Promoting electoral integrity

To cap the progress made, the sitting President congratulated his opponent who was declared winner of the election. That diffused tension and all the predictions of doom and dire consequences if some candidates did not win came to nothing. However beyond the euphoria, we still have some hard nuts to crack. In Imo and Taraba […]

To cap the progress made, the sitting President congratulated his opponent who was declared winner of the election. That diffused tension and all the predictions of doom and dire consequences if some candidates did not win came to nothing. However beyond the euphoria, we still have some hard nuts to crack. In Imo and Taraba states, the elections drew protests from the major parties in the contest and they were declared inconclusive.  The crisis in Rivers state was most disturbing and leaves us with a bitter taste in the mouth.
While we are concerned about all the irregularities that marred what was essentially a good election, our major focus is now on Taraba State. It has dominated our internet forum of women’s rights advocates and human rights activists. There is need for the wider audience to know what we are doing but all the actors are identified by their nicknames to protect their identity.
Hakima, was one of the first to blow the whistle and generate discussion on the Taraba crisis ‘We have all read with keen interest the discourse on the Taraba State election in which the mandate of a courageous and well accepted female candidate is being threatened. Some of us had reached out personally to Senator Alhassan as the events started unfolding. The contact was to assure her of Nigerian women’s solidarity and support.
Members of the group then decided on three key actions:  holding a press conference and utilizing social media platforms to generate support for Senator Aisha  Alhassan’s election man-date, mobilizing ‘boots on the ground’ i.e. a delegation to monitor the run-off elections on April 25 2015 and engage with the leadership of her party (APC) to ensure they deploy all within their means to protect her mandate.
 Maulana, a frontline human rights activist in our midst, then reminded us that ‘there was a Women’s Situation Room. Taraba was the only State in which a woman had a realistic chance of prevailing. So I’d imagine that the Women’s Situation Room could have deployed in some form there or made an effort to get a report together there. Did it? If not, were there other observer groups there with access to information on the process of collation? Do they have a report or can one be put together? If not, then in my view, the first thing in my view is to get a report together. In terms of demands, I’d have thought that the place to begin is to ask INEC for fuller disclosure and information on the hows, whys and wherefores of its decision to call the election inconclusive.’
Maulana also generated debate about involvement of civil society organisations in partisan political activities. He said if the facts clearly support an allegation that a mandate is threatened, that is a justice issue which we as charitable organisations can pursue but pushing any political party to support of its candidate in any election would be overstepping our bounds. He wants CSOs to be objectively non-partisan and neutral in such electoral contests.  
 Baby, a lawyer responded that we should verify the facts. Every election is a contest and the facts would be contested. INEC announced that the election is supposedly “inconclusive”. Against that, a civil society platform says that “the mandate of a courageous and well accepted female candidate is being threatened.” We need to dig out the facts and take action to correct injustice. Those of us who disagreed with Maulana however respected his right to abstain but insisted as CSOs we can agree to support a candidate that we believe is likely to prove a better candidate and worthy ambassador of our ideals of good governance.
Baby spoke for us, insisting that the stakes are high, if a woman gets elected as a governor. It’s been a male-dominated field for so long, for very many sundry reasons. Apart from it being a first for someone who is considered a minority in some respects, she will represent what can be done by women in governance, who are able to scale through the many obstacles that exist, that currently make it an uneven playing field for females in the electoral system.’
An interesting dimension to the discourse came from an Ambassador in our midst She informed us that two nongovernmental organisations, Ladies of Grace and Agape Sisters, have threatened to protest nude on April 25 if the woman governorship candidate in the Taraba governorship race is intimidated. Mrs Jean Onuh, Coordinator of Agape Sisters, issued the threat in Abuja at a press briefing. Onuh said Sen. Aisha Alhassan represented the interest of Nigerian women in the Taraba governorship poll holding on April 25.
She alleged that Alhassan was being intimidated by her opponents and officials of the Independent Electoral commission (INEC).“We will mobilise hundreds of thousands of Nigerian women to protest nude on April 25, if any official behaves funny,’’ Onuh said.
She called on all involved in the Taraba poll to remain neutral and urged registered voters, especially women, to ignore all kinds of intimidation to come out and vote for Alhassan.
Hakima, Baby and my humble self are praying that it will never come to the stage when nude protests will be required to restore a mandate. How can that change INEC’s role as a neutral umpire?