War of the power seekers (II)

Election rigging is not just bad. It is a democracy deficit. It hacks at the fundamentals of democracy, to wit, the people’s right to freely choose their elected leaders through the instrumentality of that powerful piece of paper called the ballot paper. When an election is rigged, it gives power to the man or woman […]

Election rigging is not just bad. It is a democracy deficit. It hacks at the fundamentals of democracy, to wit, the people’s right to freely choose their elected leaders through the instrumentality of that powerful piece of paper called the ballot paper. When an election is rigged, it gives power to the man or woman not chosen by the people and annuls the people’s right and choice and turns an election into a hollow democratic ritual.

Complaints about election rigging have faithfully attended every election conducted in this country since independence. The brazenness of it has grown into a mind-boggling monstrosity. I pointed out in the first part of this piece last week that Otunba Gbenga Daniel’s study established 22 methods of election rigging in 2007. And as I also pointed out, we know some of them, namely, ballot box snatching, ballot box stuffing, the use of under-aged voters and falsification of elections results by which losers become winners and winner become losers. The latest blight on our election is vote-buying, an old but quiet practice that has suddenly assumed greater menace.

There is only one reason why election rigging thrives in our country. We have done nothing to stop it. We have refused to criminalise election rigging by codifying electoral offences. A day or two before the Osun governorship election, INEC, promised that vote buyers would be arrested and prosecuted. Well, The Punch of September 23 reported that police confirmed the arrest of three suspects for voting buying.

I have heard nothing about the prosecution because they cannot be prosecuted. INEC knows how helpless it is in this regard. There is no law under which it could prosecute vote buyers and sellers. The same goes for the other well-known cases of blatant rigging, namely, ballot box snatching, ballot stuffing, under-aged voting and the falsification of results. These have been with us for so long they have become normal.

Problems do not solve themselves. That is not rocket science. It is common sense. If you do not solve them, they can only become worse and give birth to more and more problems.

Let me draw your attention to some solutions to rigging offered the nation since December 2008. I refer, of course, to the report of the Election Reform Committee chaired by Mr Justice Muhammadu Uwais. I keep referring to this report because a) it offers the best approach to tackling the problems, including rigging, that have increasingly overwhelmed our elections and hobbled our democracy and b) because I hope that putting it on the front burner of our national discourse, would prick the conscience of the Nigerian state to try and do well by its citizens.

I cannot just get over the fact that sensible solutions to the problems of our elections contained in that report are condemned to gather dust and cobwebs on a government shelf somewhere. But no matter how much we may pretend to the contrary, I do not think the rest of the world is impressed by our refusal to improve the conduct of our elections. If you know the whole truth, you would have nothing but sympathy for our electoral umpire.

I will draw attention to two of the committee’s recommendations on election rigging. One, it says: “The prevailing atmosphere of impunity with regard to election offences should be ended by prosecuting and holding accountable those responsible for electoral offences, including those of a criminal nature. This would reduce the impunity which has marred Nigeria’s electoral process to date, and which threatens to undermine citizens’ confidence in the country’s political institutions.”

Two, to give teeth to the prosecution of electoral offences, the committee recommends: (i) “A special prosecutorial body to be known as Electoral Offences Commission should be established to work independently in the arraignment and prosecution of electoral offenders. This will include offences arising from failings of INEC before and after voting day.

(ii) “The Electoral Offences Commission should cooperate closely with security agencies to prosecute persons accused of committing such offences.

(ii) “A candidate shall be deemed to have committed a corrupt practice if it was committed with his knowledge and consent.”

Do you see what difference these recommendations could have made to the integrity of our elections since 2008 if they had been implemented in whatever shape or form? I can. They would make it difficult for people to act with such conscience-grating impunity. You see, when people assume the right to do wrong things with impunity they claim the status and the power of a god. Impunity has become the defining nature of our elections and of how we are governed at all levels of government. Because of impunity, the rule of law dances in the wind. Because of impunity the electorate is cynically disenfranchised by the many methods of election rigging. And because of election rigging, many a man is enjoying the fruits of a stolen mandate.

(Concluded)