In this interview, the national chairman of Zenith Labour Party, Chief Dan Nwanyanwu, speaks on some salient national issues with some journalists in Abuja. CHIBUZO UKAIBE was there for LEADERSHIP Sunday.
The release of INEC guidelines has generated a lot of heat. What is the position of your party with regards to the recently released INEC guidelines?
The guidelines that are normally released by INEC come after a general election; you learn from the pit falls, the mistakes, errors, experiences gathered from the previous elections. There must be a mischief you want to correct and for that, you keep amending the guidelines.
For example, after the general election in 2015, it took a very long time to release results because people voted into the night in some places; you do accreditation from 8am till about 1pm and then voting commences till late in the night, so you discover that it takes a lot of time.
So, in order to correct that, I think simultaneous accreditation and voting was tested in Bayelsa State and it went very well. So subsequent elections where it was tested it showed that simultaneous accreditation and voting helps the process and by 3pm most polling stations are done with their accreditation and voting.
But the main crux of the objection by some of the political parties has to do with the number of accredited voters. Yes of course accreditation will be known. In the previous exercise you finish accreditation and you announce the number before you start voting but in the last presidential election most people who got accredited, above 2million did not return to vote and you know the difference between President Jonathan and Buhari was about 2million. So how do we solve that problem?
Instead of asking voters to get accredited and go, they can get accredited and vote and if they like sit down there. That was what brought about simultaneous accreditation. By the time that is done, at the end of voting, the records will be there. You have the number of people that passed through the machine, we are no longer going to have incidence forms, the votes will be counted, the votes will be recorded, copy of signed results will be given to party agents and all these will be done in the presence of party agents.
There will be automatic transmission which has never been done, but I hope it will be done now, and then a copy of the result will be pasted. So I am for simultaneous accreditation and voting because it will save time.
The one I am opposed to which I learnt now they have corrected, is allowing persons whose names are not in the register to vote. It is never done. The voters register is germane to the election, it is the voters register that decides who votes or who do not. In fact, without the voters register there is no PVC for your test on the card reader.
So why would somebody suggest to INEC that if you pass through card reader and your name is not in the register you should be allowed to vote? What it means is that PVCs could be manufactured that could be acceptable to the card reader while names are not in the register.
Supreme Court, in any case, has made it clear that it is the voters register that will determine who will vote and who will not vote and it is also from there that accreditation of voters that will participate in an election is gotten.
There is also the issue of incidence forms, although INEC has said it will not be used; there are allegations that the commission is designing a new pattern to allow people who are not captured by the card readers to vote and some people think that is a way of bringing back use of the forms through the door….
I am opposed to that, we must do things properly. If one is not captured by the card reader, your name is in the register you must find out why the card reader had refused to read that card. As many as they are, they must be put aside and another card reader used to test it, the card reader must accept you, if you are configured within the system. There are no guarantee that those votes will not count, if it will not count why take it? Everything must work perfectly well.
But you know you cannot have a perfect system?
What I don’t accept is the way INEC is being attacked that they want to rig the election. Three years after election as the national chairman of Labour Party I have taken time to study the system of INEC. It is difficult for INEC to help you, INEC has no vote to give anybody, they cannot do it; the system is being improved everyday and apart from that I know Prof Mahmood Yakubu as a credible Nigerian. But because there are positions you occupy and because of what goes on, everybody will be put in one basket.
The votes are in the polling units where you and I will be and the party agents will be there as well. So, if we are all there let us see how those votes will be taken away; if they are counted and recorded and we have our copy, let us see how the votes will be taken away. If the security agents perform their duties the way it is supposed to, there will be no problem. The votes are at the polling units not in INEC.
Don’t forget that was how votes in Ondo and Edo States were recovered. With the copies given to us at the polling units, the Supreme Court declared that that is where the winner or loser of an election is known, not at the collation centre. And that is why political parties must be observant, careful and watch and make sure those results are counted and declared there, and copies given to them and their agents must hold it tight.
In the 2015 general election, there was this allegation of massive underage voting particularly in the North; not long ago the major opposition party PDP alleged that in the by election parliamentary in Kano, there was the same incidence of underage voting. Has the Prof Yakubu led INEC improved on that aspect?
What happened in Kano was so unfortunate but the one that happened recently was a local government election, it was not conducted by INEC. INEC doesn’t conduct local government elections, so it was possible for the government to do what it likes.
INEC has told the political parties that they have cleaned the register through what they call AFIS. But, this issue, like I said, goes back to the political parties, agents of political parties. The problem is that when we are picking agents we don’t pick people with knowledge and capacity, we pick people who know little or nothing of what their role is at the polling units.
You cannot have 30-50 agents of political parties and you manipulate the process unless there is a compromise amongst them, then you don’t blame anybody.
I think there should be a continuous attempt to also clean up the system.
When somebody is underage we know it, so parties should insist on their rights. The fact that an underage has PVC doesn’t qualify him or her to vote of course you will find the name in the register. The presiding officer should be in a position to say no, you are not entitled to have that document that you have.
But their name shouldn’t even be in the register in the first place.
INEC have said they have cleaned up the register and we hold them on to that. I know it is getting better, it was worse before and I don’t want to throw away the baby and the bath water, if the system is bad I will tell you.
Let me also advise our party friends, we are busy in the states trying to win election. You must win one seat; you know political parties were deregistered some years ago. It took Alhaji Balarabe Musa of PRP who went to court and Supreme Court said while it is in the Electoral Act, it is not part of the Constitution. But now, it has become part of the constitution and 80 percent of my colleagues do not know it has been gazetted.
Instead of going to look for votes, they are doing trade unionism, when they know some of those things are not factual. They should go and campaign and win one seat, there is still time. I bet you after the election over 70 percent of the political parties will be deregistered because the way I am seeing it they are not even doing anything.
How many seats does your party aim to get?
Zenith Labour Party was the last party registered and immediately we were registered we had our primaries. So, you can see we are not contesting on a level playing field and that is why if you ask me I will say postpone the election but it is not sacrosanct. We have postponed the election before. We did it in 2015 and heaven did not fall, we can do it again once there is reason and even the way I see it INEC may not be prepared.
So in Zenith Labour Party, we need more time so that we can come at par with other parties that is not to say that we have not worked enough to win. We are going to win state assembly seats, House of Reps, Senate and governorship seats. And it will have support because the mood of the nation is that they no longer want many political parties because it appears to be confusing them. So let the parties go and work and get just one state assembly seat or any of the area council and if you don’t get it INEC will deregister you, it is in the Electoral Act and the constitution has sanctioned it.
What gives you the impression that INEC seems not to be prepared for the election?
I am not speaking for INEC, a lot of factors have come into play but I don’t want to drag this interview into those factors; all I am saying is that if Zenith Labour Party has its way, we need a little bit more time to enable us win more seats because every day we move we get more converts so that means if I have more time, we will have more converts, I am just trying to explain to you how hard we have been working, we were number 91 political party registered, we were the last given certificate.
You talked about winning political seats including those of governorships but you and I know that beyond Abuja not much is known of your party, what gives you this confidence?
That statement is to the contrary. My party is known out side Abuja, it is not known only here. We are very popular in some states, we are not carrying the whole country, we have taken our points to states we have strong presence.
Can you list those states where you have a strong base?
I cannot tell you, it is strategic but come back after the election, God will give us senate, will give us governors, will give us many state assembly across the country.
Is there a target as per numbers?
That would be too ambitious for me to give a target in numbers but I know God has assured this party that we will not be affected with the deregistration. We have worked so hard, we have reasons why this party was formed, we want to reenact what was short-lived due to selfishness and greed and after the election we will now start the proper building of the party.
What is your take on the inability of the other political parties apart from the APC and PDP to come up with a third force?
It is because of the environment, the political barometre of the country. The environment in Nigeria today will not allow that.
How do you mean?
There are inbuilt institutional pot holes that will not let you have that third force and one of it is funds. The funds are not in the hands of those that would have given effective third force. In this year, after the presidential election, the president will either be Buhari or Atiku that is factual.
Not that Kingsley Moghalu is not good, he is fantastic, not that Oby Ezekwesili is not good, not that the Fela Durotoye, Sowore and others are not good, they may be better than the two but the conclusion of the matter is that their time has not come, it is based on the political barometre in Nigeria.
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This election is going to be the last we are going to have the likes of Buhari, Atiku and Co to come out and run for presidency in terms of their ages, capacity, background, disposition. Nigeria in the next general election will look downwards for its president. So the president leading candidates are dancing their last dance. Nigeria will now prepare to look for that person that will take us to that destination.
In the Osun and Ekiti State governorship elections there was this allegation of collusion between security agents and INEC to intimidate the entire opposition in favour of the APC; going into the presidential election which is just about a month away, are you in any way worried that such scenario will play out?
The Osun and Ekiti state governorship elections are a very bitter taste in the mouth. Osun was good until it was declared inconclusive. It was that second attempt that the security agents hijacked the process and stole the mandate of the people. This is one mandate I know will be recovered if the judiciary is still what it ought to be. This also applies to Ekiti.
Do you think President Buhari will keep to his word of conducting a free and fair election?
I don’t want to anticipate him. But it is INEC that conducts elections, it is left for Prof Yakubu to do the right thing or do the wrong thing and be on the wrong side of history. But the Prof Yakubu I know and met at the national conference in 2014 and have been following since then; I don’t think he wants to tarnish his name over a pot of porridge.
As stakeholders we have a lot to do in checkmating the system. If we follow this process carefully and everybody mans his own station professionally, we may not have issues after the election. We have governorship election that people did not petition because the process was transparent. It happened in Ondo and Anambra States.
So if President Buhari has promised that, anybody now trying to force himself by pretending to be working for the president is on his own and what he sees, he gets. Let INEC do their work, let security agents be at the polling units just to keep law and order, Nigerians will vote peacefully and we will elect a president.
How worrisome do you consider the situation in the North east and some parts of the north; do you think it holds enough threat to the conduct of the elections?
It holds enough threat and that was the situation we found ourselves in 2015 and yet we had all the voters that voted. The difficult thing for this election for anybody to rig is that Nigerians still live in this tribal thing. The 2015 election was between Jonathan and Buhari; north and south.
In this election it is between north versus north, Fulani versus Fulani, Muslim versus Muslim, even within the same age bracket; it would be different from Jonathan versus Buhari scenario. So anybody planning to manipulate should also know that within the other strong hold, there are also factors, strong people that will challenge it and that is why we must allow the process to take its course peacefully without overheating the system and creating problems in the system.
You said the election would be won either by the PDP or APC candidate, it therefore means your party will vote in a certain direction; what party or candidate will your party vote for?
It is too early to ask now. In the last meeting we had before the festive holiday a committee was set up to set out criteria for which anybody we want to support must fall into. Part of what we told them is to look at the peculiarity of the factors from each geopolitical zones.
For example, I just came back from the South east after 21days; what is there now is that the Igbo’s are saying we will not wait for four more years after 2019 and that whoever needs their support must come and put it in writing which will be made public that after four years he will not run again. For the APC candidate that one is sacrosanct, for the PDP candidate it is left for him to go and sign four years.
Some traditional rulers called me and said to me that for those of us in Abuja, it is enough. They said the Igbos will no longer continue to be taken as sacrificial lambs, to be used as guinea pigs and that after four years, we must come together and contest. Nobody has stopped the South-east from contesting anyway but this zoning system of Nigeria power has gone back to the north after four years it will return to the south.
If Igbo’s will not come out to claim their right to contest and move support from other geopolitical zones after four years it will be seen that they have sold out their own, why? This is because after eight years the South west would have been out of power for 14 years, the South south would have been out of power for 12 years. So when it returns to the south again, you cannot tell them not to run, they will tell the Igbos that ‘it was your turn but you allowed them to take it.’
So after the next four years, Igbos must unite and make arguments across the country that a person from that geopolitical zone should be allowed to be president. We, the Igbos will now look at that Nigerian with stone in his heart to say no Igbos you cannot be president then that will be clear to us; so that was the argument and it made sense to me. That is not to say if it returns after four years others will not want to contest but it will be a case of equity.
I know in APC they are saying it will go somewhere. It doesn’t matter, it has gone round, let the Igbos wait to hear who will tell them they cannot produce the president. So let all of them now come and agree for four years then we will sit down and choose who.
Would you suggest that the South east rally behind the PDP candidate Atiku who prior to his emergence as the PDP candidate has been saying its possible he will sign a written document that he will be in office for four years?
He has not signed it, they demanded it from him in the South east but he has not done so. He had to think about it again.
But some leaders of the South east at the last meeting they had in Enugu said they are supporting Atiku on the basis of restructuring; do you have a different view?
You are now trying to push me to tell you who I will support. Whoever I will support will not be outside who my party will support. I am the leader of a political party and I don’t want anybody to take the votes of the Igbo and to some extent the South south for granted. It is not going to be that way; nobody should take us for granted any more.
What is on the table? The people you are talking about are businessmen who think about how to improve their businesses and how to line their pockets. We are talking about communal and corporate interest. Has anybody put anything on the table? You just write it off that we are going to win there, no presidential candidate in this election should take the Igbo’s vote for granted.
The professional body, the NBA which you are a member of, a few weeks ago gave out their position about the rule of law being under siege in the last three and a half years. What is your own take on that?
There has been a lot of infractions on the rule of law. I am not happy that court orders are never obeyed, I am not happy that former National Security Adviser (NSA) Col Sambo Dasuki and El Zakzaky are still in detention after many court orders; I am not happy that Deji Adeyanju is still locked and the key thrown away.
That is a young man that is not harmful but was only expressing his views. I am not happy that these things are happening but we have a vice president, my teacher, my professor of law at the University of Lagos who taught me law, we have Prof Sagay who taught me law, they are all in this government. If I have my way, with what is happening now, I wouldn’t have allowed them to teach me, if you reverse the clock I will say don’t teach me, “teacher don’t teach me nonsense” according to late Fela, what you taught me is not what you are practicing.
Buhari is not a lawyer, what is the role of the vice president and the attorney general of the federation. Court orders will be disobeyed with impunity, with disregard, that is not democracy; we must speak out no matter whose horse is gored. These are part of some of the things which will be on the table, Nigerians should not be living in fear, and Nigerians should not be living as if they are in the zoo that if you are not careful you will be eaten up.
The court decides let the person go, continue with the trial and when he is convicted he goes, in that is the beauty of democracy. You don’t lock a man who is harmless like Deji Adeyanju. Why was he locked up in the first place, he has never carried stones, he is just expressing himself with his mouth only and he is entering his third week in detention and a magistrate as a lawyer will sign a remand order, these are things that people will account for when the time comes.
There is so much talk about hate speech and fake news. What is your perception of fake news and hate speech?
There is actually fake news and hate speech. But it was the APC that started fake news and hate speech through their spokesperson before the 2015 elections.
How?
There are instances which abound, you can google them. What was President Jonathan not called? What did they not say President Jonathan did? They started it but it is boomeranging now. There was one that came up recently over the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen, which the author, Femi Fani Kayode, has apologised for. That is a credible Nigerian, he realised that the information he gave that the EFCC was in Onnoghen’s house was not correct, he retracted it and apologised to EFCC. Can anybody in this government do it?
So when you hear fake news that our president is not in the villa that it is one Jubril from Sudan or it is this and that, it started with them. But it shouldn’t be condoned. I know there is no Jubril in Aso Rock but it gained momentum, when it comes down somebody will bring it up again and give reasons. I knew it is all fake news but it was still trending. So all these things are the creation of the APC but it has boomeranged and that is why anything that is evil is evil whether in the cathedral or in the mosque.
But it appears that hate speech and fake news has become major features of our politics. How can we address it so that it doesn’t cause immense chaos?
It is through orientation because there are so many things you read that you don’t know whether it is true or false. But if you are somebody with experience and wisdom you will be able to discern what is correct and it won’t be long before you discover it is not correct. All these are geared towards creating tension, they want to create a situation whereby there may be panic.
I am not saying that we should take hard measures against such people but I think we should get them and let them know the implication of what they are doing. Maybe, for a first offender you warn him, the second one you can take a sterner measure. You cannot continue to misinform the public on what you know is not true. It is not only the one that gets to the government; there is also the one that gets to the opposition.
I listen to people from government say that they stole this and that. They are lying, some of those things are false, it is misinformation too in order to continue to stay where you are. So government should continue saying the truth, don’t misinform the public especially when it is proven to be wrong. Same should apply to the opposition. So we cannot continue to operate under fake news and hate speech.
