WE are about the enter the annual harmattan season with its dry, dusty, and disruptive wind. As indicated in this column last week, people, crops, and even trees will be stressed during the harmattan. Some people may die as a result, while crops will wither. Even erstwhile strong tree trunks may break.
On several occasions this year, Nigerians experienced varying degrees of stress from another kind of harmattan, that is, election harmattan. Just as the harmattan proper is a blight on the weather, so is election harmattan a blight on Nigerian democracy.
Last Saturday, November 16, 2019, election harmattan gripped Kogi and Bayelsa states during the governorship election in both states. It was characterized by thuggery, gun touting, gun shootings, vote-buying, vote rigging, ballot box snatching, intimidation, and other electoral malpractices.
At the end of the day, several fatalities and many injuries were recorded. And nobody was spared, from INEC officials and politicians to observers and innocent voters. It was yet another blight on democracy.
The conduct of both elections and the conditions under which they were held left far too many questions unanswered. For example, the Inspector General of Police boasted of deploying over 60,000 police officers to both states to provide security during the elections. What did they do?
Well, according to various civil society groups, which monitored the election, including the Centre for Democracy and Development and the Centre for Citizens with Disabilities, security agencies, including the police, were complicit in the malpractices that enveloped the elections in Kogi and Bayelsa. True, this has been the pattern since the 1999 elections but special concerns were raised this time around because the malpractices were excessive and involved fatalities.
These observations were corroborated by Diplomatic Watch, comprising the European Union Delegation, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In one voice, this consortium of international observers, which has monitored Nigeria’s elections since 1999, condemned the atrocities they witnessed during the Kogi and Bayelsa.
It is most unfortunate that the combined efforts of the presidency and the legislature since 1999 have not translated to desirable policies and laws guiding electoral processes in the country. True, in acknowledgement of the flawed election that brought him to power, late President Umaru Yar’Adua did set up a panel on electoral reform, led by Justice Mohammed Uwais. The panel’s recommendations were warmly received by most observers, including civil societies and even many politicians. Nevertheless, Yar’Adua only sent to the legislature the recommendations he cherry-picked.
His successor, former President Goodluck Jonathan forwarded the full report to the legislature. However, the legislature chose to subsume what was sent to them to their or agenda. Instead of following through on the full report as demanded by the public, Jonathan’s successor, President Muhammadu Buhari, shifted his focus to the Independent National Electoral Commission, because he was saddled with an uncooperative and self-serving legislature.
It is, therefore, doubly unfortunate that INEC has not been able to implement existing laws to desirable levels, despite billions and billions of Naira allocated to the Commission over the last 20 years! The huge expenditure on elections notwithstanding, electoral materials continue to be delivered late to polling stations or not at all. Card readers continue to fail. And the voting process, voting conditions, and the laborious process of manual collation of election results continues to be open to all kinds of abuse.
It is important, however, to also emphasize that politicians have a huge share of the blame game in Kogi and Bayelsa as in previous elections. They recruited the thugs and armed them; doled out the money for vote-buying; and greased the palms of security agents, willing INEC officials, and temporary staff, including members of the Youth Corps.
The politicians’ assault on elections is made all the more possible because of the abject poverty in the land and extensive rural illiteracy. The urban poor and rural voters are willing to sell their votes for a loaf of bread. The same factors underly the recruitment into thuggery and partisan wars, even when the fighters may not be members of the party they are fighting for and even though they may not even survive the war.
Theirs is not a fight for ideology or the people’s welfare. It is a fight for bread and their own welfare. There are thugs today, who live large and ride flashy cars, because they live on their sponsoring party’s largesse. They, too, often switch parties, along with their political sponsors. And they move on to another politician when their sponsor loses an election.
The same material motive underlies the politicians’ do-or-die approach to elections. After 20 years of democracy, a group of politicians has been bred, which now takes politics as a profession. These are politicians, who have developed the Nigerian kind of political culture in which the politician lives big-SUVs, police orderlies, siren-blowing pilot vehicles, and, in no time, big houses.
Once this lifestyle is tasted, it becomes difficult to “live below standard”. As a result of this mindset, the politicians do everything they can to retain their seat. Those who view this lifestyle from outside also look to politics as passport to wealth. They, too, do everything they can to win an election. That’s why no seat is more keenly contested than that of the executive, which controls resources, that is, the presidency or the governorship.
The atrocities associated with the Kogi and Bayelsa elections should not be viewed in isolation. They are part of a pattern established since 1999. The cumulative effect of this pattern on Nigeria’s image cannot be over-estimated. It could be deduced from the report of Diplomatic Watch on the Kogi and Bayelsa reports.
That image cannot be changed overnight. It should begin with changes to our electoral process, to the role and functions of politicians in our democracy, and to their access to the treasury.
True, the United States, whose constitution we copied, has been at it for over 200 years. Nevertheless, at no time was their process of democratic renewal this messy. Right from the beginning, they had their priorities right. Just one example: The President of the United States earns $400,000 annually, whereas the President of the University of Pennsylvania earns $3.9 million annually.
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