Misconceptions on INEC over Rivers re-run

A recent article in one of our national newspapers captioned “INEC, violence and Rivers re-run,”   authored by one Gilberth Elechi caught my attention and captured my mind not because of the striking headline but my eagerness to learn more about  political developments in Rivers State. But no sooner I had fully settled down to digest […]

A recent article in one of our national newspapers captioned “INEC, violence and Rivers re-run,”   authored by one Gilberth Elechi caught my attention and captured my mind not because of the striking headline but my eagerness to learn more about  political developments in Rivers State.
But no sooner I had fully settled down to digest the supposedly compelling piece to further enrich my knowledge on the burning issue of the delayed re-run election in the state,  than  my  dispassionate expectation was rudely shattered by the jaundiced and kindergarten diagnosis of  the subject  displayed by the writer.
It was crystal clear that the writer was on a mud-slinging mission to mislead Nigerians that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) deliberately tailored the delayed re-run election to soothe some political interests while at the same time absolving the two major political parties in the state; the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) of any blame for the postponed election.
While I am not in any way holding brief for INEC or any political party, I think the likes of Elechis need to be purged of their penchants for ill-concocted theories, lies, misinformation and selective amnesia by objectively drawing their attention to the events that culminated to the postponement of the re-run as according to Wolfgang Von Goethe, “The historian’s duty is to separate the true from the false, the certain from the uncertain, and the doubtful from that which cannot be accepted.”
Elechi, in the write-up, was quick to hit hard on the INEC’s Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu for delaying the rerun election in the self-acclaimed ‘peaceful’ Rivers State , but forget  so soon that the same insecurity  symptoms and war rhetoric by politicians that were at play in the aborted March re-run election, that led to the loss of lives, including the death of a National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) member, Okonta Samuel, were openly manifested before INEC decision to postpone the July 31 rerun.
Should INEC have gone ahead with the election even when the ominous sign of violence were clearly written on the wall with the burning of INEC office in Bori and other political skirmishes across the state? Is the political ambition of any politician or power tussle of politicians worth the lives of Rivers people?  While I await Elechi and his ilk to answer these questions, it is incumbent upon me to put the record straight that the conduct of elections is invariably a collective venture that involves not just INEC, but also a diverse range of stakeholders, notably security agencies, political parties and their candidates, voters, as well as interest groups.
 To guarantee credible and transparent polls, there are things that are strictly the responsibility of the electoral body, and the issue of security, which has been the bane of the Rivers rerun its outside the purview of INEC.
Though Elechi admitted that the issue of inconclusive elections first crept into the nation’s electoral system in 2011 through the supplementary election that saw to the emergence of Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State, he however misfired when he said that the  Yakubu’s headship of INEC has eminently entrenched them.  The reason for more cases of inconclusive election under the current INEC chairman is as a result of the desire of the electoral body to ensure that elections in the country are more credible and reflect the wishes of the electorates.
In other words, INEC new system has made it impossible for election riggers to have their ways through mere allocations of votes or the use of brute force to declare results that negate the wish of the electorates. That personifies integrity, which Yakubu has always stood for.
While I share in the well-founded paranoia of the Rivers people who are now suffering from lack of adequate representation at both the National and State Assemblies, It is high time the likes of Elechi advised politicians in the state to do away with the dangerous win-at-all cost mentality for the re-run election to hold peacefully instead of passing the blame to INEC.
Ukoha, a public affairs analyst, wrote this piece from Abuja