What’s your reaction to the recent Supreme Court’s dismissal of the petition filed by the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar against the election of President Muhammadu Buhari?
I’m still in a daze by that decision. I thought they would first adopt the briefs, look at it, before giving judgement. But for the judges to have just dismissed the petitions like that, I’m surprised. For me, I’m shell-shocked but as a General, I believe that PDP would have to go back to the drawing board. There is no need to cry over spilt milk. We need to restrategise for the next battle, which is 2023.
We can also do a postmortem to look at what happened so that we can start preparing for the journey towards 2023. I wish Nigeria well because after Supreme Court’s decision, there’s nothing left to be done again except for us to restrategise towards 2023. Has it ever happened like this? We were also in government before, wonders will never end. I wish our country the best of luck, but for PDP, the Supreme Court’s judgement is a wake up call. It is a wake up call for us to get all party’s elders and leaders to hold a very important meeting to plan the way forward. This is time for us to have serious analysis of the situation.
Then our leader now who is Alhaji Atiku Abubakar should rally other members of PDP together, he must return to the country so that we can have this important meeting on how to strategise and plan for 2023.
What’s your take on the Operation Positive Identification by the Nigerian Army, which has been condemned by many Nigerians?
I want to plead with President Muhammadu Buhari that the Federal Government needs to tread softly on this issue. How can you have the military being drafted outside to monitor and check the identity of people in time of peace?
We are still trying to convince foreign investors to come to Nigeria, but now for the military to come out and stop anybody on the streets for identification is an aberration. We are not trained for that. The military is always ready to shoot and fire, and not only that, any disobedience is seen as an affront, that’s our training.
So stopping people for identification is not part of our training. Where are the policemen? Where are the Immigration officers? That should be their responsibility, and the most disturbing aspect of the whole matter is that this directive came from the Army.
Initially when I was told about this operation, I was shocked and surprised and then I asked why must the army be involved? This should be a civil matter and the police are supposed to be in charge. We have to tread softly, softly.
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Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC has come under criticism over its conduct of recent elections, what’s your view on that?
I said before and I will repeat it again, the greatest fear for this country is election procedure, if we don’t do everything to tackle the problem of manual manipulation of elections, this country will never develop. INEC should be structured in such a way to avoid manual manipulations of elections. If we don’t do that, this nation will never develop, it is not a curse because democracy is about the will of the people. If you now subvert and subjugate the will of the people, it will have unpalatable consequences.
Not only that, we also need to look at the judiciary. Again if we subjugate the will of the people by letting some judges determine or decide election results, and winners, then why are you asking people to go and line up to vote on the day of elections?
Look at India, 800 million people participated in their last election, it took them two weeks to conclude and declare results but no single candidate went to court for adjudication. What this means is that the election process was transparent.
Recently, Argentina held election, the incumbent lost and he immediately congratulated the winner. How many people are voting here, are we up to 20 million? When I saw people here physically carrying ballot boxes inside Keke Marwa, helicopters, and buses to go and deliver results in Abuja in 21st century, this is a big shame on Nigeria.
President Buhari must as a matter of urgency clean out INEC, and we must start on a fresh note with a caveat that our electoral processes must be technology based. No manual voting procedure again. This is what they are doing in other parts of the world today. Indians did it with their 800 million population, so why can’t we do it here?
If you live in the remotest village in Nigeria, if somebody send money to your account, your receive an alert, and if your account is debited you also receive an alert, is that not data processing? So why can’t we do that with our elections here? Why are we deceiving ourselves and giving different flimsy excuses in order not to make the whole electoral process digital oriented? It is a shame that we are still doing things manually electoral wise. I’m over 70 now, so why should I be afraid of saying the truth?
There was a time Nigeria was on the same level with India, Brazil, Singapore and Malaysia but all these countries have now overtaken Nigeria. What a shame. Why are we still physically carrying election results in Keke Marwa and buses to collection centres or even to Abuja? This is a big shame. We should scrap INEC and send the staff packing so that we can start afresh with a digital oriented electoral body and we still have enough time to do that between now and 2023 when we have the next general elections. We cannot make progress as a nation without having this electoral reform PDP.
Look at the nonsense that took place in Osun State during the last gubernatorial elections there. I want to appeal to our judiciary to watch – they said because a judge didn’t come one day and they just gave judgement based on what they called technical reason. But is that fair? Which technical fault is that? Were the people who voted responsible for that judge’s absence? Was it their fault? The people voted for the man they wanted as their leader but the will of the people was subverted, and we are saying all is well, all is well, where?
As a retired military officer and also as a politician, I have been both sides, I’m not talking as a partisan politician but speaking as a patriot who wants Nigeria to move forward.
Look at what they call Trader Moni, it is a shame. It is a shame that the nation’s Number 2 man will be carrying money to markets to give Nigerians.
This is not only a shame but it is also very wrong, what federal government should be doing is to teach Nigerians how to fish instead of giving out money in the markets openly. They should teach Nigerians how to acquire skills to make them self-employed. Even in the politics of First Republic PDP PDP and succeeding ones, nobody took money to market to share and give to people. They were teaching people how to acquire skills. But where are those skills acquisition centres today?
Look at Lagos today, since 1999, one man has been running the show, but what can we show for 20 years of APC’s rule in Lagos? There is no part of Lagos that is not derelict. Whether you are in Ikoyi or Ajegunle, there is no difference. There are no drains. Roads are terrible – refuse is overflowing Lagos streets. Even the lagoon, they’ve sandfilled it to a lunatic situation and they are still sandfilling and selling the sandfilled places to themselves without consideration for the negative impacts such will have on the environment and the people. They are being driven by greed. They are very greedy and selfish politicians, these people that have been ruling Lagos since 1999.
