Slippery mandate

Editorial

For a second time in six months, the governorship of Bayelsa State is in flux. The November 19, 2019 vote on account of which Governor Duoye Diri attained office has been voided by a tribunal, which ordered that a fresh election be conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Diri of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is a beneficiary of the Supreme Court verdict of February 13, this year, which disqualified the November poll winner, David Lyon of the All Progressives Congress (APC) barely 24 hours to his being sworn into office on the grounds that his deputy candidate, Biobarakuma Degi-Eremienyo, filed faulty information with INEC for his nomination. Being a joint ticket, the invalidity of Degi-Eremienyo’s nomination entailed invalidity of Lyon’s candidature. The apex court thus ordered INEC to declare the party with the highest number of lawful votes and geographical spread winner of the election, and that happened to be the PDP.

Now, Diri too is on banana peels. His mandate has been quashed by the Bayelsa State governorship election tribunal, which last week held the November 19 poll invalid on account of a petition by the Advanced Nigeria Democratic Party (ANDP) that its ticket was unlawfully excluded by INEC from the vote. ANDP had complained that its name and logo were left out on the ballot used for the election, hence the poll should be voided and a fresh one ordered by the panel. By its verdict, the tribunal agreed with ANDP: it invalidated the governorship poll and ordered that a by-election be conducted within 90 days by INEC.

Expectedly, Diri has swiftly filed an appeal against that judgment, indicating he would fight up to the Supreme Court if necessary.

INEC as well faulted the tribunal’s verdict, saying it lawfully excluded ANDP from the vote. The commission argued that the party’s nomination for the election was invalid, and that the party did not exercise its right guaranteed in the Fourth Alteration to the 1999 Constitution by filing its suit within 14 days of the accrual of that right. According to National Commissioner Festus Okoye, the ticket nominated by ANDP was invalid because its deputy governorship candidate was 34 years old, contrary to Section 177(b) of the constitution that prescribes 35 years as the eligible age. Okoye said INEC drew ANDP’s attention to this issue, and when the party attempted to substitute, the commission informed it that the deadline stipulated in the Timetable and Schedule of Activities had elapsed. “The commission also informed the party that since they did not submit valid nomination, they couldn’t validly substitute any candidate. Consequently, the name and logo of the party was not reflected on the ballot paper,” he added.

It remains to be seen how the appellate courts would be persuaded by the contending arguments. But the point must be made again at this point that when political players or INEC itself fail to strictly observe the ground rules for elections, they take the power of choice away from the electorate and donate to the judiciary. In a number of cases, the judiciary in adjudicating disputes arising from elections has acted as the electorate – often to the chagrin of voters. It weakens the essence of democracy when genuine preferences of voters become irrelevant in the light of judicial adjudication of electoral of disputes.

Another issue arising from the latest twist in the Bayelsa poll is the spoiler factor of fringe parties in the electoral process. Without prejudice to the constitutional right of free association, the presence of too many nominal parties on the electoral roll has always been a problematic issue. INEC often bemoaned the encumbrance such parties constitute on the electoral process and had in February exercised its powers under Section 225A of the constitution to delist 74 out of the 91 parties on its roll for failing to meet performance requirements prescribed for their continuing existence. ANDP incidentally is one of the parties deregistered, hence it is somewhat ironic that it is the reason a governorship election is now being invalidated. Some of the delisted parties had challenged INEC’s measure and recently secured reprieve by way of a Court of Appeal verdict overruling the commission – a verdict that INEC has vowed to challenge at the Supreme Court in view of an earlier judgment by same Court of Appeal affirming the deregistration. With non-committance by Nigerian politician elite to ideologies, fringe parties tend to be enlisted by big parties to play the spoiler as alternative recourse in electoral contestation.

Sadly, the bottom line is huge waste of tax payers’ money involved in retakes of same elections. This is a consequential cost politicians as well as INEC must be mindful of and must show a lot more sensitivity towards its avoidance.