Tony Olutomiwa, Yenagoa
The challenge of having a functional democracy with deep-rooted process that guarantees a free, fair and credible election has continued to ignite debates on the future of democracy in the country.
From the various actors and related institutions, the cries are divergent but there is a consensus that the nation’s electoral process is flawed, requiring urgent action to fix the rot.
The current debate is a fallout of recent elections, especially that of Kogi and Bayelsa governorship elections of November 16, which have been fiercely contested as being deficient both in conduct and outcome.
While the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, is accusing politicians of circumventing the process, the national leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, vented its frustration, warning of a possible boycott of future elections unless the process is reformed. Yet the Bayelsa State Governor, Seriake Dickson, insisted that the November 16 governorship election in his state was massively rigged and brutish and, as such, what transpired can never be called an election just as the All Progressives Congress, APC, has washed its hands off any acts of manipulations.
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The debate goes on but not without consequence, as observers have pointed out if some major steps are not taken to redeem the sanctity of the nation’s elections with specific attention on the process as basis for a free and fair election in the future.
At a meeting with Resident Electoral Commissioners, RECs, in Abuja last week, INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, lamented the circumvention of the process, particularly, the card reader, by politicians, saying there was an urgent need to address the status of the card reader in future elections.
Contrary to the earlier pronouncement by INEC National Commissioner (Voter Education), Festus Okoye, that the card reader had lost “its vibrancy”, the INEC boss said the commission would continue to use the card reader but subject to necessary legal teeth.
“The judgement of the Supreme Court on the primacy of the voters’ register, as the determinant of over-voting in law merely draws attention to the lacuna in the electoral framework,” he said, adding that the lacuna needed to be addressed “through an immediate amendment to the Electoral Act.”
He added: “The status of the SCR must be provided for and protected by law. Similarly, accreditation data from the SCR should be used to determine over-voting and the margin of lead principle.”
But Yakubu is looking beyond the card reader, as he promised that the commission would institute a massive electoral reform by working with the National Assembly.
He elaborated: “The commission will present a proposal to the National Assembly on this matter as well as other areas in which further deployment of technology will deepen the integrity of our electoral process.
“The commission will seek ways by which its utility in election can be enhanced for the triple objectives of verification of the genuineness of the Permanent Voter Cards, PVCs, confirmation of ownership and fingerprint authentication of voters.”
Yakubu also opened up on the challenge of litigations in the discharge of its functions, noting that 807 post-election cases, arising from the 2019 general elections were filed at the tribunals, even as some of the re-run elections only held in a few polling units. This situation, he claimed, poses a logistic challenge.
Indeed, the imperative of electoral reform ahead of future elections has pitted the PDP with INEC, raising major concerns, going by the strength of allegations against the commission and the ruling APC by the national chairman of the party, Prince Uche Secondus in Abuja last week.
He spoke while receiving a team of Election, Party Monitoring Department of INEC at his office.
Secondus stated that recent elections in Ekiti, Osun, Kogi and Bayelsa states were riddled with major infractions, as he threatened that PDP might boycott future elections if necessary reforms were not carried out. He accused the APC and INEC of collusion to manipulate recent elections.
The 2019 general elections, Secondus said, was the height of electoral impunity that set the nation’s electoral development backward, adding that the election eroded the credibility of the electoral process and integrity of INEC.
According to him, the military hijacked the polls in different parts of the country.
He stated: “We stand vindicated in the eyes of many electoral watchers as all our fears and apprehensions ahead of the elections came to fruition in the general elections of February and March this year, the preceding governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun states earlier and the latest being the November 16, 2019 gubernatorial elections in Bayelsa and Kogi states.
“Despite a standing lawful court ruling that the military should be kept at a distance during elections as secondary security, we all watched how they not only took over the primary security role from the police but also in some instances, dictated and even connived with some INEC officials.
“Nigerians have watched how the electoral body, unable to control the military relinquished their responsibility to them and still curiously went ahead to authenticate such fraud”
The PDP chairman, therefore, called on INEC to take urgent steps towards amendment of the Electoral Act by giving legal backing to electronic voting and ensuring that the military have no major roles during elections.
“Such legal framework should address the issue of security, electronic voting and collation of results and punishment for electoral offenders.
“The effect of bad elections in our polity has been far-reaching, stagnating the political and economic development and permanently hoisting on the people unpopular and incompetent leaders,” he said.
But the APC through its spokesman, Lanre Issa Onilu, faulted the request by Secondus, saying the major reform needed in Nigerian political environment is the reorientation of the people to imbibe the culture of democracy.
Similarly, the INEC chairman frowned on the allegations of colluding with APC and the military to rig elections.
Yakubu, at the Abuja RECs summit, said it was inconceivable that INEC would want to sabotage itself by engaging in the said allegations.
He, however, reckoned that elections are threatened by impunity, which can only be curtailed by the enforcement of sanctions.
The INEC boss said the only way to safeguard the sanctity of the electoral process was to ensure that offenders, no matter how highly placed, were brought to book when caught in the act.
“It is inconceivable that INEC will make elaborate arrangement for the deployment of personnel and materials and then turn around to undermine ourselves,” he said.
Despite INEC defence and future plans to sanitise the electoral process, the details by Governor Seriake Dickson of how the Bayelsa election was allegedly rigged, analysts said, have further cast a damning look at the commission and the security agencies. They also averred it constitutes danger to the survival of democracy in the country.
Speaking in Abuja last week, Dickson was emphatic that the November 16 governorship election was massively rigged by security agencies in collusion with INEC.
Observers believe that the scenario as claimed by the governor was not different from past experiences of election manipulations but only exacerbated in depth and outcome, particularly on the number of deaths and those injured. They also noted the degree of voter suppression and falsification of figures.
According to Dickson, 22 persons were killed and 98 injured in orgy of violence during the election.
Dickson, who described the election as a democratic coup, noted that except for the rigging, there was no way the opposition APC could have won, adding that actually there was no election and any reference to that effect was an insult to the nation’s institutions.
He said that the rigging was most prevalent in Nembe, Southern Ijaw, Ogbia and Yenagoa, the state capital.
He said in Nembe, for instance, some of the victims were killed in a gruesome manner by militia men to ensure their bodies were not seen.
He stated: “The violence that they visited on law-abiding citizens of this country in Nembe, we have not heard the last of it. To cover the number of the dead, they beheaded them, tore open their bellies and throw them into the water, so that they will not float. When you do that, the human corpse sinks. They are experts in killing. The people they killed like that are close to ten. Those ones we have not seen. I am talking of corpses seen now.
“Nembe has been under siege for months. And INEC drove electoral materials there. Nobody took control, the militiamen sat, wrote the result. Those are the figures they gave out.
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“These collation officers were guided by the military and protected by the police to rig the poll. In Nembe, militiamen took control thump-printed ballot papers and returned 80,000 votes for APC.
“In Ogbia, they came up with 50,000 votes which had never been the case in the electoral history of the state. In Yenagoa, the area with the largest votes, they arrested, harassed and shot down PDP supporters. As we are talking, a number of PDP supporters are still in custody.”
Dickson disclosed that he had set up a panel of inquiry to unravel the killings during the election. He also said that some electoral officers who participated at the polls had already sworn to affidavits and ready to speak on how the election was massively manipulated by the security agencies.
Many believe the November 16 governorship elections in Kogi and Bayelsa states were riddled with irregularities leading to widespread condemnations and controversies. The various reports by observers who monitored the election also harped on the level of violence and election manipulations.
With the renewed calls for electoral reform in the country, the onus is on INEC to fashion out a credible system that can guarantee a free and fair election, thereby deepening and safeguarding the nation’s democracy as a basis for development.
