Tag: Maurice Iwu

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is under fire. Its Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, is on the weighing scale. Unlike 2011, when Nigerians heaved a sigh of relief from severely flawed elections, the nation is in a nightmare. As the people of Anambra State agonise over the bungled governorship elections, fears about 2015 polls have become heightened.

The next general elections is a litmus test for the umpire. Two years ago, it had shown an improved capacity for restoring public confidence in the electoral process, judging by its performance in the 2011 general elections. But now, it has failed woefully in Anambra State to manage the achievement and sustain the tempo.

INEC has a historic duty to live up to expectation, as it prepares for the governorship polls in the two states in the ‘wild wild Southwest’ – Ekiti and Osun – next year. The governorship elections are now somehow scattered, owing to the mistake of the 2007 by the INEC under Prof. Maurice Iwu. In Edo, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun states, where the Appeal Court restored the stolen mandates to the deprived winners, the people have to contend with new electoral timetable.

To conduct a credible and transparent exercise in Ekiti and Osun, the commission must avoid the ‘Anambra pitfalls”. It must tighten the loose ends and correct the mistakes that have boxed it into the crisis of integrity. In 2011, the electoral agency was about to wreck a monumental havoc on democracy before Jega that had to cancel the first leg of the general elections. Critics have argued that, If the polls were not abruptly stopped and postponed, it would have resulted into an avoidable electoral calamity.

Shortly after the last general elections, activist-cleric and politician Pastor Tunde Bakare distinguished between free and fair elections. He said an election can be free, and yet be fraudulent. He said, while election, as experience has shown in this dispensation, has been free at the level of voting and counting at the polling booths, it can be fraudulent at the level of collation of results.

In Anambra, the collation was flawed. In some polling units, there were no result sheets.

INEC also failed the elementary test of credibility when its officials reported late for the assignment in many local governments. Where the officials reported for the exercise, they did not show up with the non-negotiable polling materials. Voters were disillusioned. Many returned home in protest. Although the poll was postponed till the next day in some units, voters did not show up because it was on a Sunday. The most critical material is the voter’s register. The names of many voters were omitted from the register. The implication was that many were disfranchised. In Ondo State, when voters complained that their names were omitted from the register, the Resident Electoral Commissioner, Mr. Akin Orebiyi, quickly rose to the occasion by providing the comprehensive data and the voters exercised their voting rights.

In 2015, INEC will face more challenges. The elections will raise some questions about the environmental dimension of the exercise. There are trouble spots in the North, where people fret under the menace of the Boko Haram. If INEC cannot conduct a free poll in an atmosphere of relative peace, how will it cope in the tensed areas? Also, since the general elections would be holding in the creeks of Cross River, Rivers, Edo and Bayelsa, there is the need to rise to the challenge of movement of men and materials on waterways. During the last governorship election in Edo, INEC was said to have hired a drunkard to navigate a boat full of polling materials. The end was catastrophic.

Voters usually raise objections to the late accreditation and voting in many states. The late arrival of polling officers and electoral materials is worrisome. Many voters returned home without voting because their names were not found in the voters’ register. Uncouth electoral officers have always been giving INEC a bad name. A dispirited INEC chairman had to even hand over a polling officer to the police for interrogation in Anambra.

Elections have become a burden in Nigeria. Rather than being perceived as an opportunity for political choice and change, election periods are usually dark moments when the polity is submerged in a tremor of wild politicking, do-or-die contest, thuggery and violence, which often make the critical contest a sort of war. Governorship election, more or less, is a higher local election posing greater challenges to the electoral commission than the presidential and National Assembly elections. Incidentally, the fear of democratic election at the state level has contributed to the fragility democracy in the country.

The commission owes it a duty to halt the pollution of the ballot box. One man one vote is not guaranteed when many people are excluded from voting due to INEC’s mistake. The practice of voter register display and verification, ahead of the election, tends to be fading. The penchant for doctoring the results by the combined forces of unscrupulous politicians, unpatriotic security agents and electoral commissioners aptly captures the illusion of democracy. In subsequent elections, these should be nipped in the bud by the electoral agency.

INEC should also be ready to invoke the various provisions in the constitution against electoral malpractices. Electoral officers who act in concert with politicians and the police to commit atrocities against the ballot box should be prosecute The expectation that the ruling party must always have the upper hand at every democratic contest could spell doom. When it is evident that the ruling party is no more popular, INEC should not assist it to unnecessarily prolong its stay without legitimacy.

Electoral violence has also become a feature of periodic polls. Thugs and cultists, who are armed with sophisticated weapons beyond the reach of the police, are often recruited by desperate politicians to create panic, molest voters, scare away electorate, invade the polling booths, snatch ballot boxes, inflict pain, maim and kill, in the interest of the highest bidder, and in expectation of a fat reward for unleashing terror. INEC and security agents should not sleep – to avoid the floodgate of litigations that trailed the 2007 electoral foul play.

Ordinarily, a credible election is a panacea for violence. In earlier dispensations, rigging provoked popular revolt. In the Western Region, malpractices was perceived as a colossal rebellion against the people. It led to the burning of houses and mass killings in the First Republic. The scenario was repeated in the Southwest States of Oyo and Ondo States In the Second Republic.

Domestic monitors and international observers have described the 2007 elections as a national tragedy. The presidential threat of do-and-die was carried out and the INEC gave its nod. These vices may still resurface, if the exercise is characterised by the late arrival of electoral officers and polling materials, shortage of ballot boxes and papers, ballot stuffing by thugs, violence, falsification of results, bribery and corruption.

In Anambra, election observers were arrested and briefly detained. There should be a better way of accrediting and identifying the monitors next time, instead of subjecting them to ridicule while on a national assignment.

After the 2007 polls, the rot stared the country in the face. Petitions flooded the election tribunals and courts. Many of the stolen mandates were retrieved back at the courts at greater costs to the opposition parties. The courts decried the electoral horror and terrorism. The poll created a hollow in the record of former President Olusegun Obasanjo as a citizen of the world. It was the nation that suffered the debilitating effects. The country’s image was dented. The Anambra scenario has rekindled the memory of the electoral horror.