In a country where every election has tended to throw up its peculiar challenges, reviewing the laws in a manner that would not only address such challenges, but also anticipate new ones, is an option that should be given a thought from time to time. For that reason, it has not come as a surprise that the Federal Government is contemplating a review of the existing electoral laws, with a view to providing a strong legal framework for the Independent National Electoral Commission to discharge its responsibilities ahead of the next general election in 2019.
According to a recent report, the government is busy finalising plans to inaugurate a 20-man panel that would take a look at the electoral laws once again. In addition to fine-tuning the existing laws, the panel will be required to come up with new ones, while also reviewing earlier attempts at reforming the electoral laws and the extent to which such efforts were actually brought to bear on the Nigerian electoral process. This includes the report and recommendations of the Justice Muhammadu Uwais-led Electoral Reform Commission of 2008.
And this is the crux of the matter: what is the rationale in constituting panels and committees to find solution to problems when their recommendations would only end up in the inner recesses of some secure offices? It is even tempting to deem the fresh attempt at an electoral law review as superfluous because of the way the Uwais panel report has so far been treated. Perhaps the proposed new body of “wise men” is deliberately being mandated to also revisit the Uwais report in order to justify its relevance; yet, it will never justify the culture of waste and the triviality with which important national issues are treated in this country.
The Uwais committee was an immediate product of the unprecedented electoral depravity that took place during the 2007 elections. While the conduct of the elections was described by international and local observers as falling short of the minimum standards, even by African standards, the eventual winner of the presidential poll, the late Umaru Yar’Adua, saw reason enough to acknowledge the shortcomings and went ahead to take steps to redress the anomaly.
Not surprisingly, the committee, headed by Uwais, a former Chief Justice of Nigeria, did a thorough job and came up with some far-reaching recommendations. Part of the recommendations, and perhaps the most far-reaching, was that no candidates in a contentious election should be allowed to take office until the election petitions are disposed of in court. The main gain of that recommendation is that it would deny one party the undue advantage of being in a position to deploy state resources to fight a personal election battle. It will also deny the party that must have unjustly wangled its way into office, through an electoral heist, from enjoying other benefits of occupying that office.
Another important recommendation of the Uwais committee, among others, was the establishment of a commission to deal with electoral offences. With such a commission, the rate of violence witnessed during elections, for which nobody is ever put on trial and punished, will definitely decline. Other such offences as ballot box snatching, thump printing and falsification of electoral figures will also be treated with dispatch. For instance, during the infamous 2007 elections superintended by Maurice Iwu, over 800,000 suspected electoral offenders, including a deputy governor who was openly shown hijacking ballot boxes on national television, were indentified. With the police, the constitutionally acknowledged body to arrest, investigate and prosecute such offenders, not forthcoming with its responsibilities, nothing has been heard about the fate of such people.
Regrettably, Nigerians are now left to rue what would have been, had the recommendations of that report been incorporated into the country’s electoral system. It is, therefore, encouraging that the INEC boss, Mahmud Yakubu, has so far positioned himself as an agent of change, insisting in recent interviews that “every ballot in this country must count.” However, for him to achieve his objectives of building institutions and improving on what he met at INEC, he has to work closely with the National Assembly to be able to amend the necessary laws that will result in organising credible elections.
In other parts of the world, electoral reform is considered so important that it could become a campaign issue. In Canada, for instance, the Liberal Party won the majority in the 2015 national elections on the platform of electoral reform promise. According to the party, no other elections would be held under the same system that brought it to power. As a result, a committee has been set up to hold hearings and come up with a new system by December 1, 2016.
There is no doubt that a country like Nigeria needs strong electoral laws to be able to ensure transparency in the electoral process. This is the way to guarantee that only the choices of the electorate would be declared winners at the end of elections. Beyond that, efforts should also be made to enforce extant laws. If thugs kill or burn down houses during an election, there are already laws that deal with murder and arson, which should be invoked. That is what should be happening now to sanitise elections, pending the introduction of reform.
