National Chairman of Action Democratic Party and chairman of Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC), Sani Yagabi, expresses his views on the removal of the Ebonyi State Governor, David Umahi, by a court, and the Electoral Amendment Act as well as the Muhammadu Buhari-led government, in this interview with BEN OGBEMUDIA

A Federal High Court in Abuja recently gave a ruling which removed the governor of Ebonyi State and others, over their defection to the All Progressives Congress (APC), what is your view on the matter?

I think this judgment should stand and no technicalities should be allowed to interfere with what this judgement entails and what it means for the growth of democracy in Nigeria. As we approach 2023, if we do not use the advantages of these judgements to introduce sanity, discipline, and the right temperaments for leadership in our politics, it will be a disaster.

So, I think it is a landmark of judgement that will further entrench democracy in the development of Nigeria. It is very important that we get it right, that we are disciplined, that we don’t allow people to just trivialise governance and undermine democracy itself because when you don’t allow political parties to flourish, there is no democracy because we are practicing a constitutional democracy, we are practicing multi-party system.

A multi-party system means that other political parties must be allowed to grow so that they can compete and give a multiparty system its meaning. We don’t want to have a one-party system for God’s sake. It will not be in the interest of the people of this country to have a one-party system and that is why we look at this judgment as a steer to the right direction, as an opportunity for the Supreme Court to further strengthen the building blocks for democracy in this country, so that is why IPAC want to strengthen the fact that the person that may suffer losses is also a member of IPAC.

We stand for what we believe is the right thing for the nation, for democracy itself as a whole and that is why we are totally in support of the decision of the Federal High Court, Abuja we salute their courage and we are encouraging them to do more because there are more cases like that are of the tenets of democracy itself and they don’t mean well for the growth of democracy in the country.

We can practice democracy in a way that will earn us respect in the eyes of the international community but what we are doing so far up to this point in time is like we don’t give regard to what democracy means, we don’t give regard to the survival of multiparty system in this country.

Recently, President Muhammadu Buhari signed the amended Electoral Act bill, do think this will address our contemporary electorate challenges?

First of all, let me congratulate Mr President for having this very unique opportunity in the history of this country as far as I am concerned because this is about one piece of decision that will change the whole phase on how we conduct elections in this country and how we will begin to build confidence in the electorate, how we will now begin to address the issue of voters apathy, how we will now begin to address the issues of violence, the issues of money in an unseen manner, the issues of impunity.

I think this piece of legislation has so many good such as electronic transfer of resources from the polling unit to the collation centre, such as ensuring that INEC gets their appropriation today before the elections, such as giving people with a disability right to vote and then making it very convenient for them to cast their votes and so many other things and also ensuring that when you use force and make the INEC officials sign anything for you, that election is null and void.

These are things that you could see that will make up for what you can call a very credible, reliable, and peaceful election in this country. Mr President must go a step further by ensuring that the security agencies do their work to ensure that during the elections or after the elections because of the violence that you see on the day of elections, the money that is used to criminalise Nigerians on the day of elections is not on the election day that they are put together and the security agencies, they can reduce if not eliminate some of these things because they know those who perpetrate some of these things. So long we do not address the use of money to buy votes, which is a criminal offense, in any case, it will be still garbage in, garbage out because the electorate coming to vote if they are already compromised brazenly.

It is not that they do it in the hidden, the agencies are aware sometimes they can tell a blank lie that they don’t see what is happening. The excuse they give is that Nigerians are offering themselves to their votes so that their conscience will be compromised. That is why we have security agencies because by nature of governance, it is assumed that unless you have people that you put in charge of certain tendencies, it will take place. So, yes Nigerians will offer themselves if they see that no action is taken against anybody because

We are faced with a lot of infrastructural challenges ranging from poor electric power supply to insecurity, fuel scarcity, and joblessness, among others, are there areas that IPAC can wade in to push the government to tackle these challenges?

There is no Nigerian that is happy about what is happening and we are not also happy about it as a political group. The fact that we have seen the situation where the government is looking for scapegoats for what has happened. When the culprits this time around as far as this fuel situation is concerned, it is the government itself because the agency that has thrown this country into confusion is NNPC.

No private company is allowed to import fuel on its own to go and sell, whatever importation that is done is on behalf of NNPC. So, who in NNPC has been asked to answer questions? Who has answered the query? So that is the question you ask yourself, are we a serious country? In some countries, somebody would have resigned before you even call him to ask why he did it, he would have been resigned, and he would have said I have failed because this is a huge embarrassing failure that shouldn’t have happened. Because importation of fuel is not like you importing any other thing, It goes to through checks and balances.

From the point of departure and what it comes in Nigeria, It is supposed to go through some checks and balances. There are specs that laboratory are there, samples are there that confirm that yes they did the spec of the country you are taking it to and when it lands there, We also have agents appointed by the government that is supposed to check the spec of this product that has come into the country, So what has happened, how did the entire chain fail? It means that somebody somewhere deliberately wanted to put the country into this unnecessary mess.

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Where we are using billions of naira in terms of people that are dying, the fact that they can’t move from one place to another, in terms of people’s vehicles that have been destroyed, the economy that has been drawn into some kind of crisis and nobody is going to be punished? Up till this moment, they are still looking for a scapegoat than it is MRS or this company or that company as if we have fools, all of us in this country. What we know is that nobody is allowed to bring in this kind of petrol to sell in Nigeria except NNPC licenses you and when you bring it, you are bringing it on behalf of NNPC.

What’s the way out?

Mr President must wake up, he must do the needful, and somebody must be punished for once so that we know that somebody is in charge in this country. The people cannot be taken for a ride for too long. It is an embarrassing situation that shouldn’t happen. Are they sacred cows that we can’t touch?

So, what is happening?

No sane country can do this kind of thing happen because this is not a case of saying you have right, or it is an issue of somebody deliberately volunteering to decide to bring this toxic fuel into Nigeria and because our country is regarded as a dumping ground, here we are selling the sweetest crude oil you can ever think of in the whole world and we get the worst kind of product, the one they don’t accept in Europe and other places, those are the ones they import to Nigeria.

Can you imagine? We have been burnt from the two edges of the candle. Here you are, your crude oil, you cannot refine yourself. When you take it out, you cannot refine and when they refine, they cannot bring to you the right spec, they give to you the ones that they know they cannot sell in their country because it is bad and we accept it and nobody is punished.

Ahead of 2023, is your party feeding presidential candidates, and are you zoning to the South-West or the South-East or do you want to support any other party?

ADP is a credible alternative, so we are not thinking, tell me if you have a party as Nigerian is today, is there any party that is worth supporting? If you are to be sincere with yourself, is it APC or PDP, what party will make you support them for what?

To kill Nigeria completely, is that what you are going to support? PDP swindled the country for sixteen years and there was nothing to show for it. It was corruption galore, these come and it is from frying pan to fire, so is that what you are going to support? I can’t see any reason why anybody concerned about the progress of this country will think about supporting any of these two parties.

What for? What are you going to tell Nigerians, that you are going to support this party for what? Because I want to join in killing the economy, making us become a backward country from all ramifications. There has to be a reason you want to do something, isn’t it? So I cannot see anything and that is why we are not supporting any party at all because there is none to support.

So where are they zoning to?

ADP’s philosophy is fairness and equity. Fairness and equity against the background of competence, we are praying to get the right list of the three things I have mentioned to you, fairness, equity, and competence. Anywhere we can find that is where we will pick our presidential candidate from.