Obiogbolu: INEC must improve on gubernatorial, assembly polls

Anambra State chapter of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), has a task of sustaining its stronghold ahead of the State Assembly elections. Political Adviser to Governor Chukwuma Soludo, Dr. Alex Obiogbolu, speaks with OKEY MADUFORO on the challenges and optimism as well as the fate of the country’s democracy and politics

How do you see the outcome of this general election?

Well, the election has come and gone and what we have at the moment is the post-election analysis which is on the lips of every one. Just like every election in the country, we had cases of the BVAS not functioning well, and the operators not given the pin numbers and all that just as we had problems with the card readers in the other elections. We also had cases of thuggery in some parts of the country where people were attacked or forced not to vote for their preferred candidates. We had reports of ballot boxes and the ballot papers being destroyed in some other places as well as materials not coming on time. The turnout was indeed great and highly commendable and we salute Nigerians for coming out to perform their civic duties against all odds and we must admit that this general election witnessed the highest turn out since the 1999 general election and subsequent elections in this country.

How would you score INEC when it has to do with meeting up with its promise of credible elections?

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), promised us a free fair and credible conduct of the elections and the body made us have so much confidence in them to deliver as promised. Then on the election day we all saw what happened and how it all went. The Commission said it would transmit the results of the election electronically and at the end we heard stories that suggest that the transmission did not take place to the end of the day. But all the same we have a firm brief that there is room for improvement and at every stage of the country’s democracy we need to learn from our mistakes and carry on and this election is not yet over until it is completed with the conduct of the Governorship and State Assembly Elections we can now sit down to discuss and analyse the performance of INEC.

The International Community and foreign observers are saying INEC did not meet up with expectations?

Like I said earlier, we can make an understudy of what happened in the presidential election but while we do that we should also consider the fact that the election is not yet over and we cannot be in a hurry to draw conclusions. This is similar to the other question about the President promising free fair and credible elections and we cannot wholly hold the president responsible because the presidency made all the necessary appropriations for the election which INEC confirmed, and it is left for the body to do the needful and you cannot just blame the presidency for those lapses though the bulk stops at his table.

The ruling APC lost in its traditional states such as Kano, Kaduna and others. What is your view?

That is the irony of politics and what you saw in the last election may not apply in the current election and you have to bear it. There are some other places where they have never won before and you see them sweeping the area and that is politics for us. The dynamics of politics is one that one cannot always predict and when it comes Obiogbolu it becomes a surprise to most people and all those projections and conjectures would come to nothing because the game is highly unpredictable and can always spring up surprises where you least expected it .

There is this apprehension in Anambra State about the State Assembly election and the alleged protest vote by Labor Party?

I don’t know this your appreciation is coming from because our party the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) is not losing sleep about it. Let us look at the last general election that took place that Saturday. I must tell you that to the glory of God, we did very well and what do I mean that we did well? When you go by the records APGA have had the opportunity to produce three governors in this state and they are usually off season elections and one year after we go for general elections. After the second term election of the sitting governor another general election would come in and the best APGA have had is five seats at the National Assembly. But it is believed that the national parties own the federal seats yet we got five seats out of 11 in Anambra State.

The then governor did better by increasing the number of seats to give as against two before and that is in the 21 years or so and that was in 2019. This was also when the then governor got 21 over 21 in his own election and today we have four National Assembly seats in our kitty with one more that has not been concluded while Labour Party got five seats and one seat for the YPP.

So, basically the seats the Labor Party won were seats belonging to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Now we don’t know what has happened in other states in the country but it is very clear that Anambra people are very sophisticated. They understood clearly that it wasn’t just about the persons contesting in that election but the platform upon which they had contested and what they did then was to say this is our own and this is our own party.

They said we are going to send our own political party that has our brothers and sisters contesting in the party. Now, irrespective of the strength of those national parties, they also have regional connotations. So what is wrong in APGA having a regional connotation which is the South- East? That was why our people made it clear in the last general election that they also have their own party.

Once our former governor and former leader of our party chose to contest the presidency under the platform of the Labour Party we knew before that election that our people would vote for him because of that demand for the South East to produce the next President of Nigeria. It was in the same guise that our party APGA had its Presidential candidate from the South-East. The former governor scored 92 per cent in Anambra State and if you look at the other election our party took part in which is the Federal House of Representatives that is the closest to the grassroots we had over 35 per cent votes and in it was the same election where people were asked to thumbprint Labour Party all the way.

So what our people did on that day is to vote for Peter Obi for President and but at the same time, our people knew that we have our own, hence they voted for APGA in the Federal House of Representatives election. Now going forward, we know that in the State Assembly Election they are going to vote APGA all through, and this has always been the trend in other elections in the state. So when look at the Labour Party as a threat I wonder where that threat is coming from and it doesn’t hold water at all.

Are you now saying that the old order of the governor belonging to a different party from the Assembly will not play out?

This has never helped development and good governance in Anambra State. You that in the past it used to be different for what we have now because in those days it was difficult for the governor to present and get his budget passed because of the manner of blackmail and frustration from the State Assembly. The crisis then never bettered our people because government would spend huge sums of tax payers’ money in fighting imaginary opposition parties in the Assembly. These are funds that were meant to be used for road construction, building and equipping of our medical infrastructures as well as roads and other infrastructures. No matter how you see it members of the State Assembly who are not from our party would want their own party to be in charge in Anambra State, and you don’t expect them to see the good in the APGA led party the state. Remember that the slogan in the last presidential election from the Labour Party is that you must vote for Peter Obi and also vote for Labour Party candidates at the Senatorial and Federal House of Representatives levels to assist Peter Obi govern well and they claimed that if you vote Peter Obi and vote other candidates from other parties, they would frustrate the government of Peter Obi and even impeach him. So what is wrong with voting for APGA at the State Assembly level to help our governor run a good government and prevent the pot to impeach the governor? This is politics and in politics what matters most is the people that you are serving and if at the end of the day you failed to provide good governance for the people you have failed. How can you achieve this if not for you to make sure that you have the right men and women at the helm of affairs that would understand your chemistry and contribute to this drive to provide democracy dividend to the people. If you make the mistake, if not having the right men and women in those areas you cannot serve the people well and at the end of your tenure history would record you as a failure.

So you want rubber stamp lawmakers? No let’s look at it critically, who is despising who?

APGA is not despising anyone because we belong to one family and that is Anambra State. You have to separate personal interest from public interest at this point. It is not that Governor Charles Soludo cannot work with lawmakers who are not of APGA. After all the current House of Assembly is made up of PDP, APC and APGA and we have not had any issue at all. Soludo is well informed and experienced that he can work with them and don’t forget that he is a home boy and he is not new to politics. So the issue of rubber stamp lawmakers does not come in here. What we are looking at is the motive or the intent of some people who want to send some people to the State Assembly.

Are they going to the House of Assembly to represent their constituencies, to make good laws for the state and carry out their oversight functions as stipulated by the law? Are they going to the House of Assembly to see sense in what Governor Charles Soludo is doing for the people of the state? Are they being sponsored to the Assembly Chambers to do the needful in the area of checks and balances for the good of the state?

When you hear the mantra known as paying back time you can agree with me that it sounds vindictive in every sense and manner. What is payback time? It means since Soludo didn’t support Peter Obi of Labour Party we are going to vote in the Labour Party candidates so that he would know no rest as the governor and whatever he does be it good or not would be frustrated and if possible impeach him out rightly.