Mr. Jibril Samuel Okutepa (SAN) earned the prestigious title of a Senior Advocate of Nigeria in 2011. In this interview with AMEH EJEKWONYILO, he speaks on the delayed general elections and sundry issues in the country’s justice delivery sector.
What are your views on the call by some politicians for the arrest of the Chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission ((INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega’s over sundry allegations?
I have not been able to see for instance under the electoral act where a section on permanent voters’ card is a condition for precedent for one to vote.
What I do know and is the requirement of law is that for you to vote, you must have your name on the voters’ register.
Now, if Permanent Voters’ Card (PVC) is a means of identification, it is not the only legally required way of identifying a person to vote. We have national identity card; we have other things that can identify you as being the owner.
But I can understand the anxiety of INEC in tying it to PVC in order to eliminate “ghost” voters, because a lot of people can come and hold themselves out as being Jibril Okutepa when the reality is they are not Jibril Okutepa.
So, to that extend INEC is trying as much as possible to block every loophole.
But as to whether Prof. Attahiru Jega had committed an offence or not, I think this call with respect is being motivated by people who find Jega too hot for manipulation.
People who find Jega too unbendable to be bent; people who find him a person of integrity and the only way they can go around to embarrass him; to make him lose his temper is; to make him lose his cool, to make him lose focus, and for him to be blackmailed into accepting to play ball is that he should be arrested and prosecuted.
If I were Jega, I will be happy for it because the prison is not meant for animals. It is meant for human beings, and we have a process in our law that you don’t just have to send somebody to prison; you must embark upon due process.
Having said that Jega is merely the chairman of INEC. I concede that the bulk stops at his table, but he did not participate in the registration of voters or issuance of PVCs to voters.
These so-called alleged under-aged persons; who issued them the PVCs, who registered them? Was it Jega or an officer of INEC? Crime is individualized; you do not send a wife for instance to prison because the husband is a robber.
You must show evidence that indeed the wife knows that the husband is a robber and actively connived with the husband to rob; in which case both the wife and the husband can be arraigned in court on the basis of criminal responsibility.
A situation of 774 local governments with different wards and people go there to register and registration officers, electoral officers and various staff of INEC sent for this purpose.
For me, it smacks of gross irresponsibility for anybody to say Jega should be arrested and prosecuted for an alleged issuance of PVCs to under-aged persons. In any case, who says those people are under-aged? Which court has found them to be under-aged? Where are the birth certificates of those people? Do they know when they were born? How do they determine that they are under-aged?
So, to answer your question, anybody who is calling for Jega’s prosecution should have his brain examined in a psychiatrist hospital.
If the handing over date of May 29 fails, do you see the military coming in?
Well, I’m not giving to speculation. The shift in date of the elections is still within constitutional provision.
You see, when a man has a journey to make and he is not doing it well, he can still in the course of that manufacture reasons to be on the way, but the moment he keeps manufacturing one reason or the other and he gets to the terminal end of his journey, what other reason will he manufacture to go beyond that? March 28 and April 11 are close to May 29, and our constitution has set a parameter that election must be held at least 30 days to the expiration of the tenure of the current government. So, if they like they can still postpone it, but they hold election 30 days to May 29! The window of opportunity that has been created by the constitution will end on April 27.
So, after that, what reasons will they then proffer to postpone election or force INEC to postpone election? Because I have held the view and am holding it very strongly that INEC was blackmailed to shift this election! It is what I refer to as political and security blackmail for INEC to shift the election.
It’s not that there are no available PVCs to be collected. Can you take a horse to the river and force it to drink? And people have argued that there is more collections of PVCs in the North than in South. Who do you blame? Did INEC manufacture less PVCs for the South and more for the North? People’s awareness and eagerness to collect differ.
I drove from here to my village to collect my PVC. How many Nigerians would want to do so? Because a time has come where people who have capacity to change government should not sit and be talking that this government is bad.
The only medium by changing government now is by voting. And INEC says before you can vote, not only most your name be on the voters register, you must also have your permanent voters card in your hand. And so, we must cooperate with INEC to do so.
It takes patriotism and nationalism to do so. Some people have moved from the North to the South and vice-versa. Who do you blame, can INEC go and force voters to go and collect their PVCs. So, when we are putting blame on INEC, we must be careful in doing so.
How many of the political parties have ever embarked on political education of the electorate? It’s just of recent that they mounted the rostrum and said, “Make sure you collect your PVC”.
Before now how many political parties have gone to church or mosque, gone to market places, gone to town hall meetings to call on people to vote? Political education is one of the functions of a political party but they don’t do it. They would rather gather together and steal our money and donate it in contravention of the electoral act.
To be concluded next week.
