Executive Director of the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre, and a leading voice in Nigerian civil society advocacy, Mr. Clement Nwankwo, in this interview raises critical issues regarding preparations for the 2027 general elections, creation of state police, and Special Seats Bill before the 10th National Assembly. Onyebuchi Ezigbo brings excerpts.
What is your assessment of the progress being made by the 10th National Assembly in addressing issues of concern to Nigerians through constitutional amendments?
I am hoping that the 10th National Assembly understands the importance of delivering on its promise to amend portions of the Constitution that citizens have asked to be amended. It is three years into the 10th National Assembly, with only a few more months to go.
I think Nigerians will be greatly disappointed if the National Assembly does not deliver on its promise to amend areas of serious concern.
One of those areas is the Special Seats for Women Representation Bill. When you look at the National Assembly, less than four percent of women are represented in the legislative chambers. I think that is scandalous for our politics: out of 469 members of the National Assembly, we have just about 20 who are women. The National Assembly should feel embarrassed by this situation.
The reason for the Special Seats Bill is to find a mechanism that throws up more women in the decision-making process, especially in the legislature. With the executive, it is easy to correct this, because the person elected President at the national level, or Governor at the state level, can appoint more women as ministers and heads of government agencies. But you cannot do so with legislators, and that is why the Special Seats Bill is being proposed.
We think it is something the National Assembly should have taken up expeditiously. If you put it side by side with the State Police Bill that the Executive and National Assembly are pushing, the Special Seats Bill is far more urgent. For those of us advocating for the Special Seats Bill, it is disappointing to see the National Assembly drag its feet on this matter.
What is your view on the proposal for state police and the push for its quick passage by the Federal Government?
Yes, the government appears to be prioritizing the Bill on state police. But for those of us who are concerned about the abuse of state institutions by those who control them, we want to see state police adopted with absolute safeguards for human rights and for the protection of citizens.
It is very important that the process of approving or passing the State Police Bill is done with safeguards as a priority. Secondly, we do not think there is any urgency in having state police created before the 2027 elections. Those who are pushing for state police to be created before 2027 must be very careful about how they are pursuing this agenda.
I think that many Nigerians who may even sympathize with the creation of state police are not happy to see it rushed. For me, the rush to create state police should be deprioritized. More urgent is the Special Seats Bill.
What particular safeguards would you like to see provided for state police in order to guide against abuse?
If you look at the recent Osun State governorship election, you can see the actions of police personnel. We saw how policemen appeared willing to be used in support of a particular political party. We saw opposition party members being arrested, and the police blatantly behaving as if they were working for the ruling party at the national level.
These are major concerns. The police must be insulated from politics; they must be accountable. In cases where public officials, whether at the national or state level, have instigated the police to arrest people who criticize them, this is widespread across the country.
For many of us, the concern is the power of governors and how this can be kept in check so that police are not used arbitrarily at their whims and caprices, to go after critics of state administrations.
What kind of safeguards do you suggest for the proposed state police structure?
A – Presently, the federal police are controlled by the central government, and there is still abuse. Now, if you create state police for 36 states, you may be multiplying that abuse 36 times. That is the concern: that we will not have 37 abused police structures.
That is why the issue of accountability, and the issue of insulating state police from abuse by governors, is very important. That is the worry of every Nigerian. Because you will have jeopardy across 37 authorities. If you are caught by the federal government, you could also be caught by any of the 36 state governors through the abuse of state police. Governors have not shown that they have the capacity to be respectful of human rights.
In specific terms, which template do you suggest as safeguards for preventing state police abuse?
The templates exist. First, who gives operational command to the police? Can the President give operational command? No, he should not.
Secondly, is the police insulated and independent from manipulation and control, including through budgeting? The police should be independently funded. Their appointments, promotions, and retention, not just of heads of police at the national or state levels, should be protected.
Is it insulated from political manipulation? How do you bring people to account? What is the extent of supervision and accountability of the police to the legal and constitutional system? What are citizens’ rights to recourse to the courts with regard to abuses by the police? These are safeguards that should exist.
In a situation where commissioners of police are appointed by a governor, or even nominated by a governor to the State House of Assembly, we know that legislative houses are also abused by governors and that many of them are not independent. If the system worked and governors respected it, and everybody was accountable, then it would be fine. But that is not the case in Nigeria at present.
You can also see concerns about the judiciary, where the Executive is building houses and presenting them to judges as gifts. The appearance is that this could, in several ways, corrupt the judicial system.
What is your view regarding issues leading to the 2027 general elections in Nigeria?
The major issue with the 2023 general election was the transmission of results to the IReV portal. The current Electoral Act 2022 has addressed this, except for one shortcoming that citizens are not happy with: the exception that says, “If there is a failure of the system, INEC can transmit election results manually.” I think that exception is where the problem lies.
But if you have an Electoral Commission that is honest and wants to conduct credible elections, and knows that communication infrastructure is in place, that Commission will insist that electronic transmission of results is mandatory and will make no exceptions in the implementation of the law. That is what citizens need to demand of INEC: that it implements the law in full, not based on the exceptions enacted by the National Assembly.
We should not have this anxiety and tension in the country. I will not attribute the outcome of the Osun election to INEC’s delivery. I think the people of Osun State deserve commendation for what happened, because there were obvious attempts to manipulate the process, including by state institutions and the judiciary.
It was the judiciary that deregistered one of the main parties in the election, although the court later reversed the decision. But in the first place, the courts have no business deregistering political parties. I do not see where the courts derived that power from. You can talk about issues within political parties, especially where there is injustice, but you cannot deregister a political party as a court.
You also cannot have the police get into politics and begin arresting one camp against the other, which is what the police did. You should not have a situation where the Inspector General of Police has to come out and say he has removed a commissioner of police because of public outcry. There should have been no outcry at all. And if a Commissioner of Police puts himself in a position where he has become brazenly partisan, there should be disciplinary action against such an official. Instead, it was simply a reassignment, with no evidence to show that the person reassigned to replace him was any less partisan.
So the commendation for what happened in Osun goes to the people of the state, who said: “We will not allow our election to be rigged by either INEC or the institutions of state”.
In fact, we saw how a minister said that if he had been involved in the Osun election, the result would have been different. It should not be that such a thing is said about an election. Does it mean that as we go into the national elections, and the minister is involved, we will see how he intends to use state institutions to achieve political purposes?
What is your advice to Nigerians as we prepare for the 2027 general election
I think that the Osun governorship election is a lesson to Nigerians. It means that Nigerians need to prepare to defend their votes. Political parties need to build citizens’ and their members’ confidence in the electoral process.
I am not partisan, and I am not canvassing support for any particular political party. I believe that Nigerians should be allowed to go out and vote, and that we as citizens should be able to protect our votes and not allow ourselves to be intimidated by those using state institutions to manipulate the process.