(OUR STAND)
This Saturday, February 23, 2019, Nigerians will file out to vote for candidates of their choice for the office of the president of the federal republic and their representatives at the Senate and the House of Representatives. That really was not the original schedule. By the time-table released by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, last year, the elections should have been held last Saturday, February 16. What that means is that by now a winner would have emerged, provided the elections held in all polling units across the country and the process was safely concluded.
But INEC, in the wee hours of the Election Day, announced it was postponing the exercise, because, as it said, there were logistic and operational challenges. Now, that was met with angry reactions from politicians and electorate alike, particularly because the same INEC had, until the eve of preceding Friday, given the assurance that all was going on well as planned. Mr. Adams Oshiomhole, national chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, was unsparing at the stakeholders meeting with INEC afternoon of the February 16. President Muhammadu Buhari could also not be swayed by the excuse of Professor Mahmood Yakubu, chairman of INEC, that the odds were too heavy for the commission to stave off. The president said that if after investigation it is discovered that there was some underhand tactics, his administration would not hesitate to sanction culprits.
Even then, that did not stop allegations from the opposition, led by the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, that the ruling party could not convince it that it was instrumental to the challenges INEC had to contend with, because, according to its officials, it wanted to force INEC to do staggered elections.
The discussions around the counter blame and suspicions fouled the air for the better part of the week. Not even the concession granted parties to resume campaign, against an earlier stand by the commission could douse the tension. For instance, parties were particularly concerned that aside from the losses they had suffered, they would be at the receiving end of a likely lethargy that may arise on the part of the electorate owing to the postponement.
The INEC finds itself in the middle of a quagmire. Of a truth, some of the challenges may have been self-imposed, perhaps because of the inability to learn from past mistakes, or as result of naivety, or, as some hinted, because of internal distrust (we do not want to echo sabotage).
Had the commission studied what led to the postponement of the first elections in 2011, when Professor Jega, Yakubu’s predecessor, had to announce postponement of elections in the morning of the scheduled exercise, perhaps, the embarrassment would have been averted. This is why it is imperative that the commission should investigate matters that led to the national embarrassment, not just to sanction where necessary, but to ensure that such a costly mistake does not become a feature of our electoral process.
The outcome of such investigation should be a basis for the reform and constant education of staff and national commissioners of the commission.
However, politicians who harangue INEC for the postponement behave like the ostrich, which buries its head in filth while evangelising on cleanliness. They condemn a system when they are not benefiting from there. There are no shortage of opinions on why the electoral system needs a reform, but as soon as a party or political group with the best of ideas for reform gets to power it snores on the bed of comfort. Part of the victims of this is the electoral reform, through which the electoral system ought to have been completely sanitized. And the tools needed are in abundant supply.
On the shelf in Aso Rock are reports of three committees, starting with that of the Justice Mohammed Lawal Uwais Panel raised by the late president, Umaru Yar’Adua. He, it was, who was honest enough to identify the process that produced him as fraudulent. Unfortunately, ill health and eventual death prevented him from championing the reform of the sector. The best that his successor, President Goodluck Jonathan, who was also his deputy in office, did was to appoint a resourceful member of the Uwais Panel as chairman of INEC.
Jega deployed his training as a political scientist, and conviction on the need for a credible electoral system, into play. He left with his head held high. But with the kind of energy he applied, his dedication and the independence he enjoyed operating without government interference, Jega would probably have left a better system that would be useful to others coming behind him had the reform been carried out thoroughly.
The postponement of the 2019 presidential and National Assembly elections has confirmed that what happened in 2011 was not as a result of tardiness on the part of Jega and his team, it is because we are asking some patriotic men and women to use an old system to run modern ideas. We can save the electoral system from collapse and allow the modern ideas to flourish, if we undertake the needed reform. Let us look beyond Yakubu’s INEC. It is high time we took the bull by the horn and stopped playing the ostrich.
We had thought that President Buhari, having been a victim of injustice within the electoral system, would be an agent of the reform that Yar’Adua could not conclude.
We do not want to believe that the urge to use the defective system for selfish objective overwhelmed the plan and conviction to do the right thing. While we do not object to the decision of the president to investigate the reasons behind the postponement, we also want him, as a matter of urgency, to begin the reform process that will give us the electoral architecture capable of carrying the modern technics that we parade even to the envy of the western nations. In doing this, he would have to look for dispassionate persons, within and outside his political family, who will act with speed to translate to practical terms the suggestions of those eggheads who gave us the fine documents intended to reform our electoral system.
For the electorate, what has happened is also a signal that we should interrogate issues that have to do with lasting structures when we speak with candidates before elections. Curiously, the electoral system reform did not feature in the discussions that we had during campaigns, such that hardly had any politician spoken to the need for that critical section of our national life to be given attention. We helped the politicians to get away with so many things, including the instrument that may come in handy for them to colour our decision at the polls.
We also need to know that each time such a misadventure like election postponement is allowed to be rationalised as a solution to the kind of problems for which no excuse should have been given, we not only injure democracy we also cause the economy to bleed seriously. Apart from the huge loss incurred as a result of the postponement-imagine the voting materials that had to be reproduced, the repeated logistics and sundry issues. For instance, for the election weekend, all borders are closed, holidays or work free periods are declared to allow citizens to vote without interference from neighbouring countries. That amounts to a suspension of economic transactions that would ordinarily have enhanced the formal and informal sectors of our economy.
Not only that, the school calendars get disrupted. The private enterprise that has been forced to take a sudden break for election would have its earnings affected adversely, and so will its tax obligation to the state. We should, therefore, demand from the emerging leadership from this poll to, as a matter of urgency, take seriously the reform in the electoral sector with a purpose to strengthening the system.
This will entail making the electoral body truly independent, in finance and operations. It is only then can we be proud of this all-important sector.
