The Northeast will vote for the presidential candidate of the North – Satumari

South Borno People's Democratic Party senatorial candidate Kudla Satumari tells TOPE OMOGBOLAGUN his political experience and other issues

You contested the Senate seat in Borno South in 2019, but did not win. You alleged that the results were manipulated. Can you explain what happened then?

In 2019, I contested the Senate seat, and the final result of that election did not accurately reflect the people's choice. There was evidence and also stories afterwards, including the admission by the contestant who eventually won that the outcome probably would have been different, but for the circumstances we found ourselves. So that's why people came out this time to say, 'Listen, you gotta go back and re-challenge'. I believe this time it's up to us.

Don't you think you lost this election because you were relatively unknown at the time?

I wouldn't say I was relatively unknown. I have participated in elections for a long time. In 2015, I actually ran for the House of Representatives. What happened in 2019 was a situation that…maybe this bimodal system of verification and accreditation would help us, unlike what we saw in the previous system. I'll give you an example, in a particular local government, where my opponent was from, I found out about it after the election when I was gathering data and evidence for the case, and I took it to court ; I discovered that the Independent National Electoral Commission provides us, upon request, with certified copies of the ballot papers allocated to each local government area in South Borno. We found out and it was confirmed via the certified copies that the local government area, where my opponent is from, received only 55,000 ballots. By the time the election results were announced, we had 113,853 votes.

If you carefully analyze the election results, it is not possible that you gave a ballot of 55,000 and 113,853 votes returned. The irony is that the returning officer has a doctorate. A lot of these things happened. It happened in Damboa, Gwoza and elsewhere. Even beyond South Borno, it was the same incident in North Borno. Yes, the election was held, it wasn't about being famous or popular.

In fact, in all modesty, if you go to South Borno and more recently to the old states that made up Borno State, my name is a household name. So, I am very confident that this time, with the elections that have taken place in Osun State, I think things will be different. I reviewed the Osun State experience based on four major elements that could have been responsible for transparent and acceptable outcomes.

I watched the election process; we have seen a great improvement in the electoral process. We saw that the bimodal verification and credentialing system was able to filter and likely, reasonably present the number of credentialed voters, which corresponded to the number of those who voted. Thus, the incidence of overvotes was reduced because incident forms were not used, as was the case in the past. The integrity of the electoral process has improved, our elections can now be clear, fair, credible and, above all, conclusive.

Secondly, the candidate himself seemed to have been a candidate accepted by his people, and I see people starting to care about individuals, not necessarily the political party. The third influence that has come forward is the people, the electorate itself. The awareness level of our employees is starting to improve to the level that they want to hold candidates accountable. They want to choose candidates and they want to own the process of electing those who will represent them. I think that also played.

Finally, the political structure and the political party also played very big roles in the sense that there was the involvement of the party structures to ensure that the results were collected and transmitted to the crisis room, insofar as we follow the results of the elections, unit by unit, district by district, local government, by local government. So we already had an idea of ​​the total votes cast even before the results were announced, and how many votes were going to which party. It was easy to keep up to date with what was going on.

If you look at it, it lends credence to the fact that even though people say political party structure doesn't matter, it does. Indeed, if the party is not on the ground, you will not be able to monitor all the polling stations with your agent, your supervisors and the people who monitor the election, even if it is too early to judge certain parties. politicians, by their...