War against vote robbery (II)

The issue here, however, is not the irony. What is important is to find out why this has been so. Whatever anti colonial sentiments anyone has today, it must be admitted that the 1959 federal elections were the best ever in Nigeria, their several pitfalls notwithstanding. But for June 12, those organised by Babangida would […]

The issue here, however, is not the irony. What is important is to find out why this has been so. Whatever anti colonial sentiments anyone has today, it must be admitted that the 1959 federal elections were the best ever in Nigeria, their several pitfalls notwithstanding.

But for June 12, those organised by Babangida would have been on top. Indeed, even with what happened, the critics of the regime and in fact, most of us, rate it so. Those organised by Obasanjo in 1979 and Abdulsalami in1999 were also democratically friendly.

The question is why? One major reason was that the organisers were not contestants and had no keen interest as such in who were to succeed them, unlike in the case of Obasanjo during the 2007 election. Remember, he declared it “a do-or-die affair”, an indication of his personal interest in the outcomes of the various elections and this was what eventually determined their conduct.

In the federal election of 1964, Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa was an interested party as a contestant. So was Shagari on the turf seeking for a second term in 1982. Of Obasanjo in 2003, it was either a victory for him or nothing else, including even the country, as it were.

The picture, therefore, could be split into two: elections organised by departing and fairly uninterested organisers and those handled by highly interested participants, some of whom were interested in the outcomes even as they were departing, as in the case of Obasanjo in 2007.

Going by this analysis, therefore, it is reasonable to submit that for us to wage war against electoral fraud, we need an atmosphere where the organisers are not interested parties, either seeking to succeed themselves or wanting and fighting for others to succeed them, as we saw in 2007.

This has been the underlying reason why some have been arguing that a one-tenure presidency would solve the problem in the wrong belief that an outgoing occupant would provide the enabling environment for a free and fair election.

It is needless to stress here that Obasanjo has successfully dented this submission for what he did when he was departing in 2007 was worse than what he did when he was seeking to succeed himself in 2003. Put differently, a departing president cannot be encumbered from manipulating the electoral system once he is bent on imposing his choice on the electorate. It wasn’t only Obasanjo who proved this but also departing governors. Except in two or so places, their successors were largely those they imposed on their states. In some of the few exceptional cases, the same Obasanjo was the one who imposed them using the fiat of his office and its available and well known rigging machines: INEC, the Police (in particular), plus money power, etc.

It is obvious, then, that a one-tenure system has no inbuilt mechanisms strong enough to stop or prevent a departing incumbent from imposing his choice on the people using all forces at his disposal. This being the case,  the best approach  is to deny all participants the benefit of the incumbency factor, which largely are the major rigging tools beneficiaries have been deploying to achieve bogus victory.

In this regard, the President, his deputy, governors and their own deputies, Chairmen of Councils and their assistants, including all political appointees at various levels should vacate office at least four months ahead of elections and in their places a presidium, comprising the Chief Justice of Nigeria and a judge from each zone along with selected members of NGOs and trade unions be constituted to run the country during the interim period. In the states, chief judges and selected chief magistrates should be put in place to manage the affairs at that level during the period. This should apply down to local government levels.

It is hoped that this would effectively deny political office holders the opportunity to misuse the instruments of their respective offices to secure victory for themselves or/and their own.

 We cannot talk of a level playing field when incumbents use public utilities to win elections while their opponents have no access to such. At a time when Obasanjo/Yar’adua were using the presidential fleet to campaign in 2007, Buhari, Atiku and other contestants had no access to them and so it is wrong to claim the availability of a level playing field in the circumstance.

To be continued.