What? Polls without thugs?

The Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) stance that it would not proceed and conclude pending rerun elections across the country unless political parties and other stakeholders guarantee that the polls will be free of violence means that these elections may never be concluded. The Senate had asked INEC early last week to try to conclude […]

The Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) stance that it would not proceed and conclude pending rerun elections across the country unless political parties and other stakeholders guarantee that the polls will be free of violence means that these elections may never be concluded. The Senate had asked INEC early last week to try to conclude the pending rerun elections for six vacant Senate seats in Rivers, Kogi, Anambra and Imo states. The process had started weeks ago but was suspended midway due to violent incidents. At the weekend INEC delivered a comprehensive answer to Senate’s demand, first through a statement by Commission’s Secretary Mrs. Augusta Ogakwu and then in an interview that INEC Chairman Prof Mahmood Yakubu earlier granted to Daily Trust on Sunday.
Mrs Ogakwu’s statement said in part, “The commission wishes to state that it can only proceed with the conduct or conclusion of the elections where the following exist: 1] A firm and unequivocal commitment to violence-free polls by the affected political parties and relevant stakeholders. 2] An assurance by the security agencies that it is safe to return through a guarantee of peace, order and safety of all election officials, voters, other stakeholders, materials, polling units and facilities to be used for the elections.”
Her statement is long but let us even stop there. In Nigeria here, how can any political party worth the name give anyone “a firm and unequivocal commitment” that there will be no violence in an election? The way a Nigerian politician’s mind works, if he gives such a commitment and his opponent believes that he will abide by it, then that will encourage the opponent to redouble his preparations to employ thugs and unleash violence in selected areas in order to win the election. To an academic observer, violence in a Nigerian election is a random, mindless and unplanned activity by thugs who are high on drugs and do not know what they are doing. This is not true. Before 2015, the twin purpose of election violence was to scare voters away from the polls and then to snatch and stuff ballot boxes in favour of the thugs’ candidate. When permanent voters card and card reader made ballot box stuffing futile, election violence found another purpose, which is to ignite violence in areas where your opponent is strong so that the election will be cancelled in many polling booths in the area and help tip the balance in your favour. The Supreme Court’s ruling that evidence from card reader is not tenable in court made many party strategists to bite their fingers and regret that they did not unleash more violence in 2015.
In his Daily Trust on Sunday interview, Prof Yakubu explained that the provision for declaring an election inconclusive was artfully introduced into the Electoral Act in order to deny just this prospect. That is, even if you manage to stall the polls in some areas through violence, you will not be declared the winner if the winning margin is less than the number of registered voters in the affected polling units. This was what caused so many elections in Kogi, Bayelsa, Rivers and FCT to be declared inconclusive. Trouble is, even if the election is declared inconclusive, violence has still served its purpose because in most cases the supplementary election is academic. This is because, as we saw in Kogi, while the total number of registered voters in the affected areas could theoretically make a difference in the election, in reality the election was already won and lost because the number of voters with PVCs could not make a difference. The Electoral Act should be amended to reflect reality, not theory.
Okay, if you are an election candidate, you choose to be law abiding and you refuse to listen to your campaign manager’s advice to fund the mobilisation of a militia and the election result goes against you, you will become a laughing stock among fellow politicians who will say you thought you were still living in England and you played Nigerian politics by the book. Even if both your opponent and you are called to INEC’s office and you give undertakings, your supporters will bring stories to you saying your opponent is secretly going about deploying thugs so you must do the same.
Nigerian politicians are not about to change, the Buhari Change mantra notwithstanding. This weekend, INEC had to suspend a rerun election in Minjibir State Constituency of Kano State and withdraw all its personnel from the field because of what it called “the spate of violence, threats and general insecurity including the assault and intimidation of its staff and voters and the snatching of card readers and other election materials.”
The INEC Secretary’s statement also said the commission will “enlist the intervention of relevant Government agencies as well as civil society organisations (CSOs), religious bodies and traditional institutions with relevant cognate experience and their peace building and conflict resolution assets and resources in building consensus with a view to securing a conducive atmosphere for the peaceful conduct of the elections.” If an election candidate listens to a traditional ruler or a foreign-funded civil society group and does not do the needful to win the election, will the traditional ruler give him the stupendous allowances that senators are getting? The traditional ruler himself, why did he confer a chieftaincy title on the senator when everyone in the community knows that the senator’s character does not warrant giving him the title?
And what about the youths that are employed as election thugs? Are you saying that when an election comes up, the most lucrative business in Nigeria since the collapse of manufacturing industries, youths should sit idly by and not cash in on the action the way they are now cashing in on fuel scarcity to make a killing on the black market? There is no difference between election and fuel scarcity, as far as youths are concerned. There are no jobs in this country. Whole industries have packed up in the last thirty years; few new ones emerged to replace them and government itself goes for many years without hiring anyone. All the innovative things that youths came up with, someone blocked them. 419, Police Anti-Fraud Unit blocked it. Hawking drugs, NDLEA blocked it. Cybercrime, EFCC raided internet cafes to block it. Kidnapping, police is blocking it. Cattle rustling, government sent soldiers to Falgore forest to retrieve the cattle. Only election violence remains, and INEC wants to end that one as well.
The good thing about it is that there is no one around who can guarantee an election will take place without violence. Even if the Inspector General gives INEC such an assurance, he is only saying it because what he pays to his men as election duty allowance is a fraction of what politicians will give them to look the other way while thugs roam free. During the 1999 general elections, a policeman on election duty in Kaduna told my reporter from New Nigerian that the police paid him N50 on each election day but that one party agent gave him N1,000 so he looked the other way while thugs snatched and stuffed the ballot box. In other words, if INEC is waiting for solid guarantee of safety from politicians or the police, then those remaining elections may never be concluded.