How would you rate governance across Africa in the last decade in the context of improvements in human development and economic foundations which some said have been undermined by an increasingly perilous security situation and widespread democratic backsliding?
It has the positive and negative sides. As Africans, we know where we are coming from. There is the post-independence development in the continent. There was a period where we suffered from single party and military dictatorships on the continent. Then when the wind of change began to blow, first in Eastern Europe, that brought down the Berlin Wall, it also came to the continent of Africa and we saw single party dictatorships and military dictatorships crumbling.
Africans have been, of course, struggling for a long time for democratization. That was during the Cold War, when there was polarization, the West versus the East and therefore, you know, to the West, so long as you showed that you are an ally, it did not matter how you were running your country. But immediately after this fall of the Berlin Wall, then new vocabulary was invented. Transparency, accountability, and good governance. That is what actually helped the African democrats to move in eventually and then remove these dictatorships and good governance was established on the continent.
We had more open democratic societies. New constitutions were written on the continent, which gave, for example, time limits for the presidency and also created institutions that were checking each other.
That period, the 90s, and it was then the first decade of this century saw the highest rate of growth on the continent. In fact, at one time, out of the 10 fastest growing economies in the world, six were in Africa. Unfortunately, in the second decade, I’ve seen some reversals of gains which have been made on the continent. I’ve seen time limits being changed and we are seeing the big man syndrome actually coming back in some African countries.
We are also beginning to now witness military coups taking place on the continent. Unfortunately, they are taking place and they are being welcomed by the people. There is a certain amount of disillusionment for our people. That those who had been given power to run the affairs of the people, have not lived up to the expectations of the people.
I’ve also seen the decline in terms of growth in some African countries. Poverty, which was threatened in that period, is beginning again to now begin to grow among our people. So there’s a kind of desperation. So I would say that it is positive and negative development on the continent, you cannot generalize. There are some other countries which are still on the path of growth and there are other countries where there is backsliding on the continent. This is what I would describe as the state of our continent today.
The 2022 general election in Kenya, your country, had the lowest voter turnout in 15 years as only 65% of the 22.12 million registered voters turned up to cast their ballots. Low interest by the youth among others was credited as reasons for the decline in voter turnout. What will be your advice to Nigerian youths in the forthcoming elections?
I want to really blame the players and the populace, particularly the youths. As you know, in most African countries, demographically, the youth is basically now the biggest, largest portion of the population. I think in Kenya, nearly 70% of the population is below 35 years of age. Now this is a very vulnerable group of people, because some of them don’t understand where the society is coming from. And they have not known what the people have suffered in the past. They look at today and not tomorrow, and they are vulnerable to manipulation, particularly by the corrupt leadership.
Politics has become very commercial on the continent, so people have campaigned, money has been given to groups of people, particularly the youth. And because youth are used to being bribed, they see no reason to go and vote unless they are paid on polling day. And since that is not the case, they don’t turn up to vote. In my view, that is one of the reasons.
Secondly, people have seen elections being rigged. In my case, I have been rigged three times. I participated five times. I only lost one election. So the people feel there is no need to vote, because if you vote, it will not make a difference. That is why you have that kind of apathy. I want to be specific about Kenya. But generally, I think that what is happening in Kenya applies to many other African countries. Some are different. I think in Zambia last time, the youth turned up to vote in large numbers. Where you saw for the first time, an incumbent president was beaten at the ballot. But if the youth don’t turn up to express their will, they will be ruled by those that they may not like. So my appeal would be to the youth of Nigeria to turn up in large numbers in the coming elections and elect the leadership that they want. I think it will be positive for Nigerians.
African politics and democracy will likely see a busy 2023 year, as many of its countries, notably Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, Liberia, Gabon and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), will hold high-stakes elections. What are your thoughts on how African nations should conduct free and fair elections?
Elections are competition, it gives the people the opportunity to change leadership or maintain the leadership, depending on how the leadership has served them and because of this, it is high-stakes. There are vested interests who want to maintain power at all costs. In the past, people used to take guns and overthrow governments, or people used to fight to overthrow governments.
Now, democracy enables the people to peacefully change governments or maintain them or retain them, depending on how the people feel. But then, because it is high-stakes, the vested interests, everybody wants to retain power. What is important is to create proper institutions that will ensure fair competition, and that ultimately the will of the people prevail at the elections.
One is that people should be enabled to freely express their will at the elections and you start by voter education. People should be well informed about why they are participating in elections.
Two, people should be enabled to participate. In other words, whoever is eligible to register as a voter should be given the opportunity to register as a voter.
Then, thirdly, those who are willing to be elected should also be enabled to participate in the campaigns freely, without being hindered by those who are in power.
And then, of course, free association in terms of political parties and so on should be empowered to be able to participate in the elections. Then the institutions that are entrusted with the responsibility of conducting elections. Some call it the electoral commission. It should be a body that is able to preside over free and fair elections. In other words, no vested interest in this institution.
Here there are several proposals. Of course, most other countries have got one electoral commission which is centralized. There are of course challenges with this kind of institution. We have seen electoral commissions undermining the will of the people. In other words, people have voted one way, but in the end, they go and announce results the other way. This undermines African democracy.
The question has been how should the electoral commission be constituted? Because they talk about men and women of integrity who should be leading the electoral commission. But they say that there is nobody in this world who is neutral or independent. They say that even if you give the Pope the vote, he will cast it in favor of somebody. So, there is nobody who can be said to be neutral or independent.
All of them have got vested interests one way or the other. There have been suggestions that parties should be allowed to participate in the constitution of the electoral commission, so that they can check each other.
If you ask me, back in Kenya, the country has had only two free and fair elections since independence. The one that brought independence in 1963, and the one which conducted elections in 2002. The independent elections were conducted by the outgoing colonial government. But in 2002, after the return of multi-partisan, of the first two elections, we insisted that the commission must have representatives from both sides, that is the government and the opposition on equal measure. The commission then consisted of eleven members, all appointed by the president.
The opposition was allowed to appoint ten members, so it became twenty-one members. They were counter-checking each other. That was why the elections of that year were free and fair. Subsequently, the president then, who had been elected, argued that although the opposition had been allowed to nominate members, that was just a gentleman’s agreement, it was not in the constitution. The constitution still allowed the president to single-handedly nominate. And when he nominated, that was the cause of the fiasco of 2007, when he lost the elections, but he was declared by his appointed electoral commission as the winner, and the country went into almost a state of civil war, and many people were killed or died. So there is generally an argument that the electoral commission should have people nominated by the parties that are participating in the elections, so that they can be able to counter-check each other. That is the other one.
Then, finally, of course the media should be allowed to inform the people about the campaign issues in the campaign, freely. Free media is very important for free and fair elections.
Finally, on election day, the D-Day, there should be security. People should be allowed to go and freely cast their votes in a secret way.
The counting should be done transparently, and the announcement should also be done transparently. There is another suggestion that maybe there is no need for one centralized electoral commission, that this commission should be regional, and that each region should be having its own commission or structure where the results announced there will be final, so that at the national level, only the tallying is being done. That would in itself also deal with the issue of where the results coming from the regions can be manipulated at the national tallying center. That is another suggestion which has also come up. This would help, in my view.
Political contests in Africa often end with judicial pronouncements and litigations. Considering the fact that the judiciary has a crucial role to play, do you think the continent needs to strengthen the capacities of the judges in the area of delivering fair judgements in post-election matters?
Judges, just like the members of the electoral commission, are not men or women from heaven. They live in society. They also have their various biases. Usually, the judiciary is influenced by the executive to make rulings which are partial, one way or the other. They will use legal jargon to justify the decision that they are making, one way or the other.
We have seen judges who are independent, who have called a spade a spade, and said this is not right, like it happened once in Kenya, the first time on the continent, when the judiciary nullified the presidential elections. But in most of the African countries it rarely happens.
I think the Kenya example has been followed only once, or replicated twice on the continent. We need to have a truly professional and independent judiciary, which could make a ruling which is impartial.
Then there should also be sufficient time for this to be done. Like in Kenya, the provision is only for 14 days. You are given seven days in which to compile your evidence, and then the judiciary has got seven days in which to listen to you and then after that to make a ruling within those 14 days.
So the time is not there. You find most of the evidence becomes available after the ruling has been done. Like in our case, there was manipulation. We insisted that we wanted to have access to the server where the results had been transmitted, because there was no problem in our case at the polling station. The process was smooth, and the results announced were correct ones, and were scanned by the presiding officer and transmitted to the National Tallying Centre. Then the presiding officer goes with the results to the constituency tallying centre, and the returning officer at the constituency tallying centre receives the results from all the polling stations in the constituencies, and then counts them and announcements made, and again transmits.
The problem is only at the National Tallying Centre, where there is a problem, where the results were being captured because this was electronic transmission of results, the votes are being altered, and false results are being announced.
Now we only came to discover three months after the elections, after the announcement, because we had ourselves seen it.
We knew that we had won the elections from our own records, but because the results had been transmitted electronically, we did not have the proof at that time. We asked the court to compel the Electoral Commission to give us access to the server, and they refused to open the server at that time, saying that the company called Smartmatics said that that would infringe on their proprietary rights to open the server. Since that time, an insider who works with the Electoral Commission, has come out as a whistle-blower and has released the results which were in the server, which showed that I had won by over two million votes, and that was our contention at that time.
Even the exit polls had shown that it was not even close. The exit polls showed that it was 56 against 42 percent. It turns out now it was 57 percent against 41 percent. But this is after the wrong results had been announced, and the judiciary itself refused to compel the electoral body to give us access to the server. That is why we are talking about an independent judiciary that is not compromised.
There have been concerns that longer-term political stability in Africa may be threatened as a result of a number of successful and attempted coups in West Africa lately. Could this be a sign that democracy in the region tends to be superficial and that despite some gains, democracy remains largely cosmetic, what are your thoughts?
It is very sad indeed that we are seeing men in uniform re-emerging on our continent. I would say it is a failure of our democratisation process that is once again inviting the men in the uniform. Because you find somebody who was elected on a great promise of reforms and so on. After they have failed, they know that they cannot win the elections freely democratically. They rig themselves back in power. Others, because they want to continue, even though the constitution provides for term limits, they want to amend the constitution to extend their stay in power. This of course annoys the people, and the people are powerless.
It is only the men in uniform who can come and do it on behalf of the people. They are saying, because they are not doing it on behalf of the people, they are doing it on their own behalf. So we have seen unfortunately the return of men in uniform.
In some places you see when they come back these days, they are being praised by the populace. It is actually retrogressive. It is something that is very unfortunate indeed. I think at the AU level, this matter should be dealt with. The AU has acted sometimes by saying, we don’t recognize the overthrow of a government. But at the same time they don’t sanction the one who has overthrown a government who was actually trying to subvert the constitution.
The AU must come out clearly and speak strongly in favor of African democratization. That is when this democratization process will move forward.
A country like that should be suspended from the AU, and the AU should send its own people in that country to ensure that the subsequent elections being held are truly free and fair.
If given the chance to lead your country, what significant change would bring to the way the country has been governed by its former leaders?
I’ve said it and was even in our manifesto that we wanted to bring change in our country’s run as you know, Kenya is one of the leading countries in the continent but we could do much better in terms of our GDP, and those who needed to increase the GDP, increasing the GDP, but also ensure all the resources are distributed among our people. Africa is the richest continent on the planet as far as resources are concerned, these cultural resources and I’ve been saying that it is a paradox that the richest is also the poorest in terms of living conditions. We got minerals in the continent and these minerals are being mined and taken out of the continent and are being processed outside the continent.
And then we get back finished products which you know we import. I have said that we wanted to make Kenya a manufacturing hub that we want to do value addition to our goods before we send them out to the country. Instead of exporting iron ore, we should be exporting steel products. If Africa does that and Kenya can lead on the Eastern Seaboard, Africa will be richer and that’s why those that are importing those primitive from Africa who don’t want to see people talking about these value addition to be in power in Africa.
That is one of the reasons why they seem to be planning to be in competition with their own industries here in Africa. But I’m saying that Africa cannot forever remain basically a market for manufactured goods from outside Africa and then they prefer exporting to you, they look down upon you. Where do you even get the money to import those goods from them? I will also lay a lot of emphasis on manpower development in our country, ensuring that our children get the opportunity to get quality education. The other one is the issue of health where we said we really want to deal with health, we’ll invest in health so that our children, our women can get good quality health care, self-sufficiency in food production. Food is most important in a society and you see most African countries are importing foods.
This war in Russia and Ukraine has actually formed most fundamental paradox that most African countries actually depend on grains from Ukraine and Russia. That is why they cannot talk clearly about who is wrong or right in that conflict. We have many arable land in Africa where we can really grow wheat, maize and barley. I intend to make a contribution to the development of Kenya.
You have contested presidential election five times and have since become the leader of opposition in Kenya and the face of opposition politics in Africa. What’s your impression of politics in Africa? Has politics in Africa evolved in a good or bad way?
I think yes and no? Yes, I think that from the days of the Cold War you made a lot of progress in the continent. African countries, many of them have come up with democratic institutions. Now holding regular elections, less single party or no single party dictatorship in the continent. The military is coming back but it is a temporary situation as a reaction to bad governance in those countries. It is an issue that can actually be resolved. I think that progress has been made on the continent. It could have been much better but we need to do more at the AU level.
I as a pan Africanist, actually, a student of the school of Kwame Nkrumah, I learned that Africa must rise and as you can see Europe is moving to become all of one EU, now you can travel across the entire Europe with just one ID. You don’t need a visa. The currency is one in Europe. We can make that kind of progress on the continent. If you look at the United States, as one country now they’re moving with Canada and Mexico. In Asia, China is a huge country, China’s population is bigger than the entire African population. India’s population is bigger than the rest of the continent. I think that pan Africanists should stand up and be counted. This should really be our agenda for the 21st century for-African unity.
After the recent presidential election, which you contested and lost to President William Ruto, you called for a mass protest against the outcome of the poll and you have so have since insisted that you do not recognise his government because the election was flawed. How far are you willing to go in demanding that he resigns?
I’ve seen it clearly because the evidence is out and it’s there on the website, you can access it. They have not been able to controvert it. The Electoral Commission cannot be because those figures which are there coming from the Constituency Telling Centers and they were posted there. Out of 290 constituencies, they posted 245 constituencies and each one bears the stamp of the Electoral Commission. It bears the signature of the returning officer, it bears the signatures of the tally officer, party agent and our political parties.
Then there is a barcode which if you scan that barcode, it tells you the location, the date, the time when that particular form was scanned and was transmitted to the server. So it does not lie, all those facts are available we cannot change them and if you add all that it shows that I got 8.1 million votes, Ruto got 5.9 million votes, these are the facts. You cannot deny it, and that is what the chairman of the electoral commission is trying to manipulate. That’s why I’m saying I don’t recognize Mr. Ruto as the president of Kenya. He is an impostor, I told him that he must respect the will of the people of Kenya.
