“It becomes very important that the bedrock of democracy, which is elections that are credible, based on fairness and transparency, should matter to all citizens regardless of their political persuasion. To the extent of the 2023 elections, it is very clear, even by the most charitable of people, that the elections were subpar,” she said.
According to her, Nigeria is still in election mode, and to that fact lies this concept of all eyes on the judiciary.
She said that FixPolitics Initiative has carried on with topical engagement for citizens of this country around our democracy.
Continuing, she said: “Two things come for me in terms of lessons of the 2023 elections. We do not have a work programme set out for us. We could see clearly that the matter of result management is below standard in our electoral process and we have to use legal instrument to fix this. We must also fix all the administrative things that are necessary. Technology cannot fail in our own case when technology does work in another jurisdiction”.
Ezekwesili said it was not proper for Nigeria to have a candidate sworn into office while judicial petitions are still flying around.
“It just creates too much instability in the system for a society like ours. So, l believe that as we go forward, the third pillar of our FixPolitics group will focus on mobilising society towards the deepening of reforms that are necessary to build the institutions, nuances, precepts and ethos of democracy. We cannot have pseudo democracy and call it democracy. We do not need properly so-called democracy; we need a system that will deliver the kinds of competencies, ethics and capabilities necessary to build us into an economically free and progressive society.”
“I wish there were answers in the light of what we see clearly to be a systemic captive by a predatory political class; that is really what everyone has been saying. Though we don’t have the answers, we have some lessons from the past. One of the lessons is that it actually took the work of some people seated here, the ones online and, perhaps, some of the ones that are watching us, to get President Muhammadu Buhari, who was adamant about reforming the electoral system, to sign the bill. You know how long the amendment act, which is simple, something that was just going to advance the quality of elections in our country, lasted in parliament. Our own politicians fought it, for what purpose? One of the best outcomes of this election, for me, was that the Office Of The Citizen (OOTC) came to life,” she added.
She explained that OOTC is the most important office in the land adding that if the citizen cares about changing society, society would change.