By Lateef Ibrahim, Abuja
Former Vice President and presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has vowed not to go away from politics, declaring that for as long as he lives, he would continue to struggle, with other Nigerians, to deepen the nation’s democracy and rule of law.
Atiku made the vow on Monday at a world press conference he addressed at the PDP headquarters, Wadata house, Abuja.
Yesterday’s press conference by Atiku came barely a week after he lost his appeal at the Supreme court last week Wednesday.
During the last presidential election, the result announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, showed that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu cane first, Atiku was second while the Labour Party presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi came third.
Both Atiku and Obi challenged the outcome of the election at the presidential election Petition Tribunal and lost.
They also appealed the outcome of the tribunal judgement at the Supreme court and similarly lost.
However, the PDP presidential candidate insisted that he will continue to struggle, with other Nigerians, to deepen the country’s democracy and rule of law and for the kind of political and economic restructuring the country needs to reach its true potential.
His words, “However, I am not going away. If you think i am going to go away, forget about it.
“For as long as I breathe I will continue to struggle, with other Nigerians, to deepen our democracy and rule of law and for the kind of political and economic restructuring the country needs to reach its true potential.
“That struggle should now be led by the younger generation of Nigerians who have even more at stake than my generation”, he said.
The former Vice President pointed out that as a stakeholder in the presidential election of February 25, “I, along with other well-meaning Nigerians have done my bit in ensuring that our democratic process enjoys the privilege of full disclosure of the character deficiencies of the current political leadership”.
Continuing, he did, “I also believe that even if the Supreme Court believes otherwise, the purpose of technology in our electoral system is to enhance transparency and not merely as a viewing centre.
“We have to move with the world and not be stuck in time”, he said.
Atiku made some proposals which he believes will be of immense help to the nation’s political system.
According to him, “We can urgently make constitutional amendments that will prevent any court or tribunal from hiding behind technicalities and legal sophistry to affirm electoral heists and undermine the will of the people.
“Our democracy must mean something; it must be substantive. Above all, it must be expressed through free, fair and transparent elections that respect the will of the people”, he said.
According to the PDP presidential candidate, “Firstly, we must make electronic voting and collation of results mandatory. This is the 21st century and countries less advanced than Nigeria are doing so already. It is only bold initiatives that transform societies.
“Secondly, we must provide that all litigation arising from a disputed election must be concluded before the inauguration of a winner. This was the case in 1979. The current time frame between elections and inauguration of winners is inadequate to dispense with election litigations.
“What we have currently is akin to asking thieves to keep their loot and use the same to defend themselves while the case of their robbery is being decided. It only encourages mandate banditry rather than discourages it.
“Thirdly, in order to ensure popular mandate and real representation, we must move to require a candidate for President to earn 50% +1 of the valid votes cast, failing which a run-off between the top two candidates will be held. Most countries that elect their presidents use this Two-Round System (with slight variations) rather than our current First-Past-the-Post system.
Examples include France, Finland, Austria, Bulgaria, Portugal, Poland, Turkey and Russia, Argentina, Brazil, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Namibia, Mozambique, Madagascar and even Liberia where a run-off is expected to
“Fourthly, in order to reduce the desperation of incumbents and distractions from governing and also to promote equity and national unity, we need to move to a single six-year term for President to be rotated among the six geo-political zones. This will prevent the ganging up of two or more geo-political zones to alternate the presidency among themselves to the exclusion of other zones.
“INEC should be mandated to verify the credentials submitted to it by candidates and their parties and where it is unable to do so – perhaps because the institutions involved did not respond in time – it must publicly state so and have it on record.
“A situation where a candidate submits contradictory credentials to INEC in different election cycles and the electoral umpire accepts them without question points to gross negligence, at best, or collusion to break the law by the leadership of the INEC, at worst.
“The submission of contradictory qualifying documents by a candidate as well as those found to be forged or falsified should disqualify a candidate even if the falsification or forgery is discovered after the person had been sworn into office.
“The burden of proving that a document submitted to INEC is forged should not be on the opposing candidates in the election. It is never the responsibility of an applicant for a job to prove that the person who eventually got the job did so with forged documents.
“In addition to these proposed constitutional amendments, the Electoral Act should be amended to provide that, except where they explicitly violate the Constitution and other laws, the rules and procedures laid down by the electoral umpire and made public for the benefit of the contestants and the voters will be treated as sacrosanct by the courts in deciding on election disputes.
“A referee cannot be allowed to set the rules for the game only to change or ignore them when one side has scored a goal or is about to win the match. We must restore confidence in our electoral system which the current leadership of INEC has completely eroded and undermined.
“Also, we need well-thought out provisions in the legislation and regulations to reform the judiciary, including the introduction of an automated case assignment system; transparency in the appointment of judges; a practice directory that stresses that the goal of judges in election cases should be to discover and affirm voters’ choice rather than disregarding voters’ choice for the sake of technicalities.
“There should also be publicly available annual evaluation of the performance of judges using agreed criteria.
“By improving the transparency of the electoral process and reducing the incentives to cheat, in addition to transparency in the appointment of judges and other judicial reforms, the number of election petitions as well as corruption in the judiciary will be significantly reduced.
“More importantly, we would have succeeded in taking away the right to elect leaders from the courts and return it to the voters to whom it truly belongs”, Atiku said.
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