In this interview with ADELEKE ADESANYA in Lagos, the Presidential Candidate of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria , Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, said the Independent National Electoral Commission does not have any excuse to under-perform in the forthcoming general elections. She also speaks on her plans to lift Nigerians out of poverty if elected the next president of Nigeria. Excerpts.
With the 2019 general elections fast approaching, how will you rate INEC under Professor Mahmood Yakubu to deliver a credible election?
I believe the chairman of INEC knows that all eyes are on him, he is somebody who is well-read and he is somebody who should care about what history will record for him. He is someone who has a number of other competent people as Commissioners. It would be a tragedy for them if, in any way, they disappoint on the expectations of Nigerians. I think that is part of what those people who have followed the state elections so far conducted, even the international observers, have always said in terms of logistics and preparation; that it’s a better INEC in terms of that . But there are many issues involved in elections management that can undermine the integrity of electoral management. For instance, why is it that with the ugly incident of vote buying that we saw in those two elections, there has not been any kind of prosecution of any of the culprits. We saw this; the technology enabled us to see what was going on in those places.
Are you saying INEC should prosecute the vote buyers?
What I am saying is that those INEC, Nigeria Police, the Federal Government itself, other establishments that are associated with election activities are simply not interested in addressing this impunity that is taking a foot hold in our democratic process. We can’t accept that. So, my point is that the chairman of INEC has a responsibility that is bigger than any other things that we have known because under this particular management, we saw in the Ekiti and Osun elections, and these are actions that are directly of his own . The police have a role to play in this, the INEC law already says that vote buying is an offence. So, why have the offenders not been punished ? INEC cannot be the one punishing people, that is not its own mandate, but it has to be the one making this a major issue because it undermines electoral integrity. It means that you are confirming legitimacy to people who haven’t won the election but bought the elections, we can’t do that. So I am opened to the idea that he needs to remember what history record of him and he has a training to be able to solve this problem.
What is your solution to this problem?
One major basic solution is by ensuring that people don’t have the opportunity to create their vote by taking photographs of who they have voted for and be able to use the evidence of that as a basis to collect the money to have a proper market of buying and selling of the vote. What has happened? Are we going to be ready to ensure that the kind of access to such technology is taken away and, as it is, this case in every polling unit that no where in the polling unit of this country would anybody will be close enough to the person who is voting as to know that they have voted for you or your party and then collect money from you? So, there are some basic technical issues that can be done and they need to do. Until we see evidence of those things being done, we all must keep calling out INEC to do the right things.
Is the INEC chairman capable and credible to deliver in 2019?
With the training and capacity of Professor Yakubu, there is no reason why he should fail in conducting a free, fair and transparent 2019 election.The Osun and Ekiti elections have become signpost of what could go wrong in 2019, so there is no reason why a well-trained person would not take the lessons of those elections and prepare to give us at election, a national election, that would meet the global test of well-conducted election.
There are indications that Nigerians are in need of an alternative party away from APC and PDP. What are the plans of your party as the credible alternative?
We feel embarrassed that Nigeria has overtaken India as the world capital of extreme poverty and for that, we want to tackle poverty in the way that the Chinese faced it and were able to tackle it. The Chinese faced poverty of hundreds of millions of their citizen and the way they did it was to run a good economy that made the private sector the engine of economic growth and development in an inclusive way and they did that over the years. The right policies, the right institutions, the right focus of priority are in health, education, in basic human development so that they invested in their people and then, they did investment in critical infrastructures and their economy began to grow in double digits and as it grew over a period of nearly 30 years unbroken double digit growth, they pulled their people out of poverty. Today 700 million Chinese have been pulled out of poverty for decades. We have gone in reverse, at some point, our population that was poor was at 28 million in the 90s and then we have grown in size until we are talking about 87 million of Nigerian living on below 1 dollar per day. Our government is going to run an economy, a market-friendly economy, a private sector-based economy that will grow and lift at least 80 million Nigerians out of poverty.
How do you intend to achieve this in Nigeria?
Our emphasis on economic development is through human development. So, education is our new oil and human capital is our new economy. So, it means that when you look at the kind of root and branch reforms that we are going to pursue in education, health, in those sectors that matter for human resilience, environment, water sanitation, it just embodies what it takes to have productive citizens who have the knowledge to scale the resilience, the adaptive capability to be able to solve the problems in their society. The progress that it brings is definitely a different direction from what our normal political parties like, they care about oil prices. All they do is, as long as oil is doing well, they believe that the country is fine. What did they contribute to oil prices increasing, nothing? So, when you really look at it, you say what is your contribution to the development process, it’s nothing other than to look at it as an opportunity to make plenty of money. We want to change that
discussion.
