The experts urged former heads of states and past presidents like Olusegun Obasanjo, Goodluck Jonathan, Yakubu Gowon, Ibrahim Babangida, and Abdulsalami Abubakar to put pressure on Tinubu to implement the report.

To truly achieve electoral integrity and foster national development, President Bola Tinubu should transfer the power to appoint the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to the National Judicial Council (NJC), in accordance with the recommendations of the Justice Mohammed Uwais Report on Electoral Reforms submitted in December 2008.

This was the view of two experts who spoke on the Friday edition of Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, a socio-political programme aired on Channels Television.

The experts urged former heads of states and past presidents like Olusegun Obasanjo, Goodluck Jonathan, Yakubu Gowon, Ibrahim Babangida, and Abdulsalami Abubakar to put pressure on Tinubu to implement the report of the Justice Uwais Committee which was instituted by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua before his demise.

The experts are Dr Sam Amadi of the Abuja School of Social and Political Thoughts, as well as Prof Adewale Aderemi of the National Institute of Legislative and Democratic Studies.

Amadi said, “The former presidents should come together and convince the current president to get back the Uwais Report. If you don’t do democracy well, you are worse than dictatorship. Democracy should have a system and structure for people to perform and the possibility of losing election if you don’t perform.

“If you ask me, while we deal with the other bigger issues, there is a low-hanging fruit: former presidents should put pressure and say: get back to an INEC which is not appointed by the president so that we can actually have the possibility, the threat and the incentive that people in public office will leave office if they don’t perform. If we want to practice democracy, we have to get that right for development.”

Amadi also said democratic countries like the United States scale democratic values across their sub-regions, but nobody is scaling the right idea within the political class in Nigeria. “No leadership is doing that because the people who lead don’t even believe in those values,” he said.

On his part, Aderemi, who agreed with Amadi on the need for thorough electoral reforms for transparent elections, said the ruling class need to sit up and reach an elite consensus for the development of the country.

He said, “In addition to what Dr Amadi has said, we need to look at devolution of power.

“There is a false of security in the country. I think the ruling class does not realise how close we are to a calamity we might not recover from. We are a country of paradoxes. We have a rich country but poor people.”

Electoral Reforms, Restructuring Vital – Ex-AGF

Similarly on the programme, a former Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Kanu Agabi, lamented that Nigeria is a nation of abundant ideas, the ideas are not being applied.

“Why are the ideas not being applied? Because we have too many people occupying office for which they are not qualified,” he said.

Agabi agreed that the nation’s electoral laws need some reforms to get Nigeria on the path of development.

He said, “Buhari was president of this country. He was qualified to be president. He became president but if he goes to my local government now in Cross River to be a councilor, they won’t let him. He can be president of Nigeria, but he can’t be governor of my state.

“We need to have a consensus on integration, on fighting corruption and structuring. That’s why there are agitations on restructuring.

“I believe that this country is very easy to run because we’re intelligent, we are hard-working, we are resilient, we are very patient. So, people like that are easy to rule. The reason we are having difficulties is the bad examples of the leaders.

“The politicians are constantly manipulating the system; manipulating communities against one another. The president (Tinubu) must speak, he should unite the nation. That’s the essence of the presidential system. He must speak.”

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