Footages from the videos of what transpired during the Senatorial election for Imo West are scary. It is a crude reminder to any sane mind that our polity, in spite of regimes of reforms and a preponderance of laws and rules, is still stuck in the mud. Pity was the word for the Returning Officer, Professor Innocent Izuchukwu Ibeawuchi, of the Federal University of Technology, Owerri. He was an emotional heap as he was sandwiched by some goons who barked out instructions to him. Their instruction was very clear: Declare Owelle Rochas Okorocha, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) winner of the senatorial election.
The video depicted a sufficiently harassed Professor Ibeawuchi as he struggled with his conscience and the stark reality that his life might be cut short if he followed the dictates of his conscience. The gory prospects of an inevitable death in the hands of the goons loomed large in the horizon and an otherwise vivacious Ibeawuchi suddenly became sulky, nervous and worried. His captors whose voices echoed harshly across the small hall were bearing down on him.
The Professor caught the image of a man in the valley of death. It was his Golgotha moment. Frazzled and intimidated, he found his voice. “I am announcing this result under duress”. He went into a brief but damning verdict on the veracity of the result his captors wanted him to announce. He openly complained about petitions from 7 local government areas where results were grossly manipulated. He showed off the petitions but the horde of hoods could not be bothered.
They were on a mission which must be accomplished. It was a poorly scripted and poorly thought through mission. They are relying on the provision of the Electoral Act which says that once a result has been declared by a returning officer in an election, such result cannot be reversed. Yet, they forgot that framers of the Act did not say such declaration must be under duress, coercion or under the influence of a life-threatening situation.
Both the Electoral Act and the Nigerian Constitution in their respective averments on the conduct of election presume and assume that such exercise must be carried out without interference, violence, brigandage in a manner that would jeopardise the fundamental rights of citizens to freely choose, associate and exercise their civic responsibilities. This is at the core of all the shenanigans around the Imo West senatorial election.
The case has drifted from court to court across the nation. And without prejudice to the decisions at the various courts, there is the overriding need to call the attention of all lovers of democracy in the country to the matter of Imo West senatorial election.
The key point is that an election result was declared under duress. There is in-your-face evidence that the Returning Officer, the only person empowered by law to make a declaration of the result, did so under the influence of some goons who in their desperation to realize their mission, got violent. Under all extant laws in Nigeria, violence, savagery and intimidation have no place in a free and fair election. Where there is violence or anything that represents it, such exercise is adjudged to have failed because the values of freedom to choose, respect for the sanctity of the ballot and respect for the rights of others to life, were not upheld.
The Electoral Act is clear on the deployment of duress or any violent act during election. Section 131 (1) of the Act states: “A person who – threatening directly or indirectly, by himself or by another person on his behalf, makes use of or threatens to make use of any force, violence or restrain;
(b) inflicts or threatens to inflict by himself or by any other person, any minor or serious injury, damage, harm or loss on or against a person in order to induce or compel that person to vote or refrain from voting, or on account of such person having voted or refrained from voting; or
(c) by abduction, duress, or a fraudulent device or contrivance, impedes or prevents the free use of the vote by a voter or thereby compels, induces, or prevails on a voter to give or refrain from giving his vote, (d) by preventing any political aspirants from free use of the media, designated vehicles, mobilisation of political support and campaign at an election, commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a fine of N1,000,000 or imprisonment for a term of three years.”
The goons of Okorocha are in clear contravention of this section of the Electoral Act taken together. Their conduct vitiated in grave ways all the fine tenets of democracy and election. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has at sundry times cancelled elections in other states on the ground of violence and anarchical acts. It must do same in the case of Imo West. The law is not helpless in this instance. INEC must stand by the provisions of the law guiding elections in the country. To act otherwise is to disdain the sacredness and sanctity of the law. I salute the courage of Justice E.F Njemanze of the Federal High Court in Owerri who ordered INEC not to issue certificate of return to Okorocha.
To recognize Okorocha as winner is to give a free reign to electoral violence. It is a very dangerous precedence both in law and in election management. Should this sham be allowed to stand, it means that all a politician requires to do in future elections is to capture, abduct or seize the Returning Officer, compel him to announce the politician winner against the will of the people and the ballot. The testimony of Professor Ibeawuchi is too damning and limpid to ignore. It is shorn of ambiguity. He said categorically that he was announcing Okorocha winner to save his life and spare his wife the agony of widowhood and the children the trauma of being fatherless.
INEC should not allow itself to be boxed into any tight legal corner. The evidence before Nigerians, which is there blowing in the air and aptly captured in the trending video, is overwhelming. There is more to the Imo West senatorial election than meets the eye. Using the courts to create a web of legal entanglement is to dodge the bullet and a clear attempt to evade prosecution.
The election in the seven local government areas with proven cases of manipulation should never stand. But beyond cancelling the election, those goons who elected to use violence in what ordinarily was supposed to be a simple exercise of casting and counting ballot ought to be rounded up and prosecuted. They deserve no mercy. They desecrated the democratic altar. They blasphemed the temple of popular will by their vile words and virulent behaviour. They should be made to face the wrath of the law.
Democracy stutters when we fail to punish electoral offenders. The path of constitutional government is imperiled when hired goons subvert the process and are allowed to go with their illicit victory. Never should this type of inglorious victory be allowed to stand let alone celebrated. INEC must stand up and be counted.