Abdul-Azeez Adediran (Jandor), the PDP governorship candidate in Lagos, has blamed Nigeria’s democratic woes on elites who have abandoned the nation’s affairs in the hands of “less qualified” people.

Mr Adediran said many of the elite were not voting in elections and were reluctant to interrogate candidates to ensure that only the qualified would be voted for.

Assessing Nigeria’s 24 years of unbroken democratic rule, Mr Adediran said the elite had left voting and many other electoral processes in the hands of the uneducated.

According to the PDP candidate, failure to vote for qualified candidates allows less-qualified ones to rule.

“I still see the elite as the problem of our democracy because we, for over two decades, have deliberately left for those in the informal sectors and the grassroots to decide who and who govern us,” the PDP gubernatorial standard-bearer explained. “All of us, with our education, sit back and allow the less qualified to be in charge. We are still the problem.”

He called on the elite to get more involved in election processes, stressing that Nigeria needs leaders who would build sustainable institutions and rule with the fear of God to address the country’s challenges.

He commended President Muhammadu Buhari for signing the amended Electoral Bill into law, saying that his assent had given hope to many election candidates that votes would count, especially with the provision of a Bimodal Voter Accreditation System and electronic transmission of results.

Mr Adediran expressed the hope that the innovations would stand the test of time when deployed across the country.

On the destruction of INEC offices by hoodlums, Adediran said that the perpetrators would not stop the 2023 elections.

“They are just wasting their time because their actions will not stop the elections. All information about voters are already uploaded on INEC’s server. I don’t see their actions threatening the 2023 elections,” he said.

(NAN)