Former prime minister of Kenya, Raila Odinga, has said only an independent judiciary will rescue Africa’s democracy.
Odinga who is the opposition leader of that country also urged Nigerian youths to ensure they vote for the right leaders in the forthcoming general election.
Odinga lamented that leaders in Africa are paying lip service to the fight against graft.
The presidential candidate in the 2022 elections in Kenya was the keynote speaker at the 14th edition of LEADERSHIP Conference and Awards with the theme, “Credible Election and an Economy in Transition”, held in Abuja on January 31, 2023.
Odinga is currently contesting the outcome of the Kenya presidential election won by William Ruto.
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission in that country had declared former deputy president Ruto winner of the presidential election with 50.49% of the vote and Odinga second with 48.85%.
Odinga had at the LEADERSHIP conference warned Nigerians to be vigilant in the use of technology in the electoral process, saying it could also be deployed to manipulate the process and steal the people’s mandate.
In his exclusive interview with LEADERSHIP Friday, Odinga lamented that Africa has struggled with having free, fair and credible elections because the will of the people are being undermined.
Underscoring the place of the judiciary in Africa’s democratic experience, the former prime minister said judges, just like the members of the electoral commission, are not men or women from heaven.
He said, “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 becoming 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 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”.
Odinga noted that he and his party knew that they had won the elections from their own records, but because the results had been transmitted electronically, they did not have the proof their victory at that time.
He said they asked the court to compel the electoral commission to give them access to the server, but they refused to open the server at that time on the ground that the company called Smartmatics said doing so would infringe on their proprietary rights to open the server.
The former prime minister stated: “Since that time, an insider who works with the electoral commission, has come out as a whistle-blower and has released the results 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.”
Odinga however urged Nigerian youths to participate in the forthcoming coming general elections, as it is the only way to ensure they get leaders who they want.
He said, “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.”
Noting that youths in most African countries have the biggest demography, he however lamented that they are vulnerable to manipulation, particularly by the corrupt leadership.
The opposition leader also lamented the failure of African leaders to seriously fight the war against corruption.
He added that the inability of leaders in the continent to effectively fight graft has impaired development in the region.
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