National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, Sly Ezeokenwa, in this interview, speaks on the party’s alignment with President Bola Tinubu for the 2027 election, reservations about the new Electoral Act and the presidential bid of former Anambra Governor, Peter Obi. WALE AKINSELURE brings excerpts: What is the position of APGA on the new Electoral Act? There have been accusations and counter-accusations about the intent of the All Progressives Congress. I always say that if the National Assembly enacts a law or an Act, it is not a law or Act of APC members of the National Assembly; it is an Act of the National Assembly. And the moment the President assents to it, it becomes a law binding on all citizens of the country. Remember that shortly after the 2023 presidential election, the major controversy was the issue surrounding the electronic transmission of results. Sadly, 99.9 per cent of the people who were talking about the transmission of results know little or nothing about the electoral process, including members of the National Assembly. What you don’t understand, you cannot criticise. The question first is: what is the electronic transmission of results? It was a novel introduction by INEC in 2023 to enhance voter confidence in the electoral process. By that, INEC stipulated in its guidelines that at the conclusion of the election, the presiding officer, having prepared the result sheet, announced it and had agents sign it, would proceed to scan the said result sheet and send it to the INEC Result Viewing Portal. What is the essence of sending that result to the viewing portal? It is for Nigerians, wherever they are, to be able to log onto that portal and view the results as they come in real time. You hear people say that the result was rigged because it was not transmitted. Before that particular guideline, if you wanted to determine the result of an election and go to the tribunal, the primary evidence you tendered was either the true copy of the result from INEC or the duplicate copy duly issued to the various agents of the political parties. Incidentally, I was in Anambra when Mr Peter Obi contested the election on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance and was rigged out. There was no IREV portal, but he was able to go to court and retrieve his mandate because there were agents’ copies of the result sheets. They were able to tender evidence that what was released was not the result of the election. There were about three other political parties that tendered their duplicate copies, which were in line with what APGA tendered in court. I confronted the INEC chairman for the 2023 election, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, and he said that on the day of the election, they noticed that as they attempted to upload the results of the presidential election, it was bouncing off the result sheets. You recall that in 2019, there were also allegations of hacking, and the first thing that came to their mind again was that there was an attempt to hack the portal. So, in reaction, they had to shut down the IREV to prevent hacking, and that was where the glitch came from. But beyond his assertion of an attempt to hack the portal, has there been credible evidence to counter his opinion? This is because the only other evidence that could counter that opinion is the result of various political parties saying, “This is what we were issued, and it is different from what INEC declared.” To date, nobody has been able to bring an alternative result sheet. What people like my friend, Dele Farotimi, keep saying is that INEC gave a guideline and breached its guidelines. If they breached their guidelines, have you been able to bring an alternative result to show that what INEC declared was different from what your agent was issued at the polling units? That controversy has raged on till now, and till tomorrow, some persons believe that President Bola Tinubu was not the winner of the 2023 presidential election. They have continued to live in that illusion till 2026. They now tried to bring that particular issue into the Electoral Act. Incidentally, the only issue they brought up at the tribunal was the non-transmission of results to the IREV. Nobody was able to bring a result sheet to the tribunal. There is a provision in the Electoral Act that states that an instruction or guideline made by INEC which is not contrary to the Electoral Act shall not be a ground to contest the validity or conduct of an election. The Act stipulates that if there is evidence to show that the election was substantially conducted in compliance with the Electoral Act, then the election, for all intents and purposes, is valid. Now we are faced with another controversy. I see the shouting match at the National Assembly, with screams of “Ole, Ole”, as very shameful. The point is that the confusion has continued. The provision for manual backup when electronic transmission fails was contentious. What is your view on it? Today, the provision of the Electoral Act is that if electronic transmission fails, you go manual. I think that is one of the most useless pieces of legislation thus far because it shows that those enacting the law don’t even understand the different terminologies. Electronic transmission means that you are sending results to the IREV. What does it mean to do manual? Is electronic transmission the same thing as electronic collation? People confuse the transmission of results to IREV with collation. Electronic transmission of results simply means you scan that result sheet and send it to the IREV portal. You cannot manually send results to the IREV portal. And the law does not admit electronic collation. Section 61 of the Act stipulates that at the close of an election, the presiding officer shall deliver the result of the polling unit alongside the candidates or their agents and other persons to a person as may be prescribed by the commission, and that person is the collation officer. So, for all intents and purposes, what we do is manual collation even under this Electoral Act. The IREV is not a collation platform. So we enacted a law that is meaningless — that if transmission fails, you resort to manual. The manual is the main means of collation. From that provision, it looks as if when electronic collation fails, you do manual, whereas the primary form of collation is manual collation. Electronic transmission of results to IREV means a different thing altogether. The result you send to IREV is not what INEC collates. What INEC collates is the physical copy that the presiding officer takes to the collation centre. So, if you want an amendment, you should make an amendment that makes sense. An amendment that makes sense is when you do electronic collation. INEC has an officer called CSRVS, which is the Collation Support and Result Verification System. That officer is like an e-collation officer. That is why if you conclude a governorship election, you can have the result in six hours because of the collation support. Previously, before you finished manual tabulation of polling unit results, it would take almost two days. But now you will see that the officer is entering results that appear on the screen. Once he inputs and it doesn’t add up, he would know. He would ask the collation officer to repeat the results and identify where the error is. The other issue is: can you have electronic collation without electronic voting? It is impossible. So, if you want to have electronic collation, you need to have electronic voting. I am a lawyer, and for the Nigerian Bar Association election, we stay in the comfort of our homes and vote. As you are voting, the result is being summed up. Well, in future, we can have an application or portal where if you scan the result, it can extract the figures in the result sheet and compute them; that can still be electronic collation. But that is not the system currently. INEC does not have the intention of doing that. I also believe that for the result sent to IREV, INEC can develop an app. You seem to point to the 2023 election as a benchmark? I have not hidden my admiration for INEC. In my opinion, fuelled by verifiable facts, the 2023 election is the best election ever conducted in the history of Nigeria. Incidentally, it is that same election that some people want us to believe is the worst. This was an election where about four serving governors lost their bid to get to the Senate. This is an election where we were told that an okada rider in Kaduna State was elected to the House of Representatives. Other people of lesser standing in society were also elected. The fact is that they got elected because the votes counted. And why did votes count? This is because, for the first time under the Act, INEC made electronic accreditation compulsory. It meant that it was no longer the arbitrary mode of accreditation where you bring the voter register and simply tick. You must be accredited using the BVAS machine, which is electronic. To that extent, those bogus figures we used to hear about did not happen. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. What is the position of APGA on the new Electoral Act? There have been accusations and counter-accusations about the intent of the All Progressives Congress. I always say that if the National Assembly enacts a law or an Act, it is not a law or Act of APC members of the National Assembly; it is an Act of the National Assembly. And the moment the President assents to it, it becomes a law binding on all citizens of the country. Remember that shortly after the 2023 presidential election, the major controversy was the issue surrounding the electronic transmission of results. Sadly, 99.9 per cent of the people who were talking about the transmission of results know little or nothing about the electoral process, including members of the National Assembly. What you don’t understand, you cannot criticise. The question first is: what is the electronic transmission of results? It was a novel introduction by INEC in 2023 to enhance voter confidence in the electoral process. By that, INEC stipulated in its guidelines that at the conclusion of the election, the presiding officer, having prepared the result sheet, announced it and had agents sign it, would proceed to scan the said result sheet and send it to the INEC Result Viewing Portal. What is the essence of sending that result to the viewing portal? It is for Nigerians, wherever they are, to be able to log onto that portal and view the results as they come in real time. You hear people say that the result was rigged because it was not transmitted. Before that particular guideline, if you wanted to determine the result of an election and go to the tribunal, the primary evidence you tendered was either the true copy of the result from INEC or the duplicate copy duly issued to the various agents of the political parties. Incidentally, I was in Anambra when Mr Peter Obi contested the election on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance and was rigged out. There was no IREV portal, but he was able to go to court and retrieve his mandate because there were agents’ copies of the result sheets. They were able to tender evidence that what was released was not the result of the election. There were about three other political parties that tendered their duplicate copies, which were in line with what APGA tendered in court. I confronted the INEC chairman for the 2023 election, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, and he said that on the day of the election, they noticed that as they attempted to upload the results of the presidential election, it was bouncing off the result sheets. You recall that in 2019, there were also allegations of hacking, and the first thing that came to their mind again was that there was an attempt to hack the portal. So, in reaction, they had to shut down the IREV to prevent hacking, and that was where the glitch came from. But beyond his assertion of an attempt to hack the portal, has there been credible evidence to counter his opinion? This is because the only other evidence that could counter that opinion is the result of various political parties saying, “This is what we were issued, and it is different from what INEC declared.” To date, nobody has been able to bring an alternative result sheet. What people like my friend, Dele Farotimi, keep saying is that INEC gave a guideline and breached its guidelines. If they breached their guidelines, have you been able to bring an alternative result to show that what INEC declared was different from what your agent was issued at the polling units? That controversy has raged on till now, and till tomorrow, some persons believe that President Bola Tinubu was not the winner of the 2023 presidential election. They have continued to live in that illusion till 2026. They now tried to bring that particular issue into the Electoral Act. Incidentally, the only issue they brought up at the tribunal was the non-transmission of results to the IREV. Nobody was able to bring a result sheet to the tribunal. There is a provision in the Electoral Act that states that an instruction or guideline made by INEC which is not contrary to the Electoral Act shall not be a ground to contest the validity or conduct of an election. The Act stipulates that if there is evidence to show that the election was substantially conducted in compliance with the Electoral Act, then the election, for all intents and purposes, is valid. Now we are faced with another controversy. I see the shouting match at the National Assembly, with screams of “Ole, Ole”, as very shameful. The point is that the confusion has continued. The provision for manual backup when electronic transmission fails was contentious. What is your view on it? Today, the provision of the Electoral Act is that if electronic transmission fails, you go manual. I think that is one of the most useless pieces of legislation thus far because it shows that those enacting the law don’t even understand the different terminologies. Electronic transmission means that you are sending results to the IREV. What does it mean to do manual? Is electronic transmission the same thing as electronic collation? People confuse the transmission of results to IREV with collation. Electronic transmission of results simply means you scan that result sheet and send it to the IREV portal. You cannot manually send results to the IREV portal. And the law does not admit electronic collation. Section 61 of the Act stipulates that at the close of an election, the presiding officer shall deliver the result of the polling unit alongside the candidates or their agents and other persons to a person as may be prescribed by the commission, and that person is the collation officer. So, for all intents and purposes, what we do is manual collation even under this Electoral Act. The IREV is not a collation platform. So we enacted a law that is meaningless — that if transmission fails, you resort to manual. The manual is the main means of collation. From that provision, it looks as if when electronic collation fails, you do manual, whereas the primary form of collation is manual collation. Electronic transmission of results to IREV means a different thing altogether. The result you send to IREV is not what INEC collates. What INEC collates is the physical copy that the presiding officer takes to the collation centre. So, if you want an amendment, you should make an amendment that makes sense. An amendment that makes sense is when you do electronic collation. INEC has an officer called CSRVS, which is the Collation Support and Result Verification System. That officer is like an e-collation officer. That is why if you conclude a governorship election, you can have the result in six hours because of the collation support. Previously, before you finished manual tabulation of polling unit results, it would take almost two days. But now you will see that the officer is entering results that appear on the screen. Once he inputs and it doesn’t add up, he would know. He would ask the collation officer to repeat the results and identify where the error is. The other issue is: can you have electronic collation without electronic voting? It is impossible. So, if you want to have electronic collation, you need to have electronic voting. I am a lawyer, and for the Nigerian Bar Association election, we stay in the comfort of our homes and vote. As you are voting, the result is being summed up. Well, in future, we can have an application or portal where if you scan the result, it can extract the figures in the result sheet and compute them; that can still be electronic collation. But that is not the system currently. INEC does not have the intention of doing that. I also believe that for the result sent to IREV, INEC can develop an app. You seem to point to the 2023 election as a benchmark? I have not hidden my admiration for INEC. In my opinion, fuelled by verifiable facts, the 2023 election is the best election ever conducted in the history of Nigeria. Incidentally, it is that same election that some people want us to believe is the worst. This was an election where about four serving governors lost their bid to get to the Senate. This is an election where we were told that an okada rider in Kaduna State was elected to the House of Representatives. Other people of lesser standing in society were also elected. The fact is that they got elected because the votes counted. And why did votes count? This is because, for the first time under the Act, INEC made electronic accreditation compulsory. It meant that it was no longer the arbitrary mode of accreditation where you bring the voter register and simply tick. You must be accredited using the BVAS machine, which is electronic. To that extent, those bogus figures we used to hear about did not happen. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. There have been accusations and counter-accusations about the intent of the All Progressives Congress. I always say that if the National Assembly enacts a law or an Act, it is not a law or Act of APC members of the National Assembly; it is an Act of the National Assembly. And the moment the President assents to it, it becomes a law binding on all citizens of the country. Remember that shortly after the 2023 presidential election, the major controversy was the issue surrounding the electronic transmission of results. Sadly, 99.9 per cent of the people who were talking about the transmission of results know little or nothing about the electoral process, including members of the National Assembly. What you don’t understand, you cannot criticise. The question first is: what is the electronic transmission of results? It was a novel introduction by INEC in 2023 to enhance voter confidence in the electoral process. By that, INEC stipulated in its guidelines that at the conclusion of the election, the presiding officer, having prepared the result sheet, announced it and had agents sign it, would proceed to scan the said result sheet and send it to the INEC Result Viewing Portal. What is the essence of sending that result to the viewing portal? It is for Nigerians, wherever they are, to be able to log onto that portal and view the results as they come in real time. You hear people say that the result was rigged because it was not transmitted. Before that particular guideline, if you wanted to determine the result of an election and go to the tribunal, the primary evidence you tendered was either the true copy of the result from INEC or the duplicate copy duly issued to the various agents of the political parties. Incidentally, I was in Anambra when Mr Peter Obi contested the election on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance and was rigged out. There was no IREV portal, but he was able to go to court and retrieve his mandate because there were agents’ copies of the result sheets. They were able to tender evidence that what was released was not the result of the election. There were about three other political parties that tendered their duplicate copies, which were in line with what APGA tendered in court. I confronted the INEC chairman for the 2023 election, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, and he said that on the day of the election, they noticed that as they attempted to upload the results of the presidential election, it was bouncing off the result sheets. You recall that in 2019, there were also allegations of hacking, and the first thing that came to their mind again was that there was an attempt to hack the portal. So, in reaction, they had to shut down the IREV to prevent hacking, and that was where the glitch came from. But beyond his assertion of an attempt to hack the portal, has there been credible evidence to counter his opinion? This is because the only other evidence that could counter that opinion is the result of various political parties saying, “This is what we were issued, and it is different from what INEC declared.” To date, nobody has been able to bring an alternative result sheet. What people like my friend, Dele Farotimi, keep saying is that INEC gave a guideline and breached its guidelines. If they breached their guidelines, have you been able to bring an alternative result to show that what INEC declared was different from what your agent was issued at the polling units? That controversy has raged on till now, and till tomorrow, some persons believe that President Bola Tinubu was not the winner of the 2023 presidential election. They have continued to live in that illusion till 2026. They now tried to bring that particular issue into the Electoral Act. Incidentally, the only issue they brought up at the tribunal was the non-transmission of results to the IREV. Nobody was able to bring a result sheet to the tribunal. There is a provision in the Electoral Act that states that an instruction or guideline made by INEC which is not contrary to the Electoral Act shall not be a ground to contest the validity or conduct of an election. The Act stipulates that if there is evidence to show that the election was substantially conducted in compliance with the Electoral Act, then the election, for all intents and purposes, is valid. Now we are faced with another controversy. I see the shouting match at the National Assembly, with screams of “Ole, Ole”, as very shameful. The point is that the confusion has continued. The provision for manual backup when electronic transmission fails was contentious. What is your view on it? Today, the provision of the Electoral Act is that if electronic transmission fails, you go manual. I think that is one of the most useless pieces of legislation thus far because it shows that those enacting the law don’t even understand the different terminologies. Electronic transmission means that you are sending results to the IREV. What does it mean to do manual? Is electronic transmission the same thing as electronic collation? People confuse the transmission of results to IREV with collation. Electronic transmission of results simply means you scan that result sheet and send it to the IREV portal. You cannot manually send results to the IREV portal. And the law does not admit electronic collation. Section 61 of the Act stipulates that at the close of an election, the presiding officer shall deliver the result of the polling unit alongside the candidates or their agents and other persons to a person as may be prescribed by the commission, and that person is the collation officer. So, for all intents and purposes, what we do is manual collation even under this Electoral Act. The IREV is not a collation platform. So we enacted a law that is meaningless — that if transmission fails, you resort to manual. The manual is the main means of collation. From that provision, it looks as if when electronic collation fails, you do manual, whereas the primary form of collation is manual collation. Electronic transmission of results to IREV means a different thing altogether. The result you send to IREV is not what INEC collates. What INEC collates is the physical copy that the presiding officer takes to the collation centre. So, if you want an amendment, you should make an amendment that makes sense. An amendment that makes sense is when you do electronic collation. INEC has an officer called CSRVS, which is the Collation Support and Result Verification System. That officer is like an e-collation officer. That is why if you conclude a governorship election, you can have the result in six hours because of the collation support. Previously, before you finished manual tabulation of polling unit results, it would take almost two days. But now you will see that the officer is entering results that appear on the screen. Once he inputs and it doesn’t add up, he would know. He would ask the collation officer to repeat the results and identify where the error is. The other issue is: can you have electronic collation without electronic voting? It is impossible. So, if you want to have electronic collation, you need to have electronic voting. I am a lawyer, and for the Nigerian Bar Association election, we stay in the comfort of our homes and vote. As you are voting, the result is being summed up. Well, in future, we can have an application or portal where if you scan the result, it can extract the figures in the result sheet and compute them; that can still be electronic collation. But that is not the system currently. INEC does not have the intention of doing that. I also believe that for the result sent to IREV, INEC can develop an app. You seem to point to the 2023 election as a benchmark? I have not hidden my admiration for INEC. In my opinion, fuelled by verifiable facts, the 2023 election is the best election ever conducted in the history of Nigeria. Incidentally, it is that same election that some people want us to believe is the worst. This was an election where about four serving governors lost their bid to get to the Senate. This is an election where we were told that an okada rider in Kaduna State was elected to the House of Representatives. Other people of lesser standing in society were also elected. The fact is that they got elected because the votes counted. And why did votes count? This is because, for the first time under the Act, INEC made electronic accreditation compulsory. It meant that it was no longer the arbitrary mode of accreditation where you bring the voter register and simply tick. You must be accredited using the BVAS machine, which is electronic. To that extent, those bogus figures we used to hear about did not happen. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. The question first is: what is the electronic transmission of results? It was a novel introduction by INEC in 2023 to enhance voter confidence in the electoral process. By that, INEC stipulated in its guidelines that at the conclusion of the election, the presiding officer, having prepared the result sheet, announced it and had agents sign it, would proceed to scan the said result sheet and send it to the INEC Result Viewing Portal. What is the essence of sending that result to the viewing portal? It is for Nigerians, wherever they are, to be able to log onto that portal and view the results as they come in real time. You hear people say that the result was rigged because it was not transmitted. Before that particular guideline, if you wanted to determine the result of an election and go to the tribunal, the primary evidence you tendered was either the true copy of the result from INEC or the duplicate copy duly issued to the various agents of the political parties. Incidentally, I was in Anambra when Mr Peter Obi contested the election on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance and was rigged out. There was no IREV portal, but he was able to go to court and retrieve his mandate because there were agents’ copies of the result sheets. They were able to tender evidence that what was released was not the result of the election. There were about three other political parties that tendered their duplicate copies, which were in line with what APGA tendered in court. I confronted the INEC chairman for the 2023 election, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, and he said that on the day of the election, they noticed that as they attempted to upload the results of the presidential election, it was bouncing off the result sheets. You recall that in 2019, there were also allegations of hacking, and the first thing that came to their mind again was that there was an attempt to hack the portal. So, in reaction, they had to shut down the IREV to prevent hacking, and that was where the glitch came from. But beyond his assertion of an attempt to hack the portal, has there been credible evidence to counter his opinion? This is because the only other evidence that could counter that opinion is the result of various political parties saying, “This is what we were issued, and it is different from what INEC declared.” To date, nobody has been able to bring an alternative result sheet. What people like my friend, Dele Farotimi, keep saying is that INEC gave a guideline and breached its guidelines. If they breached their guidelines, have you been able to bring an alternative result to show that what INEC declared was different from what your agent was issued at the polling units? That controversy has raged on till now, and till tomorrow, some persons believe that President Bola Tinubu was not the winner of the 2023 presidential election. They have continued to live in that illusion till 2026. They now tried to bring that particular issue into the Electoral Act. Incidentally, the only issue they brought up at the tribunal was the non-transmission of results to the IREV. Nobody was able to bring a result sheet to the tribunal. There is a provision in the Electoral Act that states that an instruction or guideline made by INEC which is not contrary to the Electoral Act shall not be a ground to contest the validity or conduct of an election. The Act stipulates that if there is evidence to show that the election was substantially conducted in compliance with the Electoral Act, then the election, for all intents and purposes, is valid. Now we are faced with another controversy. I see the shouting match at the National Assembly, with screams of “Ole, Ole”, as very shameful. The point is that the confusion has continued. The provision for manual backup when electronic transmission fails was contentious. What is your view on it? Today, the provision of the Electoral Act is that if electronic transmission fails, you go manual. I think that is one of the most useless pieces of legislation thus far because it shows that those enacting the law don’t even understand the different terminologies. Electronic transmission means that you are sending results to the IREV. What does it mean to do manual? Is electronic transmission the same thing as electronic collation? People confuse the transmission of results to IREV with collation. Electronic transmission of results simply means you scan that result sheet and send it to the IREV portal. You cannot manually send results to the IREV portal. And the law does not admit electronic collation. Section 61 of the Act stipulates that at the close of an election, the presiding officer shall deliver the result of the polling unit alongside the candidates or their agents and other persons to a person as may be prescribed by the commission, and that person is the collation officer. So, for all intents and purposes, what we do is manual collation even under this Electoral Act. The IREV is not a collation platform. So we enacted a law that is meaningless — that if transmission fails, you resort to manual. The manual is the main means of collation. From that provision, it looks as if when electronic collation fails, you do manual, whereas the primary form of collation is manual collation. Electronic transmission of results to IREV means a different thing altogether. The result you send to IREV is not what INEC collates. What INEC collates is the physical copy that the presiding officer takes to the collation centre. So, if you want an amendment, you should make an amendment that makes sense. An amendment that makes sense is when you do electronic collation. INEC has an officer called CSRVS, which is the Collation Support and Result Verification System. That officer is like an e-collation officer. That is why if you conclude a governorship election, you can have the result in six hours because of the collation support. Previously, before you finished manual tabulation of polling unit results, it would take almost two days. But now you will see that the officer is entering results that appear on the screen. Once he inputs and it doesn’t add up, he would know. He would ask the collation officer to repeat the results and identify where the error is. The other issue is: can you have electronic collation without electronic voting? It is impossible. So, if you want to have electronic collation, you need to have electronic voting. I am a lawyer, and for the Nigerian Bar Association election, we stay in the comfort of our homes and vote. As you are voting, the result is being summed up. Well, in future, we can have an application or portal where if you scan the result, it can extract the figures in the result sheet and compute them; that can still be electronic collation. But that is not the system currently. INEC does not have the intention of doing that. I also believe that for the result sent to IREV, INEC can develop an app. You seem to point to the 2023 election as a benchmark? I have not hidden my admiration for INEC. In my opinion, fuelled by verifiable facts, the 2023 election is the best election ever conducted in the history of Nigeria. Incidentally, it is that same election that some people want us to believe is the worst. This was an election where about four serving governors lost their bid to get to the Senate. This is an election where we were told that an okada rider in Kaduna State was elected to the House of Representatives. Other people of lesser standing in society were also elected. The fact is that they got elected because the votes counted. And why did votes count? This is because, for the first time under the Act, INEC made electronic accreditation compulsory. It meant that it was no longer the arbitrary mode of accreditation where you bring the voter register and simply tick. You must be accredited using the BVAS machine, which is electronic. To that extent, those bogus figures we used to hear about did not happen. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. You hear people say that the result was rigged because it was not transmitted. Before that particular guideline, if you wanted to determine the result of an election and go to the tribunal, the primary evidence you tendered was either the true copy of the result from INEC or the duplicate copy duly issued to the various agents of the political parties. Incidentally, I was in Anambra when Mr Peter Obi contested the election on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance and was rigged out. There was no IREV portal, but he was able to go to court and retrieve his mandate because there were agents’ copies of the result sheets. They were able to tender evidence that what was released was not the result of the election. There were about three other political parties that tendered their duplicate copies, which were in line with what APGA tendered in court. I confronted the INEC chairman for the 2023 election, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, and he said that on the day of the election, they noticed that as they attempted to upload the results of the presidential election, it was bouncing off the result sheets. You recall that in 2019, there were also allegations of hacking, and the first thing that came to their mind again was that there was an attempt to hack the portal. So, in reaction, they had to shut down the IREV to prevent hacking, and that was where the glitch came from. But beyond his assertion of an attempt to hack the portal, has there been credible evidence to counter his opinion? This is because the only other evidence that could counter that opinion is the result of various political parties saying, “This is what we were issued, and it is different from what INEC declared.” To date, nobody has been able to bring an alternative result sheet. What people like my friend, Dele Farotimi, keep saying is that INEC gave a guideline and breached its guidelines. If they breached their guidelines, have you been able to bring an alternative result to show that what INEC declared was different from what your agent was issued at the polling units? That controversy has raged on till now, and till tomorrow, some persons believe that President Bola Tinubu was not the winner of the 2023 presidential election. They have continued to live in that illusion till 2026. They now tried to bring that particular issue into the Electoral Act. Incidentally, the only issue they brought up at the tribunal was the non-transmission of results to the IREV. Nobody was able to bring a result sheet to the tribunal. There is a provision in the Electoral Act that states that an instruction or guideline made by INEC which is not contrary to the Electoral Act shall not be a ground to contest the validity or conduct of an election. The Act stipulates that if there is evidence to show that the election was substantially conducted in compliance with the Electoral Act, then the election, for all intents and purposes, is valid. Now we are faced with another controversy. I see the shouting match at the National Assembly, with screams of “Ole, Ole”, as very shameful. The point is that the confusion has continued. The provision for manual backup when electronic transmission fails was contentious. What is your view on it? Today, the provision of the Electoral Act is that if electronic transmission fails, you go manual. I think that is one of the most useless pieces of legislation thus far because it shows that those enacting the law don’t even understand the different terminologies. Electronic transmission means that you are sending results to the IREV. What does it mean to do manual? Is electronic transmission the same thing as electronic collation? People confuse the transmission of results to IREV with collation. Electronic transmission of results simply means you scan that result sheet and send it to the IREV portal. You cannot manually send results to the IREV portal. And the law does not admit electronic collation. Section 61 of the Act stipulates that at the close of an election, the presiding officer shall deliver the result of the polling unit alongside the candidates or their agents and other persons to a person as may be prescribed by the commission, and that person is the collation officer. So, for all intents and purposes, what we do is manual collation even under this Electoral Act. The IREV is not a collation platform. So we enacted a law that is meaningless — that if transmission fails, you resort to manual. The manual is the main means of collation. From that provision, it looks as if when electronic collation fails, you do manual, whereas the primary form of collation is manual collation. Electronic transmission of results to IREV means a different thing altogether. The result you send to IREV is not what INEC collates. What INEC collates is the physical copy that the presiding officer takes to the collation centre. So, if you want an amendment, you should make an amendment that makes sense. An amendment that makes sense is when you do electronic collation. INEC has an officer called CSRVS, which is the Collation Support and Result Verification System. That officer is like an e-collation officer. That is why if you conclude a governorship election, you can have the result in six hours because of the collation support. Previously, before you finished manual tabulation of polling unit results, it would take almost two days. But now you will see that the officer is entering results that appear on the screen. Once he inputs and it doesn’t add up, he would know. He would ask the collation officer to repeat the results and identify where the error is. The other issue is: can you have electronic collation without electronic voting? It is impossible. So, if you want to have electronic collation, you need to have electronic voting. I am a lawyer, and for the Nigerian Bar Association election, we stay in the comfort of our homes and vote. As you are voting, the result is being summed up. Well, in future, we can have an application or portal where if you scan the result, it can extract the figures in the result sheet and compute them; that can still be electronic collation. But that is not the system currently. INEC does not have the intention of doing that. I also believe that for the result sent to IREV, INEC can develop an app. You seem to point to the 2023 election as a benchmark? I have not hidden my admiration for INEC. In my opinion, fuelled by verifiable facts, the 2023 election is the best election ever conducted in the history of Nigeria. Incidentally, it is that same election that some people want us to believe is the worst. This was an election where about four serving governors lost their bid to get to the Senate. This is an election where we were told that an okada rider in Kaduna State was elected to the House of Representatives. Other people of lesser standing in society were also elected. The fact is that they got elected because the votes counted. And why did votes count? This is because, for the first time under the Act, INEC made electronic accreditation compulsory. It meant that it was no longer the arbitrary mode of accreditation where you bring the voter register and simply tick. You must be accredited using the BVAS machine, which is electronic. To that extent, those bogus figures we used to hear about did not happen. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. I confronted the INEC chairman for the 2023 election, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, and he said that on the day of the election, they noticed that as they attempted to upload the results of the presidential election, it was bouncing off the result sheets. You recall that in 2019, there were also allegations of hacking, and the first thing that came to their mind again was that there was an attempt to hack the portal. So, in reaction, they had to shut down the IREV to prevent hacking, and that was where the glitch came from. But beyond his assertion of an attempt to hack the portal, has there been credible evidence to counter his opinion? This is because the only other evidence that could counter that opinion is the result of various political parties saying, “This is what we were issued, and it is different from what INEC declared.” To date, nobody has been able to bring an alternative result sheet. What people like my friend, Dele Farotimi, keep saying is that INEC gave a guideline and breached its guidelines. If they breached their guidelines, have you been able to bring an alternative result to show that what INEC declared was different from what your agent was issued at the polling units? That controversy has raged on till now, and till tomorrow, some persons believe that President Bola Tinubu was not the winner of the 2023 presidential election. They have continued to live in that illusion till 2026. They now tried to bring that particular issue into the Electoral Act. Incidentally, the only issue they brought up at the tribunal was the non-transmission of results to the IREV. Nobody was able to bring a result sheet to the tribunal. There is a provision in the Electoral Act that states that an instruction or guideline made by INEC which is not contrary to the Electoral Act shall not be a ground to contest the validity or conduct of an election. The Act stipulates that if there is evidence to show that the election was substantially conducted in compliance with the Electoral Act, then the election, for all intents and purposes, is valid. Now we are faced with another controversy. I see the shouting match at the National Assembly, with screams of “Ole, Ole”, as very shameful. The point is that the confusion has continued. The provision for manual backup when electronic transmission fails was contentious. What is your view on it? Today, the provision of the Electoral Act is that if electronic transmission fails, you go manual. I think that is one of the most useless pieces of legislation thus far because it shows that those enacting the law don’t even understand the different terminologies. Electronic transmission means that you are sending results to the IREV. What does it mean to do manual? Is electronic transmission the same thing as electronic collation? People confuse the transmission of results to IREV with collation. Electronic transmission of results simply means you scan that result sheet and send it to the IREV portal. You cannot manually send results to the IREV portal. And the law does not admit electronic collation. Section 61 of the Act stipulates that at the close of an election, the presiding officer shall deliver the result of the polling unit alongside the candidates or their agents and other persons to a person as may be prescribed by the commission, and that person is the collation officer. So, for all intents and purposes, what we do is manual collation even under this Electoral Act. The IREV is not a collation platform. So we enacted a law that is meaningless — that if transmission fails, you resort to manual. The manual is the main means of collation. From that provision, it looks as if when electronic collation fails, you do manual, whereas the primary form of collation is manual collation. Electronic transmission of results to IREV means a different thing altogether. The result you send to IREV is not what INEC collates. What INEC collates is the physical copy that the presiding officer takes to the collation centre. So, if you want an amendment, you should make an amendment that makes sense. An amendment that makes sense is when you do electronic collation. INEC has an officer called CSRVS, which is the Collation Support and Result Verification System. That officer is like an e-collation officer. That is why if you conclude a governorship election, you can have the result in six hours because of the collation support. Previously, before you finished manual tabulation of polling unit results, it would take almost two days. But now you will see that the officer is entering results that appear on the screen. Once he inputs and it doesn’t add up, he would know. He would ask the collation officer to repeat the results and identify where the error is. The other issue is: can you have electronic collation without electronic voting? It is impossible. So, if you want to have electronic collation, you need to have electronic voting. I am a lawyer, and for the Nigerian Bar Association election, we stay in the comfort of our homes and vote. As you are voting, the result is being summed up. Well, in future, we can have an application or portal where if you scan the result, it can extract the figures in the result sheet and compute them; that can still be electronic collation. But that is not the system currently. INEC does not have the intention of doing that. I also believe that for the result sent to IREV, INEC can develop an app. You seem to point to the 2023 election as a benchmark? I have not hidden my admiration for INEC. In my opinion, fuelled by verifiable facts, the 2023 election is the best election ever conducted in the history of Nigeria. Incidentally, it is that same election that some people want us to believe is the worst. This was an election where about four serving governors lost their bid to get to the Senate. This is an election where we were told that an okada rider in Kaduna State was elected to the House of Representatives. Other people of lesser standing in society were also elected. The fact is that they got elected because the votes counted. And why did votes count? This is because, for the first time under the Act, INEC made electronic accreditation compulsory. It meant that it was no longer the arbitrary mode of accreditation where you bring the voter register and simply tick. You must be accredited using the BVAS machine, which is electronic. To that extent, those bogus figures we used to hear about did not happen. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. But beyond his assertion of an attempt to hack the portal, has there been credible evidence to counter his opinion? This is because the only other evidence that could counter that opinion is the result of various political parties saying, “This is what we were issued, and it is different from what INEC declared.” To date, nobody has been able to bring an alternative result sheet. What people like my friend, Dele Farotimi, keep saying is that INEC gave a guideline and breached its guidelines. If they breached their guidelines, have you been able to bring an alternative result to show that what INEC declared was different from what your agent was issued at the polling units? That controversy has raged on till now, and till tomorrow, some persons believe that President Bola Tinubu was not the winner of the 2023 presidential election. They have continued to live in that illusion till 2026. They now tried to bring that particular issue into the Electoral Act. Incidentally, the only issue they brought up at the tribunal was the non-transmission of results to the IREV. Nobody was able to bring a result sheet to the tribunal. There is a provision in the Electoral Act that states that an instruction or guideline made by INEC which is not contrary to the Electoral Act shall not be a ground to contest the validity or conduct of an election. The Act stipulates that if there is evidence to show that the election was substantially conducted in compliance with the Electoral Act, then the election, for all intents and purposes, is valid. Now we are faced with another controversy. I see the shouting match at the National Assembly, with screams of “Ole, Ole”, as very shameful. The point is that the confusion has continued. The provision for manual backup when electronic transmission fails was contentious. What is your view on it? Today, the provision of the Electoral Act is that if electronic transmission fails, you go manual. I think that is one of the most useless pieces of legislation thus far because it shows that those enacting the law don’t even understand the different terminologies. Electronic transmission means that you are sending results to the IREV. What does it mean to do manual? Is electronic transmission the same thing as electronic collation? People confuse the transmission of results to IREV with collation. Electronic transmission of results simply means you scan that result sheet and send it to the IREV portal. You cannot manually send results to the IREV portal. And the law does not admit electronic collation. Section 61 of the Act stipulates that at the close of an election, the presiding officer shall deliver the result of the polling unit alongside the candidates or their agents and other persons to a person as may be prescribed by the commission, and that person is the collation officer. So, for all intents and purposes, what we do is manual collation even under this Electoral Act. The IREV is not a collation platform. So we enacted a law that is meaningless — that if transmission fails, you resort to manual. The manual is the main means of collation. From that provision, it looks as if when electronic collation fails, you do manual, whereas the primary form of collation is manual collation. Electronic transmission of results to IREV means a different thing altogether. The result you send to IREV is not what INEC collates. What INEC collates is the physical copy that the presiding officer takes to the collation centre. So, if you want an amendment, you should make an amendment that makes sense. An amendment that makes sense is when you do electronic collation. INEC has an officer called CSRVS, which is the Collation Support and Result Verification System. That officer is like an e-collation officer. That is why if you conclude a governorship election, you can have the result in six hours because of the collation support. Previously, before you finished manual tabulation of polling unit results, it would take almost two days. But now you will see that the officer is entering results that appear on the screen. Once he inputs and it doesn’t add up, he would know. He would ask the collation officer to repeat the results and identify where the error is. The other issue is: can you have electronic collation without electronic voting? It is impossible. So, if you want to have electronic collation, you need to have electronic voting. I am a lawyer, and for the Nigerian Bar Association election, we stay in the comfort of our homes and vote. As you are voting, the result is being summed up. Well, in future, we can have an application or portal where if you scan the result, it can extract the figures in the result sheet and compute them; that can still be electronic collation. But that is not the system currently. INEC does not have the intention of doing that. I also believe that for the result sent to IREV, INEC can develop an app. You seem to point to the 2023 election as a benchmark? I have not hidden my admiration for INEC. In my opinion, fuelled by verifiable facts, the 2023 election is the best election ever conducted in the history of Nigeria. Incidentally, it is that same election that some people want us to believe is the worst. This was an election where about four serving governors lost their bid to get to the Senate. This is an election where we were told that an okada rider in Kaduna State was elected to the House of Representatives. Other people of lesser standing in society were also elected. The fact is that they got elected because the votes counted. And why did votes count? This is because, for the first time under the Act, INEC made electronic accreditation compulsory. It meant that it was no longer the arbitrary mode of accreditation where you bring the voter register and simply tick. You must be accredited using the BVAS machine, which is electronic. To that extent, those bogus figures we used to hear about did not happen. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. What people like my friend, Dele Farotimi, keep saying is that INEC gave a guideline and breached its guidelines. If they breached their guidelines, have you been able to bring an alternative result to show that what INEC declared was different from what your agent was issued at the polling units? That controversy has raged on till now, and till tomorrow, some persons believe that President Bola Tinubu was not the winner of the 2023 presidential election. They have continued to live in that illusion till 2026. They now tried to bring that particular issue into the Electoral Act. Incidentally, the only issue they brought up at the tribunal was the non-transmission of results to the IREV. Nobody was able to bring a result sheet to the tribunal. There is a provision in the Electoral Act that states that an instruction or guideline made by INEC which is not contrary to the Electoral Act shall not be a ground to contest the validity or conduct of an election. The Act stipulates that if there is evidence to show that the election was substantially conducted in compliance with the Electoral Act, then the election, for all intents and purposes, is valid. Now we are faced with another controversy. I see the shouting match at the National Assembly, with screams of “Ole, Ole”, as very shameful. The point is that the confusion has continued. The provision for manual backup when electronic transmission fails was contentious. What is your view on it? Today, the provision of the Electoral Act is that if electronic transmission fails, you go manual. I think that is one of the most useless pieces of legislation thus far because it shows that those enacting the law don’t even understand the different terminologies. Electronic transmission means that you are sending results to the IREV. What does it mean to do manual? Is electronic transmission the same thing as electronic collation? People confuse the transmission of results to IREV with collation. Electronic transmission of results simply means you scan that result sheet and send it to the IREV portal. You cannot manually send results to the IREV portal. And the law does not admit electronic collation. Section 61 of the Act stipulates that at the close of an election, the presiding officer shall deliver the result of the polling unit alongside the candidates or their agents and other persons to a person as may be prescribed by the commission, and that person is the collation officer. So, for all intents and purposes, what we do is manual collation even under this Electoral Act. The IREV is not a collation platform. So we enacted a law that is meaningless — that if transmission fails, you resort to manual. The manual is the main means of collation. From that provision, it looks as if when electronic collation fails, you do manual, whereas the primary form of collation is manual collation. Electronic transmission of results to IREV means a different thing altogether. The result you send to IREV is not what INEC collates. What INEC collates is the physical copy that the presiding officer takes to the collation centre. So, if you want an amendment, you should make an amendment that makes sense. An amendment that makes sense is when you do electronic collation. INEC has an officer called CSRVS, which is the Collation Support and Result Verification System. That officer is like an e-collation officer. That is why if you conclude a governorship election, you can have the result in six hours because of the collation support. Previously, before you finished manual tabulation of polling unit results, it would take almost two days. But now you will see that the officer is entering results that appear on the screen. Once he inputs and it doesn’t add up, he would know. He would ask the collation officer to repeat the results and identify where the error is. The other issue is: can you have electronic collation without electronic voting? It is impossible. So, if you want to have electronic collation, you need to have electronic voting. I am a lawyer, and for the Nigerian Bar Association election, we stay in the comfort of our homes and vote. As you are voting, the result is being summed up. Well, in future, we can have an application or portal where if you scan the result, it can extract the figures in the result sheet and compute them; that can still be electronic collation. But that is not the system currently. INEC does not have the intention of doing that. I also believe that for the result sent to IREV, INEC can develop an app. You seem to point to the 2023 election as a benchmark? I have not hidden my admiration for INEC. In my opinion, fuelled by verifiable facts, the 2023 election is the best election ever conducted in the history of Nigeria. Incidentally, it is that same election that some people want us to believe is the worst. This was an election where about four serving governors lost their bid to get to the Senate. This is an election where we were told that an okada rider in Kaduna State was elected to the House of Representatives. Other people of lesser standing in society were also elected. The fact is that they got elected because the votes counted. And why did votes count? This is because, for the first time under the Act, INEC made electronic accreditation compulsory. It meant that it was no longer the arbitrary mode of accreditation where you bring the voter register and simply tick. You must be accredited using the BVAS machine, which is electronic. To that extent, those bogus figures we used to hear about did not happen. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. They now tried to bring that particular issue into the Electoral Act. Incidentally, the only issue they brought up at the tribunal was the non-transmission of results to the IREV. Nobody was able to bring a result sheet to the tribunal. There is a provision in the Electoral Act that states that an instruction or guideline made by INEC which is not contrary to the Electoral Act shall not be a ground to contest the validity or conduct of an election. The Act stipulates that if there is evidence to show that the election was substantially conducted in compliance with the Electoral Act, then the election, for all intents and purposes, is valid. Now we are faced with another controversy. I see the shouting match at the National Assembly, with screams of “Ole, Ole”, as very shameful. The point is that the confusion has continued. The provision for manual backup when electronic transmission fails was contentious. What is your view on it? Today, the provision of the Electoral Act is that if electronic transmission fails, you go manual. I think that is one of the most useless pieces of legislation thus far because it shows that those enacting the law don’t even understand the different terminologies. Electronic transmission means that you are sending results to the IREV. What does it mean to do manual? Is electronic transmission the same thing as electronic collation? People confuse the transmission of results to IREV with collation. Electronic transmission of results simply means you scan that result sheet and send it to the IREV portal. You cannot manually send results to the IREV portal. And the law does not admit electronic collation. Section 61 of the Act stipulates that at the close of an election, the presiding officer shall deliver the result of the polling unit alongside the candidates or their agents and other persons to a person as may be prescribed by the commission, and that person is the collation officer. So, for all intents and purposes, what we do is manual collation even under this Electoral Act. The IREV is not a collation platform. So we enacted a law that is meaningless — that if transmission fails, you resort to manual. The manual is the main means of collation. From that provision, it looks as if when electronic collation fails, you do manual, whereas the primary form of collation is manual collation. Electronic transmission of results to IREV means a different thing altogether. The result you send to IREV is not what INEC collates. What INEC collates is the physical copy that the presiding officer takes to the collation centre. So, if you want an amendment, you should make an amendment that makes sense. An amendment that makes sense is when you do electronic collation. INEC has an officer called CSRVS, which is the Collation Support and Result Verification System. That officer is like an e-collation officer. That is why if you conclude a governorship election, you can have the result in six hours because of the collation support. Previously, before you finished manual tabulation of polling unit results, it would take almost two days. But now you will see that the officer is entering results that appear on the screen. Once he inputs and it doesn’t add up, he would know. He would ask the collation officer to repeat the results and identify where the error is. The other issue is: can you have electronic collation without electronic voting? It is impossible. So, if you want to have electronic collation, you need to have electronic voting. I am a lawyer, and for the Nigerian Bar Association election, we stay in the comfort of our homes and vote. As you are voting, the result is being summed up. Well, in future, we can have an application or portal where if you scan the result, it can extract the figures in the result sheet and compute them; that can still be electronic collation. But that is not the system currently. INEC does not have the intention of doing that. I also believe that for the result sent to IREV, INEC can develop an app. You seem to point to the 2023 election as a benchmark? I have not hidden my admiration for INEC. In my opinion, fuelled by verifiable facts, the 2023 election is the best election ever conducted in the history of Nigeria. Incidentally, it is that same election that some people want us to believe is the worst. This was an election where about four serving governors lost their bid to get to the Senate. This is an election where we were told that an okada rider in Kaduna State was elected to the House of Representatives. Other people of lesser standing in society were also elected. The fact is that they got elected because the votes counted. And why did votes count? This is because, for the first time under the Act, INEC made electronic accreditation compulsory. It meant that it was no longer the arbitrary mode of accreditation where you bring the voter register and simply tick. You must be accredited using the BVAS machine, which is electronic. To that extent, those bogus figures we used to hear about did not happen. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. The provision for manual backup when electronic transmission fails was contentious. What is your view on it? Today, the provision of the Electoral Act is that if electronic transmission fails, you go manual. I think that is one of the most useless pieces of legislation thus far because it shows that those enacting the law don’t even understand the different terminologies. Electronic transmission means that you are sending results to the IREV. What does it mean to do manual? Is electronic transmission the same thing as electronic collation? People confuse the transmission of results to IREV with collation. Electronic transmission of results simply means you scan that result sheet and send it to the IREV portal. You cannot manually send results to the IREV portal. And the law does not admit electronic collation. Section 61 of the Act stipulates that at the close of an election, the presiding officer shall deliver the result of the polling unit alongside the candidates or their agents and other persons to a person as may be prescribed by the commission, and that person is the collation officer. So, for all intents and purposes, what we do is manual collation even under this Electoral Act. The IREV is not a collation platform. So we enacted a law that is meaningless — that if transmission fails, you resort to manual. The manual is the main means of collation. From that provision, it looks as if when electronic collation fails, you do manual, whereas the primary form of collation is manual collation. Electronic transmission of results to IREV means a different thing altogether. The result you send to IREV is not what INEC collates. What INEC collates is the physical copy that the presiding officer takes to the collation centre. So, if you want an amendment, you should make an amendment that makes sense. An amendment that makes sense is when you do electronic collation. INEC has an officer called CSRVS, which is the Collation Support and Result Verification System. That officer is like an e-collation officer. That is why if you conclude a governorship election, you can have the result in six hours because of the collation support. Previously, before you finished manual tabulation of polling unit results, it would take almost two days. But now you will see that the officer is entering results that appear on the screen. Once he inputs and it doesn’t add up, he would know. He would ask the collation officer to repeat the results and identify where the error is. The other issue is: can you have electronic collation without electronic voting? It is impossible. So, if you want to have electronic collation, you need to have electronic voting. I am a lawyer, and for the Nigerian Bar Association election, we stay in the comfort of our homes and vote. As you are voting, the result is being summed up. Well, in future, we can have an application or portal where if you scan the result, it can extract the figures in the result sheet and compute them; that can still be electronic collation. But that is not the system currently. INEC does not have the intention of doing that. I also believe that for the result sent to IREV, INEC can develop an app. You seem to point to the 2023 election as a benchmark? I have not hidden my admiration for INEC. In my opinion, fuelled by verifiable facts, the 2023 election is the best election ever conducted in the history of Nigeria. Incidentally, it is that same election that some people want us to believe is the worst. This was an election where about four serving governors lost their bid to get to the Senate. This is an election where we were told that an okada rider in Kaduna State was elected to the House of Representatives. Other people of lesser standing in society were also elected. The fact is that they got elected because the votes counted. And why did votes count? This is because, for the first time under the Act, INEC made electronic accreditation compulsory. It meant that it was no longer the arbitrary mode of accreditation where you bring the voter register and simply tick. You must be accredited using the BVAS machine, which is electronic. To that extent, those bogus figures we used to hear about did not happen. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. Today, the provision of the Electoral Act is that if electronic transmission fails, you go manual. I think that is one of the most useless pieces of legislation thus far because it shows that those enacting the law don’t even understand the different terminologies. Electronic transmission means that you are sending results to the IREV. What does it mean to do manual? Is electronic transmission the same thing as electronic collation? People confuse the transmission of results to IREV with collation. Electronic transmission of results simply means you scan that result sheet and send it to the IREV portal. You cannot manually send results to the IREV portal. And the law does not admit electronic collation. Section 61 of the Act stipulates that at the close of an election, the presiding officer shall deliver the result of the polling unit alongside the candidates or their agents and other persons to a person as may be prescribed by the commission, and that person is the collation officer. So, for all intents and purposes, what we do is manual collation even under this Electoral Act. The IREV is not a collation platform. So we enacted a law that is meaningless — that if transmission fails, you resort to manual. The manual is the main means of collation. From that provision, it looks as if when electronic collation fails, you do manual, whereas the primary form of collation is manual collation. Electronic transmission of results to IREV means a different thing altogether. The result you send to IREV is not what INEC collates. What INEC collates is the physical copy that the presiding officer takes to the collation centre. So, if you want an amendment, you should make an amendment that makes sense. An amendment that makes sense is when you do electronic collation. INEC has an officer called CSRVS, which is the Collation Support and Result Verification System. That officer is like an e-collation officer. That is why if you conclude a governorship election, you can have the result in six hours because of the collation support. Previously, before you finished manual tabulation of polling unit results, it would take almost two days. But now you will see that the officer is entering results that appear on the screen. Once he inputs and it doesn’t add up, he would know. He would ask the collation officer to repeat the results and identify where the error is. The other issue is: can you have electronic collation without electronic voting? It is impossible. So, if you want to have electronic collation, you need to have electronic voting. I am a lawyer, and for the Nigerian Bar Association election, we stay in the comfort of our homes and vote. As you are voting, the result is being summed up. Well, in future, we can have an application or portal where if you scan the result, it can extract the figures in the result sheet and compute them; that can still be electronic collation. But that is not the system currently. INEC does not have the intention of doing that. I also believe that for the result sent to IREV, INEC can develop an app. You seem to point to the 2023 election as a benchmark? I have not hidden my admiration for INEC. In my opinion, fuelled by verifiable facts, the 2023 election is the best election ever conducted in the history of Nigeria. Incidentally, it is that same election that some people want us to believe is the worst. This was an election where about four serving governors lost their bid to get to the Senate. This is an election where we were told that an okada rider in Kaduna State was elected to the House of Representatives. Other people of lesser standing in society were also elected. The fact is that they got elected because the votes counted. And why did votes count? This is because, for the first time under the Act, INEC made electronic accreditation compulsory. It meant that it was no longer the arbitrary mode of accreditation where you bring the voter register and simply tick. You must be accredited using the BVAS machine, which is electronic. To that extent, those bogus figures we used to hear about did not happen. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. People confuse the transmission of results to IREV with collation. Electronic transmission of results simply means you scan that result sheet and send it to the IREV portal. You cannot manually send results to the IREV portal. And the law does not admit electronic collation. Section 61 of the Act stipulates that at the close of an election, the presiding officer shall deliver the result of the polling unit alongside the candidates or their agents and other persons to a person as may be prescribed by the commission, and that person is the collation officer. So, for all intents and purposes, what we do is manual collation even under this Electoral Act. The IREV is not a collation platform. So we enacted a law that is meaningless — that if transmission fails, you resort to manual. The manual is the main means of collation. From that provision, it looks as if when electronic collation fails, you do manual, whereas the primary form of collation is manual collation. Electronic transmission of results to IREV means a different thing altogether. The result you send to IREV is not what INEC collates. What INEC collates is the physical copy that the presiding officer takes to the collation centre. So, if you want an amendment, you should make an amendment that makes sense. An amendment that makes sense is when you do electronic collation. INEC has an officer called CSRVS, which is the Collation Support and Result Verification System. That officer is like an e-collation officer. That is why if you conclude a governorship election, you can have the result in six hours because of the collation support. Previously, before you finished manual tabulation of polling unit results, it would take almost two days. But now you will see that the officer is entering results that appear on the screen. Once he inputs and it doesn’t add up, he would know. He would ask the collation officer to repeat the results and identify where the error is. The other issue is: can you have electronic collation without electronic voting? It is impossible. So, if you want to have electronic collation, you need to have electronic voting. I am a lawyer, and for the Nigerian Bar Association election, we stay in the comfort of our homes and vote. As you are voting, the result is being summed up. Well, in future, we can have an application or portal where if you scan the result, it can extract the figures in the result sheet and compute them; that can still be electronic collation. But that is not the system currently. INEC does not have the intention of doing that. I also believe that for the result sent to IREV, INEC can develop an app. You seem to point to the 2023 election as a benchmark? I have not hidden my admiration for INEC. In my opinion, fuelled by verifiable facts, the 2023 election is the best election ever conducted in the history of Nigeria. Incidentally, it is that same election that some people want us to believe is the worst. This was an election where about four serving governors lost their bid to get to the Senate. This is an election where we were told that an okada rider in Kaduna State was elected to the House of Representatives. Other people of lesser standing in society were also elected. The fact is that they got elected because the votes counted. And why did votes count? This is because, for the first time under the Act, INEC made electronic accreditation compulsory. It meant that it was no longer the arbitrary mode of accreditation where you bring the voter register and simply tick. You must be accredited using the BVAS machine, which is electronic. To that extent, those bogus figures we used to hear about did not happen. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. Section 61 of the Act stipulates that at the close of an election, the presiding officer shall deliver the result of the polling unit alongside the candidates or their agents and other persons to a person as may be prescribed by the commission, and that person is the collation officer. So, for all intents and purposes, what we do is manual collation even under this Electoral Act. The IREV is not a collation platform. So we enacted a law that is meaningless — that if transmission fails, you resort to manual. The manual is the main means of collation. From that provision, it looks as if when electronic collation fails, you do manual, whereas the primary form of collation is manual collation. Electronic transmission of results to IREV means a different thing altogether. The result you send to IREV is not what INEC collates. What INEC collates is the physical copy that the presiding officer takes to the collation centre. So, if you want an amendment, you should make an amendment that makes sense. An amendment that makes sense is when you do electronic collation. INEC has an officer called CSRVS, which is the Collation Support and Result Verification System. That officer is like an e-collation officer. That is why if you conclude a governorship election, you can have the result in six hours because of the collation support. Previously, before you finished manual tabulation of polling unit results, it would take almost two days. But now you will see that the officer is entering results that appear on the screen. Once he inputs and it doesn’t add up, he would know. He would ask the collation officer to repeat the results and identify where the error is. The other issue is: can you have electronic collation without electronic voting? It is impossible. So, if you want to have electronic collation, you need to have electronic voting. I am a lawyer, and for the Nigerian Bar Association election, we stay in the comfort of our homes and vote. As you are voting, the result is being summed up. Well, in future, we can have an application or portal where if you scan the result, it can extract the figures in the result sheet and compute them; that can still be electronic collation. But that is not the system currently. INEC does not have the intention of doing that. I also believe that for the result sent to IREV, INEC can develop an app. You seem to point to the 2023 election as a benchmark? I have not hidden my admiration for INEC. In my opinion, fuelled by verifiable facts, the 2023 election is the best election ever conducted in the history of Nigeria. Incidentally, it is that same election that some people want us to believe is the worst. This was an election where about four serving governors lost their bid to get to the Senate. This is an election where we were told that an okada rider in Kaduna State was elected to the House of Representatives. Other people of lesser standing in society were also elected. The fact is that they got elected because the votes counted. And why did votes count? This is because, for the first time under the Act, INEC made electronic accreditation compulsory. It meant that it was no longer the arbitrary mode of accreditation where you bring the voter register and simply tick. You must be accredited using the BVAS machine, which is electronic. To that extent, those bogus figures we used to hear about did not happen. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. From that provision, it looks as if when electronic collation fails, you do manual, whereas the primary form of collation is manual collation. Electronic transmission of results to IREV means a different thing altogether. The result you send to IREV is not what INEC collates. What INEC collates is the physical copy that the presiding officer takes to the collation centre. So, if you want an amendment, you should make an amendment that makes sense. An amendment that makes sense is when you do electronic collation. INEC has an officer called CSRVS, which is the Collation Support and Result Verification System. That officer is like an e-collation officer. That is why if you conclude a governorship election, you can have the result in six hours because of the collation support. Previously, before you finished manual tabulation of polling unit results, it would take almost two days. But now you will see that the officer is entering results that appear on the screen. Once he inputs and it doesn’t add up, he would know. He would ask the collation officer to repeat the results and identify where the error is. The other issue is: can you have electronic collation without electronic voting? It is impossible. So, if you want to have electronic collation, you need to have electronic voting. I am a lawyer, and for the Nigerian Bar Association election, we stay in the comfort of our homes and vote. As you are voting, the result is being summed up. Well, in future, we can have an application or portal where if you scan the result, it can extract the figures in the result sheet and compute them; that can still be electronic collation. But that is not the system currently. INEC does not have the intention of doing that. I also believe that for the result sent to IREV, INEC can develop an app. You seem to point to the 2023 election as a benchmark? I have not hidden my admiration for INEC. In my opinion, fuelled by verifiable facts, the 2023 election is the best election ever conducted in the history of Nigeria. Incidentally, it is that same election that some people want us to believe is the worst. This was an election where about four serving governors lost their bid to get to the Senate. This is an election where we were told that an okada rider in Kaduna State was elected to the House of Representatives. Other people of lesser standing in society were also elected. The fact is that they got elected because the votes counted. And why did votes count? This is because, for the first time under the Act, INEC made electronic accreditation compulsory. It meant that it was no longer the arbitrary mode of accreditation where you bring the voter register and simply tick. You must be accredited using the BVAS machine, which is electronic. To that extent, those bogus figures we used to hear about did not happen. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. So, if you want an amendment, you should make an amendment that makes sense. An amendment that makes sense is when you do electronic collation. INEC has an officer called CSRVS, which is the Collation Support and Result Verification System. That officer is like an e-collation officer. That is why if you conclude a governorship election, you can have the result in six hours because of the collation support. Previously, before you finished manual tabulation of polling unit results, it would take almost two days. But now you will see that the officer is entering results that appear on the screen. Once he inputs and it doesn’t add up, he would know. He would ask the collation officer to repeat the results and identify where the error is. The other issue is: can you have electronic collation without electronic voting? It is impossible. So, if you want to have electronic collation, you need to have electronic voting. I am a lawyer, and for the Nigerian Bar Association election, we stay in the comfort of our homes and vote. As you are voting, the result is being summed up. Well, in future, we can have an application or portal where if you scan the result, it can extract the figures in the result sheet and compute them; that can still be electronic collation. But that is not the system currently. INEC does not have the intention of doing that. I also believe that for the result sent to IREV, INEC can develop an app. You seem to point to the 2023 election as a benchmark? I have not hidden my admiration for INEC. In my opinion, fuelled by verifiable facts, the 2023 election is the best election ever conducted in the history of Nigeria. Incidentally, it is that same election that some people want us to believe is the worst. This was an election where about four serving governors lost their bid to get to the Senate. This is an election where we were told that an okada rider in Kaduna State was elected to the House of Representatives. Other people of lesser standing in society were also elected. The fact is that they got elected because the votes counted. And why did votes count? This is because, for the first time under the Act, INEC made electronic accreditation compulsory. It meant that it was no longer the arbitrary mode of accreditation where you bring the voter register and simply tick. You must be accredited using the BVAS machine, which is electronic. To that extent, those bogus figures we used to hear about did not happen. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. INEC has an officer called CSRVS, which is the Collation Support and Result Verification System. That officer is like an e-collation officer. That is why if you conclude a governorship election, you can have the result in six hours because of the collation support. Previously, before you finished manual tabulation of polling unit results, it would take almost two days. But now you will see that the officer is entering results that appear on the screen. Once he inputs and it doesn’t add up, he would know. He would ask the collation officer to repeat the results and identify where the error is. The other issue is: can you have electronic collation without electronic voting? It is impossible. So, if you want to have electronic collation, you need to have electronic voting. I am a lawyer, and for the Nigerian Bar Association election, we stay in the comfort of our homes and vote. As you are voting, the result is being summed up. Well, in future, we can have an application or portal where if you scan the result, it can extract the figures in the result sheet and compute them; that can still be electronic collation. But that is not the system currently. INEC does not have the intention of doing that. I also believe that for the result sent to IREV, INEC can develop an app. You seem to point to the 2023 election as a benchmark? I have not hidden my admiration for INEC. In my opinion, fuelled by verifiable facts, the 2023 election is the best election ever conducted in the history of Nigeria. Incidentally, it is that same election that some people want us to believe is the worst. This was an election where about four serving governors lost their bid to get to the Senate. This is an election where we were told that an okada rider in Kaduna State was elected to the House of Representatives. Other people of lesser standing in society were also elected. The fact is that they got elected because the votes counted. And why did votes count? This is because, for the first time under the Act, INEC made electronic accreditation compulsory. It meant that it was no longer the arbitrary mode of accreditation where you bring the voter register and simply tick. You must be accredited using the BVAS machine, which is electronic. To that extent, those bogus figures we used to hear about did not happen. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. But now you will see that the officer is entering results that appear on the screen. Once he inputs and it doesn’t add up, he would know. He would ask the collation officer to repeat the results and identify where the error is. The other issue is: can you have electronic collation without electronic voting? It is impossible. So, if you want to have electronic collation, you need to have electronic voting. I am a lawyer, and for the Nigerian Bar Association election, we stay in the comfort of our homes and vote. As you are voting, the result is being summed up. Well, in future, we can have an application or portal where if you scan the result, it can extract the figures in the result sheet and compute them; that can still be electronic collation. But that is not the system currently. INEC does not have the intention of doing that. I also believe that for the result sent to IREV, INEC can develop an app. You seem to point to the 2023 election as a benchmark? I have not hidden my admiration for INEC. In my opinion, fuelled by verifiable facts, the 2023 election is the best election ever conducted in the history of Nigeria. Incidentally, it is that same election that some people want us to believe is the worst. This was an election where about four serving governors lost their bid to get to the Senate. This is an election where we were told that an okada rider in Kaduna State was elected to the House of Representatives. Other people of lesser standing in society were also elected. The fact is that they got elected because the votes counted. And why did votes count? This is because, for the first time under the Act, INEC made electronic accreditation compulsory. It meant that it was no longer the arbitrary mode of accreditation where you bring the voter register and simply tick. You must be accredited using the BVAS machine, which is electronic. To that extent, those bogus figures we used to hear about did not happen. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. The other issue is: can you have electronic collation without electronic voting? It is impossible. So, if you want to have electronic collation, you need to have electronic voting. I am a lawyer, and for the Nigerian Bar Association election, we stay in the comfort of our homes and vote. As you are voting, the result is being summed up. Well, in future, we can have an application or portal where if you scan the result, it can extract the figures in the result sheet and compute them; that can still be electronic collation. But that is not the system currently. INEC does not have the intention of doing that. I also believe that for the result sent to IREV, INEC can develop an app. You seem to point to the 2023 election as a benchmark? I have not hidden my admiration for INEC. In my opinion, fuelled by verifiable facts, the 2023 election is the best election ever conducted in the history of Nigeria. Incidentally, it is that same election that some people want us to believe is the worst. This was an election where about four serving governors lost their bid to get to the Senate. This is an election where we were told that an okada rider in Kaduna State was elected to the House of Representatives. Other people of lesser standing in society were also elected. The fact is that they got elected because the votes counted. And why did votes count? This is because, for the first time under the Act, INEC made electronic accreditation compulsory. It meant that it was no longer the arbitrary mode of accreditation where you bring the voter register and simply tick. You must be accredited using the BVAS machine, which is electronic. To that extent, those bogus figures we used to hear about did not happen. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. Well, in future, we can have an application or portal where if you scan the result, it can extract the figures in the result sheet and compute them; that can still be electronic collation. But that is not the system currently. INEC does not have the intention of doing that. I also believe that for the result sent to IREV, INEC can develop an app. You seem to point to the 2023 election as a benchmark? I have not hidden my admiration for INEC. In my opinion, fuelled by verifiable facts, the 2023 election is the best election ever conducted in the history of Nigeria. Incidentally, it is that same election that some people want us to believe is the worst. This was an election where about four serving governors lost their bid to get to the Senate. This is an election where we were told that an okada rider in Kaduna State was elected to the House of Representatives. Other people of lesser standing in society were also elected. The fact is that they got elected because the votes counted. And why did votes count? This is because, for the first time under the Act, INEC made electronic accreditation compulsory. It meant that it was no longer the arbitrary mode of accreditation where you bring the voter register and simply tick. You must be accredited using the BVAS machine, which is electronic. To that extent, those bogus figures we used to hear about did not happen. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. You seem to point to the 2023 election as a benchmark? I have not hidden my admiration for INEC. In my opinion, fuelled by verifiable facts, the 2023 election is the best election ever conducted in the history of Nigeria. Incidentally, it is that same election that some people want us to believe is the worst. This was an election where about four serving governors lost their bid to get to the Senate. This is an election where we were told that an okada rider in Kaduna State was elected to the House of Representatives. Other people of lesser standing in society were also elected. The fact is that they got elected because the votes counted. And why did votes count? This is because, for the first time under the Act, INEC made electronic accreditation compulsory. It meant that it was no longer the arbitrary mode of accreditation where you bring the voter register and simply tick. You must be accredited using the BVAS machine, which is electronic. To that extent, those bogus figures we used to hear about did not happen. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. I have not hidden my admiration for INEC. In my opinion, fuelled by verifiable facts, the 2023 election is the best election ever conducted in the history of Nigeria. Incidentally, it is that same election that some people want us to believe is the worst. This was an election where about four serving governors lost their bid to get to the Senate. This is an election where we were told that an okada rider in Kaduna State was elected to the House of Representatives. Other people of lesser standing in society were also elected. The fact is that they got elected because the votes counted. And why did votes count? This is because, for the first time under the Act, INEC made electronic accreditation compulsory. It meant that it was no longer the arbitrary mode of accreditation where you bring the voter register and simply tick. You must be accredited using the BVAS machine, which is electronic. To that extent, those bogus figures we used to hear about did not happen. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. This was an election where about four serving governors lost their bid to get to the Senate. This is an election where we were told that an okada rider in Kaduna State was elected to the House of Representatives. Other people of lesser standing in society were also elected. The fact is that they got elected because the votes counted. And why did votes count? This is because, for the first time under the Act, INEC made electronic accreditation compulsory. It meant that it was no longer the arbitrary mode of accreditation where you bring the voter register and simply tick. You must be accredited using the BVAS machine, which is electronic. To that extent, those bogus figures we used to hear about did not happen. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. The fact is that they got elected because the votes counted. And why did votes count? This is because, for the first time under the Act, INEC made electronic accreditation compulsory. It meant that it was no longer the arbitrary mode of accreditation where you bring the voter register and simply tick. You must be accredited using the BVAS machine, which is electronic. To that extent, those bogus figures we used to hear about did not happen. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. You must be accredited using the BVAS machine, which is electronic. To that extent, those bogus figures we used to hear about did not happen. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. If it were under the old regime, those governors who lost elections would have just written results from between five and ten polling units, gone back to tick the voter register. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. If 200 persons came out to vote, he could write 1,000 and before the tribunal sits, he simply ticks the remaining 800 in the voter register as people who voted. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. But because of INEC innovation, you must accredit with the BVAS, and during collation, the first thing the collation officer does before entering the result is to query the BVAS to know the number of people accredited. If it does not tally with the votes cast, the law says the result will be cancelled. That guaranteed the integrity of the election. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. I can take up this challenge with anybody on any media channel that the best election in Nigeria was the 2023 election. Irrespective of the glitch we had with IREV, nobody has come to substantiate the allegation that the result of the election was altered. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. What do you make of the limitation of parties to direct primaries and consensus to produce candidates? Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. Incidentally, when our National Working Committee came on board, the first meeting we had with the leader of APGA, Prof Charles Soludo, was that he would want to enthrone a credible nomination process, and the arbitrary nomination process where if you want to favour Mr A, you simply prepare the delegates list in his favour and, on the day of primaries, they would elect the person. He said he would prefer a situation where, apart from the favouritism, the next challenge was how costly the process was. There were allegations of thousands of dollars given to agents in the past. Some delegates to presidential primaries were said to have been paid up to $50,000. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. The governor said he would prefer a situation where all the members of the party are entitled to vote at the primaries. One of the things direct primaries would foster is grassroots mobilisation. So, when you want to contest an election, you no longer go about looking for members of the National Working Committee of the party; you go to the people. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. So, not only will you strengthen the party, but the leader will become accountable to the people at the grassroots because, from the primary process, you have held yourself accountable to your party members at the grassroots. And from your party members, you go to the general population in the federal constituency or district, and we were looking forward to that. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. Now we no longer need to do that, or we simply amend to be in line with the Electoral Act. Those criticising the direct mode of primaries are those who benefit from the skewed system. The only issue is the logistics challenge. But if INEC can monitor congresses at the ward and local government levels, then direct primaries are possible. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. In fact, the provision of direct primaries has been in the Act for the nomination of councillorship candidates; the only difference now is that the Act states that it applies to all elective positions. What it means is that you don’t necessarily need money to win. A popular person who will be accountable to the people will likely win the nomination over a rich man. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. If you say you want to bribe, how many people are you going to bribe? There are people whose penchant for malfeasance knows no bounds and will still try. But if properly monitored by INEC, it is going to put an end to the unnecessary expenses people undertake to get the nomination of political parties. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. Observers have also criticised INEC mandating parties to submit their membership database 21 days before elections. What is your view? Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. Section 77 of the Electoral Act makes certain things compulsory. It states that the digital register must contain the name, sex, date of birth, address, state, local government, ward, polling unit, NIN and a passport photograph. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. The only aspect that APGA has issues with in the new Act is still that same Section 77, which I may call over-legislation of the internal affairs of political parties. This is because, at the end of the day, you may find out that we may challenge certain subsections of Section 77 in court. Related News PDP remains strong opposition in Ondo, says chairman Tinubu appoints GTB co-founder Adeola to lead petroleum sector reform taskforce 2027: Plateau tertiary institutions' staff pledge support for Tinubu, Mutfwang's re-election This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. This is because we believe that it is wrong, on all fronts, to demarcate the criteria and benefits of membership. Section 77 states that when you are done with that digital register, before you conduct any primaries, congress or convention, you submit that register in both soft copy and hard copy to INEC 21 days before the party exercise. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. It also states that only those who are contained in the register, as submitted to INEC, are the only ones who can vote or be voted for. This means that if my primaries are on the 25th of March and I submit on the 4th of March, it means that if someone registers as a member of the party on the 5th of March, that person cannot vote or be voted for at the primaries. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. That is very wrong. You don’t determine who votes in my primaries; it is an internal affair. If anybody should create conditions or qualifications for such rights, it should be political parties. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. We call on the National Assembly to expunge the provisions of Section 77, subsections 4–6. This is because the court has said that the issue of membership is an internal affair of political parties and not justiciable. You don’t determine who my member is. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. The Constitution did not say that if you want to contest an election, you must have been a member of a political party for one year. The Constitution only says you must belong to a political party — even if you are a member for one hour. It is for the party to determine whether you are entitled to run for election on their platform, not for the National Assembly to say that if you are not a member 21 days before the primary, you cannot participate. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. That is very wrong. It appears that there is a plan to emasculate some of the smaller political parties from fielding credible candidates that might be aggrieved by the main parties. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. But, on the flip side, the provision is such that it would entrench belief in party ideology. It is unheard of that you would go to America and see a Republican in the morning and switch over to being a Democrat in the evening. Ideologically, these political parties are different. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. But today, people see political parties as a special-purpose vehicle to get to power; they don’t have any belief in party ideology. If you call all the National Assembly members elected on the platform of the Labour Party in 2023 and ask them the position of the Labour Party on federalism, they can’t tell you anything. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. If you ask them the position of the Labour Party on economic transformation, they will say nothing. You ask them about the Labour Party manifesto on technological innovation, and they do not know. They have never seen the document. They just want to get to the National Assembly. They don’t have any belief in the party. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. And to strengthen that, if the National Assembly wants to address that problem, they are supposed to obliterate that provision. If you are elected on a particular party platform, you shouldn’t leave that party to join another party because at the point of election, the fate of the candidate and that of his or her political party are intertwined. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. So if you decide to cross-carpet to another party, you resign. There shouldn’t be any consideration. The only consideration is if it is a merger — that is, he belongs to the political party that he has merged with. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. You shouldn’t leave for a political party that has no hand whatsoever in getting you elected. But I believe that the moment we entrench these amendments in our laws, our democracy will keep evolving. At the end of the day, the interest should be the welfare and well-being of Nigerians. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. So we accept the provision of the Electoral Act on direct primaries; it aligns with our position. The issue of electoral transmission is neither here nor there. The important thing is that INEC should ensure credible elections. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. And until we have the infrastructure to have an electronic system of voting, our laws are adequate for elections. The challenge is with the people implementing the laws. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. So I call on the new INEC chairman to ensure that he builds on the technological innovation of Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Posterity will forever be kind to Mahmood Yakubu for the innovations he made to our electoral laws and elections, such that today our elections have some measure of credibility. Let the current INEC chairman build on it. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. The question isn’t really whether you are doing electronic transmission; it is the willingness of election officials to comply with INEC guidelines, which are near-perfect. If properly followed, it will entrench a credible electoral process. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. The implication of making transmission compulsory is that if I contest an election and win, my opponent, who got two per cent of the votes, can engineer the presiding officer not to transmit the result. He won’t go to court to say that I won; he would say he lost because the results were not transmitted, and the court will nullify the election. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. Meanwhile, this was an election that was validly conducted. An election should not be vitiated simply because there is a glitch. If there was evidence that an election was properly conducted, the election would be upheld. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. Would APGA be fielding a candidate for the 2027 presidential election? Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. Unapologetically, APGA stands aligned with the party at the centre today. It is a policy that was crafted not by the present National Working Committee of APGA. It was a policy that began in 2011 when Peter Obi was governor of Anambra State, and Victor Umeh was national chairman. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. That was the first time APGA did not nominate a presidential candidate and adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as our presidential candidate in the 2011 election. This was repeated in the 2015 election. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. In 2019 and 2023, the leaders of the party at that time backtracked. What we have decided to do now is go back to that policy, and our decision to go back to that policy is on a principle basis. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. First, we had a meeting with the national leader of the party, Prof Charles Soludo, and we agreed that if political parties ought to be clearly identifiable by their core ideologies, then there is no reason why political parties that are ideologically aligned cannot work together. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. This is because what we see in Nigeria is that we just have a proliferation of political parties, and party members don’t know the ideology of their political parties. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. We have looked at the APC ideology contained in their manifesto; we looked at the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, and we believe that his Renewed Hope initiative aligns with the core progressive ideology of APGA, and that is how we birthed the idea that progressives are working together. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. The most important thing is that we entrench progressivism wherever we are. In Anambra today, members of the House of Assembly elected on the platform of APC are working closely with the governor of Anambra State because we all share similar ideologies. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. The National Assembly caucus of APGA supports and works closely with the progressive ideals of President Tinubu. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. And in fairness to Mr President, he is the first person who showed good faith to APGA in terms of the alignment of our ideologies by appointing a member of APGA’s Board of Trustees as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and another member of APGA as the pioneer Managing Director of the South-East Development Commission. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. APGA supports the President. We stand aligned with him on his economic transformation, social agenda and human capital initiatives, while the ultimate decision lies with the national convention. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. Meanwhile, we also await the APC on whether it would nominate President Tinubu as its presidential candidate for the 2027 election. If he gets the nomination of his party through direct primaries, I can bet you that the national convention will likely adopt Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APGA. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. We only have that arrangement at the presidency. We will be fielding candidates for the governorship, National Assembly and Houses of Assembly in every state. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. Your son from the South-East, Mr Peter Obi, may also run in the election. What do you make of Tinubu winning the South-East ahead of Obi? I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. I think Tinubu can win the South-East. If my party adopts Tinubu, it means we will go out of our way to campaign for him because he becomes our candidate. I hope that my candidate wins the election because he would be running on my platform. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. Before the advent of the Fourth Republic, there was an unwritten understanding on the rotation of power between the North and the South. That unwritten agreement did not micro-zone that rotation. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. So, to maintain that balance, it is only reasonable that Tinubu completes the four years of Southern Nigeria before it goes to the North. This is because we must be very sensitive to the ethnic sentiments that we share in Nigeria, and anything that would distort this arrangement, I won’t support. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. But Peter Obi is also from the South, just like Tinubu Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. Constitutionally, Peter Obi is entitled to eight years. Even if he goes anywhere to sign any agreement, he would likely go for a second term. Goodluck Jonathan did it. After extracting a commitment, he reneged. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South. What the South has left is four years, and the person who should complete those four years is President Bola Tinubu. After that, it goes to the North. After eight years in the North, it comes back to the South.
Why APGA may back Tinubu for 2027 election – Party chair, Ezeokenwa
