Nothing could be more inexplicable. Listen to the words of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) for Kwara State, Mallam Garba Mamdami, reportedly speaking in Ilorin on Wednesday before the commencement of the distribution of critical election materials from the office of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to Local Government Areas in the state. According to the REC, “The result sheets for Kwara were found in our FCT office in Abuja and they are going to be sent today. I will be here (CBN) till they bring it. Also the results sheet of Lagos was found here. I have sent it back, that of Lagos was also found in Nasarawa. You can see the reason the election was postponed”. It is of course reassuring that Mamdami said that the noted lapses had been corrected in the state and that the sensitive polls items were already being moved from Ilorin to the far flung Local Government Areas such as Baruten, Kaiama and Pategi as at Wednesday.
However, against the background of these kinds of revelations across the country, it is not surprising that assorted conspiracy theories have been espoused attributing the last ditch postponement of last Saturday’s presidential and national assembly elections till today to insider collusion by elements within INEC with external partisan interests to compromise the polls. In its immediate reaction to the postponement, for instance, the PDP and its candidate, Alhaji Abubakar Atiku, alleged that INEC acted under pressure from the APC and the presidency whichallegedly envisaged the ruling party’s imminent defeat had the elections gone ahead.
Another variant of this allegation was that the INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmud Yakubu, preferred to postpone the election rather than cave in to alleged pressure from some quarters to hold the exercise in a staggered manner purportedly designed to favour the ruling party. The forceful condemnation of the polls postponement by the APC National Chairman, comrade Adams Oshiomhole, the party’s National Caucus as well as the presidency, however, seriously weakens the plausibility of this thesis. For, they have remorselessly put down INEC as an epitome of organizational inefficiency and incompetence stressing that the electoral umpire had been provided with all the resources it required to deliver effectively on its mandate.
Oshiomhole has vehemently interrogated the rationale for INEC to have waited till after 2am early on February 16, when most normal people would presumably be asleep, to announce its inability to conduct the elections despite assuring Nigerians virtually every day till then of its readiness for the exercise. And the Minister of State for Aviation, Mr. Sirika Hadi, has debunked the INEC Chairman’s claim that weather challenges were partly responsible for the logistical glitches experienced by the commission in delivering electoral materials to critical destinations on schedule by air.
Given the colossal socio-economic and psychological costs attendant on the postponement as well as the grave damage once again done to the country’s international image, it is not surprising that President Muhammdu Buhari has stated unequivocally that the incident will still have to be thoroughly investigated after the polls. Indeed, the APC has gone on to allege not only that the main opposition party had penetrated and compromised critical operatives within INEC to help skew the election in its favour but also that the PDP had prior information about the impending postponement, a development which the ruling party insists caught it unawares.
The onus is certainly on the ruling party to offer credible proof for its allegations. But then, since Atiku had alleged that INEC was pressurized by a jittery presidency to abort the polls from holding last Saturday, what explains the rather tame and seemingly kid glove treatment by the PDP of an electoral umpire it claimed worked in cahoots with the ruling party to truncate its envisaged electoral triumph through polls postponement? The PDP has inexplicably left the APC to vehemently take on INEC on this lapse as if the ruling party was the one in opposition!
If the allegations by the APC are true, the ruling party must have naively discounted its own oft-repeated mantra as regards the capacity and desperation of corruption to fight back in the face of President Muhammadu Buhari’s unprecedented onslaught against the monster, a war that has claimed the scalp of many a top PDP big shot.
Of course, one must sympathize with the INEC and its leadership who are operating in a perennially charged political atmosphere of intense competition for the economically beneficial control of state power, a struggle that is all too often difficult to differentiate from war. In such a context, critical state institutions such as electoral, judicial and electoral agencies tend to be inexorably drawn from their supposedly non-partisan heights into the political fray with unsavoury consequences for their credibility and integrity as well as the efficacy and stability of the political system as a whole.
In the run up to this year’s election, it has hardly surprising that heavy weather has been made by the opposition of the presence of one of the 12 INEC national commissioners, Mrs Amina Zakari, within the top echelon of the commission. This is because of her purported familial relationship with President Muhammadu Buhari. It has not mattered to the critics that her membership of INEC predated Buhari’s ascension to power or that one electoral commissioner in a complex organization like INEC is unlikely to be able to do much to skew electoral outcomes without extensive internal collusion.
Yes, there should be cause for worry if there is credible suspicion of external partisan interests having access to sensitive insider information through unscrupulous INEC functionaries who violate their oaths of office. But it would appear that the critics have been most unfair to Mrs Zakari after all. It is now obvious that officials from some other parts of the country play roles even more critical than that of this woman in the elections administration process.
It is noteworthy in this regard that in the cause of investigating the logistical failures allegedly responsible for the postponement of the February 16 elections, the Directorate of State Services (DSS), controversially invited a number of top INEC Staff to interact with its functionaries, an invitation that was later stepped down obviously for political reasons. Those earlier invited include the Director of INEC’s operations and logistics department, Professor Okechukwu Ibeano, Director of Information and Communication Technology, Chidi Nwafor, Director of Voter Education and Publicity, Osaze Uzzi and the Assistant Director of ICT, Bimbo Oladunjoye.
The allegation that an individual was specifically planted in INEC to manipulate election for some partisan interests certainly did not take into account the organizational complexities of INEC and the details of functional allocation of responsibilities down the line. Unfortunately, the critics are unlikely to apologize to Mrs Zakari. Sure, the commissioners and staff of INEC cannot be recruited from outer space. It is also impracticable to import expatriate functionaries from purportedly neutral international agencies to conduct elections in a country of the size and complexity of Nigeria.
Functionaries of INEC will necessarily belong to specific ethnic communities, states, regions, religious faiths and cultural entities within Nigeria. They will as human beings and necessarily political animals also have their individual political views and inclinations. How do we then ensure that officials of this critical electoral umpire adhere to their oaths of office and perform their functions devoid of ethno-regional considerations, religious bias or political partisanship?
First, the terms and conditions of service of such staff must be attractive and generous enough to reduce vulnerability to financial inducement to sabotage elections. Secondly, the cost of violating their oath of office and succumbing to primordial or financial considerations to manipulate elections must be raised to become exceedingly high. Proven cases of election rigging and manipulation at any stage of the electoral process must attract very severe consequence.
Election rigging enables governments to come to power in utter violation of the genuine will of the people. It is an act of violence that is the equivalent of military coup. Those who indulge in the atrocity must do so fully aware of the dire consequences if they are caught. Only the most draconian measures can help to force our errant Nigerian political elite to embrace attitudes and values conducive to any true transition to modernity. This is why this column is not unduly perturbed at the thought of ballot box snatchers being shot on sight.
Buhari, Atiku and election rigging
PMB’s directive to the armed forces and security agencies to deal ruthlessly with ballot box snatchers during today’s elections has elicited outrage in some quarters. He has been accused of exhibiting disregard for the rule law and disdain for due process. His critics insist that the Electoral Act provides sufficient penalties for ballot snatching and other forms of election rigging, which is at least two years imprisonment. But if widespread ballot box snatching provokes large scale breakdown of law and order it may be impossible even for courts to sit to enforce the Electoral Act. Draconian measures are needed to bring about some sanity in this regard.
In siding with critics of PMB on this matter, Atiku gives the impression that he will be soft on election rigging if he is elected President. This brings to mind Atiku’s recent stunning revelation in Lagos that as Vice President, he was the mastermind behind the massive rigging by the PDP of the governorship elections in the South-west in 2003, an onslaught which only Tinubu’s Lagos was able to understand.Unapologetic, Atiku had asked his audience to give him another opportunity to repeat history perhaps on a scale of grander atrociousness. Ballot snatchers will certainly not be unhappy with an Atiku presidency.