We will kick poverty out of Enugu, provide Water in Enugu in 180 days – Governor-elect, Mbah tells Arise News Television

In your acceptance speech, you called on Ndi Enugu to come together because you are all brothers and sisters and that there will be no difference between Nsukka and Nkanu, referring to the circumstances during the election. Can you expatiate?

Thank you Reuben. First of all, we thank and congratulate Ndi Enugu for making us their preferred choice because in the build up to the campaign and the electioneering process, we took a bold view of what Enugu state could achieve if we work together as a people and the message resonated with them. So, what we did immediately was to begin to put those campaign promises into actionable plans and policies. We said to Ndi Enugu that we want to grow the economy in a manner that Enugu state has not witnessed in the past and obviously that means that there are specific things that we must do and we have to be deliberate about it. We also said to Ndi Enugu that we want to kick poverty out.

And there are a couple of promises that are specific because we didn’t just make vague promises, but those that are tied to timelines so our people can hold us accountable.  We know that Ndi Enugu are expectant. We are already working to ensure that we accomplish those promises. And in doing that, we have invited all my brothers that we ran the race with. The truth is that we may be running on different political platforms, but we are united in our passion to ensure the growth and development of Enugu State; and that is why I have extended the Olive branch to them.

A lot of people are still commenting on what happened regarding the Nsukka and Nkanu East results. One of your opponents and candidate of the Labour Party has said he would go to court to retrieve his stolen mandate. It was a neck and neck, just 3,000 votes difference. What do you say about all of that is going on?

I believe that the democracy we practice has bequeathed us with that infrastructure of ventilating our views. It is very difficult for anybody in any race, who lost to give credence to the process. We believe that the voices of Ndi Enugu have been heard and they have shown their preference, which is us. We believe that our message resonated with them and that is the message of “Tomorrow is here”.

Let’s talk about some of the things you are promising the people of Enugu State because even in that your acceptance speech, you had so much packed into it. You said you wanted to build economic zones, schools and make sure that there is water in every part of Enugu metroplis within 180 days; and that the incoming administration is in a hurry. In your manifesto, you said you wanted to raise the GDP from the value of $4.4bn to about $30bn in a space of eight years. Isn’t that a bit on the ambitious side? And before you joined us, we were discussing the public debt profile of the states and the federal government. Enugu seems to be heavily indebted. Where will the money come from?

Great point. The truth is that we acknowledge that going by our current revenue model, there is just no way on earth that those campaign promises can be met, which is why we said from the onset that we are going to disrupt the current revenue models, positively. We recognize these current revenue models that focus on a rent-seeking approach where we have to rely on revenues from the Federation Account, come back here and spend it. And of course, the money we collect and the fraction of it that we get from the internally generated revenue is hardly enough to optimally intervene across all the critical sectors of our economy, hence we said that we will have to tweak our revenue model and unlock our rural economy, for example, and explore the resources we have in the state, which we haven’t done in the past.

And there are a number of things we have to do in our revenue part of things. We didn’t just come out and make those promises or pick them from the blues. They are numbers that we have carefully reviewed and numbers that we know that based on the disruptions that we are going to witness in our revenue model, we are able to basically grow our economy, not just by the government activities, but also making sure that we provide both the policy and the physical environment to attract private sector investment. So, that growth side we talked about in our GDP, you are going to see that coming from both the public and the private sector.

Again, if you look at what we have done, we have not quite optimally addressed our rural economy like agriculture, which only contributes a fraction to our GDP. But that fraction again we believe is suboptimal. So, what we need to do is to essentially look at ways to scale up our activities in the agricultural sector. But beyond just the production, we are going to process, package, market, and export. There are a lot of value chain we want to tap into  in the agriculture sector. For us, the agriculture will be migrated from just being a sector to agriculture and agro-allied industrial sector because there are a whole lot of economic activities that we have not tapped into in that sector and we are going to be looking to do that. We also have the energy and the mineral resources sector, which is something new.

We have not explored all the mineral resources we have in the state and also the energy resources. So, those are the things we will be looking at. But above all, we believe that we want to make Enugu State the preferred destination for investment, business, for living. As I have always said to people, businesses are not father Christmas. They are obviously interested in returns on investment. So, they want the environment, both the policy and the physical environment to be friendly; and because of my background as a private sector person, I know how to work with investors and prospective investors and businesses and attract them here because we know how to help them de-risk the investment flow.

Are you going to be raising bonds and raising more debts because you simply do not have the money. Your IGR was about 26 billion, which is disproportionate to what you get from the Federal Accounts Allocation Committee, FAAC, which is about N60bn. So, in a year, you get about N86bn or N90bn or thereabout. But you have so much to do. So, the first question is: Are you going to be raising a bond, how soon are you doing it, sought of like a way to give you a headroom or leeway to be able to do some things. You talked about the fact that you wanted to provide water that has been moribund for so many years in 180 days. How much is that going to cost you to start with?

Rufai, I am glad that you are going into data, which is something you do frankly if you want to craft strategies. You want to look at the trend and perhaps the growth pattern and maybe also get data on the economic side of things. But the truth is that if we were to do a trend analysis, our growth pattern over the years, we cannot be talking about a seven-fold. If I told you that I will do exactly what we have always done and expect to grow the economy seven-folds, of course that will not be true. But we actually want to disrupt innovatively the current revenue model. We are going to get a head start because there are a couple of things we want to do. In terms of bond, that is not our immediate focus.

Attracting investors will require you providing some basic infrastructure. If you look at the way we have explained the things we want to do in the agric sector, we said we want to attract commercial farmers and to do that, it means that we have to create that environment for them to come. Most times, the hurdles that these commercial farmers have are the friction they have with the communities and we have said we are going to address that by making sure that we legislate the harmonization of these rural lands and ensure that we parcellate them and get them ready and build access and feeder roads so that these commercial farmers will find it attractive.

In terms of even the current farmers we have in the state, we also want to enhance their skills and provide them with extension services. These are the things we are going to do that will disrupt our revenue model. The current revenue model that focuses on the FAAC and IGR may have served their maximum potentials. So, in order for us to do the things that we have promised our people, we have to rejig that model and attract funds from these sectors.

We made the promises of getting water to our people in 180 days based on a robust study that we have done in the water resources sector. This current government has already been able to access funding from the French Development Agency. They have already been able to draw a part of that and a lot of things that are required, for example, the engineering, GIS mapping, procurement of the mechanicals and electrical components of the supplies of the water schemes that we have, have all been done. So, some of the items that we needed to essentially frontload, like the pumps that we need. First of all, it is important to note that we have already existing water schemes in Enugu like the Oji River and the Ajali schemes, which can produce over 130,000 cubic meters of water to Ndi Enugu and our daily consumption today is about 100,000 cubic meters. So, what are the problems? They are largely with the mechanicals and the electricals, the M&E.

Those mechanical components, we have constantly gone back and forth on repairing, which has not quite served us. Some of those pumps may have lived out their lives. So, what we want to do is to order them and make sure that they arrive here in good time. They are items that are built to specification. So, we are going to get them and we are confident that as we did promise Ndi Enugu that in a 180 days, which is our pessimistic case.

How much is that going to cost. We also want to know what the revenue model will be because you are talking about agriculture. We both know that it will take about a year or two to materialize even if we have all the infrastructure and attract all the businesses. What will be the initial jumpstart revenue model? You are going to take more debts, talk to investment bankers or have a leeway? What is going to be and how much is the water project going to cost?

Because we have promised Ndi Enugu that this will happen in 180 days, we have had to front load the orders of the pumps because it takes three to four months to get them delivered here. In terms of our revenue model, the state has already accessed about 50 million dollars, which is available. So, we are not looking to find money to fund the project. We have started drawing on it to be able to deal with the water challenge. On the revenue model, don’t forget that we do not have challenges going to engage the financial institutions, if we are able to show them that this is the financial model we have and we need to access this amount of money and this is how we will repay the money from the project for which we are borrowing the money if have to.

I am coming from a very strong private sector background and project management and project development are my forte and I understand how to engage the financial institutions to be able to get a head start in the area of funding because again, what you want to show in your financing model is that this project is viable and we are not doing this for charity.

Enugu State has very low IGR and is heavily indebted. Unemployment rate in the state is over 31%. Is it correct to say that this revenue model you are talking about to address all the projects that you have outlined is to go to financial institutions and borrow more money?

Borrowing in itself is not the issue. What is important is do you want to borrow the money for production or consumption. That is the question you have to ask yourself and is there a model that shows how you repay the money you are borrowing and how you grow your economy, reduce unemployment that you have pointed out and also get people who are living in the pit of poverty out of the pit. What we are saying is that we have sectors that we have identified as growth productivity sectors and those sectors, we are not performing optimally there, hence we need to scale things up; and in order for us to do that, we need to attract private sector investment and to also do that, there are key infrastructure that the state must provide and there are key things that the state must do to de-risk this investment inflow.

And in order for us to do those things, we may need to access funding to be able to make sure that we provide that attractive environment for investors to come and for us to produce more and process what we produce and export. So, it is a model that will address unemployment. I have only just narrowed down on one sector. We have a couple of other productivity sectors that we have not delved into. We have just been talking about agriculture. But don’t forget that we also have tourism, commerce and industry, energy and mineral resources, creative industry, among others. We have to basically make them attractive for private sectors to come and invest in those sectors.

Let us go back to the political question. How confident are you that the Certificate of Return will remain with you because the margin of victory is just about 3,000 votes. The Labour Party candidate, Chijioke Edeoga, is saying that he will challenge the result, particularly in Nkanu East and your party, the PDP is saying they will challenge in Nsukka, Isi Uzo, and others. So, it looks like it is a big battle ahead from the tribunal, maybe to the court of appeal. How confident of an eventual victory are you?

We are confident that our people spoke in one resounding voice on March 18 and that they showed their preference in electing us as the next government of Enugu State. There were things that we believe and we have also had to speak to our lawyers about that. We would also be taking them up at the tribunal, and this may not be the right platform to begin to talk about the details of our approach to these things. But we believe that we won the election resoundingly. The measures that the umpire took in coming back to revisit the collation of results are things that we believe may require us to cross-petition. But these are obviously things that we are going to all address at the tribunal.

We have no doubt that our message, going round the 68 development centers and engaging the people in town hall meetings, going to the universities, engaging with the professional bodies, trade unions, trying to unpack what the tomorrow we refer to as being here holds for the young people rsonated with the people. Wewent round tellling our people about how we would help migrate the economy of the state to a digital economy and also create an opportunity for them to flourish as the world is shifting rapidly. If we do not enhance the skills of our young people, perhaps, the skill sets that they have today will expire and we would be struggling. We have spoken to them about movement to the world of robotics, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality and how we can create an opportunity for them to flourish in those areas, enhance their skills and set up innovation incubation centers across the three senatorial zones and also set up special agro-allied processing zones, industrial parks, clusters and hubs and how we are going to transform our young people from being job seekers to wealth creators and employment generators. These messages resonated quite frankly with our young people and we are confident that the outcome of the election was truly the reflection of the voices of the people of Enugu State.

What are you going to do about the Coal industry to be able to resuscitate it.  Are you talking to some possible partners, can there be a possibility to be able to use coal to generate electricity and industrial development?

It is a good thing that you just pointed out the consequential roles that Coal has played in the economic and historical trajectories of Nigeria. We believe that that is essentially where we want to take the state to. It may also interest you to know that Enugu has the best grade of coal in the world comparable to what you have in Japan. So, we have two approaches to our coal. It is something that we will either use to power our industries, create power plants that you can fire with coal energy or we can also begin to negotiate Coal as a stranded asset that we are warehousing in Enugu.

What are the low hanging fruits that you can quickly deliver because the water project that you have said you will achieve in 180 days, I am not sure that the pipelines are in place. So, that will be quite challenging. Again, why do you want to go through all these troubles when you were already making your money in the oil sector?

Let me start by dealing with the quick fix. There are a couple of quick fixes that we could get on with. You just mentioned water. And by the way, regarding the reticulation/distribution side of things, what we did was to segment our water supply into three parts. So, we have the upstream, mid-stream, and downstream. The up stream is the supply side of things which is the production. The midstream is the transmission. So, moving the water produced to the storage and of course, the downstream which is the distribution and involves making sure that the pipes to distribute to the different locations and estates are in place. In Enugu, we are fairly okay with the distribution.

So, once we are able to address the production, which is the major challenge we have and is a quick fix that we want to quickly tackle and that is why we said to Ndi Enugu that in 180 days, you are going to have water. That for us is a low hanging fruit. There are other low-hanging fruits. We want to convoke a diaspora and investment forum within the 100 days of coming to power. We are also going to get on with making sure that those things are in place, including the infrastructure, needed to attract investments are in place. You know that Enugu has been adjudged to be one of the safest and secure places to live. We are going to ensure that we build on that and make it a safer place for people to live.

On the question of why I left the relatively safe corporate and private sector environment and get into the murky waters of Nigerian politics, I want to say that it is driven by the urge to serve and the transcendental value. It is something that is beyond self. If you look at it from the point of view of earning, you know that the space where I play in, the downstream sector of the oil and gas sector, which is again a mature sector that we came into and displaced the incumbents and became the number one in terms of the volume and the market share in that space. So, leaving that to come into the public sector space is a sacrifice that can only be driven by a value that is beyond you.

How many primary health centers do you have in Enugu State? What is your assessment of the state of these primary health centers and what will be your plan for these centers and how much do you intend to devote in revamping the sector?

We have about 400 primary healthcare centers in Enugu State and so, you have them in almost all the communities in the state. But the question is how do we ensure that all the health centers are operational. The current government has already started working on refurbishing and re-equipping those primary health centers. We are going to build on that. I know that as at the last count, over 100 have been refurbished, renovated and re-equipped. We will ensure that we get all of them working. But above all, which is the major challenge, is to make sure that we have the proper staffing in the centers. So, we have community health extension workers and the objective for us to make sure that the PHCs are operational 24hours daily so that at each shift, you have a minimum of two community health extension workers. We want to ensure that our maternal and infant mortality rate are taken care of. Our objective is to also be in line with the SDGs.

Advertisements

CONTINUE READINGPOLITICSMike Igini on 2023 elections: I’m still in shock over level of deviation from established laws, guidelines, proceduresPublished 1 day ago on April 1, 2023By Advocate News NigeriaMike Igini

•Says ‘there must be a consequence for wrong conduct, violation of our laws

•Judiciary must stand mighty in defence of democracy, rule of law

Mike Igini, a lawyer and two-term Resident Electoral Commissioner, REC, has served in Cross River, Akwa Ibom and Bayelsa States. First appointed in June 2010, by President Goodluck Jonathan, he was reappointed in 2017 by President Muhammadu Buhari.

For a man described by many as a fearless operator in the electoral space, he was the face of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in the lead-up to the 2023 general elections, promising Nigerians that all would be well.

Now that the elections have gone the way they went, with the controversial issue of no upload of results in real-time from Polling Units, Igini reflects on what went wrong and how things can be corrected. Excerpts:

Many Nigerians are eager for your assessment of the 2023 general elections given the passion with which you urged Nigerians to participate in the election and that it would be the best, free and fair.

I can understand the feelings of extreme disappointment, pain and frustrations of fellow countrymen and women particularly youths, over what was promised and the painful experience they went through during the elections and their unmet expectations.

We are in these agonizing moments of pain together. l have been down emotionally and still in shock over the level of deviation from established laws, issued guidelines and procedures that we all signed into and that I leveraged, honestly and faithfully to call on Nigerians to participate fully to determine their leaders. I will never be part of any plot or design to deceive Nigerians, may such a day never come in my lifetime. My passion for free, fair and credible elections in Nigeria did not begin in 2023. Those who have diligently followed my advocacy for election integrity will remember my zealous exertions and subsequent detention in Enugu before and after the annulment of the June 12 elections in 1993, many also will recall my participation in CODER for electoral reforms after the fiasco that was described as the 2007 general election.

Those who are keen on elections will also recall how I took the same passion to my supervisory roles in the regulation of the electoral process as a Resident Electoral Commissioner in Cross River, intervention missions in Anambra, Imo state Guber elections in both 2011 and 2015, Edo, and later Akwa-Ibom states. Frankly, l don’t think I did anything wrong by the weekly voters’ and civic education that I gave to Nigerians without being paid a dime at a time that l had offers for a consultancy that I politely declined because l wanted to be objective in seeing to the implementation of the process that I was part of putting in place before my tenure ended last year.

Nigerians acknowledged your unblemished integrity and appreciate your commitment but wonder why you trusted INEC so much and sold it to them because they trusted your judgment

That is part of the cross I’m carrying today that has weighed me down. As a matter of fact, I am still in shock over what we all saw. We saw video clips of thugs stationed at polling units that prevented citizens from voting, the commission’s poll officials announcing to voters that they would not upload election result from polling units and that whoever would not want to vote on that condition, could go away. They took a cue from what happened in the first round of elections wherein out of the three different elections conducted the same day, only presidential results could not be uploaded from the polling units. This was what overshadowed every other success of the BVAS, given that the presidential election is the most coveted office that Nigerians and the whole world were interested in its outcome and the reason many Nigerians abroad bought expensive flight tickets to travel back home to vote, yet many of them couldn’t vote on that day. I would have said no sacrifice is too much to make for your country but is it the kind of sacrifice that we want from citizens in form of disappointment, pain and frustration?

But the question remains, what was the basis for your confidence of the system you promoted to Nigerians?

If we had a new law and innovations that have been used successfully in several elections, why will I not have confidence in the system? It’s not just a matter of my confidence in the process but a long-standing collective desire of Nigerians for credible periodic elections for the sustenance of democracy. We all collectively pushed vigorously for the passage of the 2022 electoral bill that was signed by the president on 25th February last year, the 2022 Act gave all of us a renewed hope of a credible election in 2023. It secured the use of the BVAS and other innovations that have been piloted before its passage, the system had been used to conduct one hundred and five elections (105) including five Governorship elections of Edo, Anambra, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun successfully by uploading directly declared results from polling units straight to the Server and public results viewing portal called IREV to avoid alteration/manipulation at Ward, LGA and other levels of collation centre.

This is the mischief that the entire innovation was designed to cure and the reason I promoted it but the human beings that should implement the system failed Nigerians at the hour of its implementation and not the BVAS technology that failed.

That important distinction or clarification must be made and noted even when people are unhappy and disappointed. We all saw the video clip of an INEC poll official, a young lady who unlawfully told voters that results will not be uploaded from the polling units and whoever was not satisfied with that illegal instruction should go away, whereas sections 60,64 of the Act, as well as clause 38 of the Regulations & Guidelines, are clear on the matter. So, I call for an understanding of my position before the election that my commitment and passion for election integrity far precedes the 2022 Electoral Act and the 2023 General Election.

What was however different in 2023 was that I saw from what I know of our electoral history and the reforms which informed the drafting and enactment of the 2022 Electoral Act that much effort was put into that Law to create a significant milestone in our electoral process but the human agency involved in the electoral process in Nigeria effectively played their roles to the disappointment of all. So far, the law and innovations have now made the audit trail relatively easy and have proved to be significantly effective in making it difficult to destroy digital evidence whenever there are deviations from the procedure, making such deviations obvious and indelible as evidence trails.

These are matters that the various tribunal set up will examine to put a closure to the outcome of the 2023 General elections.

Nigerians witnessed instances where voters were suppressed, collations disrupted and sometimes blatantly truncated, whereas, despite these deviations, results were announced with many disputed. How can these reflect a significantly effective system?

These deviations you described are the issues that aggrieved parties have taken to the tribunal that will influence their decision one way or the other and I will not want to dwell on them. But suffice to say that when people are not allowed to even vote at all, that is not a BVAS problem but that of the political actors and of security officials that could not or refused to protect citizens. We saw the young girl whose video went viral, she was harassed by thugs and prevented from voting and she was cursing different individuals as she walked out of the polling unit weeping and tears rolling down her eyes that she was not allowed to vote because she didn’t disclose the party and candidate she wanted to vote for that day. It was a sad day for all who went through similar terrible experiences orchestrated by extra-constitutional actors that curtailed citizen’s freedom of choice on Election Day. It is to make all stakeholders in the electoral process accountable with evidence trail that the BVAS and the IREV were introduced to automate part of the process so that we do not rely wholly on the subjectivity of humans who are vulnerable to all sorts of inducements from politicians. Unfortunately, the problem we are facing now is large of human frailties and not technology. After all, it is BVAS that has ended those bogus “Moon-slide” and “Landslide” votes of the past, that made it possible for an Okada rider and a fish farmer to win National Assembly elections, and made it uncertain for the Senate to become a reserved post gubernatorial club, so that it is no longer an automatic retirement chamber for outgoing governors unlike in the past. But we cannot be seen to celebrate all these positive outcomes given some of the terrible and very brutal experiences of Nigerians some of whom were killed during the election.

The law expected the election managers, security agents and eventually the judicial officers to be consequence managers for deviants who refuse to comply with the expectations of the law. What were the expectations for these consequence managers if they become part of the problem, like refusing to conduct elections in designated polling units, failing to upload election results as captured in the designated result forms on the INEC IREV portal as the law demanded, and failing to collate results at wards?

The law prescribes consequences for all of these, but as I pointed out it requires the human agency to comply with good laws. As I noted repeatedly during my weekly public enlightenment before the election, good laws and innovations are not self-executory, they have to be implemented by human beings and that is why it’s often said that the devil is in the implementation.

The Law does not envisage a collapse of consequences or a full bloom of impunity, that is why Saint Augustine declared several decades ago that a Nation is nothing but a band of rogues without the Law, when laws are meaningless why should we bother to embark on nation building? It will be a futile effort.

This is why we have to rely on the final layer of consequence Managers step up to the plate assuming that credible evidence of deviations is established, it will be an invitation to anarchy not to ensure that there are consequences for clear breaches of the Electoral Law. The rule of law is a graceful ornament to a well-governed society and indeed the Corinthian capital of polished society. No country or nation can make progress beyond the value orientation of those who lead.

The highest principles of ethical standards must be observed for sanity to reign in any society. Society makes progress based on rewards and severe sanctions for wrongdoing by those who seek to lead. Those who crave the honour of public office with all its appurtenances must not break the law of the land. This is where the judiciary has to stand up and mighty in defence of democracy and the rule of law.

Many Nigerians including lawyers and retired justices of the Supreme Court have all expressed a lack of confidence in the judiciary to do justice. Is the Nigerian state not a hopeless one at the moment?

Well, the situation in my constituency is worrisome and disturbing particularly when both serving and retired judicial officers and even members of the public express a lack of confidence in the judicial system. That is the most dangerous level of discredit that, members of the bar and particularly the bench must not allow the system to degenerate to, otherwise we are in big trouble. As a lawyer, I feel diminished and ashamed that politicians, the majority of whom are not lawyers, semi-educated money-bag politicians could be allowed to bring our noble profession to this level of opprobrium, resentment and distrust from members of the public who no longer respect us because of the unethical conduct of some members of the bar, particularly the bench. I repeat some members because we have shining members of both the bar and the bench who are exemplary and worthy of emulation. But the very bad ones have ruined our collective reputation. These politicians brag and boast about what they do with members of my constituency to get whatever they want and that is why they are quick at telling opponents to go to court after compromising collation and returning officers. Is it not surprising that politicians who go all out to undermine electoral laws and rig elections are the ones that will tell people to go to court? As noted very correctly by the learned Silk Agbakoba, the recent decision of the Supreme Court like others in favour of individuals that didn’t participate in party primaries has further affected public confidence and this is very unfortunate because of the timing of the decision so close to the 2023 election.

What is your recommendation or advice to your constituency which you always referred to as the Judiciary?

The judiciary must stand tall and mighty in defence of democracy and the rule of law. We have to go about solving this problem the way the United Kingdom itself introduced Nigeria to election rigging and ended electoral rigging and fraud such that for a period of almost one hundred (100) years precisely 99 years, there was no post-election petition adjudication in England till 2010 concerning Liberal Democrats. Historically, the UK was one of the notorious countries noted for vote buying and election rigging because of the concern that such practice of use of money could be used by politicians also to capture the judiciary in England by buying judges if the courts were to adjudicate on electoral disputes, allegations of electoral malpractices by way of election petitions were initially determined by parliament and not the courts to insulate the judiciary from potential corruption.

However, parliament with majority party members expectedly could not deliver electoral justice to opposition petitioners for years. Consequently, it was decided that the courts in England should assume jurisdiction over post-election petitions and that was how the court became involved. But mindful of the fact that the ills of corruption that prevented justice from being served to petitioners in parliament could be transferred to the courts, parliament had to pass the 1872 secret ballot Act, Electoral corruption and illegal practice Act of 1872 as well as the 1883 ballot Act with a range of consequences such as expulsion from parliament, a ban for seven years from politics or for life from politics.

These were the laws that judges and the courts used strictly in England to do substantive justice to election petitions to discourage potential election rigger politicians in the UK and never hid under the technicality that encourages election riggers in Nigeria who are quick to tell people to go to court. Because the courts in England were never a haven for election riggers, given that they, politicians linked to election rigging could be banned for life from participation in politics, and with various legislation to strengthen the electoral process free of manipulation and corruption in the UK then as we tried to achieve with the 2022 Act and the BVAS/IREV technology, politicians had to abide by the process because of fear of severe consequences from the courts. That is why for almost 100 years, there was no post-election petition adjudication in England. The fear of judges by politicians and their judgments on matters of electoral fraud, manipulation and deviation from established electoral laws in England brought sanity to the electoral process in England and ended election rigging. Politicians in England and America are afraid of the courts and judges but here in Nigerians, politicians brag about judges as their friends and will get whatever they want from the judiciary. Why can’t we emulate what judges and judiciary did to give meaning and purpose to the ballot as the best means of the expression of the will of the people in a democracy? The judiciary is now the last hope of putting an end to the culture of impunity and election rigging in Nigeria

For the average citizens who were prevented from exercising their civic responsibilities or whose votes were upturned by influential deviants, what remedy can they rely on?

It is premature to paint a picture of futility when the post-election dispute resolution process is ongoing. We should allow the judiciary to perform its statutory duty in the determination of these matters and let us be restrained. There must be consequences for wrong conduct and violation of the laws of the land. Impunity sustains deviation from Electoral Integrity, thus, if we do not address the gaps in the management of consequences for deviation from electoral integrity, we risk an increase in all the predictable consequences of such impunity including protest politics, which we now have on the streets, decline in governance legitimacy, violence, civil unrests and consequently a lack of development. All these are avoidable.

Will ensure consequences for deviants from the electoral Law alone address the scale of the problems associated with those who defy the electoral laws with impunity?

It will help, but it will not address the root causes, because elections are a means to the end of good governance and development, not an end in itself. To assume that just managing the consequences of deviation from election integrity alone will solve the problem is to avoid the real issues.

The real issues also lie with our governance structures and what follows the election of representatives. We have to go back to the very motivation for electing people to represent us in running our affairs because we cannot all leave what we do daily to sit around a decision-making table to run these affairs collectively daily, which was what citizens did before families became clans and clans became villages and villages became cities and cities became a metropolis. We need to go back to how the traditions and regimes for our governance are organized in such a manner that we all have self-interested value to obtain in ensuring that those who are selected to represent us cannot game the selection process or are demotivated to do so.

Apart from Managing electoral deviations by the Court’s sentencing or banning election riggers and their sponsors, the more important task is the restructuring of our governance structures in such a way that we have more collective and collaborative zeal to vote objectively or “select” representatives in a manner that is not necessarily adversarial and competitive but rather collaborative and productive.

This is why we must return to the core subject of how we federate, why we federate and how best to organize ourselves for collaboration rather than competition. If we do not address that core issues, our efforts to curb impunity during the selection of representatives will remain a contest where clever demagogues play the voters against their collective interest by gaming the selection system. So we must first address objectively why we select and how best to select representatives to meet that goal. In addressing this core question we will then define what the representatives are, are they agents, delegates, our proxies for our well-being and interests or are they rulers over our collective interests?

So you are implying that the electoral failures have root causes in the failure to address the restructuring of Nigeria to true federal governance?

Yes in the sense that elite political actions and power struggles are conflated amongst Nigerians because of the realities of the distorted Federal system, and the unethical way elites play on these weaknesses using the over-centralization of power, wherein the federating units rely on the federal centre for much of their development needs, it makes the competition for central power co-terminal with regional survival, hence there are regional competitions rather than collaboration for central power. These centrifugal forces are heightened for electoral purposes and can be deliberately calibrated where it can provide desired outcomes. Let me state it more clearly with bread and butter issues. Until the recent constitutional de-concentration and decentralization of the jurisdictions for generation, transmission and distribution of electricity for example, everyone knows that no matter how efficient state governments may be, they cannot effectively address electricity problems without the federal government, the same goes for Ports, rail, mining and even supply of fuels and these are the core drivers of economic activity, economic activity drives GDP which is the central metric of growth if we leave aside the social indicators.

These distortions are crowned by the fact that because all the powers have been centralized, most federating units do not need to make too many economic efforts because the Federal Government holds the reins to ride or die. So everyone that can figure out the imperatives knows that owing to these distortions of the federalist governance model, the real jackpot is at the centre where a winner takes all presidential model is at play.

So for the electoral laws to be effective you are implying that we have to address restructuring or federalization

The electoral laws are suitable and sufficient, we have to address why despite the electoral laws many election personnel, security personnel and election gatekeepers still acted with impunity to flout the law and are confident that they can walk away with no consequences. It is not because the law is weak or absent, the experiences of the 2023 General Elections have shown that we must also pay attention to the Latin credo by the famous Roman poet Juvenal that states; “Quis custodiet ipsos custodies” or “who will watch the watchmen”.

Put in another form our political elite have to come to a consensus that a cycle of elections in the form of a bloodsport where all the weaknesses of the frail pillars that hold the nation together as one are shaken to their foundations is unsustainable. Under a nation with settled standards of election integrity, the electoral Law will be an excellent legal bastion for superintending elections, but Electoral integrity requires regimes and institutions that will not be sacrificed for expediencies, but our federal practices feed on expediencies.