By Wilfred Eya
Former presidential candidate of the Peoples Trust (PT) but now a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim in this interview, among other issues, said Nigeria should do further electoral reform to restore the confidence of the people in future elections in the country.
What are your thoughts on Nigeria at 63?
At independence, the people looked forward to their leaders because they led from the front. Nobody was a leader because of the size of his wealth. Those who had money then were led by the political leaders. All the rich people in the South-West were made by Chief Obafemi Awolowo. He empowered most of the businessmen who were following his party line. The political leaders at that time were not businessmen but the businessmen accepted the leadership of the political class.
Even those in the military before the 1966 coup, especially those from the North, saw Sir Ahmadu Bello as a demi-god. That was the image they had about the Sardauna even when they became generals. That was why they were so emotional over the killing of the Sardauna during the first coup. The whole society was connected, so we need to go back to the basics if we want to get things right.
Would you say that Nigeria has been able to achieve the dreams of her founding fathers in the last 63 years of self-rule?
You see, Nigeria started regressing after military intervention. The tide of national development was arrested and the hand of the clock was drawn back. Most of our national infrastructure were built in the first and second republics although the first set of military leaders also had some level of patriotism in them because they knew the agenda. So, they were still a bit balanced.
There was what was called the Nigerian Foreign Policy, which was non alignment. Everybody knew that and even when the military coup came, they maintained the Non-Alignment Policy. There was a national development plan, covering a number of years and they also maintained that. So, despite their low level of education and as military leaders, they maintained some of the standards that were created by the post-independence administration.
Also, there were national values but all those values have been eroded. It is a shame that we are presently talking about politics of ‘it’s our turn.’ In pre-independence period, Sir Kashim Ibrahim, a Kanuri man and a Muslim, came and ran for election in Benue-Plateau that is a Christian dominated area and was supported by Joseph Tarka. Nobody asked where Kashim came from. Chief Awolowo campaigned for Ernest Ikoli against Samuel Akinsanya, a Yoruba man, during the Nigerian Youth Movement (NYM) election. That was the spirit!
But now, we are so fractionalized as a people that we cannot talk about programmes, values and virtues. All we talk about now is ‘it is our turn.’ What is all these rubbish about ‘it is our turn?’ Awolowo talked about federalism and not about rotation of the presidency; they are not exactly the same. Federalism is about decentralization of power to the major components of the society. It is just a structural arrangement; it is about balance of power and not about ethnicity.
Rotation of presidency or rotation of power is not federalism. It is bullshit; that is what it is. We have created a society, where every single issue has to be looked at from pro-North or pro-South, pro-Muslims or pro-Christians. Despite our level of education as we have more professors now than we had at independence, the people of pre-independence era were more patriotic than present-day Nigerians in terms of national values.
So, we need to reset our thinking as a people because there is no major development in history, without a period of ideological preparation on a mass scale. Before independence, all the newspapers were saying the same thing. Whether it was Tribune or West African Pilot, the ideals that were promoted were the same. Even in European history, there was a period of darkness. And the period when they were preparing for industrial revolution was what was called renaissance; the period of mass discourse about the best in European history by philosophers, clergymen, journalists and everybody.
So, this should be our period of renaissance; the period to promote the best in our values and discuss them on a mass scale in order to inspire mass consciousness and not promoting the worst in us. Enough of promoting the worst in us to the front burner. Emotionalism and what is news about us is now driven by the most audacious of the evil that lives amongst us and the promotion of such things to the front burner.
We need a shift from this culture because that is the only way we can redefine mass social value and consciousness, so that the rebirth that Nigeria desperately needs will come. Without this on a mass scale, it will be difficult to have a progressive leadership.
Where and how would you say that Nigeria got it wrong in terms of leadership?
I’ve already said it; the January 1966 coup during which First Republic leaders were killed. It was a coup against history, not just a coup against the government.
Can we continue to blame the nation’s woes on the military, and if Nigeria is to be restored to the path to greatness, what are those things the citizenry should start looking at?
The number one is subscription to good leadership and embracing of positive values wherever we find ourselves and drive these positive values in our communication. Whether you are an editor, a teacher or a cleric, you are a leader at your own level and you must see it as a responsibility because the people get the kind of leadership they deserve.
Secondly, we must have electoral reform. Leaders should not be chosen by their war chest and the electoral process must be transparent. Transparency is not just about something being free, but about being seen to be fair and I will prescribe the reconstitution of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Let’s deal with these issues now and not six months to the elections. Let’s discuss and deal with these issues and put them behind us, not six months to the next general election, so that people will know that there is a process that assures a fair competition to avoid a situation that some people will see elections as war and litigation.
If we have elections that are overwhelmingly transparent, people will find it easy to concede defeat. But when something is shady, even though it is not unfair, there will always be a problem because you cannot convince anybody that something has not happened, otherwise why did you do something else from what you said you were going to do. That is what transparency is all about; it is not a legal issue.
So, we have to deal with electoral reform now for the sake of our young people, who are really patriots and want a better country to avoid extinguishing their hope in the democratic process. So, these issues are important and must be addressed right now before the next general election.
So, we need a further reform on the electoral process to address the recruitment of the leadership of INEC to make the electoral process truly independent of external control and influence before the 2027 general election. The positions of chairman of INEC and national commissioners should be advertised and not appointed by the president.
Do you see the ruling APC heeding your call for electoral reform before the 2027 polls?
In 1999, we won the election on the platform of the PDP. But who were those that asked for an independent electoral commission? We were the ones. We were not behaving like people who were sure they were going to get power because we were believers in democracy. So, Nigerians need believers in democracy across the parties. This is beyond APC and PDP. If we don’t sort out the electoral system right now, and not six months or one year to the elections, the 2027 general election is going to be war. Nobody would be going to court and we don’t want that.
So, Nigeria needs statesmen and not politicians. We don’t need politicians in the driver’s seat of the reform of state institutions. We need statesmen who will speak up. The issue of electoral reform is not the business of the opposition alone. It is the business for everyone who loves Nigeria because if we don’t reform the process and elections cannot be delivered credibly, 2027 will be war. We have to rescue the democratic process because it is becoming meaningless. Why are we having coup d’états all over Africa; it is because people don’t see any content in what we call democracy.
Most young people seem to have lost confidence in the electoral system as INEC recently complained that the youth are not coming out to serve as ad hoc staff and to collect their Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs) ahead of the off-season governorship elections in Imo, Bayelsa and Kogi states. How do we address this situation?
Yes, they have lost confidence in the electoral system but INEC should blame itself for that. However, that is why we need to reconstitute the commission. This same INEC that cannot get young people to serve as ad hoc staff, is it the one that will conduct elections? They have a lot of job to do. The evil that was done in the 2023 elections process did so much damage to this country.
You raised the hope of young people, particularly those who were first-time voters; you told them that you will do this and that but at the end of the day, unapologetically and without any communication, you just discarded everything, and said there was a glitch.
I am not saying that APC did not win the presidential election because there was a structural problem with the opposition. One of the structural problems was that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) divided itself into three parties. Peter Obi of Labour Party (LP) was part of PDP; Rabiu Kwankwaso of New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) was part of PDP and the Atiku Abubakar-led PDP was the mainstream.
Besides the division, about four or five governors of the party went with the Nyesom Wike group. If you add the Wike group to the number of governors who supported the candidate of the APC, Bola Tinubu, that will give you almost 28 governors. It is very difficult for 28 governors out of 36 to support a presidential candidate and he loses in the election.
In fact, the size of votes that those governors produced, which was hardly up to 40 per cent, was a disappointment. As a matter of fact, the result did not match the level of structural and organisational support, and it shows how unpopular the APC has become. If you have 28 governors, you should have landslide victory. So, the outcome of the presidential election was a measure of how Nigerians were angry with the APC as a party.
That was why with 28 governors, the party struggled to have up to 40 per cent of the total votes cast. So, there was a structural problem with the way the opposition organised itself before the election. I was there at the foundation of the PDP. I was a director in the secretariat with Prof. Jerry Gana as National Secretary and we had meetings; nobody was taken for granted.
At that foundation of the PDP, we had people, about 20 of them, who were qualified to be president. They include Chief Bola Ige before they walked out of the initiative and went to start their own party; Chief Ayo Adebanjo, who was the representative of Afenifere to the meetings we used to have at Prof. Jerry Gana’s house in 1998.
We also had people like Alhaji Adamu Ciroma, Chief Sunday Awoniyi, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, Prof Jibril Aminu, Chief Jim Nwobodo, Alhaji Abubakar Rimi, Chief Solomon Lar, Prof Jerry Gana and Dr Iyorchia Ayu, among others. All these people were qualified to be president. There’s not a single one of them in terms of their stature, bred and history that you can compare to any presidential candidate we have right now.
They were well brought up, you cannot challenge their educational training, whether the school they went to and at what time or their political tutelage and what have you. But all of them subsumed their political ambitions and we formed one party, so that by the time we went for the local government elections in 1998, the PDP had two-third of the seats in Nigeria as a political association and it was not anybody’s money that led to that because most of the rich Abacha politicians were in the All Peoples Party (APP).
In Kwara State, for instance, even though Senator Bukola Saraki’s father, Chief Olusola Saraki, was in APP, he could not win convincingly in the state. His party had a little above 40 per cent of the votes during the local government elections even with Mohammed Lawal as a member. The PDP had 33 per cent of the votes and Afenifere that left us and formed the Alliance for Democracy (AD) had 19 per cent of the votes.
I delivered my local government in that election. We even had Alhaji Ndalolo of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), becoming a council chairman in Kwara North. What happened was that political leaders relied on their history to deliver their localities and not because of anybody’s billions. All those who had the billions were in General Abacha’s party, the APP, but Nigerians disgraced them at the polls.
The PDP had two-third of the country, while the Afenifere won in most states of the South-West. That was how the Fourth Republic was formed; I was at the centre of it. So, we need consensus building within the parties. Like I said, there was a structural problem within the PDP, which it made it easy for them to lose the 2023 presidential election but INEC should have neatly done its job by adhering to its guidelines and regulations.
If you said that results would be transmitted electronically, you are duty bound to do that. We don’t need mutilated results because when you come with this kind of results and emotion is high, it is very difficult to convince anyone that you did not manipulate the process. We don’t want to have that kind of election again.
So, whether the Supreme Court validates the election of our president, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, or not is not the issue. The issue is that if we want to restore the confidence of the people in our electoral process, we must clean up INEC and put competent people to run affairs of the commission. The Mahmood Yakubu-led management of INEC has disappointed Nigerians many times.
You will recall that in 2019, he postponed elections without informing anybody even when President Muhammadu Buhari had gone to his home state, Katsina, for the exercise. So, I don’t even know why he was even retained for the 2023 elections. Buhari has said then that there will be consequences for that postponement as billions of naira were allocated to INEC for the elections but at the end of the day, there were no consequences; not even a probe.
Should the blame only be on INEC; how about the judiciary, which seemed to be validating whatever INEC did during the elections?
I know that people have their expectations from the judiciary but judges adjudicate based on law and evidence and the truth of the matter is that the Electoral Act has skewed the balance in favour of the winner of the election and the man who organised the election. The judiciary litigates based on the law but the law as it is now, puts the burden of proof on the petitioner, who is not responsible for the conduct of the election. And if the petitioner should rely on evidence from the electoral commission, definitely there will be no evidence to prove his case.
So, it is always very difficult, except in an exceptional case for the one who is declared winner of an election to lose in court under the present system. That is why I have always said that the onus of proof, which is also one of the recommendations of the Justice Mohammed Uwais panel report, should be on INEC because it is the custodian of all the evidences in the conduct of elections but that will be a different jurisprudence.