Constitutional lawyer, human rights activist and president, Voters’ Awareness Initiative (VAI), Wale Ogunade, in this interview with Senior Correspondent, ISHAYA IBRAHIM, examines the problem of having credible elections in Nigeria.
Objective of VAI
Wale Ogunade
The whole essence is to educate people on their civic and political rights. Voters Awareness Initiative (VAI) came up as a result of the state of slumber the National Orientation Agency (NOA) has gone into. Ordinarily, the agency has the statutory duty to educate Nigerians on their civic and political rights. But they have failed, and woefully for that matter, in doing that. And you find out that they have gone to sleep. They don’t sensitise people on anything. The only thing they do is that one or two days to the election, they come up with one or two jingles. And since 10 years ago, I just felt this shouldn’t be; that I was going to change the face of electoral activities in Nigeria. So, I started Voters Awareness Initiative. And with it, of course, God has used us to really deepen democracy, expand the electoral system and so on and so forth.
Strategies used in creating awareness
Our activities are anchored around good governance, accountability and rule of law. We get involved in the electoral process through sensitisation programmes, civic education, and holding those in government accountable. Once in a while, we have interviews with them (elected office-holders). We have workshops and seminars or conferences of which we call them. And, of course, most of the time, we throw issues up in the public space about their activities and actions, to which they too react.
Problem of the Nigerian voter
The principal reason we came out is because we have seen that the Nigerian voter is very naive, very docile and nonchalant. All come from the belief that their vote cannot count. And since the vote cannot count, there is no need wasting their time going to vote. Of course, the other thing is that rigging of election is the order of the day in Nigeria. So they believe that whether they vote or not, the elections will be rigged. All these things put together make the issue of nonchalance rampant in Nigeria. And the politicians like it.
To that extent, they ensure that there is no strong voter education in Nigeria. They ensure that they do not have a voter education department in their political parties. And that is why you find that they will be using the words “imposition”, “consensus candidate” and “it is a family affair”. These lexicons don’t exist in the political concept of other countries. They don’t know what is called party primaries, and there is no internal democracy in all the political parties. What they do is to hold what is called shadow elections, after they would have done all the arrangements. That is what is playing out between (Tom) Ikimi and the All Progressives Congress (APC), or the seven governors that formed the new Peoples Democratic Party (nPDP). It is all lack of internal democracy in political parties.
Staying neutral of the process
I am not a member of any political party. I know that politics is for the betterment of everyone. Mine is that I want politicians to work towards the betterment of everybody. It is not about being partisan; it is about being patriotic. And there is a line between been patriotic and partisanship.
Handling the challenge of voting by ethnic affiliation
Ours is to educate them (the voters). We are not coming out to say Goodluck Jonathan is good or bad. Ours is that you must come out and vote. When you go to our website, you will never see us supporting any candidate. Anytime we come out, we talk objectively, aimed at strengthening democracy; not to endorse any politician, because the politicians are a shameless set of people. And that is why it will be convenient for a Tom Ikimi to quickly leave APC, before evening, he is already in the PDP. That is what we call political harlotry
And of course, it is this stomach infrastructure that we are talking about. It is their stomach that they are interested in. No philosophy and no consistency. All those things are what we are talking about; so that we can have politics of ideology in Nigeria; not politics of money.
Plans for 2015 election
We are working towards having a voter education; in fact, we have started. We sensitise people through the media, through street walk and town hall meetings, and, of course, we will be going round the country in the next two, three months, so that before the election, many people would have been educated. We want to reduce election rigging by 40 per cent.
