Amid complaints arising from the conduct of last Saturday’s presidential/national assembly elections, which produced Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as president-elect, operators in the real estate sector say there are lessons to learn and opportunities to tap into future elections.
The operators told BusinessDay in a telephone interview that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) failed in conducting a credible and transparent election, describing the exercise as a sham.
They said the election was a huge lesson on how not to trust institutions in Nigeria which remain the country’s major growth and development draw-back, adding that “the election has been a case of the more you look the less you see.”
According to them, besides sending a message to the political class that it is no longer business as usual, the election in its shoddiness has also taught politicians a lesson that they should not underrate people or political parties.
“We saw the Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, that nobody gave a chance to get a head-start causing upsets in the whole political landscape of the country,” Damola Akindolire, former managing director of Alpha Mead Construction Company (AMDC), said.
He added that the election has given Nigeria and its citizens the hope that the voice of the people could be heard, going forward. “Yes, there are concerns, but there is hope. The electoral umpire has not been able to live up to expectations, but the election has largely improved confidence in the system,” he said.
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To MKO Balogun, CEO, Global PFI, though the election fell below expectations, it still had some lessons to offer, explaining that INEC underrated the work at hand. “Unlike the off-season elections in Ekiti and Osun states, the just concluded presidential election was a 90 million population project,” he said.
Continuing, he said, “attention was more on the electoral laws than the process and the outcome of that misplaced priority was what we saw in places where electoral materials and INEC officials arrived at polling units hours behind schedule.”
Balogun said that the challenges that dogged the election presented an opportunity for both the country and the electoral body to prepare and do it better next time. “I personally hope that when next we have cause to do it again, we will get it better,” he said.
Recognising that many Nigerians are not happy with the outcome of the election, Adetokunbo Ajayi, MD/CEO, Propertygate Development and Investment Company, cautioned that people should not take laws into their hands by resorting to a protest or civil unrest.
“If INEC has promised to do ABC and is not doing that because of what it said were technical hitches, nobody should fight or criticise them. The right thing to do is to go to court and challenge what you think is not done right by your judgement,” he said.
“Be that as it may, I also expected that INEC should have shown a high level of efficiency given the level of expectation from it to deliver on its mandate, but before anything, let us allow the process to exhaust itself,” he advised.
Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a two-term governor of Lagos State from 1999 to 2007, and the most controversial candidate in the election was declared the winner of the election by INEC. Like in any other contest, the outcome of the election is good for some, and bad for others.
