections were not sufficiently honourable?

Well, first of all, there are honest people in every sector of this country. You just have to look carefully. Although, I am an academic by profession, I will not say the university has a reservoir of honest people. There are honest people and there are crooks in every sectors in this country. One has to look very carefully and you will find very credible, clean, honest people everywhere. We have to search carefully. Now, back to the issue of the political parties, that committee headed by Vice President Jonathan then to which I served as Secretary – Inter-party Committee on Electoral Reforms which is credited with 90 per cent of the recommendations of Uwais panel on Electoral Reforms. And we made a recommendation at the end of the exercise, that let there be as many parties as possible as Nigerians want, but after each election season, any party that fails to secure at least a seat in the National Assembly should, by law, be disbanded so that at the next election, they cannot come into any contest. That way, the ballot paper would not  be this cumbersome and voter education would be much easier and a lot of resources would be saved. After all, if you look at majority of the parties, they do not really, in my view, give Nigerians any serious alternative choice. Many of them, the difference between them is like six and half a dozen. All of them! Even the PDP, APC divide. Are they not twin brothers? They are the same. So, why do we have to waste our resources on them?

 

So, what is your recommendation?

My recommendation is let us go back to the recommendations we made through the Uwais Panel. Any party that fails to secure at least a seat at the National Assembly should not be on the ballot in subsequent elections.

 

In this election, we have instances where returning officers declare results only to return after to say they acted under duress. The Okorocha saga. What is your take on that?

For me, that returning officer that did that should be given national honours because he is an upright person. Somebody who would own up to an error he committed under duress, in my view, should be respected. I wish that Nigerians have the guts and to now come and say that “I was wrong when I did this and these are the reasons… please forgive me for that.” That man could have kept his mouth shut and enjoy whatever people alleged he had been given by Rochas. What is alleged to have been given to him, he would have quietly gone underground and enjoy the money. But the man came to say no! This is what really happened.

Now, the challenge is for him to prove that he actually declared the result under duress. If he can confirm with credible evidences and witnesses because he was not the only one there, then I think that man deserves a national honour.

 

Your party’s presidential candidate inspired a lot of hope. We were looking forward to very significant contest. Up North, he appeared to have performed below the margin of expectations of many people. What happened to Atiku in the North? How come he was lavishly defeated in many places people thought he would have done better than this?

I do not believe that Atiku has been defeated. But I am constrained to comment on that matter because the matter is now subjudice – it is before a competent judicial body, the presidential election tribunal. And so talking about it would be subjudice and I will be committing a contempt of court.

 

Back home, what is your assessment of the election and the supplementary election that took place in Kano some days ago ?

Kano re-run election has been done, a winner has been declared and those who feel aggrieved have said that they are going to court. They have a right to do so.

 

But if you want to recommend area of improvement to INEC- you are a political scientist, you are practitioner of politics and you are an academic – in what areas would you recommend for improvement?

My main recommendation is that the world is moving very fast, but we are moving at snail’s speed. We need to catch up. Technology is wonderful. We can sort out a lot of these election crises if we deploy technology correctly. One, take the case of the card reader. Card reader is a beautiful innovation that can revolutionize the way elections are being conducted in this country. But since it is a new innovation and people are trying to catch up, you will expect naturally some mistakes and errors. The way card readers were used in 2015 when they were first introduced is not the way they were used in 2019. The way card readers were used in the Presidential and National Assembly elections is different from the way it was used in the state elections…. We need to train those who are going use the card readers, including the voters on the use of the card readers long before an election. The voter education unit of INEC, in my view, has to be very active at least six months before an election, so that they would educate Nigerians fully- those who will operate the card readers as well as the voters to know how to operate it.  The card reader should be improved in such a way to address all the technical issues identified like low battery, low capacity as so on. If card readers are deployed correctly, a lot of these electoral malpractices can be stopped.