The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) should be ready and willing to take blames arising from its shoddy conduct of the 2023 elections. The electoral agency has been excoriated by Nigerians, local and international observers on account of its shambolic conduct and management of the polls.
Nigerians had expected an improvement during the weekend supplementary polls. Regrettably, the exercise was not significantly different from the February 25 and the March 18 elections. Like in the previous exercises, the weekend poll was generally marred by violence, ballot snatching, vote buying, voter apathy, late arrival of election materials and other infractions associated with elections in this part of the world.
But the worst case scenario was the bizarre drama in Adamawa State where the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Hudu Yunusa-Ari, declared Senator Aishatu Ahmed Binani, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the governor-elect against the rules for the declaration of election results. Yunusa-Ari reportedly came with some security officials and without records of collated data of votes at about 9 am and gleefully announced that Binani had won the election. The resumption of the collation of results was scheduled to commence at 11 am. By audaciously announcing the result, Yunusa-Ari usurped the duty of the INEC’s Returning Officer, Prof. Mele Mohammed. Although INEC ordered the embattled Ari to vacate the position hand over to the agency’s State Administrative Secretary, much harm had been done to the nation’s electoral system and its battered image. It will take a long time for the electoral umpire to convince Nigerians and the international community that what happened in Yola was not planned.
The bizarre drama in Adamawa is a strong pointer that the electoral agency is open to manipulation and that its conduct of the elections can be compromised. By asking Yunusa-Ari to quit the stage and even summoning him to Abuja is like giving him a red carpet reception when he should be cooling off in police detention, INEC is being clever by half. Yunusa-Ari must be sacked with immediate effect and even be prosecuted for flouting electoral rules. The security officials who accompanied him should be sacked and prosecuted along with other INEC accomplices in this drama of absurd.
Before Yunusa-Ari is sacked and prosecuted, he should be made to reveal those who instructed him to declare Binani the winner of the poll when the process was yet to be completed. Did Yunusa-Ari act based on instruction from above or whatever? Nigerians deserve the right to be duly informed on what actually transpired that a REC becomes a Returning Officer and acted impudently in defiance all established rules, including INEC rules. The chairman of INEC, Prof. Yakubu Mahmood, should speak to Nigerians on what happened in Yola and what the agency is doing to rid itself of so many Yunusa-Aris. It is likely that Yunusa-Ari is not alone in this macabre dance. There are other Yunusa-Aris in INEC only waiting for an opportune time to strike. The task before our Yakubu is to rid the agency of all tainted officials. It is public knowledge that every election year is like a boom season, Christmas or bazaar for INEC workers, both main and ad hoc staff. Like every other thing in Nigeria, it is a period to make money, real money to last for a life time. In a system where salary is so poor, civil servants depend so much on such occasions as election year offers to make money for themselves. You may call it bribe, gratification, tip or whatever you like. It may be another dimension to vote buying or falsification of election results. It is also another ingenious way of rigging election. In a corruption-ridden society, nobody is free and no institution is immune from malfeasance. These are some of the issues Mahmmod must tackle concerning INEC’s impartiality in the conduct of the 2023 polls.
It is not all blames for the Mahmood-led INEC. It tried in saving all of us from a Yunusa-Ari. It saved Adamawa from imminent chaos and violence. It saved Yola from bloody violence and destruction of property. It also saved the nation from another cycle of violence. However, it was a resounding victory for democracy and the people of Adamawa State when INEC’s Returning Officer, Prof. Mele Mohammed, declared the incumbent governor of Adamawa State and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate in the governorship poll, Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri, as the winner of the election having polled 430,861 votes to defeat Aisha Binani of the APC, who got 398,788 votes.
For the governor-elect Fintiri, it is a sweet victory song. But it didn’t come so easy. He must have fought with so many demons to snatch that victory from formidable forces and principalities. Our politics like our football, boxing and wrestling is still a masculine game. I know that women play football and also participate in boxing and even wrestling, but give it to the men who play these sports with great agility and combustible energy and gusto. Fintiri must have wrestled with so many forces before he got his victory from the jaws of the usurper and impostor. He must have boxed all evil forces and gave them a technical knockout before getting his victory. Fintiri’s victory is a victory for democracy. He should use the opportunity offered by this victory to rededicate himself to the service of the people of Adamawa State by ensuring that he reaches every part of the state with commensurate development. Let him be magnanimous in victory and carry all the people along, including his political opponents.The significance of Fintiri’s victory is that the votes actually counted and were made to count. The people of Adamawa have spoken and they have spoken well and gave their governor another chance. He must not abuse the golden opportunity. He will reciprocate the good gesture with more work and work. For the PDP, it is well-deserved victory. Moving forward, the 2023 election year has offered us another opportunity to review our conduct of elections and infuse it with new ideas to make the process more transparent, free and fair. The 2023 election like others before it was overtly marked by identity politics. The markers of identity politics in Nigeria include tribe, religion, class and even gender. All politicians including our major contestants in all the polls benefitted from our identity politics to some extent. It is still part of our developmental process. Even the United States is also affected by identity politics. Some of the issues that need to be addressed before the next general election is power rotation at levels of government, gender inclusivity, tenure and mode of voting and transmission of election results.
Since every president and governor come to office with the mindset of doing eight years, let us move towards one tenure office of six or seven years with less polls than having eight year-tenure with two elections and attendant violence and killings. If political offices are shared or rotated on turn by turn basis, it will save us of acrimonious and contentious polls and the usual ‘go to court’ and the courts instead of the votes deciding the winner of our elections. Considering that every democracy is local, we must, therefore, add local colours to our democracy to make it work for all of us so that another election season will not elicit a climate of fear and anxiety as well as ethnic profiling of other Nigerians in a supposedly one country. We need urgent electoral reforms and restructuring of the country as a way of moving forward. Postponing them will amount to postponing the doom’s day.