…Says Senate president should go to Southeast for zonal balancing, proper inclusion
By Daniel Kanu
Dr Sylvan Ebigwei, elder statesman, renowned dental surgeon, former chairman of the governing board, Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, President General emeritus, Aka Ikenga, Ndigbo intellectual think tank, and former Vice President General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, has never disappointed in letting his position known on critical issues affecting the country.
He took time during this exclusive chat with Sunday Sun to speak on the 2023 elections and the challenges, the ill-wind of promoting ethnic hate speeches, and why the job of a legislature should be part-time, among other national issues. Excerpt:
What is your evaluation of the 2023 elections so far?
Well, to start with there was a lot of hype that the election is going to be free and fair, that hype and assurances from the government and INEC engineered and propelled the youths and a lot of other people to come out and vote and they came out in their great numbers because the information about the issue and magic of BVAS gave Nigerians hope. Recall that in the past, elections have always been marred by irregularities. And you ask yourself, why irregularities? This is because everything was done manual and the manual submission of results normally lead to manipulations. So, with that mindset, when the issue of the BVAS came out Nigerians became very hopeful that their votes will count because we were told that as soon as you vote it will be immediate transmission or will be immediately uploaded to the INEC IReV server. With that assurance in mind, people trooped out to vote. Unfortunately, known to everybody, including the international observers, the election was compromised, there was a betrayal because the expectations were not met. And you ask why? Because they also reverted to the old primitive system of manual collation and transmission of the results and that created a lot of fracas. This was worst with the presidential election of 25th February. So, that betrayal did not go down well with a lot of Nigerians. Even those who won and those who lost were not happy because they know there were manipulations here and there. Secondly, there were lots of ballot snatching, over voting, voters suppression, even those who voted, their ballot were destroyed in their presence and that sent a lot of shock waves to both the voters and to the entire country, as well as to the international community because it was nothing, but thuggery. It appeared it was the people versus thugs. It appeared as if thugs were the people who conducted the election in many places. So, the results collated, people believed they were manipulated not just by one party, but by all the parties. I think with all this negativism the interest that Nigerians had for a good democratic process were completely eroded. So, it becomes a minus for us, the country and for INEC itself. Anybody who comes out to say that the elections were alright or that things were right, the person is either living in the moon or the person is deceiving himself or herself. Any such individual must have gained from the irregularities recorded. But again everything could not be said to be bad because a lot of things equally emanated from the process. The process is that BVAS is a very good instrument to be used for our elections if properly utilised or operated, so, many of us believe that in future if all the negative things that surrounded the BVAS are removed, I think Nigerians will be getting free and fair elections. So, adoption of BVAS only prevented a lot of over-voting and all sorts of other irregularities, but the only problem was the wrong utilization of the BVAS or call it BVAS misuse or the betrayal by the INEC staff for not using the machine as it should be used. BVAS has no problem on its own, it was the compromise of not using it the way it should be used. BVAS is a good thing for us if properly used. We have to continue adopting electronic system of voting in future elections. But the truth is that today, Nigerians are disappointed with outcome of 2023 elections due to manipulation.
But those who commend the election saying it was free and fair base part of their argument on the fact that we had a lot of shocks as some politicians, even governors, lost and this before now was unthinkable?
That is why I said there are negative sides of the election, as well as the positive sides. The positive side is that where the BVAS machine and the electoral processes were allowed to hold that is where we got some of the good results that they are talking about, but in the areas where the electoral guidelines and the BVAS were ignored, sidelined or manipulated nothing good came out from those places. We would have had more upsets or surprises on those who will lose the election if the BVAS were allowed to function fully. You can see that in the places where the BVAS were allowed to function, a party like the Labour Party got a good result. You see the LP producing legislators and even governors and start being a Third Force. Our youths believe in the BVAS, that was why they were able to bring out a Third Force to confront the other two big parties (APC and PDP). You can see that in Lagos State, LP was able to beat and outshine other political parties that have been there for years. So, as I said the BVAS is good, but its operation was bad, it was compromised.
But are you worried that the BVAS manipulation was worse in the presidential election of February 25…?
Yes, due to vested interests and that goes to what I said before that the operation of the BVAS has shown that it can be manipulated; it can be compromised given vested interests. But again for what we read especially on the input by the PDP in their presentation they revealed that the BVAS machine was corrupted. PDP presented that in the ecosystem of the BVAS machine a third programme was created to intercept the uploading of presidential result into the IReV. Some people intercepted it and now used it to release results that were not in consonance with what was obtained at the polling booths. So, these are the things the courts are going to look into. It is one of the technical issues raised or submitted by the PDP to the Court of Appeal. If it is true that a programme was created to interfere with the ecosystem of the BVAS machine and the IReV, then it is a very serious criminal issue as far as I am concerned.
How would you react to the hate speeches that now abound even from the quarters you hardly expect it to come from…?
It’s sad. I am aware that the hate comments of Bayo Onanuga (Spokesperson for President-elect) have been forwarded to the International Criminal Court, ICC. I see the hate speech as the last struggle of a dying man. You know when you have boxed a man into a corner where he can no longer defend himself he will apply all sorts of mechanisms, methods to get himself from that problem. Those drumming hate speech to me are not being honest to themselves and to Nigeria. We are a country and according to our constitution you are free to live anywhere in this country and do your business, our constitution guarantees it. It is not everybody that is in support or behind Onanuga in his hate speech. You can see that the place the hate speech was pronounced was in Lagos because there was ethnic profiling in Lagos, especially the Igbo people. If you look like an Igbo man you will not be allowed to vote. If you look like an Igbo man you are now enemy of the Yoruba. This is a dangerous narrative and it is not so. It is people who are benefitting from the present structure, from the crisis in Nigeria that are doing that. It is for selfish interest and those people have very primitive mind. They believe that if they can drive away all non-Yoruba people from Lagos, especially Ndigbo, they can now acquire their property, that is negative thinking, and they know it is not sustainable and it can never happen. Lagos is a cosmopolitan city because many things; airport, seaport, railway etc, all are based in Lagos and Lagos used to be the federal capital of Nigeria and that has attracted people from all ethnic groups to come to Lagos. Most of the non-indigenes as they call them in Lagos went to swampy areas that were unhabitable before and developed the areas into some major city, so telling them to go away seems ridiculous. Some of them were born here and don’t even know any other place. There are many Yoruba in Lagos who are not Lagosians. Let those people fanning ethnic hate speeches remember Rwanda, Hutus and Tutsi, the pogrom that happened there, the Tutsi later woke up to take their revenge. The majority of the people living in Lagos who are not Yoruba are huge; they are from different ethnic groups within the country. So, my advice to those drumming ethnic war and ethnic profiling is to tone down their commitment on ethnic profiling, they should know that we are a country, which we want to build into a nation. The only constant thing in life is change. Today, you may be on the receiving side, you may be gaining today and tomorrow you may find yourself on the other side. We need to be cautious of what we do or say because it may hunt us in future. Those weeping up ethnic sentiment are living in the past and to me they have primitive mind because with the situation in Nigeria today they cannot achieve their mission, but can only succeed in creating crisis, but that crisis can consume everybody including those that created it. So, they should perish the thought because it’s an ill-wind that blows no good.
The latest snag from those that, perhaps, rigged the election to win is to quickly tell their opponents to go to court. Are you worried about this development?
Well, the truth is that some Nigerians no longer have confidence in the judiciary as to guarantee justice, but for me, I do not condemn the judiciary because in every profession you have bad eggs. The judiciary is not a palace where you have only saints, so I still have hope in the judiciary that they will do the right thing. It is just that some questionable judgment given in the past are worrisome too, but I think in this 2023 elections the whole world, including the international community are now focusing serious attention on the outcome of what the Appeal Court is going to bring out. The issue now is; will the decision of the Appeal Court or any other court involved in the matter be based on technicalities or will it be based on facts and figures produced by the contending parties? So, all eyes are focused on the courts, especially on the presidential election, to see what they will do, so the judiciary has to be very careful or they will be doomed. Any wrong decision taken without proper consideration of facts on ground is going to spell doom.
The race for the Senate President is on already…?
(Cut’s in) Well, it is for the winning party (APC) to make their choice on where it will come out from. They should help the country by balancing the distribution of positions. They should not forget the Southeast, especially if they have people eminently qualified for the post. I was not happy at what happened in the past remembering the number of Senate presidents produced during the President Obasanjo regime. If my people will down play the crab mentality there is nothing wrong positioning the next Senate president to the Southeast for zonal balancing and proper inclusion. The challenge before the National Assembly is to rise to the occasion to bring out good laws.
You have always been an advocate of restructuring. Have you changed position?
We need restructuring to save Nigeria. If we have these six autonomous zones, let them become semi-autonomous in certain items that are padded into the Exclusive List of the federation. To me, Nigeria is not practicing presidential system of government. Nigeria is not practicing true democracy; true federalism is not just there. So, if we can restructure and carry out fiscal federalism whereby the states or the federating units keep certain amount of what they generate from their zone and pay certain amount to the centre, it will help in even development. Look at the time of Michael Okpara, Sardauna of Sokoto, Ahmadu Bello, Chief Awolowo, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe etc, when we had three regions, look at what they did with the meagre revenue realised from agriculture, cocoa house etc. They built universities, and put in place lasting infrastructure etc. All this was possible because they were keeping part of what they were generating, and paying certain amount to the Federal Government to keep the federal structure alive. And you can see that there was healthy competition in the first place. The truth is that we have to decentralize, we have to restructure, we have to decongest the Exclusive List given to the Federal Government, let education, transportation; thank God they have started with the railway, airport etc, let the Federal Government concern itself with areas like Immigration, military, security, currency matters, diplomatic issues, so that the regions will have something to focus on rather than always rushing to Abuja cap in hand. As at today everything is concentrated in Abuja and not only that, the type of legislative system we are having is very bad. Legislators should be given allowances, from the local government council to the Senate, they should be paid stipend, allowances for their sittings. You take care of their hotel bills, welfare and not the type of huge amount of money wasted on them. How many are they in the first place in the parliament? Look at the percentage of the amount that we are using to maintain them. How can Nigeria develop with such setting gulping so much money that would be channeled to development? Any system that allows people to have the kind of money our legislators are sitting on under their care cannot allow economic growth. Never.