Comrade Oluwafemi John Adebayo,
Communication Officer , KIMPACT Development Initiative (KDI)
Comrade Oluwafemi John Adebayo is the KIMPACT Development Initiative (KDI) Communication Officer and he’s also playing the same role for the Nigeria Election Violence Report Project (NEVR), a project being conducted by KDI in the Southwest part of the country for International Foundation For Electoral System (IFES). He spoke with THE IMPACT on electoral violence in Lagos State and ways of tackling it. Excerpts:
IMPACT: Can we meet you sir?
Adebayo: My name is Oluwafemi John Adebayo. I work with KIMPACT Development Initiative as a communication officer and also holds the same position for the Nigeria Election Violence Report Project (NEVR). As far as NEVR is concerned in Nigeria, KIMPACT is coordinating the project in the Southwest while the project is also going on in other five geopolitical zones in the country.
THE IMPACT: Let’s focus on the Southwest, especially Lagos State which you are coordinating. How many monitors are being deployed to cover the elections?
Adebayo: For the whole of the Southwest, KIMPACT trained one hundred and six (106) monitors that are being deployed across the Southwest geopolitical zone. In Lagos, we have around 15. We have also done an hotspot marking of the state to know areas of the state. We also did same across the six states in Southwest, Nigeria. In Lagos, we have some places marked ‘red’ which are hotspot courtesy of the outcomes of our pre-election survey. Out of the 20 local governments in Lagos State, six have hotspot marking. In all these councils, we have to be extra careful and we have to do lots of mitigation.
IMPACT: Which Local Governments are these?
Adebayo: We have areas like Alimosho, Amuwo-Odofin, Agege, Mushin, Surulere and Oshodi. We also have some zones which are marked “amber” also known as yellow. In this zones, it is either we have peaceful elections or not peaceful. The yellow areas are uncertain and if care is not taken, we might experience violence and could fall in the ‘red’ zone if care is not taking . The yellow zones are Kosofe, Eti-Osa, Ikorodu, Lagos Mainland, Ikeja, Ojo, Shomolu, Apapa, Badagry and Ifako ljaye. Other areas I did not mention are called “green” zones because we have a certain degree of peace as far as election is concern. So, that is just about the Lagos hotspot marking.
IMPACT: So far, what is the outcome of your electoral violence survey in Lagos?
Adebayo: We conducted a survey sampling the opinions of 2,722 respondents and according to that in Lagos, we have 270 whom we asked, “Do you agree that elections will be peaceful in your area?” According to the 270 respondents, which is 18.6%, they agreed that elections would be peaceful in their areas, but 32.1% said that they are not sure if the elections would be peaceful or not and that is worrisome. 7.3% of the respondents are of the view that the elections will not be peaceful.
The major concern now is the uncertain figure of 32.1% that said that they are not sure if the elections would be peaceful. We have to be careful with this because there is one degree of concern in them that is making them think that the elections might not be peaceful.
IMPACT: What has been the level of support by the stakeholders to your campaign?
Adebayo: Actually, we have received maximum supports from the stakeholders and that is even why we are here to meet the traditional ruler and he has granted us an invitation already. So , we have been receiving supports . Few weeks ago, our monitors were in Oshodi to discuss with the transport workers and mitigate electoral violence. Regardless of that, we still need to do more on the stakeholders like voters, INEC, political leaders, party and security agencies and others. We are all stakeholders because everyone has a role to play and that is why we still fall back to the pre-election survey that we did because it raises so much concern especially regarding the political parties, security agencies and even the media. We have to acknowledge the important role of the media in this.
IMPACT: What do you see as the impact of the postponement of the President /National Assembly elections on the coming elections?
Adebayo: Although, the postponement was sudden and I think that INEC might have acted for certain reasons, some of which were logistics. But xthe postponement has caused mixed feelings among the electorate but we want to charge INEC to ensure that this election is credible, free and fair. 78% of our respondents alleged that INEC is partial and they are only waiting for any form of uncertainty act from INEC.
I am also concern about the political parties because ‘hate’ speech majorly comes from them. This is a major concern all over the country. We have seen lots of campaigns full of hate speeches and this is one of the major factors that encourages violence. On the side of the media, there is the issue of ‘fake’ news which has cost us greatly in this country. I’m calling on the voters and general citizenry to always verify their sources of information before sharing such. Regarding security agencies, we have seen low professionalism in the elections so far and we are expecting something better from them.
To the voters, they must realise that this is our country and that we don’t have any other country to go, so, we must ensure that we do not employ the instruments of violence in our conducts. Before now, I actually taught we have move past issue of electoral violence and that we should be looking at tackling vote buying but this project has revealed otherwise. Even the Southwest that we taught is peaceful in terms of elections has recorded quite a number of killings and stabbing. We need to embrace peace in the Southwest before it becomes an issue. We have not left the era of electoral violence and that is just the truth, while another form of monster, which is vote buying, is compounding our political problems. On the average, we get report of electoral violence of 20% per day in the six states in the Southwest and you should know that that is very disheartening.
IMPACT: Practically, how will your report helps in solving the country’s election challenges like violence?
Adebayo: I have had to answer this question quite a number of time. People are asking us why we are recording or documenting electoral. The truth remains that the major problem we are facing in the country is lack of data. We don’t have data base. One of the reasons we are embarking on this project is to have data base for peace building intervention. It is important to have this so that we can know where to come in and fix whatever challenge. The project would help us uncover which of the age groups are causing violence and why among many other outcomes. After the exercise, we are going to have a report which is going to be shared with the international community and major stakeholders like INEC, security agencies and we are also going to make it accessible to the common man on the street. The purpose is to educate the public on why we have electoral violence and also reveal those that suffer the consequences most. As a people, we don’t want to be undefined, we want to be defined so that we will all know where to tackle and not just to be solving the problem on the surface alone. We want to get to the root cause.
THE IMPACT – Thank you for sparing us your time for the interview.
Adebayo – You’re welcome.
