Fears that genuine elections won’t hold in 2027 fuelling defections to APC —Jacob Mark

Former Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, National Legal  Adviser, Jacob Mark, in this monitored interview, suggests reasons politicians are defecting to the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, among others. Excerpts:

The latest development in the PDP is the visit of the party’s National Working Committee led by Kabiru Turaki to former President Goodluck Jonathan, to confer with him, to seek his guidance and all of that. Now, what do you make of this major outcome of that meeting and consultation with the former president saying that the PDP is alive and well and it is the only surviving party since the return to democracy in 1999 and that he remains committed to the party that gave him all his major opportunities as a politician and as a political leader. How significant do you think that is, and how do you think that fits into this lead-up to the 2027 general elections? 

The words of the former president are so soothing and very reassuring, because they are not coming from a riffraff. They are coming from a statesman. Those words are coming from a man recognised and respected around the globe, not just within Africa, but also around the globe. His words mean a lot to all those who mean well for this country. We live in times when people are quick to forget their roots, when decency takes the backstage, when personal interests and self-made egos take the stage. People have forgotten that they were nothing before 1999. People have forgotten the platform that made them have microphones placed before their mouth, and now they are talking as if they are God. So when you have a statesman like that talking rightly and making correct statements, it is soothing. It is a distance far away from what is going on in the country, when you have the elite, the very very important persons, VVIP, as they call themselves, throwing away all the goodies they got from the PDP and running to one party, a party that has thrown the country into chaos, insecurity all over the place. The economy is in shambles.

The ordinary Nigerian is unable to celebrate Christmas or Salah. Civil servants are unable to pay for transportation to their homes after work. To pay children’s school fees, people are going to do DNA tests because they want to confirm whether they have to pay school fees for people they give birth to. We are in trouble in this country, all because people have thrown away the ethics, the integrity that should be attached to politics. It is now just okay to think of the next election, not what the government is doing, not the position of the country, not the condition under which the country and the Nigerian people are living. Nobody is discussing that. Governance has been put to the back seat and 2027 elections have taken the front seat. And it is a shame that people who were brought up are using their left hand to point at their fathers’ houses. It’s a shame, it’s a catastrophe.

When you juxtapose this with people who were local government chairmen, became governors, ministers and you find them talking as if they were born as ministers or as governors, you know that Nigeria has been taken for a ride by the elites of the Nigerian state. And it’s unfortunate. So the discussions with the former president came at the right time. There must be a way of putting people in check. Let us match the brakes and stop this movement to nowhere because the Nigerian politician must respect the Nigerian people.

In my profession as a lawyer, we refer to Rivers State because of the kind of people that have come from there. In my profession, we highly adore them. But it is embarrassing that a young man like Wike will come and browbeat everybody to submission and he’s dancing all over the place with nobody to call him to order.

It’s an embarrassment. Now, Nigeria needs to sit down and think. This issue of people decamping to one party is a threat to democracy. And some of them have said it clearly. And we are tempted to agree that while they are shifting to APC, it is not because the APC has performed. It’s not because the records are positive.

No, it is because they say that in 2027, election results will be written by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, for the ruling party. And so nobody wants to lose out simply because he’s in a different political party. This is the main cause of the defection from the National Assembly to the governors, everywhere.

It’s not because people are happy. You can’t go to some villages and campaign in the name of APC. They will chase you out.

And that is why we have started seeing in the North where members of the National Assembly who went home in December were beaten up. And this trend is going to continue because people are in pain. And yet the elite, the VVIP, are defecting to the party that is bringing pain to them, and they are so arrogant about it. They are unapologetic about it. We may not have clear-cut ideologies in the political parties.

But if you go to my village, for instance, we have our groups. We have our beliefs. We believe. We know who stands for us. We know the political parties that have been there for us. So once you move out of that political party, you have lost the election.

And they know it. But at the elite level, they say there is no ideology so they can shift from one political party to the other. But if you go to your own environment, you know who has always been aligned to outside forces.

You know who does not come for your cultural meetings. You know who does not identify with your people. But because you know who belongs to you, you will vote for that person. That is traceable to our Nigerian system. So, when the elite behave as if once the governor moves, everything moves with him, they are making a mistake. And they are going to be shocked. Unless, of course, what they are saying is true, that there will be no elections, that the elections will be written by INEC for them, if elections will indeed take place and every vote will count, there are going to be shocks in this 2027. 

There is this concern that the APC has already taken up to about 28-29 states with the governors defecting. Yet in the face of that, the PDP is saying, we are alive and well. If we can just get over our court cases, we are the most durable political party and we will upstage the APC. Do you think that it is still possible for any political party to upstage the APC? What do you think could be that factor that could change the calculus ahead of the 2027 election?

Well, the discussions we have had so far are the foundation. Let the issues be taken up politically. We should not allow the courts to be the ones to determine political issues. And I am an advocate of political solutions to issues. And that is why I am happy that the national leadership is going around.

There is nothing wrong, and it is encouraging to see the national chairman leading his other colleagues to visit leaders of note, even those who have left the party like Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi and the rest. There is absolutely good faith in that and I am encouraged by that. First of all, the PDP can make headway if political issues are addressed politically and resolved.

Second, if we get the right candidate to contest this election in 2027, I mean the presidential election, there will be an upstage. All this movement, like I said, is because there is an assumption that there will be no election, that the election result will be written and that a candidate will be declared whether people vote or not. And that is a threat to democracy, not to PDP. That is what Nigerians should stand up against. We are aware that most of these governors and members of national and state assemblies are moving because that assumption is largely and widely believed. So, where does the Nigerian person stand? Where do the electorates stand? Do they have a right in this country to put their feet down and say no to what is happening? Nigeria is a large country made up of widely and highly educated people, made up of people that can say no to nonsense and they are waiting.

Let them allow every opposition party to work freely. Let them allow it. Let the federal government withdraw its police from the party secretariat of PDP. Without a court order, the federal forces have taken over the PDP national secretariat and have barricaded it, and they are keeping policemen there on a daily watch while the streets are being ravaged by armed robbers.

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