CENTUS NWEZE Reporting
Former Presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 2023 general elections, Prince Adewole Adebayo, doesn’t think that writing open letters to US President, Joe Biden and European countries, like Chimamanda Adichie wrote recently would solve electoral problems in the country.
Rather, according to him, reforms on the Independent National Electrical Commission (INEC), would solve problems better, saying that the kind of works the Commission is assigned to do are not the most important ones.
While not mentioning the author specifically on Thursday at the “Special Post-Mortem Roundtable On the 2023 Elections in Nigeria,” organised by the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) at the Institute in Lagos,
“People have to determine whether they want better governance or a four-yearly ritual that doesn’t improve their situation.
“We are trying to realize that Nigeria is a mature county and we can’t look outside for salvation.
“So, writing letters to Joe Biden, Tony Blair or whoever does not help matters.”
His party, SDP, in some states in the country was percieved largely as an appendage of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, and there were strong speculations that president elect Bola Tinubu may defect to the party if APC failed to give him the ticket last year.
Adebayo lamented that “INEC is making up for failure of infrastructure, as well as failure of governance in many areas.”
Noting that the theme of the event was apt, Adebayo added: “We are starting on time to examine our electoral processes, our politics and attitude to better governance in Nigeria.”
He advised Nigerians to take responsibility for the elections, adding: “Nigerians are self aware, they know that we need our elections to be okay and we have stopped pretending that our elections are okay.