Don Ikponmwen, retired brigadier-general in the Nigerian Army, former provost marshal and a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party in Edo State in this interview with Adekunbi Ero, general editor, speaks on what the just concluded election in the state portends for the country’s democracy and why his party failed to win

 

The Edo State governorship election has come and gone; what is your impression?

The election that we have just had in Edo State has laid a foundation for credible election process in Nigeria by design or by default. INEC (Independent National Electoral Commission) promised to give a free and fair election; the President had also always talked about one man, one vote. The aspirants all talked about the need for free and fair election. There was a lot of hullabaloo about the election; the atmosphere was so charged, tension everywhere. Thank God that the election came and everything went generally well and we didn’t hear about ballot box snatching; we didn’t hear about violence.

Rate the performance of INEC against the backdrop of certain inadequacies, which prompted the governor to declare that INEC had failed?

I was aware of the initial hiccups; I was aware that some polling booths did not get officials and voting materials at the right time. I was also aware that in some polling booths, the registers of voters that were made available were the ones that did not carry photographs of registered voters. These initial problems were there. At the end of the day, most people agreed that the election went on well and the standard is such that has put the whole business of electioneering, especially voting, on a different pedestal and one expects that this standard, with all the corrections being made about logistics, will be sustained and in fact improved upon.

What caused the PDP to suffer this humiliating defeat?

A lot of things happened. I will tell you very frankly that I am not at all surprised by the turn of events. Right from the time the PDP lost the governorship position to the AC (Action Congress), as it then was, one has not been able to see any marked repackaging, any marked departure from the way things were being done in the past. PDP for sure had for this election, a formidable opponent in the person of the comrade governor who had so many things, including of course the incumbency status, working for him. One had expected that the PDP which fell into opposition in 2008 would do a self-appraisal, do proper internal democracy, elect their candidate through manifestly credible means. We expected that the leadership that would emerge in PDP would be leadership based on value for human beings, leadership that you could easily say deserves to lead. But unfortunately, it remained the same old song. The conventions that were done were manifestly blameworthy; many members were angry and aggrieved.

Even talking about the way the governorship candidate emerged a lot of people had their reservation. So many people indicated interest in the governorship. One would have thought the party would try to make sure that the very best in terms of experience, in terms of how long you’ve been in the party and known the party’s system and the people, and how long the person had been in politics would count, so that whoever emerges would command the respect of all the other aspirants and other members of the party. I do not think that that was the position, because after the convention where the governorship candidate emerged, there was a lot of bad blood. People felt that they were deceived, they felt that the position was sold to the highest bidder. Another thing I think didn’t work well for the PDP during the election was that whereas we are talking about homogeneous Edo State, we are talking about merit and progress, some people made it a point to emphasise ethnicity – who is a Benin man and who is not a Benin man. I think we have passed that stage. We should not play politics in such a way to divide our people.

Political observers believe Charles Airhiavbere, the PDP candidate, was naïve to think he could defeat a governor whose record of performance is widely acclaimed. Where did he derive his confidence?

The truth is that a man comes out, he wants to go for a position; sometimes he gets blinded to some facts. He would be seeing things the way he wants them to be. It takes extreme thoughtfulness and care for people to read the handwriting on the wall. The environment, judging from what had happened in the past from 1999 till the time Adams Oshiomhole became governor through court process, definitely could not have been favourable to PDP because not a few people thought that there was nothing to show for the almost 10 years of PDP administration in the state and this was even as bad blood existed between members in the state. There was no effective reconciliation and harmony amongst members; it was more like a dictatorial regime with one or a few people pursuing what they wanted to pursue not minding what other people thought about their style. Even their campaigns through the length and breadth of the state, I didn’t see the PDP saying anything that would have turned the table in their favour. All the campaign tours failed to bring out how the PDP would offer a better opportunity than the party that was in government. Nobody came out to say this is what the incumbent government was doing and doing it wrongly; prove that he was not doing it right or he was being fraudulent. Nobody came out to say this is what we are going to do and say it convincingly.

I think they did because they quoted how much a kilometre of road was being done by the Federal Ministry of Works, NDDC and in other states.

All right, be that as it may, the truth really is that the task of discrediting the incumbent was a very gargantuan task in the sense that there is a wide gap between what people are seeing being done and promises that there is no assurance will be fulfilled, more so when the same party had many years to translate ideas into realities and it didn’t do. It was difficult to convince the generality of the people that a miracle would happen and to be performed by the same party when especially the leadership itself was still essentially the same stuff of people.

So, where do we go from here?

Edo people have spoken. The votes have shown that Oshiomhole of the ACN is preferred to other candidates. Whatever problems there are in the system, we should be glad that an election without rancour and thuggery has taken place. So, we take it as the wish of the people; we can continue to address other problems.