Politics

Despite the applause that greeted the introduction of BVAS and the other electronic devices as the solution to ballot box snatching and other electoral frauds, but the conduct of the 2023 presidential and general elections have shown that the nation is far from achieving this long expected peaceful, free, fair and credible elections. Perhaps the current practice of hiding like an ostrich behind the absence of immediate repercussions for electoral misconduct and fraudulent practices would be merely to bring closer the next electoral disaster in the country.

By Goddy Ikeh

WHEN Prof. Anya O. Anya, octogenarian and former director general of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group and an elder statesman stated that Nigeria is at war, little did we realize that this view expressed by him would have any consequences on the conduct the 2023 general elections. Prof Anya told Realnews in an interview in Lagos before the polls that most of the challenges confronting the nation in 2020 had not been tackled successfully, especially the issues of rising insecurity across the country, poor performance of the economy with rising inflation, youth unemployment and the growing appetite for borrowing and its impact on economy, insecurity in the south east.  He also touched on the issue of equity and the need for a presidential candidate, who is literate in economics to repair the broken sector as well as a candidate with the requisite knowledge and experience to occupy such office, which he believes abound in the South East if the zone is given the opportunity to have shot at the office.

Prof Anya lamented that the country has continued to live in denial and that the war is real and can only be won by recalling all the retired army generals because of their knowledge and wealth of experience. He noted that the war is even more dangerous because the country is dealing with non-state actors, “people who are not organized and should not be near government and not even in government, so they are on their own and what makes it worst is the fact that from what we are now hearing, many of these people are from outside of Nigeria, so, it’s not an internal war, it’s in fact an external war.”

“Nigeria as we speak is at war, but Nigeria is also in denial. There is nowhere in the world that you have so many people being killed each day either by bandits, insurrectionists or kidnappers or whatever, and you think the society is normal, no way!      

“So we are at war, the difference is simply that we are pretending that we don’t know we are at war,” he said. In spite of the views expressed by Prof Anya, it is ironic that a nation with these unattended issues headed for a presidential and general elections and expected a successful exercise.

However, the elections have been held and the war appears to have not ended and many Nigerians are now calling for national healing and as usual to wish away these issues as if there never existed.

Unfortunately, the 2023 polls have been largely described as the worst elections since independence in 1960. Apart from the fact that the elections were marred by violence, killings, vote-buying and different forms of electoral frauds, there was also the issue of not allowing non indigenes in some states like Lagos to vote for their preferred candidates.

In addition, the post-election reports of foreign media, institutions, election observers as well as civil society organisations agreed that the conduct of the elections were below acceptable standards. For instance, the review of the February 25 presidential and National Assembly election was more damming as The Economist described it a “chaotically organized vote and messy count” gave Nigeria a new president, while The Financial Times of London said in an editorial comment that our presidential election was “deeply flawed” and the winner “a wealthy political fixer.” The Guardian of U.K. in its analysis, described the winner as “an immensely wealthy veteran powerbroker trailed by corruption allegations which he denies.”

The New York Times described him as “a divisive figure in Nigerian politics.” Robert Rotberg, founding director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s programme on intrastate conflict, wrote an opinion for Canada’s influential Globe and Mail; its headline: “Bola Tinubu’s election is another triumph for Nigeria’s corrupt old guard”, while The Times of London said: “A wealthy kleptocratic ‘godfather’ of politics” and the CNN played a part of Bola Tinubu’s acceptance speech where he described what he got as “a serious mandate.” A CNN anchor then asked if it “was really a mandate” with less than 10 percent of the registered voters behind it. He must be wondering what kind of people are these?, while The Washington Post quoted Matthew Page, associate fellow with Chatham House’s Africa Program, as accusing INEC of making both deliberate and unintentional mistakes: “They raised the hopes about the election and its transparency, and then they dashed them. When the opposition says the process was broken, it’s hard to argue with them.”

And the foreign election observers from the US International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) summed up their opinion of the election as falling “well short of Nigerian citizens’ legitimate and reasonable expectations.”

And for the governorship and state House of assembly polls, the reports were not also impressive as Yiaga Africa, one of the election observer teams, described the elections as marred by rigging, violence and voter suppression.

An official of the organization, Ezenwa Nwagwu, told a news conference in Abuja during the group’s post-election review that the team observed manipulation of governorship election by agents of the Peoples Democratic Party in one local government areas in Abia State.

Nwagwu alleged that the PDP agents, in connivance with security agents, entered Obingwa LGA results collation centre in Abia State, chased everyone out and compelled INEC officials to change figures in favour of their candidates. The group also said that in general, the elections were marred by voter suppression, electoral violence and impunity, vote buying and capture of the results management system by political thugs in Delta, Lagos, Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Kano and Taraba states.

“Yiaga Africa is saddened by cases of attacks of voters, INEC officials, election observers and personnel of the EFCC by political thugs.

“Reports also indicated an average of eight fatalities were recorded in the last 24 hours.

“These election-related deaths are unacceptable, highly condemnable.

“It is important for security agents to hold the political thugs and their sponsors accountable for these deaths and attacks,” the team said.

And for Civic Hive, it was knocks for INEC for the poor conduct of the elections in its report of the polls. CIVIC Hive, which is committed to the principles of open data and governance, citizens’ participation, and data transparency, stated in its assessment of INEC’s preparedness and conduct of the 2023 Nigeria General Elections that elections “not only is our electoral budget an ever-increasing black hole, but INEC’s electoral conducts and operations have also spiralled down in voter turnout, with the 2023 Presidential election being the lowest since 1999”.

It also noted INEC’s staff lateness to some PUs across the country is unacceptable, unethical, and tampers with the voting process, credibility and security. Some PUs counted results well into the night because voting started late. This could have been avoided if they did the right thing as they promised.

Some of the observations included faulty result in collation framework, involvement of INEC staff in partisan politics and failure to use the IREV which they described as IREV redundancy. The organization reported of the involvement political figures and devotees who influenced INEC staff operations during the elections.

“We witnessed some disparities in BVAS’ importance and usefulness in this election. We also noticed a significant delay in result collation at the ward level, a process that gave room for result manipulation before they reached the state level. INEC, whose work is to coordinate the aggregation of these results in real-time so that final election results can be available within 24 hours, failed woefully at this,” the organization said.

“We have also observed that citizens and even legal practitioners are yet to arrive at a confluence on the interpretation and meaning of some salient items in the Electoral Act, which may further create uncertainties about the electoral process, participation, distrust, and apathy in INEC to uphold its commitment to conducting free, fair and credible elections.

“We are concerned that the interpretation of salient items of the electoral act remain unclear to many including citizens and legal practitioners thus sustaining an atmosphere of distrust and uncertainties about the electoral process and INEC’s commitment to conducting free, fair and credible elections. We therefore seek for timely judicial clarifications of these salient items towards enabling the restoration of confidence in the electoral process,” the report added.

For the European Union Observers Mission, the governorship and states houses of assembly elections lacked transparency.

The EU-EOM Chief Observer, Barry Andrews, said in the group’s preliminary observation report for the elections that INEC improved on logistics during the gubernatorial elections.

“Positively, INEC introduced some corrective measures ahead of Saturday’s polls, allowing a timely delivery of sensitive materials and improved use of election technologies, yet the institution continued to lack transparency,” he said.

He said that the EU observers witnessed a widespread voter apathy, which he attributed to the consequence of INEC’s earlier flaws.

Mr Andrews said the mission’s findings revealed that while voting mostly started on time, there were multiple incidents of thuggery and intimidation of voters, polling officials, observers, and journalists, disrupting the process in some parts of the country.

“Throughout the mission we saw that Nigerians have a great appetite for democracy and are keen to engage in various civic activities,” he said. “However, in many parts of the country, their expectations were not met. Many were disappointed and we witnessed voter apathy that is in part a clear consequence of failures by political elites and, unfortunately, also by INEC,” he said.

He also noted that the mission directly observed incidents of vote buying.

Meanwhile, the presidential candidates of the Peolpes Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi of the Labour Party, LP, who were declared second and third positions respectively in the result of the election have rejected the result and the process used by INEC to arrive at the result and have approached the courts to contest the result of the election.

In addition, some of the candidates who lost the governorship election have indicated interest in seeking redress at the election tribunals, while INEC has earmarked N3 billion for the execution the numerous litigations resulting from its handling of the 2023 elections.

While the nation awaits the proceedings in the election tribunal, Nigerians will not stop discussing the consequences of the flawed elections conducted by INEC in spite of over N300 billion budgeted for the 2023 polls.

Unfortunately, another devastating consequences of the poor handling of the 2023 polls is the obvious loss of appetite developed by the youths for democracy before the polls as they were keen to engage in voting candidates of their choice during the elections. But this was clearly demonstrated in the voter apathy witnessed in the governorship election across the country because their expectations were not met in the handling of presidential and National Assembly elections by INEC.

A.

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