Negative effects of 2019 elections will take many years to erase and correct -Yerima

Comrade Shettima Yerima a renowned human rights activists is the President of Arewa Consultative Forum. He is worried about the outcome of the 2019 elections, describing it as a failure, arguing that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has taken the country several years backward. He told PATRICK OKOHUE further in this interview that unless the nation deliberately decides to restructure the system, the future is bleak

The much awaited 2019 elections just took place and many things happened, like the inconclusive elections in many states, as is now peculiar with this INEC and many other things that Nigerians had thought the nation had over grown in organising elections, but what is your impression of the elections generally?

It was sad and very unfortunate that in the 21st century, we are experiencing this kind of election, it is sad, some of us felt very pained because a lot of us have a lot at stake. A lot of us feel so sad that we have made a lot of sacrifices for this democracy to come into being.

Also remember that we have some of our colleagues who today are not alive to see what is happening, despite being part of the struggle from the days of the military that we have been together as young comrades.

For over 20 years we were in the trenches clamouring for democracy, but this is not the type of democracy that we expected. We thought that by now we would have been improving, but the last 2019 election has actually shown that rather than going forward we are going backward, and have gone much steps behind now, because I do not see us solving this problem in the next 10, 20 years to come.

What we have lost in this election, where the will of the people are not being respected, where people come out enmass to elect their leaders, but simply because of the interest of one or two persons, who felt they are not comfortable with those people who were elected, they undermine the collective will of the people and do it and get away with it.

Where you see INEC suddenly becoming an APC arm of government, where security agencies who are supposed to be seen to be neutral and look at the country as their primary responsibility to protect, but rather turn back on the country and do the bidding of few individuals,

this portend nothing but danger, where a ruling party does not believe that it should have opposition, rather what they want is to have a one party state, where anything goes, where impunity will become the order of the day, where they can do anything their own way without anybody checkmating their excesses, this is rather unhealthy.

It is sad, what happened in the last election is not what we expected, with the kind of money approved for INEC, with the kind of both local and international support that they got, with the good will of Nigerians behind them to encourage them to give us free and fair election, which was the only thing Nigerians asked for, but it turned out to be something else.

Today, whether you like it or not, PDP has been vindicated when they said they won that presidential election from what has happened in the governorship election.

Why was it so impossible for the INEC and the APC to agree that they have been defeated in those states that they declared inconclusive, only in states won by the PDP that elections have been declared inconclusive,

but where APC won even when there are more cancellations, going by figures and everything, going by the Electoral Act, they were declared as winners, but in the case of states won by PDP it has been declared inconclusive, this is unfair, Nigerians deserve more than this.

Unfortunately, today the INEC cannot be said to have any credibility before Nigerians, my worries is not what happens today, but the consequences of what happens today is what we are going to reap in the next 20 years, because you cannot come out and tell Nigerians to come out enmass and vote,

because they will always think back on this, and where people wake-up on election days and they don’t feel like going to vote, it is obvious that we are in for a dooms day, because certainly we might not get the kind of leaders that we desire to govern this country,

people who will lord it over us, the mafias will continue to do their own thing and they will continue to impose people on you to lead you whether you like it or not. This is the problem we are going to face in the future.

You are one activist who has been around since the days of the military, you have seen a lot of things, what will you say is the problem of Nigeria, because over time many countries who were in the same situation with Nigeria have gone far ahead of us, yet we seem to be going round in cycles?

Going back to history, in the dark days of the military, in the era when we had the likes of Gani Fawehinmi, of blessed memory, the likes of Beko Ransome Kuti, the likes of Wole Soyinka, even though he is alive, he is not actively involved in some of these struggles now, the likes of Chief Anthony Enahoro whom I worked with closely, especially during the NADECO days.

The activism at that time was more coordinated, well organised, the civil society were doing very well, with the Campaign for Democracy, and so many of these platforms at that time, subsequently, after the demise of Chief Gani Fawehinmi, Beko, Enahoro, things went wrong, the last we did was in PRONACO, under the leadership of Chief Enahoro, when I was the Youth Director, Beko was the deputy to Enahoro, we were advocating for a new constitution for the country, the civil society was strong because there was a rallying point.

After the demise of these heroes suddenly there was no more rallying point, that was where we began to lose it, some of them would rather think about themselves rather than think about the collective interest.

At the time of Gani Fawehinmi, he does not care about where you came from, he does not care about your religion, when an injustice is melted on you he takes his own resources to fight for you.

Are we saying we don’t have lawyers like Gani Fawehinmi today? We do, but do they have the same mind set like him? No. I wouldn’t want to mention names, but some of them are still alive.

They suddenly compromised the struggle, they made it as if it is their personal business and they do the business themselves to the extent that even their followers loss confidence in them, so there is no rallying point,

that is why it is so difficult to make a clarion call and you see every civil society coming on the desk to do the battle, otherwise, if we were so organised the way we were in the past, some 15 years ago things wouldn’t have been the way it is today, so we lost out.

Will you say the coming of the political era helped to compromise the civil society community?

So many things happened at the time of the fight against military dictatorship, even when the military left power and returned to the Barracks, some of us were not mindful of the fact that we needed the power, we kept chasing shadow, when the military were no longer in control and some people came from behind who were never part of that struggle and hijacked the process.

When we got to some extent we realised that the enemy we were looking for were no longer there, we turned back but some people have already grabbed the power and those are the same people today that have held this country to ransom,

they never paid dues, they never made any sacrifice, they never suffered for it, they abuse the sensibility of Nigerians because they never made any sacrifice, they never knew what was involved at the time we fought against dictatorship.

So, it is so sad and painful when we see this election of 2019, now we realise that almost what we did in the past, the kind of sacrifice of those lost in the battle, those that suffered a lot of detention with us, and this is not what we expected to see now, our case, the likes of me is different from somebody who just woke up one day to call himself a comrade, form a small group of people, sit down under air-condition, in a comfort zone and talk,

the way they see things is not the way we see things, that is why sometimes when we talk some people will say are you mad, no, we are not mad, we know what we are saying, it is painful, because you felt this is something you are nursing for the betterment of the country, then one person will singlehandedly come from nowhere and abuse the entire process, people will just sit down and laugh and think it is normal.

The consequences is that maybe after now we begin to reap it, probably some of us may not be alive again to give our own side of the story.

But certainly, this is total backwardness, in this era you conduct an election of this nature, marred with rigging, even before the election day the election have been rigged, the hands are very clear, even the removal of Justice Walter Onnoghen was itself a rigging, just for all of these to happen and people fold their hands and say all is well.

Some people are suggesting that for these kind of anomalies to be avoided that there is the need for electoral reforms that will involve maybe electronic voting, transmission of results electronically and all that, do you share these views?

I do, the electoral law that was ignored by this President was one issue that clearly shows that this thing is calculated for it to happen, electronic process of election had actually been passed into law, like the use of the card reader machine,

but even that we saw a situation where a section of the country was asked to go on card reader while another section of the country were allowed to vote manually, whether the machine confirmed them or not, you can’t do that, we don’t have two laws, we have only one law that protects us, why was it done differently in various sections of the country?

That is where we failed again. Thirdly, until we look into ourselves and tell ourselves the honest truth, that security agencies must be seen to play roles as security and allowed to play a neutral role without pulling them into politics, that is when we will begin to see light at the end of the tunnel, but those are things that will not just happen overnight.

Some people also complained about the issue of underage voting, but others are saying if they were registered in the first place there is no point complaining about their voting, because it is in the registration process that these things happened, what is your view of these?

Those are things that one, you can put the responsibility at the door step of INEC to have compromised in the first place, why should you allow under age to even be registered.

Even if he has registration card whether by hook or by crook when you see him at the polling units why allow him to cast a vote, those are compromises, these are the worst that INEC under the leadership of Mahmood Yakubu has done to the country.

…Having seem all these problems and with your background, what do you think should be the solution to these electoral flaws?

Electoral reforms must be looked into with a view to make a lot of amendments, electronic voting must be encouraged, because without the introduction of the card reader President Goodluck Jonathan would not have been defeated, he passed it into law and it was the same thing that consumed him, I am surprised that this government that is a beneficiary of that act suddenly turned back on it.

Thirdly, our security agencies must be well organised, let them know their responsibilities, because Nigeria has come to stay and these politicians are people who may win today and tomorrow they may loss, but Nigeria remains as a country, 100, 1000 years to come people will still exist and you can only be remembered on the positive side of history when you do well,

but if you don’t do well you will also be remembered on the negative side of history and the unfortunate thing is that you are not only going to suffer for it, even your children, once your name is mentioned, they will tag your children.

These are some of the mistakes that some of these actors are making that they don’t even know that they are making.

In your state Kaduna many people didn’t expect that the governor, Nasir El’Rufai will be reelected, especially because of the many controversies that have dogged his government, but he has been re-elected, what really happened, you were on ground during the election?

Governor El’Rufai’s election was massively rigged, he was not re-elected, rather he created unnecessary tension where there was none, make it look as if there was a fight going on in some areas where he felt he was not going to get votes, those areas were manned with high presence of security agencies,

so that the votes will be lower in those areas and then concentrate on where he was sure and improve on the votes, that was just the logic that he used, that was what happened. In southern Kaduna you should know that he wouldn’t have 10 percent votes, but look at what happened at the end of the day, because certain things happened.

It is just like the story of places where there are insurgencies, but look at the number of votes coming out from there, it was the same thing that happened, nobody would have imagined that it was possible for El’Rufai in a free and fair election that he will win, but thank God the PDP has also gone to court to challenge his victory.

All these we have been talking about are problems all over, what can Nigeria really do to move forward from this point?

I think from my experience we need to change this system, we need to totally decentralise the central government by reducing the powers at the centre, create a situation where regions have power, where the central government will be less attractive, where leaders will be elected from their communities where they come from,

because people in their communities must know them, not this case of god-fatherism where if you have the blessing of the center, because of too much power in the hands of the central government, even if people are opposed to you, like the case of Kaduna you are saying, because he has the backing of the central government, it was easy for the central government to give him all the necessary support he needed to come back,

so, if we continue to run a system like this you can be rest assured that we will keep producing people who are not worth being councilors becoming your governors are even becoming your senators.

So, the best thing we can do is to restructure the system, to ensure that power is being devolved to the regions, where the center will become less attractive, people may not even be too keen to go to Abuja, you will be more serious in your region and the regions where you come from, your community will be able to attest to your character as a person, if you have integrity, if you are from a good home,

if you have a very good up bringing your community must know and on that basis now we begin to see leaders coming on board on merit, but if we continue to run this type of system where only Abuja decides your fate, it will not augur well.

Somebody will run to Abuja, a person who has never been in Nigeria, and they foist them on you as a Senator, House of Representatives member, even people who are dealing drugs will be foisted on you, even fraudsters, 319ners will be foisted on the people.

Somebody who already have a 419 case or has acase with the EFCC, against all odds from his own state will come to Abuja to receive blessing and be sent back to his state to contest and win election, which was what happened generally in this election, then I am sorry for this country.

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Unfortunately, today the INEC cannot be said to have any credibility before Nigerians, my worries is not what happens today, but the consequences of what happens today is what we are going to reap in the next 20 years, because you cannot come out and tell Nigerians to come out enmass and vote, because they will always think back on this, and where people wake-up on election days and they don’t feel like going to vote, it is obvious that we are in for a dooms day, because certainly we might not get the kind of leaders that we desire to govern this country