As millions of Nigerians continue to bemoan the lack of democratic ideals in the country following the anniversary of June 12 struggles for Democracy, Champions Assistant Political Editor, Chinwe Odita, spoke to George Ashiru, Chairman of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Lagos State on the issues. Below are the excerpts:
To what extent have our current political realities justified the sacrifice of MKO Abiola and other heroes of the June 12 struggle, and where lies the greatest betrayal of that mandate?
My name is George Ashiru, the Chairman of African Democratic Congress (ADC), Lagos State. I will say that I was one of those that voted in 1993 and I was able to observe first hand the reaction of Nigerians to the annulment of that election. The sort of transparency and equity that followed the voting itself, that made us believe it was the freest and fairest election Nigeria has ever held.
So we suffered as a nation, as a result of that singular action of the then head of state and his government, to annul the election.
I think the heroes of our democracy stood up and fought all across the country, to ensure that we’re able to realize the mandate which unfortunately, did not come to the man who was voted then, but it came six years later when the military handed over power to a civilian administration.
We expected so much after suffering for that period of time and the previous years under military rule.
We expected a just and equitable society, better healthcare and industrialized nation. We expected income per- capital parity that is good.
We expected good education, vocational training that will make our young artisans very competitive in the employment of this modern world.
We expected that by now, with leaders in various spheres of economic endeavours, we thought that with the democracy that we suffered, fought for and now received, we would be allowed to have a good criminal justice system, better security but alas, if all of us agree, we do not have security, we do not have good healthcare, we do not have good industrial base.
We are still a nation of importers. Our income per-capita is still very very low. Infact it’s the lowest in modern history because of our humongous exchange rates .
We are still importing refined fuel that we produce and we even have local refineries which our own government is not patronizing.
So these are the anomalies that we thought, you know, having gone through what Nigeria went through since June 12, 1993 to May 29, 1999, that Nigerians will have the benefits of the suffering but this is not what we are seeing.
The little opportunities we are having have come purely from the private sector. Private- sector led economy, private -sector led corporate governance, private -sector led investment which are not even well managed by the governments which has ruled this country since that period.
So we have a lot of work to do.
What core democratic principle that the June 12 struggle symbolized- free mandate, people’s sovereignty, or national unity remains most unfulfilled in Nigeria today?
I dare to say that we have not fulfilled any of these mandates. Our nation is even more divided than it was before.
We have had in the past ten years, serious agitation by segments of the society. Fifteen years ago, we had serious agitation in the South South, then the South East.
We have had serious insecurity in the North as a result of issues again bordering on national unity, so the political class has not been able to grant us national unity since the Advent of the Third Republic.
And as far as Sovereignty and the mandate of our people in the electoral process, the voter apathy that we are experiencing has shown that people are disenchanted with the electoral process.
They are disenchanted by the fact that their votes don’t count. Their voter apathy arises from the fact they have seen people’s mandates taken by the courts, they’ve seen impunity by the way we practice our electoral processes and that to an extent, has taken away the Sovereignty of the people, from the people and it’s still left in the hands of the ruling class.
And of course we also have to think what exactly did we fight for in June 12? We fought for the right to choose our leaders but in a state like Lagos, where the leader is chosen by 8% of the total number of people who are qualified to vote, if 8 to 10% of the people who are qualified to vote are voting for the Governor, it indicates that people are so…, it’s not lackadaisical but people are disenchanted by the kind of governance, the method of governance, the messaging, the vision, that they don’t even bother to come out to express either their appreciation of the current government in order for them to return to power, or a desire for change.
All of these indicate that we have not been able to deliver the vision for which people sacrificed their lives and energy on June 12, 1993.
We have a lot of work to do in that regard.
Learning from the glitches of past elections, what concrete, non-negotiable mechanisms must INEC deploy to guarantee the integrity of result transmission in 2027?
The job of INEC is actually quite straightforward. Ensure that elections are held, ensure that security is made available, in all the polling booths, ensure that results are correctly and transparently recorded and transmitted real time. That is how simple the job of INEC is.
If INEC can focus on delivering these three, then voter apathy will be eradicated. In majority of cases, people will feel like coming out to vote because of the promises of free, fair and transparent electoral process.
INEC only needs to ensure that security is amply available, they only need to provide the right resources for their staff and Ad-hoc staff as well to be able to conduct this free and fair elections.
Then they also need to ensure that the results recorded are a direct reflection of whoever the people made their choice, and must record accordingly and transmit it accordingly.
We know that trillions of Naira are being released to the election umpire to conduct the elections.
We also know that includes all the necessary gadgets to record, to upload and download the results for Nigerians to view.
I believe that if transmission is where the problem is, then they must make a commitment to use the right kind of satellite technology to make it happen even in the remotest of regions.
This is the mandate that our tax payers agree on and I think INEC needs to deliver on this.
Anything other than pure electronic voting, where people can simply lay their finger or thumb directly on the logo of the party they are supporting and the result is transmitted instantly, electronically, anything short of that, as long as you are using ballot papers which then, have to be counted manually and there are thugs waiting to snatch it, if it’s not going in their favour, then we are still going to have these Sir of issues over and over again.
There must be a way to have the electronic results available, while the manual is being also collated to re- confirm it.
And this is one of the electoral reforms that we are going to recommend to INEC.
INEC should make the necessary technological advancement and innovation in order to make it easier for both themselves and their staff to be able to conduct our future elections, safely and fairly.
Beyond the arrest of culprits, what specific electoral design changes such as ballot paper layout, polling unit configuration, or payment traceability can structurally break the cycle of vote buying and selling?
How many culprits are you going to arrest, how many are you going to jail? Prevention is better than cure.
Our best bet is to begin to innovate. To look for different and better ways to conduct our elections and I think that is what I will say for now. That is our advise to INEC. Let INEC innovate and look for better ways to ensure that the mandate of our people is well captured at the electoral front come January 2027.
