Anti-graft war needs more investigators than judiciary

There have been conflicting judgments on the card reader at the various election petitions tribunals. What is your view on this? My view on that is guided by the Electoral Act, 2010. Section 138 (2)clearly says that one, any directives, guidelines, manuals given by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) or instructions which is not […]

There have been conflicting judgments on the card reader at the various election petitions tribunals. What is your view on this?
My view on that is guided by the Electoral Act, 2010. Section 138 (2)clearly says that one, any directives, guidelines, manuals given by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) or instructions which is not contrary to the Electoral Act and which is not obeyed  will not be a ground to challenge an election. Two, you are aware that the Electoral Act says that electronic voting is prohibited.  And, voting is not an event, it’s a process. And so if the act says that a computer or electronic voting is prohibited, accreditation using electronic voting is going against the act. And so long as accreditation is provided for in the Electoral Act by saying ticking of the voters’ register, card reader for me is surplus and whether you obey it or not, should not be a ground to nullify the election.
I refer to Section 138 of the Electoral Act which says ‘an act or omission which may be contrary to the instruction or directive of the commission or of an officer appointed for the purpose of the election but which is not contrary to the provisions of this Act,  shall not of itself be a ground for questioning the election.’
What the act says is that yes, the commission has said, if you use card reader, if it doesn’t work postpone the election.  That if you go ahead to do the election it is contrary to the directive given by the commission but it is not contrary to the provisions of the act because the  act does not provide for card reader. There is nowhere in the entire gamut of the Electoral Act that card reader was provided for. All it says is that you go in, provide your voters’ card, your name is checked in the register and it is ticked. Ticking is what shows whether you have voted or not. And that is why judicial authorities are bound that if you want to prove no voting, you must produce your voters’ card. I agree that the commission meant well by introducing the card reader but the law is still the law. You can’t go against what the law says. So  I agree with the Akwa Ibom governorship tribunal that says using the card reader is not the basis, and should not be a ground to say election should hold or not. For me all those tribunals relying on card reader is an error in law.
I agree that violating the instruction of the commission by not using card reader is a violation but it’s not contrary to the act. So you can’t use it to challenge.

But there are suggestions that the card reader was not for actual voting, rather just to authenticate the voter?
That is why I say that voting is not an event but a process. Voting commences when you present your voters’ card, you are accredited by checking the voters register, the ballot paper is given to you and then you go and cast your ballot. So election is a process. If one is missing, there is no election. So if you introduce electronic voting which is prohibited by the act, you are violating the act.

The elections in Bayelsa and Kogi states have led to the shut-down of the entire states. In other climes, you vote and go to your regular activities. What is wrong here?
We can only improve our electoral system in that direction when we have a complete data base of the citizens of this country. In those countries you are talking about, nobody really talks of voters’ card or whatever. It’s your identity card. With their database, if you present your ID card or passport the system will pick it up and know you are the person. But here people come and claim other people’s name when they are not even up to the age of voting. So until we get our acts right, we will remain in this same position.

In the Taraba tribunal judgement, the court said that if a political party did not conduct primaries to produce a candidate, the party has no candidate and the votes cast for it are a waste. What’s your opinion on this?
First, it is not true that a political party has the right to do their primary anywhere they like. You must do your primary within the constituency where the election is going to take place. If you decide to go outside and it is not monitored by INEC which regulates the process as provided in Section 87 of the Electoral Act and you go ahead or hold it in one local government, it is void. If you go ahead and hold it in Abuja you must make a case to INEC for a waiver through what they call the ‘doctrine of necessity’. Without that, what you have done is against the law. As I said, election is a process, if there is a dislocation in one place, the process can’t be complete.

It has been argued that by the provisions of sections 140 and 141 of the Electoral Act, the tribunal ought to have ordered a re-run and not to declare the runner-up the winner?
It is true that Section 140 (2) of the Electoral Act says so. It might interest you to know that a Federal High Court in Abuja has struck out sections 140 and 141, and there is no appeal against that judgment. And by Section 287 of the 1999 Constitution every person and authority is supposed to obey and enforce judgment of court. So long as that judgment remains extant, those provisions are dead.  So the tribunal was right.

Do you think the anti-corruption war can be won with the existing structure of the judiciary?
My view is that the existing judicial structure can effectively deal with corruption cases. There is this unfortunate thing that people push the blame on the judiciary. In other climes, investigations are carried out before arrests are made. In Nigeria, arrests are made before investigation starts and is concluded. What I’m saying is that very often the bogus claims of corruption we hear, are all just on paper and the journalists publish them that billions have been stolen. And people are expecting the thing to come out that way.
The bulk of the work should not be on the judiciary but on the investigators. If they do proper investigation and come up with hard facts before arrest, once you are caught red-handed, maybe you may not want to waste the time of the investigators to go to court. You will just go there and agree. But when you have not done proper investigation and a lawyer has seen that you didn’t do a good job, you allow the court to find out.
Here, you see them charge people for 50-counts charge, 200 counts charge, it makes nonsense of the whole thing to keep duplicating charges just to create the impression that they are working. People see the judiciary as an appendage of the executive to send anybody charged to jail. But the judiciary holds the scale, once you can’t prove your case, the man is allowed to go free.
The EFCC should be restructured to make it more effective. And another department should handle recovered assets.

Most states are complaining of dwindling allocations, what is the way out for the country?
Simple. The way out is to look inwards.  We should cut down on our expenditure, look at internally generated revenues, look at what we can produce. Nigeria is a blessed nation because I always say we can feed the world. All we need to do is to organize ourselves and be serious about agriculture, solid minerals and cut down on unnecessary expenditure. We must live within our income to make progress.
We have to restructure the country. I don’t appreciate the fact that the federal government takes about 52 per cent of whatever revenue that comes to Nigeria and the other 36 states and their local governments take 46 per cent, and I think 2 per cent is kept aside. For me rather the federal government should take 25 per cent and share 75 per cent to the states to develop and let the centre hands off some of the projects.