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| Ezenwa Nwagwu |
Ezenwa Nwagwu, is the Chairman of Partners for Electoral Reform (PER). In this interview, with Chibuzo Ukaibe, he speaks on the planned merger of the opposition parties and highlights the need for fresh values and personalities as panacea to its success. He also called for the unbundling of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to make it more efficient.
What is Partners for Electoral Reform all about?
Partners
for Electoral Reform are interested in sensitising Nigerians to be partisan in
the way we engage politics. We are thinking of shifting from simply critiquing
to begin to create that space where we can galvanize our people to take deeper
interest in the issues of democracy, good governance and transparency and also
identify people that can bring about this change that we anticipate.
The position has been that political parties lack
ideology. Do you agree with this position?
You
will appreciate that most of what we have as political parties presently are
fixtures of the departing military and basically they founded these parties
around the thinking that you have to own properties, with headquarters in
strategic places. So most of those issues gave rise to people being the ones
who rented office space and individuals have to pay for those office spaces.
So
money bags and economic gangsters came together having had something to do with
the military came together to form most of what we call political parties. So
we jumped a step and that step was where people were not part of the founding
of the political parties. So the price we are paying is that once you jump the
first stage, which is to have democracy without democrats, then you will have a
challenge of lack of ideology that is prevalent now.
Then
if you wanted to join the National Council Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) or the
Action Group (AG) like we read, you have to go through a school to be taught
its ideology. So you don’t just walk up to join them. There has to be some
indoctrination that takes place to put you up to speed on the values, norms and
ideology of the party. But we know today that this process does not happen.
Even
at the core issues of the merger, the people themselves are not part of it. So
we need to take the battle that if we need to dislodge the current governing
elite today. You have to bring the people in. That is what Partners for
Electoral Reform is about. We are out to sensitise Nigerians to dislodge the
people who are holding on today.
The opposition is working out a merger arrangement
to battle the ruling PDP. Do you think they can take care of the issues that
have plagued such attempts in the past?
Yes
if nothing fundamental is done about it. The law of madness is to continue to
do what you have done and expect new results. What is that thing that we are
looking forward to in the merger, the merger must contain new values. The core
components of the merger would be at the fore. Would it just be about power? Or
about positioning people to take power? Or about core issues that have
bedeviled leadership in Nigeria; issues of corruption, transparency,
accountability should be part of the conversation. It shouldn’t just be a
mechanism to take power.
Then
there is also the issue of personalities. It is important that this merger is
not just about individuals and personalities. It should throw up a process that
throws up younger elements who can take the country to where it ought to be and
there are such people available. People who have tested their abilities in
other areas like business and other professions. All over the world that is the
trend, people in their 50’s and below with fresh ideas and energy are entrusted
with leadership positions. Most countries are running away from gerontocracy,
government by the elderly. It is something that is taking a back sit and I
don’t see why Nigeria should be an exception.
So
the conversation around the merger must take that tone otherwise, the same
baggage and issues that led to the process being dead on arrival before will
repeat itself again. Remember the people the opposition wants to merge for are
not folding their hands they are also working around seeing how they will
weaken the platform of their engagement. And so if you don’t raise the bar a
little higher with these new values and new personalities, you might be missing
the mark.
A key issue has been the call for persons in the
fore-front of the opposition merger to resist the temptation to run for
elective office. Do you share this view?
I
belong to the school of thought that persons in the fore-front of the merger
should not contest elections in 2015. I think that they have made enormous
sacrifice. They possess tremendous goodwill but their role in politics has also
been a little divisive. In the sense that their continued involvement invokes
passion in such a manner that it perils the whole idea of consensus building
and compromise. And so people need come to a point of self-understanding.
General Mohammad Buhari, should come to some point of understanding. Be honest
about your abilities and weakness. You must come to that point where you begin
to see society making progress and not the individual making progress.
That
is what being a statesman is about. They think more about how the society can
make progress and not how they as individuals make progress. When you get to
that point then you begin to see whether you possess the genius of politics
which politicians should have. There is a point you play in politics that the
system checks. It is historical; if you look back there are persons who kept
playing a particular role and then the system rejected them and made it
impossible for them to continue.
So
what you do at that point is to go back and think. You say to yourself does my
progress make for progress of society? Or do I work for the progress of
society? What that means is that at certain points in your life you must have
reproduced people. Every leader who has not reproduced his kind or does not
have the capacity to produce somebody better than him will not be fulfilled.
Considering the pedestal that some of these people we are talking about are
today, they need to have reproduced people of strong element and character to
take over and Nigeria is getting to that point where people want to see
freshness.
What
gave it to Jonathan in 2011 was the promise of freshness even though that is
dashed now. But Nigerians still look forward to something fresh. But in doing
that credit must be given to those presently in the forefront of the merger
talks that they possess what it takes to defeat and dislodge the governing
party. But like I said except it is well managed with new values and
personalities are brought in it might be returning to where we are coming from.
What do you make of the looming image of the PDP
in the polity?
PDP
is not popular. They have the capacity for rigging but they are not popular.
That is why Operation Nigeria is interested in the people. The people
themselves must understand that it is not about party or individual. It is
about our lack of interest and analysis of politics without voter’s card. For
instance the Occupy Nigeria was successful because of the anger of the rich.
The rich were sufficiently angry. Across the states look at the people who led
the movement. They were people you just can dismiss. The issue is that the
elites are critical in bringing about change. That is what must happen.
The
elites understand all the issues but majority do not vote. They do the analysis
but when you say go and do registration they don’t want to stand through the
pains of staying on a queue to register and get their cards. And so you find
out that on Election Day they sit down and discuss issues around election but
themselves are not voting. So we need to also inspire our people; elites, poor
and what is left of the middle class, to begin to get interested in the issue
of governance beyond analysing it. And the first step is to begin to have the
consciousness that the voter’s card has the power to bring about the change.
For
instance, a polling unit that registered 1000 voters, and they all come out to
vote would suspend rigging. Rigging takes place where you have 1000 registered
voters and only about 40 come out to vote. Then you have community conspiracy
which means the sharing of the votes by dominant parties. But if citizens who
have voted in a particular unit appear to vote, then you can’t rig. We need to
mobilise people to understand that pervading issue of corruption and failure of
leadership we have seen will not be wished away by the analysis that we do.
People
should come out and vote. That is why it is important that persons like Sam Nda
Isaiah, publisher of Leadership Newspaper, and others should leave the column
space and throw their hats into the ring. That is part of our interest to draw
out such people to come into the political space.
A former governor, Balarabe Musa, said it is very
difficult to win election today without being corrupt? How do you marry your
call for new persons with fresh ideas to join the political space against the background
of the money bag politics practiced in the country today?
Such
uninterrogated statements by elites insult the sensibilities of the people to
the extent that questions have to be asked at what point that started to
happen. Prof Chika Obi, whose political views were built around the Turkish
system, he defeated the NCNC in the Onitsha province, simply taking a ride on
bicycles with banners and promoting the ideas that he has. What has happened is
that majority of our politicians are lazy. They talk about the people without
wanting to get to the people. And so there are no alternatives. It is not true
that you do not have to be corrupt but it is true that you just have to work
hard and connect with the people. And that disconnect is why there is that
problem.
We
want to build a modern society and that modern society is not available now.
And that is what has defeated the elite; the need to build a modern society has
defeated the elites. And so all kinds of excuse are put up, like if I don’t
have money I can’t win election. Let’s see the possibilities. Obama had all the
excuses in the world. No black man has been president in the United States; he
had no experience, a fresh senator. But he had his dream, worked towards it and
today he is the president. There is nothing impossible.
If
we give the people the needed push and encouragement to draw out and dislodge
the status quo. We also need to build that consciousness that this is a
democracy and like I said you can’t have democracy without democrats. The
people must be carried along. People must understand their rights so we are
build that consciousness in which the central focus of any policy will be the
people and that people should understand that they can make that change.
Looking at 2015, what’s your rating of INEC so
far?
When
Prof. Attahiru Jega, Chairman of INEC, was appointed my take was that he was
deodorant. Now, if you don’t take your bath and you apply deodorant, you will
smell good for a while but later the stench for which you used the deodorant
will manifest. What are the issues; we have voter registers that have not been
reviewed. We have papered them but we need to fundamentally engage in a voter
audit that responds to the need of Nigeria for a clean, transparent and
authentic voter register. That has not happened. Secondly, INEC is saddled with
so many responsibilities.
INEC
conducts elections, follows election offenders, and that is why Justice Uwais
Reform committee recommended issues around electoral tribunals to take care of
election offenders. Some of us have also called for the unbundling of INEC so
that it will concentrate on issues of election management and leave the issues
of constituency delineation, election offenders, monitoring of political
parties to other institutions. That would be helpful. So you will find out that
even in isolated elections where you concentrate attention on one state we
still have logistic problems around election materials coming in on time,
officials being reshuffled sometimes 24 hours before elections making them get
to the places and not knowing what the issues are.
Again
this issue of adhoc staff needs to be engaged. Everywhere in the world adhoc
staffs are used, but it does not remove from the fact that INEC has the
responsibility to conduct free fair and credible elections. If there are
practices for which the election body was demonised, we are expected in the
past one or two years that Prof. Jega has been on the saddle that those
practices would have become clear. But subsequent elections have not shown that
that value has been percolated down, so it is important that we don’t allow the
rule of a good man but be interested in the rule of an institution.
The debate over the number of parties has been
raging for a while now. What is your view on this against the background of INEC’s
delisting of some political parties?
We
have a lot of politicians including Ph.D. holders who don’t know what democracy
is all about. So sometimes I marvel at the texture of their analysis. I did say
that the parties we have today are fixtures of the departing military meaning
that for most of us coming from that background the thinking is that if you
have two parties things work better. But when Chuba Okadigbo formed the
Communist Party in Nigeria, he did not have headquarters anywhere.
The
reason why we have the bigger challenges is that when you say people must have
parties in all the states and there are no dues from members, you have simply
told an individual who has money to provide those things and once he does that
he owns the party automatically. The option available to election management
body is not to allow them fight for election. But their right to association
cannot be denied. They can continue to grow from there or defunct as they case
maybe. But to legislate them out of existence has no place in democracy.
The
excuse of the parties making the ballot boxes too long can be dealt with by not
including them in the ballot papers after all if they are not fighting for
election they have no reason to be in the ballot papers. So the condition should
be those who want to fight for election should satisfy certain conditions. But
to say these parties are many and so we should be legislated out for me does
not capture the basic tenets of democracy.
Source: Leadership newspaper.
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