21032019 - PDP, Atiku in post-election trauma, depression — APC

Vanguard, THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2019 — 39
Nigerians deserve better
than the 2019 elections
IF Mahmood Yakubu is
given to introspection he
should be asking himself what
went wrong with the 2019 elections.
The free, fair and credible
polls the Independent National
Electoral Commission,
INEC, chairman promised
Nigerians did not happen on
February 23 and March 9.
Yakubu got all the money he
needed and one week extension
to boot. But what did Nigerians
get in return? A fundamentally
flawed exercise with
dubious outcomes.
As John Campbell, former
United States ambassador to
Nigeria, and the Ralph
Bunche senior fellow for Africa
policy studies at the Council
on Foreign Relations noted:
“Nigeria’s latest presidential
election cycle has been bad
news for democracy in Africa’s
most populous country and
across the continent.”
Many agree with him.
Campbell, coauthor of the
2018 book, Nigeria: What Everyone
Needs to Know insisted
that: “February’s presidential
election does not inspire confidence
in the democratic trajectory
of Africa’s most populous
country.”
The Situation Room, an
umbrella organisation of Nigeria’s
civil society groups,
agreed with Campbell, saying
the 2019 elections marked “a
step back from the 2015 general
election,” and urged that
“actions should be taken to
identify what has gone wrong
and what can be corrected.”
Campbell concluded that
“the poor quality of this election
cycle and the low and declining
number of voters do not
inspire confidence, and some
Nigerians have begun to question
whether democracy is
right for their country”.
Those who claim to be more
patriotic than others may rise
up in self-righteous indignation
against such portrayal. But
as lawyers would say, res ipsa
loquitur, the facts of the 2019
elections speak for themselves
and the odour is not the scent
of roses.
With a historically low turnout,
particularly for the governorship
ballot, unprecedented
militarisation, unparalleled
violence, intimidation of voters,
snatching and burning of
ballot papers and boxes, waste
of human lives, the jury is still
out on if any other election
since 1999 can compete with
those of 2019 in Nigeria’s hall
of electoral infamy.
But the consequence of such
malfeasance was predictable.
Almost two weeks after the
vote, the fate of seven states –
Kano, Sokoto, Bauchi, Benue,
Plateau, Adamawa and Rivers
The most important
variable in the
election value
chain for Nigerian
politicians is the
ability to compromise
security
agencies and
INEC officials
– still hangs in the balance with
inconclusive polls.
Instructively, with the exception
of Plateau State where the
incumbent All Progressives
Congress, APC, Governor, Simon
Lalong, was leading his
Peoples Democratic Party, PDP,
challenger, Jeremiah Useni,
with 583,255 to 538,326 votes.
The PDP was leading in
Kano, Bauchi and Adamawa,
states touted as APC strongholds
which also returned humungous
votes for President
Muhammadu Buhari.
Why did the governors who
pulled off that incredible feat
not do the same for themselves
in the election on March 9?
The PDP was also leading in
both Sokoto and Benue before
the INEC waded in with its own
electoral doctrine of necessity.
The case of Rivers is even
more bizarre. Given the fact
that the APC had no candidates,
election there ought to
have been a cake walk. Yet,
Rivers was turned into a war
theatre, where rivers of blood
flowed, literally.
But I am most disappointed
in Buhari because of his endorsement
of this charade
called elections.
Chastising governors owing
civil servants arrears of salaries
in October 2017, Buhari
wondered aloud: “How can
anyone go to bed and sleep
soundly when workers have
not been paid their salaries for
months?”
I have found myself asking
the same question. How can a
president who promised free,
fair and credible elections go
to bed and sleep soundly in the
face of this disastrous outing?
Why is it that anything Buhari
touches turns to ashes in
the mouth? How can he, the
primary beneficiary of a worldacclaimed
credible polls in
2015, superintend over what
may go down in history as Nigeria’s
worst election only four
years after?
It is sad but true to character
that Buhari, a self-acclaimed
man of integrity, is not fazed
by the sad turn of democratic
events in the country.
But as Campbell rightly observed,
the 2019 elections is
bad news for Nigeria’s democracy
and the implication of the
malfeasance will be huge and
far-reaching.
One can wager a bet that
these elections may well attract
the highest number of litigations.
Voter apathy will get
worse and the implication of
Nigerians losing confidence in
the ballot box is better imagined.
Nigeria is not making significant
democratic progress.
Despite the shutting down of
the entire country on election
day, closing of borders and deployment
of the military, the
electoral processes are getting
worse, not better.
Votes cast at polling booths
account for only about 20 per
cent of what determines success.
The most important variable
in the election value chain
for Nigerian politicians is the
ability to compromise security
agencies and INEC officials.
They deploy huge resources in
buying the loyalty or co-operation
of electoral officials and
military officers.
Politicians wait for the INEC
to appoint Returning Officers
and then move in.
A friend of mine, a university
lecturer, narrated how his
phone started ringing unceasingly
immediately he was appointed
a Returning Officer
until he declined the offer.
When the Resident Electoral
Commissioner, REC, in the
state called to know the reason,
the man told him the process
lacked integrity.
The admonition was: Please,
protect your votes.
But because the institutions
of state with responsibility to
deliver free and credible polls
failed woefully in discharging
that responsibility, most politicians
resorted to self-help.
To protect their votes and
“victory”, politicians pay security
agents and thugs to disrupt
voting and collation of
results where they lose and
protect same where they win.
Results announced at polling
booths are changed at
ward and local government
collation centres.
A lady who was a local observer
broke down in tears
when she saw the results of the
elections she observed. Figures
manufactured at collation
centres were poles apart from
what she recorded at polling
booths. The most frightening
phenomenon is the loss of confidence
in the ballot box and
the apathy that significantly
marred the governorship election.
It can only get worse.
Most people insist that it is
not worth their while going out
to vote knowing their votes will
neither be counted nor count.
Loss of confidence in the ballot
box is a precursor to selfhelp.
That is the surest route to
the Hobbesian state of nature
where life is brutish, short and
nasty as it is in Rivers State today.
On his inauguration as president
on May 29, 2007, Umaru
Yar’Adua declared that the
election which brought him to
power was a sham, and vowed
to reform the electoral process.
He delivered on the promise
on August 28, 2007 with the
inauguration of a 21-member
Electoral Reform Panel, led by
Justice Muhammed Uwais.
That is the hallmark of
statesmanship.
But expecting Buhari, the
man of integrity, to do the same
is like waiting for Godot. Yet
for all intents and purposes,
the 2007 elections represent by
far the electoral will of Nigerians
than the 2019 edition.
Nigeria deserves a lot more
and better from Buhari.