Militarisation of Elections Undemocratic, Says Onu

Former National Chairman of the defunct All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and currently a national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, has described the militarisation of the Ekiti State governorship elections and restriction of movements of the leaders of the APC as a negation of democratic principles. Similarly, the former governor of Abia State said what Nigerians had experienced in the past 16 years under the Peoples Democratic Party ( PDP)-controlled federal government was not true democracy but mere civilian rule. Onu, who spoke in an exclusive interview with THISDAY at the weekend on the fallouts of the recently held governorship election in Ekiti State and the APC national convention, acknowledged that the ripples generated by the convention but said that efforts were being made to address the grievances. Giving his personal account of what happened during the Ekiti gubernatorial election, he said: "You see, Nigeria is a great nation and democracy is good for our country but the way is practiced in the past 15 years is almost like a civilian rule without democracy. There is no way you can deny people their fundamental rights of movement and association under a democracy. This is the position of the party.” Speaking on the party's position over alleged militarisation of the Ekiti election, Onu said the shutting down of roads and airport to on political opponents would not have happened under a true democratic environment. According to him, "if governors, former governors, former ministers, former national chairman of political parties are not allowed to move about freely, you imagine what other Nigerians are going through.” While narrating his experience two days before the Ekiti elections, Onu said the security clampdown on the APC leaders forced him and some leaders of the party like Chief Audu Ogbeh to leave Ado Ekiti by road around 7p.m. driving all night to get to Abuja by 2a.m. "I was an eyewitness and I was directly involved because an aircraft was chattered for fly some leaders of the party from Abuja to Akure because there is not yet a functional airport in Ekiti State. So we arrived Akure and drove for about one and half hours to Ado Ekiti. "We learnt that the Akure airports cannot take night flights and so all aircrafts must land or depart before 6p.m. We had to leave Ado Ekiti early enough in order to get to Akure and take off arround 5p.m. only to be informed that our aircraft cannot fly. There were three aircraft in the airport but they blocked the run- way with military trucks. "It was indeed a very pitiable situation. We have to now drive back to Ado Ekiti and when I got there I insisted that I must be back to Abuja. I went with the clothes I was putting on with the hope that I will come back same day. We left Ado Ekiti around 7p.m. in the night and drove all the way to Abuja arriving at about 2 am. Imagine if anything had happened to us.”