What is your assessment of the recent general election?
The electoral process has been largely successful. Despite the negative attention on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), I would commend them for running a largely successful and credible process. You have to understand that first and foremost, elections are a logistic nightmare, and like all logistic-based processes with a lot of human interactions you are bound to have some shortcomings. Those shortcomings are what sometimes explain the late arrivals of electoral materials, and INEC’s regular or ad-hoc staff, which are mainly usually caused by human elements within the process. But we all saw the genuine desire of INEC to address those challenges in order not to leave people disenfranchised and that is a good thing which should be commended. I am also aware that in some areas in Nigeria, for instance in Victoria Garden City, in Lagos State, INEC identified these logistic issues and conducted elections till the early hours of the morning during the presidential elections and the next day during the governorship and House of Assembly elections.
What is your position on the controversy generated by BVAS and its usage during the election?
Let us be clear, BVAS has brought tremendous transparency and fairness to our electoral process. We must also be clear that BVAS usage was largely successful during this election. First is to of course understand the purport of the usage of BVAS, which is to function as an accreditation tool that is able to undertake both biometrics capture, facial recognition and transmission of election results from polling units towards ensuring that the right people are voting and we eliminate the problem of multiple voting that has plagued our elections in the past. BVAS also has the added capability, with its inbuilt camera, to take pictures of the results sheets (EC8A) and send them to the IReV. All of these functions it was able to perform and that will explain, to some degree, the numbers that came from certain places that hitherto brought out numbers that were more than accredited or registered voters.
So, the technology worked. From our research and this can be independently verified for those interested in the truth and the facts, the BVAS functionality rate for the 2023 election was 88 per cent. It means that BVAS worked without any issue whatsoever in 88 per cent of the entire 176,606 polling units across Nigeria. In nine per cent of polling units, it malfunctioned and was fixed and in another two per cent, it malfunctioned and was replaced. In essence, there was nowhere that voting took place without BVAS and well-meaning persons will agree with me that the 88 per cent functionality rate within the context of this election was a success. Importantly is that it eliminated multiple voting, ballot stuffing and other electoral malpractices that had hitherto marred our election from 1999.
And people must not forget where we are coming from. We need to cast our mind back to the elections of 2003, 2007, and 2011 and other presidential elections conducted by the PDP and how they perpetrated electoral malpractices by multiple voting, voter suppression, vote buying, violence and other electoral malpractices. This party, the APC led by President Buhari is responsible for sanitizing the electoral process that has allowed the most popular candidates to win elections and allowing the will of the people to prevail across the country. You will see from the analysis of the results that emerged across the country that incumbent governors were defeated by the opposition parties in some states. That could never have happened in the past during the PDP era. Have we quickly forgotten? Indeed, during these general elections, the APC did not win the majority votes in 13 states where it had sitting Governors. It is only through the reforms and technology introduced by this party that made that possible. It is this party that reformed the Electoral Act that has made the process better and we should be applauded for it.There were allegations of voter suppression and violence during the election, particularly in Lagos. The opposition alleges that this is the reason why their supporters did not vote in areas considered to be their support base. How do you respond to this?
Sometimes, we need to focus on the numbers rather than the noise. It is important for people to also see through the veil of the opposition as a set of people with an agenda to scuttle a credible process because they were beaten at the polls so they will make all sorts of allegations concerning the legitimacy of the victory of the APC. The fact is that those numbers did not exist and if they existed, they existed only in the imagination of their hired pollsters designed to hoodwink Nigerians into thinking they had a path of victory.
If there was any suppression of voters, we knew where it happened. Go and look at the places where the LP candidate won with over 99 per cent, which was funny by the way, the voters’ turnout in the Southeast was 20.26 per cent and the South-south was 18.72 per cent. Who had the motive and muscle to suppress votes in those places? It was the LP and the reports we got were that indeed our party members were threatened and intimidated across those two regions.
But, the fact was that the main cause of the low numbers was voters’ apathy and the reason is clear to me. When the currency swap exercise was done weeks leading to the election, our candidate then and now the President-elect raised his voice in solidarity with Nigerians that the policy will impoverish Nigerians, negatively affect businesses and hinder the elections in a negative way. The opposition parties led by their presidential candidates were happy to impoverish Nigerians and Nigerian businesses especially small business owners on the altar of their self-interest but we stood firm on the side of Nigerians. And we saw what happened, people had no money to feed, transport or do business. How did we expect those people to be enthused to come out to vote? How did we expect those that spent hours queuing to enter banks and collect their money from ATMs to be so encouraged to go and queue the following morning to vote? They were angry and hungry. They stayed away and we can only have the opposition parties to blame for that as well as misguided elements in the Central Bank of Nigeria that left their remit of economic management to be dabbling in politics.
The LP and its supporters have said they won and that the court should declare them the winner of the 2023 general election. How do you see this playing out in court, given that they have filed their petitions?
It is a good thing that they have gone to court as it is their right to do so. You must understand that approaching the court in the aftermath of an election is an integral part of the electoral process. It is as important as the primaries that selected the candidates, and the election itself so we welcome that. What we however hope for is that since they have approached the court, they should then allow the court to do its job based on evidence and facts before it. What we are seeing is the intimidation of the judiciary and mudslinging being thrown the way of the court even before the hearing of the petition gets underway. This should not be encouraged.
We have seen and heard some commentators sympathetic to the opposition’s cause already casting aspersion on the integrity of the judiciary and the court, setting the groundwork for their eventual loss as they will surely lose because I cannot see where a candidate that came third in a general election is claiming that he won and should be declared the winner. You did not win in Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, Sokoto, Bauchi, Borno, Niger, Kwara, Kogi, Jigawa, Adamawa, Oyo, Ekiti, Ondo, Ogun to mention but a few. You did not even meet the constitutional requirement of 25 per cent in 25 states and the FCT and yet you claim you won. Are we so gullible in Nigeria to be taken for a ride by a Donald Trump wannabe?
What we see is a group of people that are ready to bring the country down once a process does not go their way no matter how credible that process is. They are the same guys that are quick to approach the court, praise it to high heavens when the decision of the court is in tandem with their wishes and castigate the court when it comes to a decision contrary to their wishes. It is important at this juncture to advise otherwise respected senior members of the bar and a section of the press to be circumspect and desist from heating up the polity by making unguarded and unprofessional comments. Most especially members of the fourth realm must know that they have a sacred duty to protect our hard-earned democracy and guard that duty with all sense of responsibility. Making blatantly partisan commentaries on the sanctity of our electoral process and our democracy should be discouraged. What we must all collectively do is continue to deepen our critical institutions. What we are grateful for is that under the President-elect, Nigerian institutions will grow stronger and such acts of denigrating reputable arms of government like the judiciary will not go without an invitation to substantiate such bogus allegations.
We must all subject ourselves to the sanctity of the judicial system. What is important is to lay the facts and put the evidence before the court for its review. In our own case, we are ready to defend the mandate freely given to the President-elect by Nigerians as you can see by the legal team assembled by the President-elect and the party.
Security, as well as electoral integrity, were some of the reasons adduced for the currency swap; to ensure that money bags did not hijack the process and thwart the will of the people. Do you think that was achieved?
To put it on record again, the currency swap exercise was ill-thought-through and it wreaked havoc on our economy and the psyche of our people, the ramification of which may not be glaring now and we may well grapple with for the foreseeable future. I have always thought that the professed reasons behind the decision by the actors responsible for it cannot justify the damage that it did to our economy. Having said that, it is also a blessing in disguise that the legitimacy of the victory of the President-elect cannot be questioned on the basis that the APC induced voters with money. So, the integrity of the electoral process as it relates to money playing a part in the emergence of a winner was eliminated.
But, like I have said in the past, which speaks to my statements about voters’ apathy earlier, money is an integral part of the electoral process and is required by all parties involved, INEC inclusive, to guarantee a transparent process. Parties will hire and pay agents to man the various polling units, INEC will hire ad-hoc staff as its workforce cannot undertake the magnitude of the logistics required on election day, and the security agents will be on the ground to ensure law and order. All of these workers were most likely going to be paid in cash. If you remove the ability to do this in a seamless manner like it was done by that policy, you will ultimately be jeopardising the integrity of the entire process. But, we will learn from this and hopefully perform better in the 2027 general election.
THE NATION
