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)
