Alarm! Nigeria's democracy is in Danger - Mantu

Nigeria's democracy is in Danger - Mantu

Former Deputy Senate President and Chairman Board of Trustees of Save Democracy Africa Group, Alhaji Ibrahim Mantu is a founding member of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). In this interview with MAGNUS EZE, in Abuja, he x-rays the goings-on in the nation’s polity and submits that democracy is endangered. While Mantu supports the anti-corruption fight of the All Progressives Congress-led government, he also begs Nigerians to forgive PDP.

Excerpts:

Why the Save Democracy Africa Group project?

When you say save something, it means something is in danger. If you say, save democracy, it means that democracy is in danger and there’s need to save it. That’s why some of us who have benefitted from democratic rule feel that we have a duty to save that which we have benefitted from and also promote good governance for the good of all.

You recall that this is the first time in the history of Nigeria that democracy has survived for up to 17 years. The first and second republics, including the third abortive republic all didn’t last more than once term; at best. From 1999 till date, we have had an uninterrupted democratic rule.

One would have expected that the longevity of democracy would have helped to deepen democratic principles and practice; that we would have developed democratic culture of doing things naturally without hiccups.

But you will agree with me that in spite of the fact that we have made progress in some areas, we still have not made progress in the fundamental areas that matter. For example, there is no internal democracy in all the political parties in Nigeria. And that to me is the foundation; the beginning of the political journey. By being a candidate of a political party through proper process, you will now see the need to win your election through a proper process. But if you emerge as a candidate of a political party through fraudulent means, you won’t see anything wrong in using fraudulent means to win the election because a product of fraud will not see anything wrong in committing fraud.

So, we feel that if there is no internal party democracy, we cannot say that democracy is being practised as it should be. Unless you respect your constitution and conduct your elections in accordance with your constitution, in a free and fair manner, where anybody who wins the majority vote will be declared the winner, then we are not talking democracy. But you know that in our primaries, party members will come out en masse from morning to night, queuing behind aspirants of their choice in order to have a candidate, but what happens? After they have denied themselves food and water till the night, not because they are fasting, but because they are performing their civic responsibilities, at the end of the day, their choice sent to the national headquarters of the party to be forwarded to INEC is not the one forwarded. A very powerful person with money goes to the party chieftains and gets such popular choice replaced with either his anointed son, his wife; his girlfriend; or any other person that the big man wants to put there. And they jettison a candidate who emerged through popular vote.

As I said earlier, if a man emerges as a party candidate through fraudulent means, he will use similar fraudulent means to get INEC to declare him the winner of the election proper. He will buy INEC officials; he will get thugs to disorganise the voting process, beat up voters and get the officials to declare whatever result he wants them to declare in his favour.

All these malpractices must stop. Every time we’ll say, like it’s done in Britain, like it’s done in America, like it’s done in Jamaica, but are those people not human beings like us? They have two eyes and we have two eyes; they are normal human beings like us. But why are they doing things that we appreciate and see as exemplary, yet we cannot do it right? It’s because we have refused to obey the constitutions of our parties; we’ve refused to play by the rules and regulations, we’ve failed to come to terms with democracy. It’s because we’ve not respected the principles and practice of democracy.

We are saying that after 16 years of uninterrupted democracy, that the most important achievement so far is the outcome of the 2015 general elections. For the first time in the history of Nigeria, we had a sitting president who was defeated by the opposition candidate. And the then sitting president did not only accept defeat, he even congratulated the winner before the official declaration of the result. That singular act was responsible for the peace that greeted the result of the general elections in 2015.

Again, that actually made Nigeria to be seen by other African countries as having woken up from the slumber and having embraced the right way of doing things and taken the rightful role as a leader of Africa. Almost all the African countries saluted and commended Nigeria for that feat.

So, what we are saying is that since we have started getting it right, since God has intervened and we have done something very positive, we have to build on the positive achievement by building the foundation for democratic principles and practice. From there, we’ll begin to practise democracy as done in the advanced democracies.

That is why we decided to form the Save Democracy Group, so that we’ll get democracy out of the woods and entrenched in Nigeria.

What do you expect of INEC in all these?

I totally agree that we need to build strong democratic institutions if our democracy should endure because it’s only that that can make our democracy endure. INEC is trying its best, introducing all forms of innovations to improve on elections but that notwithstanding, we are still far away from getting it right.

As I said before, the 2015 general elections were commended by virtually all well-meaning citizens of the world but if you take into consideration what happened in Bayelsa governorship election recently, it’s like we are reversing the trend. Instead of deepening democratic practice, we seemed to have gone back. Honestly, I was so sad to see what happened in Bayelsa because it’s like it has taken us many steps backward.

We don’t want to have free and fair elections only in the federal election; we want free and fair elections conducted at the local government council, state level, in fact, even at ward level. It is when the whole thing is holistic; free and fair councillorship election to free and fair presidential election that we will say that everything has come to stay. It’s then we will say that everybody has come to embrace the theory of free and fair election.

But when people are still killing, still hijacking ballot boxes, still getting involved in so many malpractices; they will not give us the accurate result. What it means is that this new direction we chose in 2015 has not been embraced by some people. We really have a duty to do that.

Hence, INEC, the police and the political parties must wake up. INEC is doing its best, but there is still much to be desired. But above all, the police need to do much more than any other organ because where there is tight security; it will be difficult for hoodlums or miscreants to snatch ballot boxes or waylay INEC officials and snatch other sensitive electoral materials.

The parties must conduct free and fair primaries where winners are fielded as the parties’ candidates and no amount of pressure from any quarters should make them change the candidates.

Secondly, the police must provide adequate security to ensure that hoodlums do not have their way and take over the conduct of elections in various electoral centres.

What do you think should be done to check the maddening defections in our polity?

The truth is that our parties are not actually built on ideologies. In countries where political parties are centred on ideologies, you hardly hear the issue of cross-carpeting or defection. For instance, in Britain, you have Labour Party, Conservatives and the Liberals. Those who formed the Liberals were opposed to the ideology of the Conservatives and also opposed to the ideology of Labour Party. So, they formed their own, but unfortunately they did not get the kind of membership that will make them form a government. In fact, for several decades, they were just having one, two or three members in the parliament. But gradually, people began to buy their own story and they grew with time. Recently, they formed a coalition government in Britain. They never said because they can’t form a government, let us go and join the Conservatives or Labour.

If you go by that, everybody should remain where he is. But the fact is that Nigerian political parties are mere platforms for achieving political ambitions. That’s why Nigerian politician can jump from one party to another, like a person runs for the primaries for the governorship ticket of one political party and fails to get it, the next day you see him as the flag bearer of another party for the same election. You can see clearly that if there had been clearly defined ideologies, it would be difficult for someone who does not share your ideology to just jump into your party.

Coming to the National Assembly for example, the law is very clear that you cannot cross carpet from your party to another party unless there is crisis in your own party. So, if there is no crisis in your party, you must remain in the political party that brought you to the National Assembly until your tenure is over. But as I said that people just join parties because of their political ambitions, if somebody is in say PDP for about 15 years and loses nomination, the following morning he goes to APC or Labour Party, gets their ticket and wins. You will see that he’s not really a committed APC or Labour Party member because he doesn’t even know anybody there; he just wanted to use the party platform to be in the senate.

But if there is a crisis in your party, you can actually leave for another party; where there is no crisis, you will actually lose your seat. There are decided cases in the Supreme Court on this.

As of now, people are just jumping out because nobody wants to be in opposition because nothing is there. That tells you that most people in politics are in it because of what politics can give them and not because of service. If you are there to serve the people, it doesn’t matter where you are; you must not be in the ruling party. Every time a political party wins, people flood to the ruling party. When are we going to develop the kind of opposition that will be formidable to criticise the government and its policies. We need a viable opposition that has the capacity of barking and biting.

I personally believe that jumping from one party to the other is not right and should be condemned. I have been in PDP from inception and I’m still there even when I left the National Assembly in 2007. The PDP was in power from 1999 to 2015 but I didn’t say let me leave the party since I was not accommodated in any capacity in 2007. I would have been a very good candidate for defecting to APC; because of marginalization, but I said no. I believe in PDP. PDP, as a political party, has also made me what I am. I cannot just run away from the party because we’ve lost election. There must be winners and losers in any election. And in any case, you must be principled. You can’t claim to be a good leader without principle because when you can’t accommodate a small heat, how do you expect your followers to accommodate heat? You must lead by example. As far as I’m concerned, it will be a sign of ingratitude for me to say because PDP is now not in power, let me leave the party. After all, in 1999 I came to the National Assembly as Ibrahim Mantu, when I was sworn in, I became Senator Ibrahim Mantu and in 2000, I became deputy senate president; the second in command in the senate, the highest law making body in the country; courtesy of who, the PDP. If I had not been given the opportunity by the party, I wouldn’t have been deputy senate president.

So, if it’s my dead body lying there now, they will say there lies the body of former deputy president of the senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. It’s not every time that you must win. The world is not a bed of roses; there are times you laugh and sometimes you cry.

I see the PDP as a father infected with leprosy and his son says my father is not healthy again, let me run away and leave him to his fate. But a good son will say no, my father has leprosy, let me stay and get him cured. Even if it becomes incurable like cancer or AIDS, at least you will give him a befitting burial if you stay behind. For me, I will not run away from my father because he’s infected with leprosy, I will sit there and cure him.

That’s what we are doing now. We are going about, evolving different strategies of revamping the party. We’ll sift the party, remove the bad eggs and bring in new good people. I am one of those people that are totally committed to revamping the PDP. We are going to dissect it, look at the ills of the party, see what we can do to remove those ills and come up again as people who are born again. We’ll baptize the party that people will now see that these people are totally committed to see that a new PDP is born; we’re bringing faces of hope to run the party at all levels. We’ve learnt our lesson. We knew what we did wrong and we are not going that route again. We’re going to make sure that this time around, we allow the people of Nigeria to determine who leads them and we will allow them to choose people of their choice; not imposition of candidates. We will allow our constitution to be totally in charge; nobody will do anything outside the constitution. And when people see that they will now know that yes, we’ve learnt our lesson, we’ve purged ourselves.

Is PDP now prepared to play the role of opposition?

Whether we are prepared to play the role of opposition or not, we’re now in the opposition and we have to learn how to live the opposition life. Indeed, the PDP was not prepared to play opposition, but many of us saw it coming because we knew with the kind of attitude, the kind of impunity displayed at all levels, we knew that there was no way PDP would survive the election. Many of us saw it and that was why some of us were not visible in the presidential campaign because we told them and they refused our pieces of advice. You can only take the horse to the stream, but not force it to drink the water. Since they jettisoned our advice, they eventually saw the result.

But we will remain there to get it right. I’m a veteran; I’ve been in this game for over three decades and there is no way I don’t know exactly what to do to put things right. If somebody is in charge and he says he doesn’t recognise your value, are you going to force yourself on the person? No!

The PDP now must accept its role because we are responsible for our situation. We have to pay the price for impunity, pay the price for sins we have committed and that’s why I’m saying as far as I’m concerned that we should ask Nigerians to forgive us for disappointing them because for 16 years we enjoyed the patronage and support of the Nigerian people. This is the first time any political party will enjoy such number of years in government. Nigerian people didn’t actually want to part with the PDP but PDP’s impunity, arrogance and power drunkenness led us to where we are now. But we are saying we are sorry. We’re sorry, we’ve purged ourselves, we’ve realised where we went wrong; we’re truly repentant, we’re born again. Give us another chance; we’re going to show you that we’re not going to repeat the sins of the past because we’ve learnt our lesson.

With rumours of political realignments going on, is the Save Democracy Group not another way of bringing up another political party?

This is not a PDP outfit, neither is it an APC outfit. It’s not a Labour Party outfit. In fact, it’s not anybody’s outfit. It’s an outfit of committed, patriotic democrats who want to make sure that we play by the rules of the game; who want to make sure that we don’t kick out democracy in Nigeria again. We don’t want a situation where one Sergeant in the military will come and say ‘I sergeant so, so, so, again’. As I told you earlier, the worst democratic government is better than the best military dictatorship.

So, we just want to ensure that we continue to enjoy democratic government, if not for any other thing, it allows us to express ourselves and tell our leaders where they are going wrong. You don’t have that in a dictatorship. Therefore, this is not a political party; its membership cuts across all the political parties and very senior citizens who are not politicians but they are committed to ensuring that democracy survives in Nigeria. When we have good governance, everybody benefits, everybody enjoys. You know this country is blessed; God has blessed us with abundant natural and human resources yet the people are suffering.

That’s why we are saying that there must be good governance so that everybody will enjoy the benefits.

What’s your take on the fight against corruption by the President Muhammad Buhari administration?

As far as I’m concerned, the current war against corruption is not a Buhari versus corruption. It is a war that all hands must be on deck to fight corruption because the effects of corruption are being felt be all of us. Whether you are a politician or not; APC or PDP; Labour or any other party, even non-politicians, you are suffering from the negative effects of corruption because it is bad governance that gives birth to corruption. That is what is responsible for our not realising maximum benefit from what God has given us.

With our abundant human and natural resources, Nigeria should be flowing with milk and honey. Instead people are suffering; many people in this country can’t eat a meal in a day not to talk of a square meal. As we speak, there are millions of Nigerians that have not eaten. This shouldn’t be the case. We have no business with poverty. God did not intend that any Nigerian should suffer anything deprivation.

But because of bad management of our resources, people are living in abject poverty. So, all we are saying is that the fight against corruption is not a party’s fight or individual fight. All citizens must join hands and fight corruption so that good governance will provide us with all the good things of life.

Somebody must be there at any given time. Today, Buhari is there and he has introduced the fight against corruption. Back in 1984, the same Buhari engaged in the war against indiscipline. Nigerians were beginning to behave themselves but it was short lived. And we went back to our old ways of doing things. We do hope and pray that this time, the war against corruption will be entrenched and develop strong roots that nobody again will come and uproot it as was done before.

I don’t care who is there but I care about the need to fight corruption.

What about the school of thought that the fight against corruption is one-sided?

The issue is that you have to start from somewhere. At this point in time, we are only dealing with one office; Office of the NSA. There are governors in 36 states, there are ministers; there are commissioners in the states, all these are coming but they can’t pick everybody at the same time. They must go step by step. At this point in time, because the NSA’s office happened to have disbursed or shared this money to PDP people, it tries to look as if the probe is one-sided. But don’t forget that a very close person to the President, a former military governor was also given this money and he is in APC. He’s not in PDP.

If office of the NSA disbursed the money to mostly people in PDP, by the time we arrest people in other sectors, you may find out that all the people that are involved may be APC or members of other parties or even non politicians.

I don’t want us to use what is happening in one office to measure. We are fighting corruption and Rome was not built in a day. The searchlight is on the Office of the NSA and as soon as that is finished, we are already told that there are others they are still pursuing. It’s premature to say it’s one-sided. Let’s give them enough time to bring out all the cases.

-Sun