Rivers election re-run fracas: How ready was inec?

Recent events in the Nigerian polity justify doubts over the attitude of some leaders toward the judgment of their tenure by the people and posterity. Given that public opinion on the dos and don’ts of people occupying public office in Nigeria no more matters since many of such consider their incumbency as feats of ‘conquest’, […]

Recent events in the Nigerian polity justify doubts over the attitude of some leaders toward the judgment of their tenure by the people and posterity. Given that public opinion on the dos and don’ts of people occupying public office in Nigeria no more matters since many of such consider their incumbency as feats of ‘conquest’, and their positions mere spoils of war, posterity remains the final judge on the good, the bad and the ugly aspects of the performance of incumbents of public office. Fortunately, belated as its verdict of posterity may seem, it cannot be compromised.
The re-run of some elections in Rivers State last weekend which witnessed serial instances of mayhem featuring unmitigated violence with killings, and other associated electoral malpractices, will remain one other sad chapter in the political history of the country. Seen from the perspective of what Nigerians should be expecting in this era of change, the entire spectacle betrays a failure by the leadership community in the state to get their act together. But for their bungling of the affairs of the state, late NYSC member Sam Okonta and several others who lost their lives in the fracas, would still be living Nigerians today.
Incidentally, even before the fuller implications for the country will cascade down sooner than later, its immediate effect as an indelible stain on the tapestry of national renaissance, which President Muhamadu Buhari is striving to weave before Nigerians and the international community, has become manifest. Already media reports indicate that several of Nigeria’s friends such as the United States and the United Kingdom have expressed misgivings over the conduct of the polls.
Yet as is typical with several dips in the country’s fortunes, this entire drama, even as unending as it is, remains one fracas that was clearly avoidable. That is if discretion and not chauvinism, was allowed to serve as the better part of valour, by the leadership of the state on whom rests the onus of making the place conducive for legitimate public activities including elections. Hence the country is today witnessing the prolonged overlap of a series of errors of judgment by the leadership community in the state, which were often driven by sheer impunity to serve parochial interests. For sowing the whirlwind, the state and the country by extension, are reaping the storm.
However while bellyaching over the acts of commission and omission of the leadership of the state may prove a wild goose chase – given the implacable stance of some of them, and the entrenched state of their grievances against each other, the role of the electoral umpire – the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the whole drama qualifies for a revisit. Several questions associated with the outcomes of the polls are difficult to be wished away and are therefore begging for answers.
For instance, a topical one is how prepared was the Commission for the polls given the sundry developments that marked the build up to the exercise, especially with respect to the belligerent postures of some of the stake holders and their equally incendiary utterances that clearly betrayed the likelihood of turbulence during the polls? With the benefit of statutory access to operational intelligence and an installed capacity for discrete reading of media reports, it is difficult to see why INEC did not anticipate the anomic fallouts from the polls re-run and act accordingly, including a possible postponement until sustainable sanity prevails. At least even if the powers that be in the state have the wherewithal for turning their abode into hell on earth, do they also have INEC in their pocket? INEC ordinarily reserves the powers to define the specific terms under which it can conduct elections and ensure that all concerned comply with such. In the case of Rivers State the body simply failed to invoke such powers and tagged along; as if it was more interested in complying with an election time table than safe-guarding the more critical electoral process.  If not, what guarantees for a conducive environment did the body demand and secure, from the government at both the centre and the state for the now troubled and inconclusive exercise?
The foregoing contention draws from the statutory mandate of the INEC; the thrust of which is to provide the country with credible, free and fair elections – simple. This mandate as enshrined in the Constitution empowers the Commission to envisage ways and means to avail the country the expected results with every election it conducts, and if there are any mitigating factors to its performance, to act in protection of its processes. A proper reading of its mandate shows that the Commission is not expected to conduct elections in environments that may prove unfit for such important enterprise.
An immediate reference is the tenure of the immediate past Chairman of the Commission Professor Attahiru Jega, who is credited with standing up to the powers that be in order to press home his reforms.
It is easily recalled how at the commencement of the electronic voters registration exercise in January 2010, Jega created a stir when he announced a sudden postponement for two weeks of  the exercise, citing the incidence of irregularities that could compromise the integrity of the process. Several Nigerians in high and low places had their say, with not a few calling for his head. But Jega had his way. The monumental contribution of Jega’s ‘intransigence’ in 2010, to the landmark transformation of the nation’s electoral process with the use of the Permanent Voters Card (PVC) and the Card Reader, in Nigeria as witnessed in the 2015 general polls, is there for everybody to see.
Against the backdrop of the successes recorded under Jega it qualifies as a patent disservice to Nigerians for INEC to allow itself and its operational fortunes to be ridiculed by the wild antics of the untamed elements of the country’s political class, especially given the powers and appurtenances of office at its disposal. It is even worrisome that INEC went ahead to conduct polls in Rivers State, against the backdrop of recent history; with the Supreme Court overturning the ruling of the Tribunal and Appeal Court on the state’s governorship polls,on the grounds that the all-important PVC was not known to the Electoral Act. Lamentably the Commission has not even addressed itself to the grave implications of the ruling by the apex court, before plunging the country into the Rivers imbroglio.  
Does INEC really understand the Nigerian politician better than the English playwright William Shakespeare who could have been thinking of that persona when he wrote centuries ago that the character of a man cannot be read merely from looking at the face? INEC’s dealings with the Nigerian politician (many of whom can be at ease hiding an AK 47 rifle under a suit or flowing robe while addressing supporters with double speak) may need to revert back to the Jega days of relative institutional detachment from the reigning sentiments of the political class. As evidence grows to show on a daily basis, ascendancy in the Nigerian political class is increasingly being determined by tendencies of chicanery, insularity and viciousness. This is one of the unfortunate signs of the time.
Yet Nigeria does not belong to the political class alone. There is the larger majority of the citizenry with superior potency, but who have only committed the error of misplacing their trust in some ‘power-miss-road’ potentates in the political class; who, having infested the class offer no higher value than serve as wolves in sheep clothing, looking for where to steal or destroy what cannot be stolen.
It is for the sake of this larger group of Nigerians that that the INEC needs to be on top of its game of providing Nigerians with credible, free and fair elections that will produce leaders that are accountable to the voters. That is the compact it has with Nigerians.