Off-year elections, as polls detached from the General Elections are called, are supposed to afford the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and other stakeholders the opportunity to perfect their act. They have more time to plan, hold a series of meetings; they are also able to deploy more personnel, among other advantages, because the elections are not nationwide. So, the question of being stretched thin does not arise.
However, the Kogi and Bayelsa states’ governorship elections only brought out the worst in our electoral system. Those declared winners will, for long, have to battle for legitimacy. Guns boomed everywhere, ballot boxes were carted away to be stuffed only for them to resurface at collation centres, officials were abducted from polling units, results were allegedly falsified, lives were terminated. All because politicians wanted power at all cost.
All those who were directly involved in conducting the polls have queries to respond to as all monitors, observers, the media, opposition parties and the international community were unanimous in concluding they were a sham. The INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu, Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Adamu Mohammed, INEC national and resident electoral commissioners and professors brought in as returning officers should be made to explain the roles they played in making the country a laughing stock among the comity of nations.
Just when the 2015 elections gave us the building blocks to lay the foundation for a solid, credible electoral system, the off-year elections in Ekiti and Osun states, last year, the 2019 General Elections, and now the Kogi and Bayelsa polls have pulled the nation back.
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It is not enough for President Muhammadu Buhari to call for a thorough investigation into how Mrs. Salome Abuh was cruelly set ablaze by gun-toting thugs in Ofu Local Government Area of Kogi State in broad daylight. The President should, like the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, call for a security report on the two governorship elections. This is a time when the presidential duties as Head of State and Father of the Nation should prevail against his partisan role as leader of one of the contending parties; in fact the major beneficiary of the brigandage. He should demonstrate his love for the Nigerian state and her people by seeking to leave an enduring legacy.
How did the heist in the two states take place given the deployment of 66,000 police officers and men? How did the thugs move about unhindered? Are the police conducting an internal inquiry into what happened? Has the IGP queried the senior officers deployed for the purpose? When would political actors live up to their assumed positions as leaders? When would they become responsible to the Nigerian state? It is a shame that the flaws that marred the 1964 federal elections, the 1965 Western Parliamentary Election, 1983 general elections and the Professor Maurice Iwu-supervised 2007 General Elections are still repeating themselves in 2019.
We lost the chance of improving on the electoral architecture when President Buhari frustrated attempts to amend the Electoral Act prior to the last General Elections. This is the time for all well-meaning Nigerians to rise up to compel both the executive and legislative arms of government to conduct a wholesale review of the electoral process before partisanship gets in the way again. It is obvious that the Nigerian political actors are mere gain seekers. It therefore behooves all citizens – the academia, media, civil society organisations, religious bodies, Nigerian Bar Association, retired diplomats and professional bodies to rise up in defence of democracy because the conduct of credible periodic elections is at the heart of a viable democratic order.
Failure of Nigeria to develop politically and economically could be traced to inability to sanitise the electoral system. Unless the needed steps are taken now, the violence that rocked Kogi and Bayelsa polls would be a child’s play during the 2023 General Elections.
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