By Eric Elezuo
Following the rejection by the Godswill Akpabio-led Senate of the electronic transmission of election results on real-time basis, renowned journalist and a chieftain of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Aare Dele Momodu, has lent his voice, dismissing the actions of the Senate as unfortunate.
He accused the legislators of attempts to disable technology ahead of time through their flimsy excuses.
In his interview monitored on News Central, Momodu berated the Senate for striving hard to hide behind a finger, noting that Nigerians were however, not surprised at their decision as their body language was tailored towards pleasing ‘one man’.
Recall that as a result of the outrage that greeted the earlier rejection, the Senate convened an emergency plenary, where they rescinded their decision, accepted electronic transmission, but added a proviso, which fall back to their original intention of sanctioning manual transfer.
Below is an excerpt of the interview…
(Yesterday,) the Senate rescinded its earlier decision and now has come up with transmit electronically but without the real time thing, what’s your reaction from there?
I don’t think any Nigerian is surprised about what happened and what is going to happen. It is obvious that the ruling government knows that numbers are not adding up and it is not likely to add up as they continue to refurbish Nigerians and as such resorts to DIY (do it yourself). They have to find a way to make sure that they add up the numbers to get what they want, they have always done that. But I think what I saw in the last couple of days is that Nigerians are really warming up for a big fight, and it’s not going to be easy for the ruling government to get away with it, they’ve always gotten away with it, and I think Nigerians are too desperate now to accept such transcality from the ruling government.
The concern from many Nigerians is that the opposition parties are not opposing as it is supposed to, many opposition members not standing their grounds. One will think that the political parties will be holding their members accountable even while they are in their chambers.
I have always maintained that the biggest political party anywhere including Nigeria is what I call the floaters party and so people are worrying about the ADC, PDP, Labour, NNPP. The fight will not come from that direction alone, it is going to involve everyone of us whether you are in the opposition or not. The floaters party, most of those we found in Abuja, I am sure they didn’t belong to any political party. It’s no longer a political affair, it is about our country, it’s about the direction we are going and the passidious disposition of our legislators who ordinarily should be speaking and acting on behalf of the people of Nigeria not just for their personal interests. I saw something on the social media which I tried to advise the Senate president in particular because he is someone I have known since he was governor and the question I asked him was why would you want to risk your own legacy, future because of personal ambition of one man. A lot of them regret it, all the problems in Abuja will end one day maximum after 2027 if we manage to cross the river then they will come back. Why can’t we do that which is right, my appeal to them is listen to the people, if you don’t, you end up like all the other failures in the past.
Regardless of the fact that we say this will ensure that rigging is curtailed or stopped completely, it may not work out that way
It is about the mindset of the politicians, there’s no big deal about technology today. I flew through Doha and Dubai last week, and throughout the flight, the telephones were working at 40,000ft. At the end of a trillion budget, technologies must work and if you don’t want it to work then you will deliberately disable it. What the legislators are doing now is to disable technology by giving flimsy excuses ahead of time. It’s so unfortunate.
Nigerians believe that the country doesn’t have the technology yet for electronic voting
I told you that it is about the mindset. There’s nowhere in the world that technology is not advancing, but we are rather going backwards. There was an election in Ghana in December 2024, pre-midnight I spoke to the current president of Ghana who assured me maybe quarter to midnight that he has won and I started begging him that he shouldn’t go to sleep that the results can be changed before morning then he started laughing. I am sure he knew where I was coming from. I am telling you if they want it to work, it will work but we have very dangerous politicians, who would do everything not to leave power, that is the truth and there’s nothing to hide. The politicians want to hide behind one finger and Nigerians should not allow them because Nigeria is not owned by a few people. What we are seeing is that there will be gangsters who would do everything to frustrate everything called technology and even when you say you agree with them and you want to use Analog technology, they will still frustrate it, whatever technology you bring they will try to frustrate it but God will frustrate them too.
