A comprehensive reform by the Federal Government to deal with the perversion of our electoral process is underway. This is laudable, as elections here since 1999 have failed to meet global standards. Details of the overhaul will soon be unfolded, according to the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, after consultations with the leadership of the National Assembly and the judiciary.
This indication from a stakeholders’ forum in Abuja, organised by the Nigeria Civil Society, came in the wake of the recent parliamentary polls in Rivers State that raised the intensity of electoral violence a notch higher. Some soldiers and civilians were killed, just as fully armed thugs recruited by politicians to subvert the wishes of the electorate were arrested in military uniform.
Because nobody is ever punished, more than 800,000 persons were involved in electoral irregularities in the 2011 polls. Out of this figure, only 200 were prosecuted by the Independent National Electoral Commission, which cited lack of capacity as the reason for failing to bring every suspect to book. If the country had addressed the electoral banditry of 2007, which the international community said was the worst ever experienced globally, the bloodletting of 2011 or the killing of 160 persons in 2015 could have been reduced.
The Rivers State mayhem gave credence to the European Union Election Observers’ report that 160 people were killed in 2015, in election-related violence from January to the time of the polls.In the 2011 post-election violence in 12 states in the North, 800 persons were killed, according to Human Rights Watch. Such macabre harvests before, during or after elections have been the order of the day when sectarian and primordial sentiments replace issue-based campaigns and national interest.
Yet, we have to entrench democratic values in our system in order to strengthen good governance. To eradicate the “do-or-die” mentality towards elections that manifests in the snatching of ballot boxes, ballot-stuffing, spilling of blood and unnecessary litigation, the government must come out smoking. “We cannot rule out the possibility of the imposition of sanctions to restrain those found guilty of electoral violence from participating in the electoral process,” the AGF said.
However, Nigeria’s problem is not really the absence of laws to deal with electoral malfeasance, because the Electoral Act has a surfeit of provisions, ranging from fines to terms of imprisonment, but largely the lack of political will by the state and its institutions to implement writs.
In some instances, law enforcement agencies like the police and military had been used as vehicles for the rigging of elections, a fact one of the staggered governorship elections just before the 2015 general election revealed. Also, the National Human Rights Commission Technical Study Group on the 2007 and 2011 polls reported that “the evidence of the witness is that police officers were, in fact, doing the shooting, the thumb-printing or the ballot-stuffing.”
As broad as the FG electoral review might be, we consider some issues most critical: the sanctity of the ballot-box, which means that electoral outcomes must reflect the wishes of the people; punishing all electoral offenders in accordance with the law; and the conclusion of all petitions at Election Tribunals before declared winners can be sworn in.
Admittedly, the integrity of our electoral process in the 2015 elections was enhanced with the introduction of the Card Reader and Permanent Voter Card devices. Yet, operational lapses clearly dictate that the efficiency level of the former should be worked on, while INEC amends Section 52 of the Electoral Act 2010, which forbids the use of electronic machines in elections for now. This will be in concert with the digital age. No barrier should be placed in the commission’s way in discharging its statutory duties.
To improve the country’s electoral system, the Federal Government set up the Muhammadu Uwais electoral reform committee, which recommended, among other things, a separate commission to handle electoral offences. Now is the time to dust off the report and implement it wholly. Our continual dismissal of electoral violence or those who subvert popular will at the polls gravely undermines our democracy.
Election is a contest; all those who submit themselves to it must be given a level playing field to do so. But such fairness vanishes the moment the so-called winners are sworn in, and then empowered with state resources or finance to fortify their legal representations at tribunals or even bribe judges. INEC should, therefore, begin now to put its house in order so that elections could be conducted at least three months to the swearing-in. Its plan to put this into effect by scheduling to conduct elections in February 2015 was subverted by a combination of its own shoddy preparations and conspiracy of the Executive.
President Muhammadu Buhari’s government, which has vowed to sanction perpetrators of electoral violence, should walk its talk and learn from Kenya’s ugly experience in 2007. Clashes among rival groups in the Mathare slum in Nairobi in a post-election violence in January 2008 claimed 1,200 lives. It was viewed as a crime against humanity for which President Uhuru Kenyatta faced trial at the International Criminal Court.
When hired thugs maraud with AK 47 rifles during elections, even killing soldiers and going scot-free, as we have often seen, it is a noxious evidence of the need for a radical change in order to avoid anarchy. This ominous drift should be halted by the Malami electoral agenda, and thereby prevent a bloodbath in 2019.
