Presidential candidate of the National Conscience Party (NCP) in the last presidential election, Martin Onovo, in this interview with Assistant Politics Editor, DANIEL KANU, takes a holistic look at the exercise, among other contending issues. Excerpts.
What is your assessment of the recent general elections?
Elections in Nigeria since 1999 have been progressively unacceptable, and this is not an exception. Let me use INEC (Independent National Electoral Commission) numbers; out of a total 68.8 million registered voters in the presidential election, INEC recorded about 28 million votes. This shows that INEC disenfranchised over 40 million voters. I don’t know whether you consider that. And there are even issues around the 28 million votes cast. There are serious questions whether using the card-readers as was agreed after a very strong national contention, whether Kano State will be able to deliver 1.9 million votes, especially when you see it in the light that in the 1.9 million votes, there was no void votes. If you believe that, you can believe anything. It is unfortunate and that is because of the ethical ambience and the impunity in the polity. I am bold to say that Nigeria is incapable of a free and fair election as at today; maybe in the future we will get there.
There are two pillars of democracy: the rule of law and integrity of the ballot. Both were absent in the election; so this cannot be a democratic election. And it is unfortunate that the INEC chairman, Attahiru Jega, who claims to be a professor of political science, does not know this much.
The rule of law is the first rule of democracy, even before the integrity of the ballot. You can only cast a ballot in line with the rule of law. For example, if a 14-year-old goes to the poll to vote, it is unlawful. So we must understand that the first step is the law, and the laws in Nigeria prohibit corruption.
Look at the outrageous use of slush funds, which was raised and which Jega and his INEC pretended not to be aware of, notwithstanding the historical antecedents and the obvious public facts about the use of slush funds and about the serious violation of Section 91 of the Electoral Act on election finance limit. For a presidential election, according to the Electoral Act, you can’t spend more than a billion. We raised the issue and INEC kept silent, while trillions were being spent on the elections. Interestingly, the trillions are not anybody’s funds; it is public funds that were clearly diverted for election purposes. The historical facts are incontestable. Therefore if you look at the level of disenfranchisement, the ethnic and regional skew in the disenfranchisement, you will notice that it was more in the South East and South South. In the North, particularly North West and North East, they were having, if you will permit me, over-enfranchisement. The Internally-displaced Persons (IDPs) in the North East found it easier to collect their Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) than people in the South East. With that, you will find out that it is obvious there was a deliberate structured disenfranchisement.
We had a stakeholders’ meeting where five members of each political party were invited in Abuja. I was there. Every other political party, to the best of my knowledge, was there. Journalists, the police, representatives of international partners etc. were all there, and INEC rolled out the procedure for the elections. But all turned out to be deliberately deceitful.
INEC told us that card-readers would be used as agreed. It also told us that where the card-reader fails, an incident form would be used and then manual accreditation would apply. This was supposed to be transparent and everybody agreed that it is what would happen. Only on the day of the election for INEC to announce exemption, showing that it was pre-meditated, and this exemption applied only in certain parts of the country, so that over-voting could occur in those places. When it took some individuals 35 minutes to accredit, how do you justify the claim of two million voters in one state in the North West? So, you find out that it seems that INEC abused its authority in a very treasonable manner to subvert the will of the Nigerian people. This is why we should be intolerant of deviations because the first deviation was during the primaries where we had so much violence and INEC kept quiet. INEC abdicated its responsibility, and we should have called INEC to order.
But also, the Nigerian society had, because of the prevalent impunity, become very tolerant of deviations. When we had multiple fatalities, human beings killed in several states during primaries, INEC never wrote a memo, not even a press release. What INEC did, what they are good at, was only to deceitfully gather the world media and be signing peace accord. That, to me, is silly. Is the peace accord stronger than the Nigerian law, and yet people, including journalists that should have been very critical on the issue, were celebrating? Why sign a hypocritical peace accord that they did not keep? We cannot continue in this mass deceit as a people.
We have had governments since 1999, but we have never had a legitimate democratic government. The 2015 election is not different. The NCP as a party has decided that it is in the interest of the party to go along with General Muhammadu Buhari, not because he won a credible election, but because the process is so cumbersome and it is irreversible at this point. It is in the national interest to go ahead, but the only way to prevent this is to make sure we start from the first deviation. That is the duty of the media as the fourth estate.
I am an opposition political candidate. I am partisan. But as far as the media continue to fail in their constitutional role as the fourth estate of the realm, the watchdog of the society, this nonsense will continue. If we apply corrupt forms in violation of the constitution, we used funds beyond the limits stipulated by the Electoral Act in clear violation of Section 91 of the Electoral Act, and we tolerated violence starting from party primaries till the elections, I find it difficult to accept that the election is credible because it didn’t conform with the laws. The first indication is that if you have 68 million registered voters as claimed by INEC and you have only 28 million voters, what happened to 40 million? So you disenfranchised the majority; that can’t be democratic. Second, there were obvious cases of criminal voting by under-aged pupils recorded in videos, especially in the North West and you know Jega is from the North West. So the regional skew in the structured disenfranchisement and over-voting, and the fact that Jega is from the North West points to a clear bias without question. It cannot be coincidental. To that extent the NCP, having evaluated all the facts, decided that this election is not different from the 1999, 2003, 2007 and 2011. But we went ahead after those charade elections.
So it looks like, considering our historical inability to conduct a free and fair election and the cost of any crisis, it is patriotic to tolerate this treasonable fraud that was the outcome of the polls, just like we tolerated previous ones and proceeded. We just hope that General Buhari will correct all the deviations in the next four years that he will be in power, which is our position. We want to offer him our patriotic support as long as his government proposes policies and implementation plans that are patriotic and for the development of the country. That does not mean we are not an opposition party. We didn’t win the election because there was none; if there was a credible election, there is no party that will beat the NPC.
But the international observers gave credit to the election.
The election has to be tolerated by virtue of patriotic judgement. What is the alternative? Another charade? But the first thing you must know about the international community is that their own interest is primary and paramount. These are the same people that loan us money at shylock interest rates. So do not ever make a mistake (to think that) they could love you more than you love yourself. Maybe they want us to move on for there not to be crisis, so as not to have Nigerians as immigrants flooding their countries. Don’t you know our population and what impact it will have on them if we are in crisis? So they have their own reasons. We must not supplant their own objective for our national interest.
Does Buhari strike you as one that can give hope to Nigerians?
At Buhari’s age, I think he will do what is right. I don’t see what he will be scheming about at 73. I think he needs to finally establish his legacy. We must remember that the legacy he established as a military head of state is still there. I am one of those who insisted that Buhari of 1984 is different from Buhari of 2015. I still hold that position. He was much younger, much stronger, and more mentally alert then. He was at the peak of his life. But I still think he is in a good position to do more good now if he decides to.
The Nigerian presidency is so powerful, which is why I sought after it. If you really intend to do the good, the position is very powerful that you can do the good you want. The Nigerian presidency is the most powerful presidency in the world, in terms of constitutional powers. So, to that extent, I expect that Buhari at his age and pedigree should perform. It will be unfair to say he is not a patriot; I think he is a patriot looking at his record of 1984/85. But I still maintain my position that he is too old for the presidency right now. However, since that is what we have, we have to work with it. I still think that anybody who should be our president should be under retirement age: 55 years. That is my position.
We in the NCP will offer him (Buhari) very robust support, specifically for national development. Not for partisan promotion, not to be soft with corruption. We do not see him among those in the list of Nigerian oppressors. We will advise him to audit the election process, so that we can see the deviations clearly. For example, before you collect your PVC, you are supposed to either return your (Temporary Voters Card) TVC or fill a form. Let us see all the TVCs or the forms for all the PVCs that were given, particularly in the North East. You will see it was a shameful scam. If you look at the regional skew with respect to registration and PVC distribution, if you under-register your opponent’s stronghold and under-distribute in your opponents stronghold, then you have already defeated your opponent before the election. The non-indigenes, for instance in Kano and Lagos, complained before the election yet there was no remedy provided. Even many notable politicians could not collect PVC. These are known data you cannot contradict.
Most Nigerians applauded President Goodluck Jonathan for statesmanship, given the way he conceded.
(Cuts in) For me, that’s not statesmanship. I think he simply used his personal sense of judgement. I think he came to a conclusion very similar to that of the NCP; that what is the cost of trying to establish that there were irregularities at that stage? He knew that the cost of reversing the process was too high and unreasonable.
