This Is The Most Confused, Weakest INEC I Have Ever Seen – Sagay SAN

Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN), Chairman of the Presidential
Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC), in this interview
with TEMIDAYO AKINSUYI, speaks on the wait
for President Muhammadu Buhari’s cabinet and other latest
developments in the polity. Excerpts:

Some Nigerians are beginning to get worried over the
failure of President Muhammadu Buhari to announce his cabinet
almost a month after he was inaugurated for second term, especially
given the fact that it took the President six months to announce
his cabinet in his first term. Are you also worried about
this?

What are Nigerians worrying about? Nigerians will always have
something to worry about. When was the National Assembly
inaugurated? That was just few days ago. So, there is nothing to
worry about. It’s better to be thorough, make your enquiries, get
all the recommendations, study reports about the ministerial
nominee before selecting him and forwarding names for screening and
confirmation. I think we are in very, very early days. There is
nothing to worry about in the formation of the cabinet.

91 political parties participated in the 2019 general
elections. Now INEC is saying we may have up to 200 political
parties in the 2023 general elections. How do you think that can be
averted?

Well, I think INEC is to blame for all these. A body like INEC
should be proactive. When they found that the whole thing was
getting out of hand with 91 parties, they should have done
something about it. I myself with my level of education find it
very difficult to identify my party logo out of the 73 political
parties that contested in the presidential election. Now, INEC is
talking of 200 and they are just saying it without thinking of what
to do about so that we don’t get to that level. Shouldn’t INEC now
through the government propose an amendment to the provisions of
the constitution for registration of political parties? That is
what INEC should be talking of. They should get their lawyers to
draft a document and send it to the Ministry of Justice so that the
conditions for registration can be made more drastic and at the
end, we won’t have more than 10 political parties.

For me, it’s all a sign of INEC’s weakness which has been a
serious problem particularly in these 2019 elections as against the
one in 2015 when we had a chairman of INEC who knew what he was
doing. The current INEC chairman is a very weak man and doesn’t
have any initiative. He is not proactive and collapses easily under
problems and just articulates the problems without any solutions
while waiting for somebody else to do it for him.

Not only that, you see the way European Union and National
Democratic Institute and all these American and British people came
and lectured us about how we should organise our elections in a
very, very insulting and condescending way and everybody was
laughing it up. Nobody could see that these people are putting
their fingers in what doesn’t concern them and were insulting us.
What they did was teaching us about our elections in such an
arrogant, stupid manner and we all swallowed it. We all saw the way
the INEC chairman was just saying ‘yes sir, yes sir, I take
corrections. I will implement your recommendations next time’. He
didn’t feel outrage at all. Only Festus Keyamo, the APC campaign
spokesperson saw the danger that we are being exposed to because
they were even telling lies that the pasting of election results
was not transparent. That to me is pure lies and of course, PDP
being a short-sighted political party jumped on it for immediate
gratification rather than looking at the long-term interest of
Nigeria. It’s very sad. But like I said, this is the weakest INEC I
have ever seen. The most confused; an INEC that brings problem on
itself by withdrawing the certificate of former governor of Imo
state, Rochas Okorocha when the law clearly states that you cannot
do that. After he has been declared winner, only the Tribunal can
do that. But INEC did it despite knowing that it was wrong. That
was the only place they showed courage but they did it in the wrong
direction. So, I blame INEC for all that has happened and I think
the rest of us must rally round now and begin to think of
provisions to restrict recognition of parties so that at the end of
the day, there can maybe 10 or 15 political parties at the most.
Otherwise, we all know Nigerians. Once you give us an opportunity,
we will abuse it to the most extreme. Everybody now wants to form a
party; bedroom parties. We all know that they are useless parties
yet we are still tolerating them. We must do something immediately
to stop it before it gets out of hand.

You once said ex- Presidents are institutions that
cannot be arrested. Do you think former President Olusegun Obasanjo
can be investigated over some of his recent claims about
Islamisation of the country?

Every rule has its exception. When I say Obasanjo is an
institution that cannot be arrested, I was looking at him as a
former president who though does not have legal immunity but has
immunity by convention because we look at them as people who are
the embodiment of the country and as such should not be humiliated.
But if an ex-president goes out of his way to endanger the country
by spreading alarmist stories that will create disunity, frictions,
dissension, crisis and then possibly conflicts, then it may become
necessary to restrain such an ex-president in any way possible even
if it means physical restraints. If the case is as extreme as
Obasanjo is making it now, he may erode all the protections and
expose himself to some form of restraints and it may be
physical.

Let me add something here. I have been observing politics in
Nigeria, even participating for almost 60 years; I have never seen
the level of bitterness a loser has expressed in actions, in words
Obasanjo. The impression they gave before the election was that
they are absolutely certain that Atiku will be declared the
President one way or the other. When it didn’t happen, they were
shocked so much that it has become extreme bitterness and this is
what is spilling over to Obasanjo. Obasanjo has always been the
kingmaker. He made Yar’Adua, he made Jonathan. Later, he said
Jonathan should not contest and he contested and lost so all that
myth has grown around him but now that myth has been totally blown
by Buhari and so, he is extremely bitter. That is own source of
bitterness and he has been humiliated by the way Buhari
overwhelmingly defeated Atiku. Atiku’s own is that something he is
absolutely certain of and for which he has made lots of investments
in both psychological and material matters has been removed from
him. So, the level of bitterness is unprecedented. He attacked the
President of the Court of Appeal; he hired people abroad to say
they won’t recognise the government. Some people even went to court
to stop the inauguration which has never happened before. Before
Buhari won in 2015, he was defeated three times but he never tried
to stop anybody from being inaugurated. They are even issuing out
statements that can destabilise the country. When you combine all
these, we may have a situation where people behind all these may
have to be restrained for peace and stability to reign.

Culled From Independent

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