Shocking memories of the 2007 and 2011 electoral debacles were rekindled by the National Human Rights Commission when it recommended early this month that an erstwhile chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Maurice Iwu, and some former public office holders be brought to book for their alleged untoward roles.
The late President Umaru Yar’Adua, the ultimate beneficiary of the poll, had to acknowledge that the process that brought him to office in 2007 was indeed flawed, following local and global disapproval. But the country carried on as if nothing was amiss. Aside from Iwu, others the NHRC mentioned included Emmanuel Uduaghan and Oserheimen Osunbor, former governors of Delta and Edo states respectively; Tanko Ayuba, Ayo Arise, Hosea Ehinlanwo, and 60 others, among them a horde of INEC officials. Almost all the former elected officials have pilloried the NHRC for its allegations, just as they restated their innocence.
We hold no brief for the NHRC: yet, we agree that Iwu should be put on the spot for conducting what international observers perceived as one of the most bizarre elections ever held in the world. The outcome inaugurated the strange staggering of governorship elections now in vogue in the country and affecting Bayelsa, Edo, Ondo, Ekiti, Osun and Kogi states, where election tribunals upturned the fraud-tainted results.
The commission had empanelled a Technical Working Group that studied the 2007 and 2011 polls, which turned in a 284-page final report, from which it derived its imprimatur. Osunbor, Uduaghan and Arise have carpeted the NHRC, and wondered why it could not even give them the right of fair-hearing by inviting them before it reached its conclusion. Surely, they would have that chance when they are arraigned in court.
However, an election so deprecated as that of 2007, which led to the loss of lives, cancellation of results and over 800,000 persons identified as electoral offenders by INEC, cannot be swept under the carpet. It should be thoroughly investigated and the culprits punished in line with the Electoral Act, which has prescribed various fines and jail terms for electoral offences. The European Union Election Observer team, led by Max van den Berg, did not mince words when it said, “The election fell far short of basic international standards,” stressing that poor organisation, lack of essential transparency, widespread procedural irregularity, and significant evidence of fraud were its noxious trademarks.
But all this was rooted in the do-or-die mentality towards elections, as preached by the then President Olusegun Obasanjo. At a political meeting in his home town, Abeokuta, Ogun State, preparatory to the election, he had thundered, “I will campaign because this election is a do-or-die affair for the PDP (Peoples Democratic Party).”
This perversion has since then defined the way politicians see electoral contest: they hire thugs to perpetrate violence by killing political opponents, intimidating electoral officials, snatching of ballot boxes and ballot box stuffing in order to deliver tainted electoral victory to the highest bidder.
Such vile campaigns claimed the lives of prominent politicians like Funsho Williams in Lagos State, Dipo Dina in Ogun State, Ayo Daramola in Ekiti State and Harry Marshall, just to mention but a few. Sadly, nobody has been held responsible for any of these murders.
Amid these misgivings, Yar’Adua had set up the Muhammadu Uwais-led electoral reform committee, which recommended the establishment of the Electoral Offences Tribunal to try offenders. But his death barely three years in office aborted the chance of a wholesale implementation of the reform. His successor, Goodluck Jonathan, did not even give it a thought.
This official indifference to guaranteeing the integrity of the electoral process explains why security personnel like soldiers, police and Department of State Services operatives became routinely involved in the rigging of polls. The Nigerian Army felt so scandalised about how its officers were neck-deep in messing up the polls in Ekiti State in 2014 that it had to probe and retire some of its officers a few months ago.
The country must stop trifling with electoral brigandage. Treating those who undermine the wishes of the people at the ballot as petty criminals gravely imperils democracy. Indeed, they are the worst bandits or criminals, since their ultimate goal is to gain access to public treasury, or seize total control of it, as it is the case with state governors and presidents.
Democracy, as a matter of fact, does not exist when the process that throws up elected officials is flawed, or brazenly compromised by the stakeholders. The immediate past chairman of INEC, Attahiru Jega, left office in June 2015, bemoaning the non-adoption of the Uwais report wholesale, especially the creation of a tribunal to handle electoral offences. Since his successor, Mahmood Yakubu, shares the same sentiment on the necessity of such a tribunal, we urge him to move beyond rhetoric and nudge the Federal Government into action. If “there are people who believe that they can do anything and get away with it,” as he agonisingly expressed recently, when he revealed that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission grilled 100 INEC personnel over bribery allegations in the 2015 election, then his leadership should de-fang such a system without further delay.
Even in the established democracies, the frontiers of democracy are still being advanced through periodic reviews of their systems. That was a statement the United Kingdom made with the appointment of Sir Eric Pickles last year, to review electoral fraud and make recommendations on what could be done to deal with the challenge. Pickles had charged, “While all politicians want high turnouts, we cannot sacrifice integrity and confidence in our democracy…”
Consequently, in our quest for an endurable democracy, it is the bounden duty of the Federal Government to embrace the NHRC campaign of bringing those proven to have jeopardised elections to book.
