By Tonnie Iredia
The Independent National Electoral Commission INEC, says it is set to conduct a governorship election in Ondo state as scheduled for next Saturday November 16, 2024. The commission has also given firm assurances that all would be well. Whether or not people believe the electoral body is not easy to tell.
By Olu Fasan
Trust Nigerians, some will scoff at any comparison between Britain’s democracy and what Nigeria calls democracy. But if democracy is, as Abraham Lincoln famously defined it, “government of the people, by the people, for the people”, then Nigeria must be held to universal standards.
The critical electoral link between the government and the governed must not be severed, and democracy must not become ineptocracy, a system run by inept people. In any representative democracy, the irreducible core is the will of the people freely expressed in credible elections. That’s why last week’s UK general election offers some lessons.
By Emeka Alex Duru
I cannot recall where, between Benin and Kano, that I first came across the hashtag “#AllEyesOnTheElectionTribunalJudges,” powered by Diasporas for good governance. But I read in it that Nigerians had not lost interest on the last general elections and all that played out in the exercise. Indeed, they should not and ought not! That was a particular election that Nigerians of all ages and classes, especially the youth, saw as one that would change many narratives in the country.
It was one election which the organisers – the President Muhammadu Buhari administration and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) – advertised as the best that would happen to Nigeria. Buhari, in fact, boasted that the success of the election would stand as a legacy and point of reference for his regime. INEC chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, equally assured the whole world of conducting an election that would mark a radical departure from the past that was characterised by manipulations.
By Casmir Igbokwe
As The he saying goes, when a man on top of a palm tree pollutes the air, the flies get confused. No doubt, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) polluted the air of our 2023 general election. Now that many confused Nigerians are wondering what happened, the chairman of the electoral umpire, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, has remained taciturn.
Ordinarily, Yakubu expresses his views frequently. But since he surreptitiously announced the result of the infamous February 25 presidential election in the ungodly hours of March 1, 2023, he has left the arena for some other stakeholders and observers.
I watched INEC’s spokesman, Mr. Festus Okoye, trying labouriously to explain the so-called “technical glitches” in the last presidential election in a recent interview on Channels Television. He acknowledged that the results of the National Assembly elections were uploaded seamlessly to the INEC portal.
By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
Shamelessness is the vilest disease of the Nigerian establishment. The shameless mode of the leaders of Nigeria was activated in full force on February 25 and March 18, in this year of Our Lord, when so-called national elections were staged.
It all turned out to be a sham, a charade that even the most mentally retarded child would scoff at. Yet, billions were voted for the exercises that the organizers never believed in at all in the first instance.
By Michael Owhoko
Real losers of the 2023 Nigerian general elections are not the electorate who were deprived of their rights to freely choose candidates of their choice nor the first-timer youth who were disappointed by the Nigerian state nor the candidates who lost or won as declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
The biggest losers are President Muhammadu Buhari; INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu; President-elect, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu; and Nigeria as a political entity. Except for Bola Tinubu who carries the burden of legitimacy arising from what is perceived as a flawed process and total miniature votes garnered, the others will live with the scar and collective guilt slammed on the country by ethical deficit in the delivery process of the elections.
By Olu Fasan
Every nation fails or succeeds on the quality of its institutions. But every institution is as strong as the quality of its personnel, their competence and professionalism, their values and norms. Unfortunately, Nigeria is a country where state institutions utterly malfunction, bereft of any sense of responsibility, and where public officials have perverse norms and values, lacking a sense of purpose to serve the national interest.
The latest instance of institutional failure in Nigeria is the abysmal performance of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, which dashed the hopes of millions of Nigerians, and the expectations of the world, by conducting a presidential election universally condemned for woefully failing the basic tests of transparency and credibility. INEC’s failure reinforced the global perception of Nigeria as a failing state.
By MC Asuzu
Without any iota of doubt, all Nigerians must know by now that the vast majority of the people in this country are no longer ready to go on with all the lies and deceptions that had gone on in this country for all these past years.
And even that statement is to put it very mildly indeed. The only surprising thing about this emerging situation is that unlike in the past, the young people that dominate this revolutionary movement have apparently agreed not to be violent about it; no matter the provocation they get from the erstwhile political brigands in this regard.
By Casmir Igbokwe
The senior military officer looked with pity on some citizens marching enthusiastically to go and cast their votes. “You are wasting your time,” he said. It was in Lagos on the day of the presidential and National Assembly elections. When prodded, this officer alleged that a security report came shortly before the election, indicating who the powers that be wanted as President. This supposedly meant that the security men would have to cooperate to deliver the anointed one. I dismissed this information. But when President Muhammadu Buhari illegally raised his ballot paper to show that he voted for his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), I became suspicious.
It was then that what Reverend Father Emmanuel (surname withheld) told me five days to the election dawned on me. This priest said he was highly afraid the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, might not make it to Aso Rock. “The cabals are highly against him. I have been praying about this, but God can’t do for human beings what they can do for themselves,” he added. This was actually his reaction to my article titled, “Electing Nigeria’s miraculous President,” published on Monday, February 20, 2023.
By Ray Ekpu
It is only one month since INEC blew the whistle for the campaigns to begin. And within that one month there have been serious cases of campaign violence and related incidents. The most prominent is perhaps the harassment of the campaign convoy of the former Vice President and presidential candidate of the PDP, Mr Atiku Abubakar. The thugs pelted the Atiku’s convoy while on its way to the Palace of the Shehu of Borno. Several vehicles were said to be vandalised while 70 persons were hospitalised. The Borno State PDP Chairman, Zamna Gaddama alleged that the attack was carried out by some miscreants from the APC.
He said that the attack occurred at three points from the airport to the Shehu of Borno’s palace. On the other hand the Director of Media and Publicity for the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Mr Bayo Onanuga said that the attack could be the result of the infighting in the Borno State chapter of the PDP. He insisted that the APC had no hand in the attack.
By Ikechukwu Amaechi
Last Sunday, Professor Chidi Odinkalu, human rights activist, lawyer and guest columnist with TheNiche newspaper, raised a poser: Can Nigeria’s INEC Organise A Credible National Election?
Odinkalu asked the question against the backdrop of the mind-boggling revelation by the spokesman of the Coalition of United Political Parties, CUPP, Ikenga Imo Ugochinyere, that the 2023 elections may have been rigged even before the first ballot is cast.
Ugochinyere alleged on September 14, at a press conference, that voters register has been grievously compromised, having been padded with fictitious names. He further alleged that there was a plot to sack the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, in the event that he refuses to play ball; and also alerted of a secret suit at an Owerri High Court to stop the use of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BIVAS, in the 2023 elections.
By Rasheedat Shuaib
Nothing can be more shocking than learning that the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has embarked on not less than 16 industrial actions between 1999 and 2022.
For those who may not know, a major factor prompting our
university lecturers to be laying down their tools intermittently is the
failure of government to fulfill an agreement it once entered with the academic
union.
*Buhari receiving an honorary doctorate degree from the Kaduna State University
Another factor is the failure of the lecturers to reinvent themselves and face current realities, and find fresh ways of resolving their incessant disputes with the government.
Each time the ASUU strike rears its ugly head, one is forced to conclude that both the government and our lecturers lack empathy for us the students. Better put: they don’t have our interest at heart.
The recurrence of ASUU strike has numerous negative impacts on us, something the government and ASUU don’t consider when they fail to come to an agreement. We lost a whole session to this same madness two years ago. The same thing is already happening now, with the ongoing strike.
By Nick Dazang
Shortly after Professor Attahiru Jega assumed office as the
Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in June 2010,
his first major outing was a visit to the INEC state headquarters office in
Ibadan, the Oyo State capital. By the same token, shortly after Professor
Mahmood Yakubu was inaugurated as INEC Chairman on October 21, 2015, he
replicated Professor Jega’s pilgrimage with modifications.
He visited the South-West geopolitical zone, by beginning with a tour of the INEC state headquarters office in Ibadan, Oyo State.
*Voting day in Nigeria
After receiving a rousing welcome by the Oyo State INEC
officials, the media savvy Professor Yakubu flagged off a visit of media houses
in the zone with a robust engagement with the editorial board of Tribune
Newspapers at Imalefalafia, Ibadan. One of the issues raised by a member of the
Tribune editorial board was how Professor Yakubu intended to address the
scourge of of vote-buying and selling also known popularly in the South-West as
“see and buy”.
At the time of this engagement, the menace of vote-buying and
selling was as inchoate as Professor Yakubu was new to the Commission.
Therefore, Professor Yakubu requested that the said editorial board member
elaborate on what he meant. An election cycle down the line and the conduct of
many off-season governorship elections and a legion of bye-elections under his
belt and watch, the phenomenon of vote-buying and selling has since assumed the
proportion of a clear and present danger to our electoral process.
From what stakeholders have witnessed recently during the
conduct of the FCT Area Council Elections to the presidential primaries and the
conduct of the Ekiti and Osun governorship elections, vote-buying and selling
have become rampant and commonplace. Whereas vote-buying and selling were
carried out in the full glare of observers and the media during the FCT Area
Council Elections and recipients were liberally rewarded with Naira
notes, the currency of vote-buying in the presidential primaries morphed
from the Naira to the Dollar, with deleterious consequences to the economy and
the electoral process.
Following the token arrests of perpetrators of the act by
anti-corruption agencies during the conduct of the Ekiti governorship election,
the perpetrators, who are our own version of geniuses of travesty, have
contrived other means. Votes were reportedly bought in lieu of the Osun
governorship election days ahead either by direct cash or by way of offerings
or gifts. Rather than display thumb printed ballots, following the prohibition
of android phones at voting cubicles, commitments were extracted during the
Osun governorship election through vouchers by agents who then proceeded to
take care of complicit persons who voted for their preferred candidates.
Instead of playing by the rules as enunciated by the
Constitution and Electoral Act, thereby upholding the sanctity of the electoral
process and putting our democracy on an enviable keel, our unscrupulous
politicians seem to excel in gaming the system. Each time INEC plugs a loophole
created by them, they proceed, with frenetic zeal, to create new ones.
The upshot of their prolific negative genius is clear: they imperil and make
nonsense of the onerous efforts of the Commission to sanitise the electoral
process and to deliver wholesome elections which reflect the true and genuine
wishes of the Nigerian people.
My fear- and indeed that of most stakeholders in the electoral
process- is that if vote-buying and selling are left unchecked and
untrammeled, they will not only torpedo and undermine the integrity of the
electoral process, they will rubbish all the gains and reforms which INEC and
its partners have fought for and instituted over more than one decade.
Vote-buying promotes the outright sale of political office to the highest bidder. It brings diminishment and devaluation to political power which ought to be sacred and hallowed. And when or where a deep pocket buys political office he will either covet or abuse it. He will seldom deploy it to uplifting ends. At best he will obsess himself with recovering his “investment”. At worst he will enrich himself with a view to further perpetuating himself in office. In this sordid scenario or circumstance, good governance and delivery of democracy dividends are the first casualties.
The
office holder is not obligated to deliver them. The voter who has exchanged his
birthright for a miserable dish of pottage loses the moral high ground from
which to hold such an office holder to account. We have arrived at a sorry pass
on account of bad governance and the arrogance and betrayal of the political
class. Should we compound our woes by selling our votes and condemning
ourselves and our children to untold and continuous suffering and servitude?
To rise to the challenge of vote-buying and selling, INEC has had to expand its Interagency Consultative Committee on Elections Security, ICCES, by co-opting the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Commission, ICPC. In response to the threat of vote-buying, the two anti-corruption agencies made a few arrests during the conduct of the Ekiti and Osun governorship elections.
But given the widespread manner in which vote-buying reportedly took place in
the said elections, the arrests were at best niggardly. The arrests pale in
significance when compared with the large number of alleged perpetrators. As if
the arrests were not significant enough, we are yet to hear of the prosecution
and sentencing of perpetrators by our courts in what appear to be open and shut
cases.
As the Election Management Body, EMB, and, therefore, the chief driver of our elections, INEC has a responsibility to insist that those apprehended are prosecuted to the full extent of the law. INEC should upscale its voter education, underscoring to voters the danger which vote-buying and selling constitute to our democracy and good governance.
INEC and the anti-
corruption agencies should be proactive and anticipate in advance the
shenanigans and tricks deployed by politicians to buy votes and to stop them in
their tracks. In addition to being on top of their game, subsequent
arrests of perpetrators of vote-buying should not be limited to the minions.
Arrests should be extended to their high-profile sponsors. Beyond these, INEC must work with other stakeholders to ensure the establishment of the Electoral Offences Commission and Tribunal ahead of the 2023 general elections. That way we shall have a separate body which remit shall be the apprehension and punishment of those who seek to undermine the electoral process.
This should strengthen the integrity of the electoral
process and divest INEC of the legion of responsibilities with which it is
saddled and for which it has limited resources to discharge. The establishment
of the Electoral Offences Commission and Tribunal will also help check impunity
in the electoral process and further improve the quality of our elections.
*Dazang is a former
director in INEC (nickdazang@gmail.com)
