Associate Professor of History at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife and highly sought-after scholar, Dr Tunji Ogunyemi, speaks to DARE ADEKANMBI on the implications of President Muhammadu Buhari’s assent to 16 constitution amendment bills, advises INEC on future elections, submits that the planned census be left for the incoming government, among other issues.
What is your review of the performance of INEC, the conduct of candidates and the attitude of voters regarding the 2023 elections which have come and gone?
I will score INEC seven out of 10. It was an election that was well organised. INEC was not perfect, but such imperfections did not go to affect significantly the conduct of the elections. INEC did not do well in the area of logistics during the presidential election in terms of the lateness of the polling officers at the polling units and begin election by 8:30 am. The instances of this were scattered around the country. But it was not a consistent thing. The truth of the matter is that those who of us who witnessed the election, analyzed it and made comments know for sure that INEC did well. In terms of turnout for the elections, I would say it was what it ought to be. Going by the statistics with respect to the total number of registered voters vis-à-vis those who came out, we had around 28 per cent turnout in the presidential election and 26.7 per cent in the governorship and state house of assembly election. But then you don’t forget that in Nigeria, registration for vote is always over-bloated because Nigerians always have this liking for numbers. They think there is a correlation between numbers and the federation account allocation. So, a lot for people in the rural areas, particularly politicians over-bloated and expanded the voter register unnecessarily through double registration and all manner of fraudulent claims, including especially in the North, the registration of underage. But of course, the introduction of BVAS limited all kinds of shenanigans that politicians would naturally do. The turnout was not significantly less than what we have been doing before. This has actually shown that since 1999 up to 2023, fraudulent statistics and voting pattern were what we witnessed. But now, since it is very difficult to overload the voting system with excess votes and all manner of allocation of votes by politicians after the real voting might have been done, BVAS has made all these impossible. This is what accounted for the seemingly low turnout.
Finally, in terms of substantial compliance with the law of voting, I think both the voters and INEC did not badly at all. I will rate Nigerians eight out of 10 in terms of conducting themselves in the best of manners and not being riotous or disruptive. I know there were significant disturbances in some parts of Lagos, less the one over 10 of Lagos had problem. In Rivers State, almost about a third of the state had problem and that is the history of the state, the history of brigandage or occult groups attacking people and snatching ballot boxes everywhere. So, if we have problems in about five out of 36 states, I think we can’t say that we have not done well.
In terms of lessons to be learnt, what would you advise INEC to take away from its conduct of 2023 elections?
Two lessons: number one, INEC chairman should know that he is not the law and he cannot be making promises that are at variance with what the law says. The law says there shall be manual voting and manual transmission of election results plus electronic uploading of results that have been modernly done and manually scanned. By Professor MahmoodYakubu saying he guarantees that the results will be uploaded in real time, is the real-time written in the law? In other words, he promised what the law does not tell him and exceeded his bounds. So, let him therefore be careful about making outlandish and reckless statement in order not to create a problem within the system to give the impression that they are doing less than they promised. Nigerians are not supposed to work on INEC chairman’s promises. They are supposed to work on INEC law and regulations. Nigerians did not vote electronically, but manually and the ballots are counted manually and are recorded manually and after recording the results on form EC8A, what do you do? Your snap it and send it to BVAS which will remit it to IREV. Now, the issue is: at what time? The law is silent on the time the result will be uploaded. So, anyone who is relying on Professor Yakubu’s promises as a basis for going to court to say INEC did not follow its own regulations, that person is doing what is called meddlesome interloping.
The second advice is we should really check to see whether there is correlation between population census figures and those who actually registered to vote. The truth of the matter is that Nigerians are very fraudulent when it comes to demographic statistics. You see a situation where almost 80 per cent of the people who live in an area registered to vote. How can this be possible? This is the problem in northern parts of the country where underage registration and voting have been the Achilles’ heel of their political development in the North. It is high time too for Nigerians to know that it is not possible for INEC to conduct free and fair elections alone. The civil society organisations, particularly those that are involved in issues relating to politics, demography, security, good governance and so on, should be actively involved as technically speaking policemen of the system. And finally, if you commit a crime in the process of election, that crime is given by the Electoral Act to be prosecuted by INEC. The question is: does INEC have the capacity and the skill to be able to do investigation and prosecute people? INEC does not have such capacity. What we have learnt from this system is that, yes the police can apprehend the criminals and investigate and submit the list of offenders not to INEC for prosecution but to the Nigerian Bar Association. I believe verily what Femi Falana SAN said that NBA has offered to give legal services pro bono to prosecute the almost 700 people who were found culpable of levying violence on human beings during the elections. In other words, election related violence should be something that should be seriously tackled. Otherwise, impunity will take over and thugs will be the real anointers or the anointing instrument for Nigerian political leaders.
On the eve of the second round of elections, President Muhammadu Buhari assented to some critical constitution amendment bills, although out of the 35 of such bill sent to him, he only signed 16. How relevant to the re-engineering of Nigeria are those assented bills which have since become law for the growth and development of the country?
First, there is no law that says the president must sign all the bills referred to him. That one is settled. The only thing the law says is that if he refuses to sign, he must give reasons and communicate those reasons to the National Assembly. It has happened several times even since 1999 up to 2007 that the president of Nigeria refused and neglected to sign the budget of the federation. Between 1999 and 2007, there was no single budget that President OlusegunObasanjo did not reject except that of 2007. He insisted on his own way only and issues were only resolved by superior statesmanship when people from outside the National Assembly had to intervene to see that things went well.
Five of the 16 signed by President Buhari will have significant impact on Nigeria’s fiscal federalism. In fact, it’s like Nigeria’s restructuring is now being done, though incrementally, through constitution amendment. There is an amendment with respect to the transferring the power over electricity from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent List. In other words, electricity that had since 1900 been exclusively in the hands of the Federal Government is now devolved to the two level of government, the Centre and the sub-national authorities to be able to produce electricity for their states. So, the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) that had been labouring and been wanting to do some development can now do so. If Nigeria would not move fast, the Western Region will decide to move fast by all means. DAWN wanted to do that kind of infrastructure for Western Nigeria and can now do it. The same thing has happened to railway which is no longer the exclusive preserve of the Federal Government. The touchy issue is that of policing and this cannot continue to remain an exclusive federal concern. It has to be devolved. Another good thing about the signed amendment is giving financial autonomy to judiciary at the state level as well as state houses of assembly such that the governors will no longer be able to pocket or ride roughshod over them. I think there are very good constitutional amendments that have been done. People in Mambilla-Plateau, Cross River Obudu Cattle ranch can independently generate electricity now and do something with it. I think we have done very well in this instance. Of course, there are amendments relating to the changing of the names of certain local government areas in the country. For instance, Egbado North and South are in the constitution and in reality the councils are known as Yewa North and Yew South. I thought they would also adjust the spelling of the name of the capital of Osun State which in the constitution is still spelt as Oshogbo and that is the correct spelling of Oshogbo in our law. Anybody writing Osogbo is wrong. It is what is in our law that is correct. Things like this may appear as if they are small, but very technically correct with respect to the laws of Nigeria as to claiming form that area or getting privileges appertaining to it. I think they should also adjust Bakassi Local Government that has been conceded to Cameroon. Bakassi is still being counted as part of Nigeria and we should have excluded it so that Cross River can have the original local government areas that are assigned to it in the constitution.
Speculations are that the un-assented bills may be more germane to the real restructuring of the country and that such bills that Buhari did not sign might include something on resource control and others. Do you think this suspicion is ground in reality?
Any suspicion with respect to the capacity of the current president to do what is right with respect to Nigeria’s fiscal system and federal structure is well grounded. How come it is just weeks to his exit that very critical issues and decisions relating to them are being taken? Why could he have done so in the last seven and a half years? The president has just been lethargic and has decided to go AWOL with the Nigerian federal governance. But let’s come to think of it, we have more than 60 issues dealing with the structure of the Nigerian federation that have to be adjusted. In the last 23 years of democracy, we have adjusted only 20 of them. Is that not fair enough? Rome was not built in a day and we can’t build Nigeria in a day. These incremental adjustments to our constitution will actually lead to real federalism that will want. What is the federalism that we want? It is that the centre should not be so powerful as to be able to control the destiny of the subunits. Two that powers should be divided and should be clearly written in the constitution into Exclusive and Concurrent Lists and these lists must be done in such a way that they are judicious and judicial so that the principle of subsidiarity applies to them. What is the principle about? It means a government should be permitted to do a work that is closest to it and have almost exclusive authority over that in so far as it does not affect the general.
On electricity for example, why can’t Osun cooperate with Oyo to produce electricity using Asejire dam? But our law before now says it is wrong? Why can’t the states in the South West cooperate to do a railway system for the people if the Nigeria railway system will not work? The headquarters can be in Ado Ekiti crisscross through Oshogbo, Iwo and comes to Lagos and go to Ondo which is completely more excluded from railway line in Nigeria. There is no single railway line in Ondo and Ekiti states and these are the agric cash crop belts of the South West.
States can now establish their own prisons or what they now call correctional centres. Osun State can establish its own correctional centre and jail people there who refuse to pay your personal income tax that is being collected there. Building prisons has its own economics. Some people will have to supply food and for the people living within the location, what we call backward and forward linkages in economics, will be there to benefit since it is part of their economy. We don’t have to do everything at once. For example, look at the issue of Petroleum Industry Act where a significant portion of federal power has been devolved to the states and even to the local areas that won or bear the oil. A percentage of investment in the industry will now have to come from the local area. So, the local people who have the land in which the oil is being exploited will not be shareholders in the company involved in the exploration. Is that not significant? The Mineral Ordinance of 1946 as amended said oil belongs to the Queen of England, but it belongs to not just the Federal Government and the states where it is found, but also the community that owns the oil. The only thing is that it is just about 15 per cent which is far from zero per cent.
A lot of people think the outgoing government of Buhari should leave the national housing and population census to the incoming government given the fact that time will be too short to do critical census. What do you think?
In Nigeria, census is not about statistics. It is about politics because we are using census and the figures therefrom as a fundamental criterion in the sharing of federation income which is provided in Section 162 of the 1999 Constitution as altered. Except we correlate population to tax, in other words, if you say your population is very huge, then we should say bring more tax from your area. If you say your population in 6m, then we expect that at least 3m will be paying taxes. Except we do financial comparability of population, Nigerians will continue to tell lies about it. Why will the president that is leaving be conducting such a fundamentally important issue that requires extensive planning and huge deployment of capital, including human capital? That tells you there is no leader from the northern part of Nigeria that has never wanted a situation in which he will want to be in charge of the data with respect to population census. I am not speculative. The northern part of Nigeria has always argued and shown although without evidence than it is more in population that the other part of the country. Therefore, they always want a situation in which they will in charge of doing the statistics of census. The truth of the matter is that the government that could not do an election effectively in certain parts wants to conduct a greater demographic and statistical matter with respect to those same states. This population issue is something we have to leave to the next government. If this government insists on going ahead with it, will the outcome be acceptable? Acceptability of population censuses depend upon people’s perception of fairness. Even if you are very correct with the data but it is perceived that you are not just or you are trying to rig it in your favour or trying to supervise and if it does not favour your area, you will declare it inconclusive, people will not accept it. There has been a population census figure in Nigeria since 1952 that has been accepted, except the 2006 census. Even that exercise, the full data has not been made public as we speak. Census is too critical a matter to be handled by Buhari’s lethargic government.
Are you concerned that the issue of autonomy for local government has not been resolved even with the recent amendment proposed?
The issue of local government is provided for in Section 7 of the 1999 Constitution as altered and in that section I don’t know why the drafters drafted it that way because it deliberately provides that the personnel, administration, fiancé and the law which local governments shall operate shall be as passed by the House of Assembly of a state. Section 2 subsection 2 of the constitution says Nigeria shall be a federation consisting of the states of Nigeria and the FCT. So, Nigeria is not a federation of local governments. So, I am surprised people are referring to local government as the third tier of government. Those that the constitution recognises are the Federal Government, States and the FCT. What Section 7 only says with respect to local government is that a system of a democratically elected government shall be guaranteed. So, it is the system of local government that is guaranteed and not the local government itself. Except in Section 162 where they must be part of the level of government sharing from the federation account. But even at that, in Section 162 subsections 4 and 5 that there shall be a state and local government joint account called JAC account which shall be set up by the state and the income of the local government within a state shall be paid into the account. Who administers the JAC account? It is the governors. So, if the drafters of the constitution wanted the local governments to be independent, would they sentence them to such financial slavery to the state governors as they have done is Section 162 subsections 4 and 5? The intendment of the founding fathers is that local governments shall be as determined by the state governors. So, the fact that the president did not sign it is in accord with our law. Can we please do something about Section 7, expunging from it that the administration, finance, system, including the structure, shall be determined by the state house of assembly? What this means is that Osun State, for instance, can decide to adopt parliamentary system for its local governments and it will be correct. Where is the independent that we want to give our local government when our constitution has already sentenced them to the apron string of the governors and the houses of assembly? So, any to give the councils independence must first of all adjust those sections. I think these are some of the things the president saw to decline assent to it. Twenty four of the states in the country must approve any adjustment to the constitution. On the issue of local government autonomy, only 12 states signed up for it. In fact, there is no single state in the North except Kogi that approves that local government be autonomous. All others voted against it. The remaining 11 are from the South and even in the South, Osun voted against local government autonomy. How many local government councils are being run by democratically elected officials in Nigeria? You will be surprised that they are less than one third. All the governors want to put their appointees, loafers and all manner of political bootlickers in charge to run the councils as if they are sole administrators. GboyegaOyetola did not conduct local government election until a few months to his leaving office. Governor Godwin Obaseki has not done it. In Kano, Ganduje has not done it and they are leaving in a few weeks. Is it NyesomWike, the maximum ruler of Rivers State that will want democratically elected officials at the local governments in the state?
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