From Abdulfatah Babatunde, Yenagoa
A Media Practitioner and former Managing Director of The Guardian newspaper, Mr Martins Oloja, has appealed to politicians in Nigeria and Africa to learn from the near-perfect American democratic process.
Oloja made the appeal in an exclusive interview with TheNewsZenith on the sideline of the just concluded 20th All Nigeria Editors Conference (ANEC) in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State.
According to him, that election is not about what it means to Africa.
It’s about what Africa can learn from that, especially Nigeria as a strategic country, the most populous in Africa and also the hope of the black race.
“We are still talking about the outcome of even our last election since February 2023.
“But look at what had just happened. They are more populated, their democracy is older and within 24 hours the result was ready and not controversial.
“And even the fiercest opponent, projected to be a great rival, conceded victory and things are going on.
“So what we need to learn from that is how democracy happens there, despite the projection and how even public opinion is not shaping the outcome of what happened democracy. There is democracy.
“The people’s choice, the outcome, which shows the people’s choice, is different from what the media had projected to people that it was going to happen to be this……
“The people spoke. It means that there is some disconnect between what the media is projecting and what the people want.
“So, it is a great lesson for us; even in the media, not only for politicians that (Donald) Trump was not projected to win or come back.
“And he has come back in a big way with the popular votes and electoral college votes.
“He has won big. He has been re-elected. He has been rehired, as one headline put it; rehired in a big way.
“So, the lesson is not about what Trump is going to do,” Oloja, who is also a member of the Presidential Livestock Reforms Implementation Committee, said.
According to him, Trump is not going to help us to develop our economy, he’s not going to help us to balance our trade or help us to manage our affairs.
He said what is significant for Nigeria is the electoral process.
“Since this started, nobody in the media has even been able to think about the name of the head of the US election management agency.
“They have their commission. Nobody even knows, nobody has seen anywhere the location of the office or even the name of the chairman. They have a chairman like our own.
He said the US has a head of election agency in its system.
“You don’t even see they are not visible. Just take results to the network; they will project the results from there through technology.
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“You can see that their federalism works there.
“We should see how our federalism will work, not one national electoral body to be conducting election all over the country and the only one they have commissioners in the states that we do something.
“Look at what happened there. The Secretary of a particular state has power over the outcome of an election in that state.
“That person will sanction it and they cannot tamper with anything they use technology and nobody’s disputing it now as it was even disputed even Trump disputed this thing four years ago.
“Now they have gone together that they are not talking about governance, they are talking about.
“But our own here, we are still discussing the outcome of the election even one and half years after the person has been sworn in.
“So we need to be our own we need to reform our electoral system we need to our governance system we need to reform it begins with you and I.
“It begins with us. We need to also reform our process; we need to renew our minds if we need transformation.
“If we need democracy, how can we begin to hear about problems in the process of feeding election results into a gadget that was a glitch and affected the outcome of elections?
“That will affect the destiny of the most popular black nation on earth and we just dismiss it like that.
“Here, the electoral commission would say there was a glitch and that changed everything.
“I think that is a lesson we need to learn that we need to improve our process. We have enough people who need to be honest.
“We don’t need to be disputing the outcome of every election. Our politicians should campaign, we need politicians to look beyond the media.
“The media cannot help democracy from the way we see it. In the United States, now the mainstream media, they went their way and were projecting what was not true.
“And then the projection didn’t go the way of the media but the people’s wish was still reflected,’’ TheNewsZenith quotes Oloja as saying.
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