•’How to make peace pact work’
Chief Don Etiebet is a founding member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and a member of the Board of Trustees of the party. In this interview, he bares his mind on the state of the nation, preparations of INEC ahead of the February elections and the peace pact signed by President Goodluck Jonathan and General Muhammadu Buhari, among other presidential candidates.
He also talks about what he describes as a conspiracy of silence by the PDP leadership over the outcome of the governorship primary in some South-south states. Excerpts:
BY GBENGA OKE
As we move closer to the general elections, there was a peace pact between President Goodluck Jonathan the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and his All Progressives Congress (APC) counterpart, General Muhammadu Buhari. How far do you think this peace pact will go especially with the candidates of the parties getting personal?
Considering the peace pact that was agreed by Mr President and the opposition leader, General Buhari, I want to tell you that it is commendable. I believe we have to start somewhere as a nation; to get the two most prominent presidential candidates, incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan and General Buhari, to agree to that peace initiative, put their pen to paper, it means that they have good intentions for Nigeria, they have good intentions to conduct free and fair elections, they love Nigeria more than their aspirations.
Without peace, there is no Nigeria. So I commend them but the main point is implementation of that peace plan. If it is not properly implemented, there might be issues arising from it. As we prepare for the elections, to some people, it is winning or nothing. Some people already had the mind they want to win elections even if the environment is not conducive for their will, they will go all out to do anything to ensure victory at the elections.
Don Etiebet
The police and the military remain a major factor in the conduct of free and fair elections and Mr. President himself has been harping on peaceful elections. He has gone further to say there must be one man, one vote; one woman, one vote; one youth, one vote. What can be more commendable from an interested party? The President himself is an interested party and he has gone ahead to tell Nigerians what the conduct of the elections must be. What is left now is whether his doctrine will be translated to the field because that is where the election is done. What is left is whether some of the leaders in various states like the state governors will give peace a chance because they are the field marshals in their various states. Do they tie themselves up to what the President has said? Will they follow what the President has ordered?
For example, you have a governor who says he is the chief security of the state and, by virtue of that, he believes he can control the security at the state level, can he control them and use them to his own advantage against the opponents? You go down to local government, the local government chairman will say I am the chief security officer of the LG, therefore I can control the police in my LGA.
The question is that will they want to use the security agencies to their advantage during the elections? If they do, will the elections be free and fair. The most important thing is for the President to call those who call themselves chief security officers of the states to be careful about their conducts during the elections. He should also call the police and every security agencies in the country to be non-partisan because, whether you like it or not, politicians will want to use the security agencies to perpetrate evil during the elections. So the security agencies should ensure this one man, one vote, which the President propounds, is a reality and it’s carried out.
I will use this opportunity to plead with the President and Nigerians to ensure the security agencies do what they are meant to do during the elections and they should eschew partisanship, they should not allow themselves to be used by anybody against any opponent because that is where trouble comes from. The two presidential candidates have signed a pact to maintain peace during the elections but violence can start involuntarily when somebody at the polling booth perceives that the police has been used against the interest of an opponent and they have used it to announce a wrong result. So when this kind of thing happens, the violence can be involuntary and spontaneous. So it is not a matter of we saying it, it is about walking the talk.
Some Nigerians think that this election, if the President wins, some part of the North might go up in flames and if the opposition candidate wins, the boys might return to the creeks in the Niger/Delta. What does this impression portend for the nation putting in mind the peace pact that has just been signed?
The situation today has polarized many into all kinds of groups and it is very unfortunate and it is not funny at all and the potentials for trouble are very much there. Arising from the scam of primaries that took place in the country in all the parties, people are starting to grab the last straw they have, and they can find this straw in ethnicity or religion or anything that they have and in all kind of things they have in voicing out their discontent in the process of choosing their leaders.
All these things are the results of the injustice that the people have seen rearing its head particularly from the results of the primaries in various states across Nigeria. So it a very dicey situation and the only panacea to it is free and fair elections which the President has propounded for a very long time which again they have agreed to give peace a chance. I can tell you that Nigerians are peace loving people but the most important thing is that for that peace accord to work, the law must be followed. If these elections are done properly, free and fair, you will see that the loser will concede victory immediately when he knows all the ingredients, all the parameters were free and fair.
I can tell you that the loser will be ashamed to make noise once he knows the elections were conducted properly, what would they complain about? The only problem is if they complain against injustice, they now start to take sides and the North will now say if somebody does not win, there will be problem. Then the South will say if this person does not win, there will be problem. During our time, there was nothing like that, I am from the South-south and I can tell you that we in the South-south had always supported the core North in elections.
In those days when there was polarization between the Igbo, the Hausa and the Yoruba, we were the stabilizing force. But today, the thing has polarized into the action of if it is not this, it will be that. I believe strongly that if this election is conducted freely and fairly and if the security agencies do not allow themselves to be used to cheat other persons, there will not be opportunity to complain about anything talkless of giving violence a chance.
I pray and we all must pray and follow the advice of the President and he must ensure the advice gets to the field marshal who will be playing a major role during the elections. The President must ensure that message is passed down to those who call themselves security officer of the state and we are seeing examples of partisanship in some states already. Truly these security agencies are human beings and they have preferences from party A or B, but they should realize Nigeria comes first.
In some states where the governors are bent on forcing their way down the throats of the people, that is where some of these problems might arise , that is why the President needs to warn some of these people that Nigeria is bigger than anybody, that Nigeria is bigger than any party or any interest group.
Very thick clouds are enveloping Nigeria today and every part of the world is looking at what Nigeria will do during and after these elections; the ECOWAS, the African people and the international nations are all watching. So I believe that no sacrifice is small or big enough to ensure these elections are peaceful. If any of the two presidential candidates is quick to congratulate the winner, there will be peace after the elections.
I have a personal experience in this regard. In 1997, I formed a political party called NCP and we had elections and we use it to win the first local government elections against the UNCP. My party won that election and because of that I was arrested; when my supporters in Sokoto and Kano heard that I was arrested and that the elections results were being changed, they started taking buses and moving down to Abuja.
Gwarzo was the National Security Adviser at that time, he told me to tell my supporters to go back home because if they came to Abuja, I would be held responsible. I sent a message to them I was fine and that my supporters should go back and that the results of the elections will be rectified. They were surprised I was winning elections even in Kano against the wish of General Sani Abacha.
So what I am trying to say is that Nigeria is bigger than anybody, leader or party. Therefore, we should tell our supporters to accept whatever the results of the elections are, but first, the elections must be free and fair. The first people to warn are the governors of various states; let people’s choice prevail and let them be given the opportunity to choose their leaders. If the elections are held in a peaceful environment, results are free and fair and results declared properly, there will be no problems.
If on the other hand, the results are being changed at the collation centre, people have their right to say that is not the result declared at the field. That is why INEC has a crucial role to play in this election; the future of this country depends on INEC’s conduct. The adhoc staff, local returning officers, those are the people Jega should ensure they are not partisan and they should be careful about inducements from anybody. Those are the people who the future of this country is in their hands.
We should be very careful about the conduct of these elections. For example, a situation where governors go round the local governments to inspect what is happening should be abolished. Why should they do that when they are interested parties in the election.? These are practical things that happen that bring about violence.
Having talked about the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC), how do you view the preparation of INEC ahead of the elections?
INEC has published that there are over 68million PVCs already gone out and they have promised that, by the end of this month, all PVCs would have been given out. I want to believe that by the end of this month, they would have sorted out this issue. If by the end of this month, INEC has not been able to do as they have said, we can start attacking them. They have the responsibility of conducting the elections and they have to do so in a manner that will not cause chaos. I don’t envy them; they have a lot of work to do.
But like I said before, anybody that is an interested party should be removed. INEC needs to educate their adhoc staff because the inaction, omission or commission of one of the electoral officers at any of the polling booth may spark off controversy in this country. So everything rests on INEC and since they say they are doing everything within their power to conduct free and fair elections, then we will keep our fingers crossed.
The card reader will do a lot of work in reducing malpractices we experience in Nigeria.
The elections are here and facts have shown that the opposition is gaining more ground by the day. Considering the problems that persist in various states led by the PDP government, what are the chances of the party and President Jonathan?
I will like to say that the chances of Mr President depend on the people, it is the people that will vote for Mr President but I am afraid of the aftermath of what happened in the PDP primaries particularly in the South-south and even some other parts of the country. There was no proper conduct of the primaries in the South-south; even in my own state of Akwa Ibom, the guidelines for the conduct of the primaries were not made available and, consequently, many people became annoyed.
In my state for example, 24 aspirants came out and paid about N400million and, when they went for the primaries, there were no delegates list and they asked the official that came from Abuja, ‘where is the delegates list which will be used for this primaries?’, he said accreditation had been done in the Government House and nobody knows the delegates list which was used and party members maintained they were not going to take part in such an election because there was no delegates list and no accreditation and that was on the 8th of December.
On the 9th of December, 22 of them went to Abuja because one of them had gone to APC and the other one was the favoured candidate of the governor. In Abuja, they submitted a letter to the Chairman of the Appeal Panel which was headed by the Chairman of the party, according to the party guidelines which say you must turn in appeal under 24hours. They stayed there till the 19th of the month without seeing the national leadership of the party, the national leadership of the party refused to entertain their complaint and the appeal panel has not met to call them. So what do you expect those people to do?
And they are strong supporters of the party in a state like Akwa Ibom which is 100 percent PDP. Don’t you think they have followers or you want to tell me that the followers of one person is better than the followers of these 22aspirants because he is supported by the governor? The answer is no because I am from that state, so things like that will cause some problem and I expect the South-south to be the zone on which the President will stand on to face other zones.
So I am saying those scam PDP primaries have jeopardized the President’s hold in the zone, a zone where he should have been having 100 percent untainted votes cast to stand on to go to the other zones. If you go to Rivers State, you and I know what is happening there, Delta already has its issues, all because the primaries were not conducted in a manner that gives the party internal democracy.
So where the foothold of Mr President is in tumult, I am afraid he will not get the maximum votes he is supposed to get to face other zones. And we have all these problems, because the governors have gone to tell Mr President that they will be the ones to win the election for him and that is why they refused to allow the primaries to hold properly. So a lot of work has to be done to assuage the people of the South-south who are annoyed because of the problems arising from the primaries.
Why has Akwa Ibom refused to find a solution to its own problems when in places like Delta and Lagos, the PDP aspirants have been able to come together and solved their problems. Why has the Akwa Ibom PDP aspirants refused to find a common ground?
The aspirants are PDP members and they believe that the PDP leaders should attend to their problems. There are bonafide members of the PDP in Akwa Ibom when we took the party there in 1998 and the state has always been 100percent PDP state but actions like what the present governor did has polarized the state. We need to understand that these 22aspirants have a lot of followers and they come from every part of the state and their grouse is that they were not allowed to participate in the primaries.
The delegates list were produced at the Government House, many have written letters to the national leaders of the PDP complaining and nobody has considered it fit to respond. So these people are annoyed. I have been holding them for five weeks in Abuja and stopping them from moving to another party by telling them that the national leadership will see to their problems but up till now, nobody has answered them because the governor has gone to Abuja to tell them to forget about the 22aspirants, that he will win the elections in the state for Mr President. How is he going to win the elections? Is he planning rigging?
The conspiracy of silence by the leadership of the PDP is what is infuriating the 22aspirants the more.
That somebody like me who is also a founding financial member of the PDP in 1998, I was going for the Presidency of the party then and everybody knows me for that, I have written petition to the national leadership of the party that there were no primaries in the state.
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