The judgement of the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal (PEPT) has thrown up a lot of dust and many Nigerians are yet to come to terms with some of its decisions. In this interview, the President General, Middle Belt Forum (MBF), Dr Pogu Bitrus, bares his mind to ONWUKA NZESHI on the controversies trailing the judgement as well as the resurging insecurity in the Middle Belt region
What’s your reaction to the judgement delivered by the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal?
We are not satisfied with the judgement but we reserve our comments since the complainants or petitioners have moved the matter forward to the Supreme Court. We encourage them to exhaust all the legal opportunities available to people who are aggrieved about the outcome of the election.
After that, we can then sit down with some of our partner organisations, look at all the issues and know what to do next. But for now, we encourage Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar to go further to explore all legal opportunities available to them on the case.
With the way the PEPT handled the matter, some Nigerians are saying there is no need to go to the Supreme Court because the result might be the same. Have you thought about this?
It doesn’t matter what preconceived notion somebody has; the law is the law and the Constitution is the Constitution. Let’s exhaust every available opportunity. Then and only then would we be able to make a sound judgement or deduction from whatever has happened on this matter.
The problem we have is that our laws, especially the Electoral Act, are not water tight. The lawmakers have deliberately created spaces and loopholes in it, allowing the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to make a fool of all of us, Nigerians.
So, the Commission has done it, the legal system is also doing its own, but let’s exhaust all the processes. Let’s see how the Supreme Court will interpret some of the things that the Appellate Court has ruled upon.
In 2006 or 2003, we had judgments about the status of the Federal Capital Territory but, today the Appellate Court says there is no special status. How come the Constitution forbids the FCT from having a governor and other things, which states have?
I believe there are a lot of questions that the Supreme Court will have to answer in line with its previous judgements. It will either make pronouncements affirming those earlier judgements or deviate and cancel whatever they have done earlier.
All these steps are good for the development of our jurisprudence, our legal system and the process of lawmaking in our country. I read what the former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo said at a programme recently – he said if democratic rule cannot provide peace and good governance, then it has no value.
So, all these are things that are coming out now which were not there before. Let’s exhaust whatever that is there and then wait for how Nigerians would respond.
Earlier, you complained about weak laws and loopholes in our legislations, what areas would you want the National Assembly to amend in the Electoral Act to guide against the challenges we had in the 2023 General Election?
There is one major one – the provision that INEC has liberty to determine whichever technique it would want to use in the conduct of an election. That is dangerous. The law should be specific. If the law says, use BIVAS, INEC must use BIVAS. If the law says use IRev and transmit results electronically and in real time, INEC must follow it.
We can’t continue to have INEC coming out to tell us what is going to be done before the election and at the end of the day, they change the rules and do whatever they want to do. A referee officiating in a match can’t change the rules in the middle of the game and come out to tell us that he has the liberty to do whatever he likes.
It is an insult for INEC to come out and tell us that it has discretionary powers to use whatever technique it chooses to conduct the election and transmit results. Such a provision should be abrogated so that what is written in the law should be abided by whether INEC likes it or not. I think that is the main thing. The provisions of the Electoral Act should be very clear and contain no ambiguities.
There are complaints from different parts of Nigeria about the pattern of Tinubu’s appointments. Some Nigerians think that most of the key appointments have gone to his region. What do you think?
It is unfortunate that our system allows for this kind of thing. Apart from the issue of ministers, the Constitution did not spell out the criteria for appointment into some other positions. In the case of the ministerial appointment, it is constitutional that every state should have one and any additional one is at the discretion of the President.
But if President Bola Tinubu is doing the same thing that Muhammadu Buhari did during his time, it is just like saying that Nigeria has not become a nation. We are just nation states within a geographical space and whenever one ethnic nationality is in power, they will just play their game the way they want to, not minding how the rest of us feel. Buhari did that, we cried out, now Tinubu is doing it.
So, it is just a pointer to tell us that we have not become a nation yet. It’s everybody for himself and God for us all. You’ll remember that before the election, Tinubu was criticised for saying Emilokan- it’s my turn. Somehow, it is now really his turn, it is the turn of the Yoruba. But such a disposition creates problems for us as a country.
Maybe we are not yet having democratic rule in the true sense of it. We seem to be having just a civil administration rather than a democratic government because in a true democracy which is based on nationhood, the nation, that is Nigeria, rather than the ethnic nationalities should have been the focus of any leader. Ethnic agenda and considerations shouldn’t be the guiding principle in the country.
There should have been a balance in appointments so that everybody would be taken on board for fairness, equity and justice. There is no ethnic nationality, including small ones like mine, that lacks capacity to produce somebody who possesses wonderful competencies that can transform this country. So, it is unfortunate that what Buhari did is being replicated by Tinubu who should have known better. Nigeria, may God help us.
Some Nigerians have expressed misgivings about these appointments because they see them as part of the tactics being deployed to consolidate power by someone whose election is still being challenged at the courts. Would you suggest an amendment to our constitution to prevent this in the future?
If our National Assembly will do us justice, there ought to be an amendment to that effect. Our institutions are weak. This is the type of protection we need now to be sure that we have the right things happening. But as you said, when somebody gets into office, he uses the machinery of that office to consolidate power and to remain perpetually in power whether the people like it or not.
The fact that our institutions are weak means that they can be manipulated whichever way the person with executive power chooses. So, our National Assembly should find ways to amend the constitution to prevent what we are seeing now from happening again in the future. They should be Nigerian, be patriotic not minding whether the amendment will favour them or not.
They can bring forward our elections so that all judgements are concluded before a President or whichever office holder is sworn in. I think that will help us because we lack strong institutions that can resist the manipulations of people in office. Our institutions are weak and if we put into the electoral law that all litigations must be concluded before people are sworn into office, I think that will do us a great deal of good in this country.
In recent months there has been a resurgence of attacks and killings in Plateau State, Benue State and Kaduna State. What does the Middle Belt Forum think about these incidents?
The answer is very simple. The security agents know where these criminals reside. I made this statement at an occasion in Jos about two weeks ago. A representative of the GOC of the Army was there and I told him that we are not satisfied with the military men going to Mangu to defend the people when they know that these criminals come from Mahanga. Let them go to Mahanga, root them out and then, Mangu will have peace.
It appears that our security architecture or network is compromised in this whole thing. Now, if you know where the criminals reside, what is difficult in going to attack and decimate them instead of waiting for them to attack and kill innocent citizens you claim to be defending?
All along, it has been mainly defence, defence and defence. It has not worked and I don’t understand why our security agencies have continued to use that approach. Unless they want to tell us that there is a conspiracy and that the military is also involved in the conspiracy.
Before now, we said there was a lack of political will on the part of the government, but Buhari is out of the way. Is the new gov- ernment going to continue doing the same thing? Is Tinubu not going to give the security forces a free hand to do their job? If the location of the criminals is known, they should be rooted out.
What are you doing about reclaiming those communities that were seized by the bandits and marauders?
Of course, that one is coming. We are not in the medieval era where there is no government and a group of people could attack a community and take over their land. We have a government and every person; every community and every nationality have a mapped-out area where they can say we are indigenous to this place.
Any person coming from another place to join them is a settler. Now, you can’t come to settle in a place and use violence to chase out the people you met, kill some of them and then you occupy their land. When it happens, nobody is arrested, the government just sits down as if it is part of the policy of the government that some nationalities should be decimated and new ones should take over their lands.
We will not talk about what is going to happen if government doesn’t do anything. But it is wise for a true and democratic government to ensure that those people displaced from their ancestral homes are returned to their ancestral homes. It is also the responsibility of the government to ensure that the aggressors are not rewarded but instead punished for their crimes.
Let me give you an example. We have over 100,000 people from Gwoza Local Government Area, Borno State, who have been displaced and are today either in Cameroon or in other parts of Nigeria. They have been denied coming back to their local government area and we are in a country which has a constitution, which has laws and rules.
The government is just looking the other way while such things are being done. It cannot continue. The government has to sit up and do the right thing. There is no need for any citizen of Nigeria to remain in an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps while some strangers occupy their ancestral homes. We have instances on the Plateau where some communities were attacked by the Fulani herdsmen who subsequently chased the people away, took over their land and even renamed these communities.
We insisted that there should be no census because if the proposed population and housing census had held, these aggressors who seized people’s lands would have been enumerated as original owners of those places they are occupying. That is rewarding aggression and punishing the weak in our country. This cannot be allowed to continue. It should not happen at all. If we have a country and a constitution, the people must return to their ancestral homes and resume their normal lives again.
