The laws, the rules, INEC, and the politicians

I believed, hoped actually, that given his passion, his courage, and his determination to clean up our electoral system and make our elections credible, the INEC chairman, Professor Mahmoud Yakubu, would bury our past failures and birth a new and respectable electoral system and credible elections and make Nigeria a poster child in the black man’s belief in miracles.

If he could not do it, no one else could, unless a more passionate and a more courageous man could be thrust on the system from above. It takes one man to make a difference, to make a fundamental paradigm shift in how a country is governed. I thought Yakubu was the man.

But I knew then, as I know now, that the forces of retrogression would fight back and render his efforts and those of his team at INEC a near nullity or a nullity. I knew that somethings change but somethings change not at all in politics. The struggle for power, in a democracy or dictatorship, does not change. The road to political power is permanently paved with real or metaphorical blood.

Given the stakes in political power in a nation such as ours in which politics is the only business in town with the power to elevate the poor and the wretched into stupendous wealth in the time takes to say INEC, the power seekers have no qualms in poisoning our sense of decency and our commitment to decency in accordance with the letter and the spirit of democracy. Instead, they turn the civic duty of using our ballot papers to elect men and women of our choice in order to institute governments of our choice at national and sub-national levels into a war once fought with sticks but now fought with bazooka and the ubiquitous AK-47 in which the dead are reduced to statistics and used as piled up heaps of unknown bodies for stepping to the top.

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Take a breath.

Against resistance from both executive and the legislative branches of government, Yakubu succeeded in effecting some fundamental changes to block the gaping avenues through which the camels of blatant rigging walked through the eye of the needle. The Electoral Act 2022 ought to be our bible in our electoral system and the conduct of our elections. It was Yakubu’s crowning glory in his frustrating struggle to give the country a new take on democracy and decent democratic elections. It removed some of the wrinkles in the system. Its visible faces are BVAS and iREV. With them, we ought to join other African nations with firmer claims on credible elections than ours.

Ah, the ship is still far from the shores. The trauma of impunity by rich and privileged politicians and the constant changes in the rules of the game by them and the courts leave this giant of Africa afloat in the nether world of politics as business, governance be damned.

Yakubu has conducted two major general elections, 2019 and 2023, off season elections and numerous supplementary elections. He received kudos for some and merciless excoriation for others. The determination to deny him commendation has turned into desperation among the politicians and half-baked political commentators. We may yet see some of his best efforts reduced to turning back hands of the clock. Given the changes in the Electoral Act 2022, each election ought to represent our steady march towards the Eldorado. Not yet. Each still shows that we are actually marching on the same spot because changes in the law fail to make changes in the heart of the vicious power seekers.

The off-season governorship elections conducted by INEC in Bayelsa, Imo and Kogi states on November 11 provide evidence that nothing is about to change in a hurry among the power seekers. In each state, there was evidence of measures to disenfranchise bona fide registered voters, violence, over-voting, vote-buying, thuggery, and ballot box snatching. Bayelsa and Imo followed the tradition that an incumbent must not lose his re-election.

In Kogi, the incumbent was not up for re-election but had imposed his cousin as his hand-picked successor. Here too the election followed the tradition: a chosen successor must win because he represents a third term for the departing big man. Of the three, the election in Kogi proved that killing election rigging has so far proved impossible. It introduced a refurbished element in election rigging, to wit, ballot box stuffing, the hall mark of rigging dating back to the second republic. From records obtained by independent sources from INEC iREV, over-voting was pretty widespread in the state. Official election observers and independent election monitors witnessed blatant and arrogant rigging in favour of APC.

INEC confirmed incidences of pre-filled election result sheets in the state. Mohammed Haruna, INEC national commissioner and a member of its information and voter education, said the incidents occurred in Ogori/Magongo, Adavi, Ajaokuta, Okehi and Okene local government areas with the worst cases of electoral malpractices occurring in Ogori/Magongo. Haruna described what happened as “unacceptable.” The commission announced the suspension of elections in nine wards in that local government area. He also announced that the commission had fixed November 18 for fresh elections in 59 Kogi polling units.

And then things suddenly dissolved into public confusion. The head scratching began. Without taking the promised actions to fully investigate all the cases of electoral fraud brought to its attention and without conducting the fresh elections in the affected polling units, the commission declared Usman Ododo, the candidate of APC, winner of the governorship election in Kogi State. This must be in keeping with the tradition that winning is the exclusive right of the political party in power, no matter what the voters think of it. Never mind. Haruna said the elections were credible. No, he did not speak tongue-in-cheek. It means the losers who complain are bad sportsmen in the tradition of Nigerian politicians, right? Not quite.

One of the election monitors, Centre for Leadership Legacy International, believes INEC was complicit in what it regards as a blatant rape of our democracy in the elections because it did not enforce its own rules. On November 13, Comrade Omonu YG Nelson, the lead director, wrote to complain to President Bola Tinubu not to let it stand. Nelson wrote: “The election in Kogi Central was marred by widespread irregularities, including the brazen disregard for INEC’s laid-down rules. The use of BVAS for voter accreditation was blatantly ignored, and results were arbitrarily written and riddled with discrepancies. Despite INEC’s rule that results should be cancelled where over-voting occurs, INEC inexplicably accepted these fraudulent results into its server.” (To be concluded)