FOUNDER, Centre for Values in Leadership, Professor Pat Utomi, has regarded the upcoming general election as the most divisive in living memory and echoed the need for a transitional government, to ensure the emergence of a government of national unity.
Utomi, who decried the North-East insurgency and economic threats, also expressed fears at contentions in the public space in the run-up to the elections, which may destabilise the country afterward.
Speaking exclusively with the Nigerian Tribune on Monday, he said “I also share in the need for transitional government. There is a sense in that this is the most divisive elections our country has witnessed, perhaps in living memory. You almost have a situation that it does not matter which way things go, you would have some strong contention that may be destabilising.”
Emphasising this position, Utomi added that “we have a couple of national emergencies facing us; we have national economic emergency, national sovereignty emergency in terms of North-East insurgency.
“There has never been a greater need for a government of national unity as in the Yakubu Gowon era as there is today. So it is a perspective I share that we need transitional government.”
Lamenting the failure of political actors to bring issues to the front burner in their campaigns, he called on the chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega, to force a process that involved issue-based debates at all levels of government between candidates.
Such debates, according to Utomi, would force out “cash and carry” politicians in Nigerian politics.
Utomi noted that “Nigerian politics has been reduced to cash and carry. So, most of the people who have cash to carry are usually not those who can think.
“When Professor Jega spoke at Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) some months ago, I raised that issue and he acknowledged it. Some electoral systems have forced a change in that in other countries, through several rounds of debate between candidates on issues.”
“In a place like South Korea, their politics was as messy as ours until the electoral commission then forced a process that involved debates at every level. This eventually forced out the ‘cash and carry’ types and only people who had a certain vision of society began to participate in elections, but we seem to have been unwilling to do that in Nigeria.
“Unfortunately, we have not been able to do that. And so we get all types of charlatans running for office once they can find some money somewhere. They try to buy the process and try to even abort anything that involves engaging in a discussion of a vision of society,” he decried.
On INEC’s readiness for the 2015 elections, Utomi noted the need to restructure the elections management system and called for the commitment of citizens to monitoring the process.
“What we need to do is restructure the elections management system so that we not only have the technocrats running the electoral process, but would also have a representation of the major stakeholders.
Source: Tribune
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