Tade Ademola is the newly elected Lagos State chairman of the Inter-Party Advisory Council of Nigeria (IPAC) and the state Alliance for Social Democrat (ASD). In this exclusive interview with INIOBONG IWOK, he spoke on a number of issues, including moves to deregister smaller parties in the country by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), agitations for electronic voting and the 2019 general election. Excerpts:
How would you assess the performance of your party in the 2019 general election?
For a party that was relatively young in the system we still had a governorship candidate in Lagos State. We had three House of Representatives candidates and nine Lagos State House of Assembly candidates.Competing election is not an easy thing; Lagos State is about 20 million people, if you are coming to meet and compete with a party that is already in existence and with a structure and capacity the people would show you that you are an underdog.Politics is seriouslymonetised in Nigeria; whether it is money for campaign or just giving supporters for logistics, for running the election, it is always high.If you are running for governorship election in Lagos State, how much would you use to do logistics? How much would you use to do your campaign? Even on the day of the election we hadmany polling units across the state. Assuming that the minimum you would pay an agent in a polling unit is N10, 000 each; multiply that for all the polling units across the state, you would know that it is roughly four hundred million naira.Imagine such amount being distributed in a day, we have not talked about supervisors; it is awesome.We also have volunteers; these are people who are ready to do it for us with little or nothing. So, that is the challenge, we are not able to compete with them because of the financial implications needed to run and election.That is what we need to face overall; it means that in a state, a party may end up spending about two billion to compete for an election; multiply that across the country and see the multiplier effect.So, setting up a party is easy, but to spread it is not easy, we did not know it would be that tasking.
The results of the 2019 general election was criticised by the opposition parties; what is the position of your party?
My party has this policy of not criticising unnecessarily, but the overview of that general election result we have seen is that people complained of rigging.But we know that you can only rig election where you are having majority and every one of them is involved. I can tell you a party would put one agent in a polling booth and such agent would be compromised.The agents do all sorts of things, they represent one party, but they do all they can to block, intimidate and send away the agents of other parties from the polling units because they want to subvert the process. They tamper with voting materials, sometimes collaborating with the other parties and the people to do this. So, if you are talking about elections not being free and fair, we are all involved. There is no recent election that was free and fair in Nigeria except the June 12, 1993 election.I know the 2019 general election had issues, I believe there were malpractices; I was in Amuwo-Odofin and I saw what happened. But like I said because there are issues in general election would not mean to just totally condemn the whole process. Where I was I saw what happened even my agents were asked to leave and fought with; I had to tell them safety first; your life is more important.
The perception was that smaller parties were bought over before that election?
Well, that is an assumption, because if we were bought over, my party would not have candidates in the elections in Lagos State. My party governorship candidate participated fully in the gubernatorial election. We also had agents across the state. That is the problem a lot of political jobbers created; they would go round, print posters, saying that we have endorsed this candidate and that party.There was a time we were having meeting with our party national chairman and someone sent a picture to me where a candidate was holding the party’s flag covering his face that we have endorsed him, even when we were not aware of it. My party chairman sent it to me; those are the kind individuals causing confusion in the system and it is common during general elections.
You have just been elected the Lagos State chairman of IPAC; what are you bringing to the table?
What this election means to me from experience is that we have to come together and bring the parties together. I think after the general election, we should find a way out where we can come together and get things done; it must not be a do-or-die affair.When we start killing ourselves, it is not good. We should be able to correct and make suggestions to those ruling. Whatever they have done is for everybody, so we should call them to order when necessary. But the parties must come together and think for the state, it is not personal aggrandisement. We are bringing the parties together and so they can have social relation; it is not just about political relationship; when you have a social relationship together there are things you think of before fighting each other.
We need to build the capacity of people holding public office. We need to let party chairmen know the powers they have and the limitations of their power. Let the people understand what it entails. It is not all the time we go for elections that we have to have a fight; we should come to the table and say this is what we have.
What is the relationship of IPAC with APC?
APC is a member of IPAC, the present Secretary of the state IPAC is a member of the APC in Lagos State. So, APC, PDP we are the same and we all work together. The ruling party is running the government, but there is a synergy with IPAC. With the three of us when the parties are aggrieved we can say let’s talk.
Some stakeholders have canvased deregistration of some political parties; what is your take?
We are just going front and back on this issue, there is no way you would delist political parties, because there is already a ruling on that. INEC had delisted some parties before and they went to court and won. The people that are saying that the parties are redundant after election, what do they want parties to be doing? They expect them to go to newspapers and be shouting this party is not doing well, or doing bad? You expect them to be walking on the street advertising their parties?A party activity is not everyday affair, like it is in business. You can’t see me every day, I have lost an election, I would go back to the drawing board and strategise for the future.You notice parties have different programmes during election because there are other activities. The parties would have something to do every day, because they would go and solicit for votes. You are a reporter you don’t just go to everybody you go to people who are relevant. We have just finished verification at the INEC headquarters; if there were no parties, would there be verification? There are so many things that are being done, the few that makes headlines are the ones people hear.
What is your take on moves to amend the 2010 Electoral Act?
At Lagos State IPAC, we had not deliberated on it and taken a position as a general assembly, but I can tell you that personally, the best thing for Nigeria is to have electronic voting. Like I said before, the parties spend money so much during elections on agents if there is electronic voting such money would be saved.Then how much is INEC spending from the buying of ballot box and moving them around the states?They didBig Brother Africa and people voted from their homes; how much did they use in building the platform? If you look at it electronic voting is the way to go. But some people are saying they don’t want it because they want to rig. You can’t rig when I am voting for who I want through electronic voting; its means that businesses would not be affected; because on the day of election everybody would be at work. There would not be multiplication of votes. There are so many advantages in it. Because we have the power to subdue a lot of things and use it to subvert the process, you know a lot of people refused to come out to vote in the last general election because of fighting, violence, there is problem everywhere.How can we have over 80 million registered voters in the country and we are having only 15 million voters? Look at how much number of people voted in big Brother Africa; it means that we can have lots of people voting and it would be the voice of Nigerians and that is when you willrealise that so much of smaller parties you call mushrooms have advantage because a lot of people would vote their conscience.For now, the immediate priority of the group is to bring a level playing field to all the parties. Even if you are the party in government, not everybody would be on the same page.
