Chief Ralph Okey Nwosu, the National Chairman of African Democratic Congress (ADC), in this interview with EMEKA NZE, bares his mind on the recent ruling of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT), which returned President Bola Tinubu as authentic winner of the February 25 2023 presidential election.
Judgement, yes, one thing that bothers me is that, what is happening in Nigeria is that we all have collective responsibility but somehow, some persons absolving themselves from certain responsibilities. And these set of people are from political parties to Civil Society Organisations, to you guys in the media, to INEC, but INEC is just one body. The democratic ecosystem is diverse. For us to have a very roburst democracy, all the ecosystem must have some integrity. And so, who is doing that? The media will come to you and say many things. Because of the poverty or porosity in governance, we have impoverished everybody. Media man would not get paid as when due. Some media owners will tell journalists working with the organisation not to expect salary because he or she has been given identity card. Media owners paying journalists N25, 000 per month. Is N25, 000 anything for a media man who is creating content on daily basis? Meanwhile, some small people when they create content they are making big money in US Dollars. And then media people that go out and create great content, you pay them N50,000, N100,000 and even at times, you don’t give them anything but only to say I have opened gate for you to make yourself. The porosity of governance, leadership, it has been corrupted. So we all have issues. As I said again, political parties have their own. You can see when we are running elections, we spent almost all the times fighting because people came into the party with agenda. And even some people within the party are also affected by the culture of ecosystem which is also the corrupted culture. They are all part of it. But we have a nation to build. We are all involved in nation building with understanding that you build nations with character. We are all failing when all of a sudden, everybody has failed then you say, yes, you have election, all the elements of ecosystem , all the feature, they have all failed and you now say INEC, INEC, INEC. Imagine, what do you expect? INEC will finish their own, and then you will now shout the judges, judges, judges. We have all failed in our different responsibilities in one way or the other.
