Uduegbunam ChukwujamaProfessor Pat Utomi, convener of the Big Tent for Obi/Datti and Labour Party Leader, has called for removal of INEC’s Resident Electoral Commissioner, Segun Agbaje. He also called on the global community to set up an International Election Court to try electoral offences in Nigeria and other parts of Africa.
He said this an international press conference he held in Lagos on Wednesday, February 22, 2023, three days to Nigeria’s Presidential Election.
Read the full text of Utomi’s speech at the well attended international press conference:
The dividends of democracy have eluded us for so long because our Democracy took a wrong turn early. It failed to be about the people and for the people. I have often defined the Nigerian variant as Government of the politicians, for politicians, by politicians. The result has been policies that made the people poor, sick, hungry and angry in the calm that precedes made the storm they turned to apathy as the Afrobarometer measures for Nigeria with a continuous downward slide show.
A Perfect Mess And New Possibilities – UTOMI
The consequence of a democracy not about the people is an inchoate economy, widespread insecurity and the Japa syndrome as we have chosen to label unplanned exodus migration of the disadvantaged. Invariably, this would be followed by insecurity descending into anarchy as Robert Kaplan predicted in “The Coming Anarchy.”
AN ELECTION LIKE NONE OTHER
Nigeria got lucky. Its youth woke up. And ENDSARS shocked them into consciousness about the desperation of the champions of state capture in the ruling elite, reading them to take the fight to the ballot box. But those Entrepreneurs of Machine politics and pollical power for sake of self-assumed the people would tire out, get apathetic and they the landlords can then, suppress enough votes, rig well and continue in power even if a majority of the people reject what they stand for. This time the awakened and angry citizens continued to say enough is enough and their battle cry is: “If we die if we die”. But they are angry enough to say they will no longer accept from a violent minority the use violence, ethic jingoism, religion and money to separate the jointly abused from finding salvation in the ballot box.
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I want therefore to call the attention of international observers of the pattern and their role in unwittingly suppressing democracy in Nigeria as their role, has an inoculation effect on the rights of citizens to elect the candidates they want to lead them. Their palliative call for calm when the rage of the cheated wells up is why Nigerian lies prostrate.
I say this bearing in mind my own role in the struggle for an international criminal court to combat genocide. I bring up often my visit with the Editorial team at the Christian Science Monitor in Boston in January of 1997. They told me the idea was too idealistic less than three years after the Rome treaty had passed and an International Criminal Court was underway.
I am beginning to take exception to Election observers being a whitewash on abuse by the fascist oriented who are bent on abusing elections. Foreign missions in Nigeria know Nigerian Politicians who have invested much in violence, voter imitation and vote suppression, including manipulating voters registers to disenfranchise voters. They also know the very corrupt politicians who buy votes and use stolen public funds to block access for citizens politicians. But they preach one thing in public and court these politicians so they can be partners in asymmetric relations between the centre of the metropole and the centre of the periphery of poor struggling countries that are prevented from progress by these their politicians. The currency of the centre-periphery thesis of International Political Economy may have run out decades back but Nigeria’s retrogression proves is validity and veracity.
These young people who rose up must now know that their future is in their hands and not in these fancy arrangements which only mortgage their future. I salute their solidarity chant. If we die, we die.
On INEC and These Elections
The people rejoiced when the current Electoral Act began to move from those who manage elections to voters. We thought Technology was getting us ready to turn on its head Stalin’s statement that those who count ballots, not those who vote, determine the outcome of elections. But many things cause me worry. INEC, extremely poor performance in PVC collection leaves much to worry about. Then there is the matter of creating new polling units and the speculations that people considered a threat to interests by the look of their names were being posted miles away knowing that restricted movements would disenfranchise them.
I have watched INEC treat with kid’s gloves the widespread calls for the rearrangement of its REC in Lagos. Not to respond to that is a big question mark on the credibility of the elections, and I call on the International Community to note this point. The Nigerian people want Mr. Segun Agbaje redeployed. His skills can be as valuable in Jigawa as they are in Lagos.
There are also reports that in some parts of the country people are being told that if they do not have their PVCs but have the temporary ones BVAS can read the barcode and activate their voting. If that is used in any part of the country, it must be used all over the country.
INEC has also to ensure that list of people voting in a booth must be posted 24 hours before at the booth rather than using phones to do so, allowing for chaos when people without android phones show up the day before.
CLOSING CALL
We want to thank all citizens and Defense Force especially the CSO, General Irabor as his team we called on yesterday and who we have called on and affirmed there will be no room to cheat the people and urge they feel safe to come out massively to vote for a new future and vote the Liberation.
It is time for freedom. As I did in 1993, after they vote, they should stay back and vote as if there lives depend on that ballot , for in fact they do, in this existential crisis of purpose for the Nigerian state. Then they should wait to see the uploading of the outcome, get a snapshot of it before going home for deserved rest. We call on those who could not collect their PVCs to come out and be part of the peoples Army to defend the vote.
It is our country as the future of our children is at stake. Patriarch duty should propel us to come out. Call out any incident of possible vote buyers or riggers in the neighborhood and ensure that the INEC officials stay honest. Vigilance is the Price of Liberty. We want to be free so all must watch out and be counted. Nigeria Will Rise Up Again and our chance is now.
Press Statement by Professor Pat Utomi, convener of the Big Tent for Obi/Datti, Leader of the Labour Party and Professor at the Lagos Business School.
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