Editorial: INEC and the Conduct of Elections 

The controversial Supreme Court decision on the Imo State governorship election that saw Senator Hope Uzodinma of the All Progressive Congress (APC) who came fourth in the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared result, leapfrog to first position, is yet another highlight of the charade that is election in today’s Nigeria.

The Imo case is a bizarre scenario that saw the total number of votes legitimized by the Supreme Court surpass the total number of accredited voters, putting both the judicial institution and the electoral body on the spot. But even as bad as the Imo case is, it is nowhere near the worst we have seen in recent months and years. In today’s Nigeria, elections have literally become wars with those who have superior force of arms emerging victorious.

The obscene violence that was the governorship election in Kogi State, which saw the incumbent governor, Yahaya Bello, a generally unpopular candidate emerge victorious by the barrel of the gun is only one of the recent highlights. Sadly, like everywhere else, the barbarity of vote stealing, ballot box snatching, disenfranchisement and even murder of the electorate were supervised, if not aided by the country’s security agencies, namely, the police, the military and the civil defence corps.

Yet, even Kogi pales into insignificance when compared to the mayhem unleashed by men of the Nigerian armed forces in Rivers State in an attempt to subvert the will of the people and impose an Abuja sponsored candidate.

Here is the painful reality of Nigeria’s military, the symbol of her sovereignty and the strength of the most populous black nation; indeed, an army that was once the pride of the continent with enviable exploits in the Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone and elsewhere, being reduced to mere election-rigging thugs. It was a show of shame which the military authority’s feeble attempt to deny only helped to compound.

To its credit however, INEC officials were not accomplices in the Rivers’ very regrettable episode. They had been themselves victims with one of their ad-hoc staff among those killed in the mayhem. But the same cannot be said about Kogi State, Osun and Kano, among other states where the electoral body actively participated and aided stealing of people’s mandates.

It is a given that at the heart of Nigeria’s developmental crisis is its inability to evolve an electoral system that is by any stretch, credible. Indeed no nation can make meaningful progress where leaders are not liable to be removed or chosen on the basis of their performance. The culture of electoral impunity has far reaching consequences which many Nigerians may not yet have realised. At the basics, a leadership   whose legitimacy does not lie with the people cannot be answerable to them. At the heart of Nigeria’s failure of leadership therefore, is the failure of its electoral system.

Sadly, we seem, as a collective, to have assimilated the culture of might is right; a culture that accepts the idea that in elections, the will of the people count for little while the choice of those in power count for everything. It has become accepted therefore, that in every election, whoever the outgoing incumbent backs will emerge winner irrespective of whether or not he is popular with the electorate. So much has this absurdity been assimilated that in today’s Nigeria, we hear highly respected men of God calling on incumbents to “choose their successors.”

It is unfortunate that as opposed to improving the electoral system with time, we are only progressively learning new ways of strengthening electoral fraud. Who, in 1993 when the Prof. Humphrey Nwosu led National Electoral Commission of Nigeria (NEC) conducted a very transparent presidential election during which, election results were announced in states, covered every step of the way by the media, such that even before the final announcement which never happened, people already knew the outcome, would have thought that nearly three decades later, the Nigerian electorate would be put in the dark for two to three days after a presidential election, within which period, all manner of manipulations would have taken place to arrive at a predetermined outcome?

From the dark days of the blatant electoral manipulation of the early 2000s under the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) leadership, Nigerians witnessed a semblance of sanity in the electoral system during the days of Goodluck Jonathan who continued with the reforms of his predecessor, Umaru Musa Ya’Adua.

Indeed, to his eternal credit, Ya’Adua had, upon coming to power in 2007, admitted that the electoral system that brought him was not credible, and vowed to pursue reforms. Part of that reform made it possible for the APC and President Muhammadu Buhari to come to power in 2015, riding on the back of massive goodwill to beat then incumbent Jonathan.

Regrettably, the gains of those few years have been eroded. We now have in power, those who rob mandates and swear that they won fairly. And indeed, dare to insult the sensibilities of the populace by laying claim to integrity.

This newspaper believes strongly that Nigeria cannot afford to continue on this path as it is a sure way to ruination. The decision about who governs must strictly be that of the electorate to make. It is the bedrock of democracy. Anything short of that is tyranny. Indeed, that’s the only way to enthrone a culture of accountability needed to make progress as a nation.

The recent introduction of card readers by INEC is a good step even though it doesn’t go far enough. Unfortunately, President Buhari has so far rendered this brilliant initiative useless by his refusal to sign the amended electoral bill into law.

We appeal, therefore, to Buhari to fulfill his promise of appending his signature to the bill. The leadership of the 9th Assembly should apply necessary pressure on the president to sign the bill once it reconvenes. Above all, there also the need for electronic voting; the problem of violence and fraud ties closely to human element and less it intrudes into the process the better for its integrity.

But beyond card readers, Nigeria must pursue electronic voting as it remains the surest way to ensure credibility of the electoral system. The time to begin is now.