Constitutional, electoral, justice reforms and political stability

Political stability is the foundation for the prosperity of a nation. It enables the strengthening of the institutions of state and their empowerment. It provides the base for sustainable institutional memory which enables a nation to learn from their mistakes and improve on their past achievements. No nation has ever become a super power nation without political stabilty. Present powerful nations, like the United States of America, United Kingdom, Russia, France, China, and the emerging ones like India, Brazil, etc have political stability. The only reason the “tiny” Israel is the most powerful nation in the middle east is because of political stability. There are some basic characteristics of these powerful nations. Most of them are democratic that conduct periodic, free, fair, credible, and verifiable elections. The ones that are not truly democratic, take the issues of corruption and abuse of public office seriously. They manage their resources prudently for the welfare of the people.

Immediately a nation loses political stability, there’s nothing even the most righteous among the people can do. Anarchy or military dictatorship usually ensues, which engender wars that destroy lives and property, and stall economic development. It’s stated clearly in the scriptures that if the foundation be destroyed, there’s nothing the righteous can do. It’s saddening to state that no African country is powerful today because of lack of political stability. Most African countries are governed by leaders who come in either through military or civilian coup. Civilian coup is even worse than military coup because the country will be pretending that it is in a democracy when it actually is in a civilian regime, not a democratic regime. Civilian coups are conducted through rigging of elections by violence, bribery and corruption. There’s no place that this phenomenon is rife as it is in Nigeria, where, before an election takes place, the results and winners are already known because fake results were already written by politicians and fraudulent Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) officials and transmitted during the election day as the original results. When those leaders come in, they build an army of corrupt followers who will watch their backs after they leave office. They pick their successors from the corrupt followers who have mastered their act of corruption with the attendant consequences that the succeeding leaders become more corrupt than their predecessors. The next generation of the corrupt leaders will have to steal enough for themselves and steal more to feed the insatiable appetite of their godfathers.
This is the reason the constitutional, electoral, and structural reforms of this country and the amendment of its laws, championed by some members of the House of Representatives, who styled themselves as “The Reformers”, led by Imo Ugochinyere, said they have introduced bills on the floor of the House aimed to address agitations from different parts of the country, reduce the cost of governance, and promote unity. This will contribute in correcting the anomalies in the polity and thus save our country from collapse. These bills are germane at this point in our history and should be taken very seriously by everyone. The amendments stretched from bills to change the tenure of the president and governors to a single term of six years to the rotation of the presidency among the six Geo-Political Zones as well as the creation of two vice presidents, from North and South, and one from the same zone as the President to ensure that in the event of the death, resignation, removal from office, or permanent incapacitation of the President, the Vice President from his zone assumes office to avoid political instability as it happened during the Yar’Adua – Goodluck Jonathan regime where the presidency was zoned to the North-West but re-zoned halfway by death of Yar’Adua to the South-South. One of the alterations seeks to divide Nigeria into six geopolitical zones.
The lawmakers are also seeking to provide more stringent laws enforcing the financial autonomy of the states and local governments. They propose an alteration to prescribe an independent Consolidated Local Government Council Account solely superintended by local councils and prescribing long-term imprisonment for any misuse of local government funds. In addition, they proposed an amendment to section 162(5) of the 1999 Constitution to provide that where a state government fails to remit to the local government councils within its jurisdiction (or within the state), the amounts standing to the credit of that local government in the allocation from the federation account, such state government shall not be entitled to receive a future allocation from the federal government.
They equally seek to amend the relevant sections of the Electoral Act to ensure that all elections (presidential, governorship, National Assembly, state houses of assembly, and local governments) are held on the same day and to provide that no declaration of a winner of an election shall be done by the relevant INEC officials until such officer has compared the results with the list of accredited voters and ensured that the results to be declared are in tandem with the list of accredited voters and the B-VAS machine or any other electronic device; that the amendment would provide that all election-related documents and materials must be made available to those who participated in elections and who have reasons to question/petition the elections at the Elections Tribunal; that all election-related litigations must be resolved and determined by the Elections Petitions Tribunal, Appeal Courts, and others before the winners are sworn into the respective elective offices; that furthermore, any INEC officer who declares a false result will be liable for civil and criminal action personally brought against them by parties in the elections.
Starting with the recommended six-year single tenure, it is submitted that this suggestion stemmed from our admission that we are a lawless country that does not respect the rule of law. Ordinarily, two terms of four years each, would have been a preferable option because if you have a bad leader, you will tolerate him for just four years and vote him out at the expiration of one term. Under this arrangement of six-year single term, that bad leader has gotten an additional two years to continue his incompetence and corruption. Likewise if we have a good leader, we are now denied the opportunity to extend his tenure by another four years which would give us eight years of good leadership. Under this arrangement, we will lose two years of good governance. The issue of rotation of the presidency among six Geo-Political Zones is unwieldy, because it will take 36 years to come back to each zone. This will deny us of recourse back to any Geo-Political Zone that has a very good candidate after every 8 years or 4 years as the case may be. A rotation between North and South will be appropriate.
The reason these reformers recommended one single term is to remove the powers of incumbency which is negatively used to rig elections despite their terrible performance in office. The incumbent appoints the INEC Chairman and Resident Electoral Commissioners of all the states. We have seen how this government unapologetically appointed some APC members as Resident Commissioners, obviously preparing to use them to manipulate the elections of 2027. Let us not fool ourselves, election results of 2027 will be written in government houses before election day and winners declared on election day even before the completion of the collation exercise. Coupled with the unfortunate declaration by the Apex Court that electronic transmission of results is discretionary for INEC, the assurance of any free, fair and credible elections in 2027 is practically dead. It’s to ensure that no incumbent has the power to deploy these enormous powers for his own benefit that these reformers are seeking this compromise of granting two more years to the incumbent to entice them to agree to the option of one tenure.
To consolidate our democracy therefore, these reformers should go beyond the quest for a single term and ensure that not only should INEC transmit election results electronically, it must be transmitted to all the parties simultaneously at the same time and from the polling unit, into a National Electronic Register of Results containing accounts of all the political parties in the register. Any election result not transmitted from the polling unit by the Presiding Officer is void and should be deemed fabricated. The presentation of the electronically transmitted results by the party or candidate should be enough evidence for the proof of the results of the election. There’s absolutely no need of labouring a candidate or his political party to go round 36 states and the FCT looking for results and witnesses in 176,000 polling units to present his petition in 21 days. This is impossible to comply with by any human being. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court said this is the position of the law.
The recommendation that all elections be conducted one day is germane. The cost of transportation has become prohibitive to conduct elections in two different days that are two weeks apart. This will lead to voter apathy for the second election. The bandwagon effect of any declaration of the post of the President on other lower posts held after the presidential election is also evident. Election petitions must be concluded before winners are sworn in to avoid the incumbent President using his enormous executive powers to intimidate or bribe the judges to get favourable judgements. This is how it is done in other climes.Dividing the country into 6 Geo-Political Zones will be very welcomed because this will substantially reduce cost of governance. The legislature should be trimmed down and part time engagement should be considered. Local Government autonomy should be guaranteed and state-local government joint account abolished. INEC should conduct elections into the local government councils. The amendments should address what should be done with the present state structure if the 6 Geo-Political Zones are recognised because we cannot sustain more than three-tier levels of government. We must embark on these amendments immediately if we dream of political stability in our country. We are running out of time.