Bolaji Akanni
In 2015, March was Nigeria’s golden month. On March 31, 2015, former President Goodluck Jonathan, presidential candidate of the then ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP), wrote his name into history when he called his main opponent and candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Muhammadu Buhari, to accept defeat. He also congratulated the former army general for winning at his fourth attempt to claim the coveted prize.
The next day, April 1, there were many who thought that people were springing “April Fool” jokes on them when the news of Jonathan’s action filled the airwaves. The rest is history.
The old general repeated the 2015 feat by defeating the PDP candidate in the February 23, 2019, poll, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar. Since the announcement of the final results, Buhari has received greetings from the international community and prominent national groups and statesmen.
Although Buhari implored his supporters not to gloat over his victory, the outcome of the election was quite predictable, a resounding victory for the APC flagbearer whose relentless anti-corruption campaign has been the signpost of his first term in office. President Buhari had embarked on ambitious infrastructural projects as his government built and rehabilitated roads and rails, stabilised many states that were on the brink of bankruptcy and invested heavily in education, agriculture and social intervention schemes targeted at the poor and the most vulnerable members of society.
The New York Times called the contest between Buhari and Atiku, “a referendum on honesty.” That reasoning is hinged on the fact that, for a vast majority of Nigerians, the attraction of integrity in leadership remains the strongest on the quality and desirability spectrum, far more than the primordial considerations of tribal and ethnic leanings, and even religion.
Still, it is a salutary attestation to the evolution of our democracy and party politics that Atiku hauled in almost 11 million votes. His robust performance is perhaps indicative of a potential to win the prize the next time he is on the ticket. That is for the future to tell.
Thankfully, we did not witness another Elder Godsday Orubebe show. But what we seem to have is, in my opinion, even more condemnable. That is the unpatriotic attempts by some Nigerians, especially the opposition PDP and their supporters, to totally denigrate and discredit our electoral process while also condemning the conduct of the elections in its entirety.
Indeed, the media, both mainstream and social, have lately been awash with an orchestrated campaign to paint the process that produced Buhari’s re-election as heavily rigged in his favour and preponderantly tainted with irregularities. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Yes, there were irregularities here and there and there were also pockets of violence in some parts of the country. There were reports of late arrival of electoral materials leading, inevitably, to late voting at some centres, malfunctioned card readers, snatching of ballot boxes, alleged seizure of electoral materials from unauthorised persons and groups, alleged tampering with poll results between polling stations and collation points, heavy military presence in a couple of states and, sadly, the loss of some lives arising from election violence.
Wherever they are widespread or become the norm, these violations would definitely detract from the minimum standards expected of a free and fair election. However, there is no record or evidence that the irregularities and violations identified by local or international observers generally characterised the election.
What was witnessed was the glorious sights of more than 26 million Nigerians trooping out to peacefully exercise their civic obligations to vote for their preferred candidates. Of course, the electoral process as well as the handling and conduct of the election by INEC was imperfect, given the overwhelming transportation, logistics, security, monitoring and staffing challenges and problems the commission must confront every four years and which are also compounded by the infinite capacity of political parties and their supporters anywhere in the world to compromise and circumvent the system, thereby degrading the integrity of the electoral process. No election anywhere can really be deemed perfect and totally hitch-free.
Take the United States of America (US) for example. Although that globally-acknowledged leader of the free world held its first presidential election some 330 yeas ago in 1788, the last presidential polls in the US in 2016, won by Donald Trump, was anything but perfect. In an assessment of that election in the Washington Post, Dan Slater and Lucan Ahmad Way, both professors of political science, found two sets of violations, which they classified as procedural abuses and violations of the substantive norms of democratic fair play.
While the aberrations to the 2016 US election, some of which have also featured in Nigerian elections in one form or the other, were identified for possible corrective measures where feasible and backed by changes in the law, no one had alleged blatantly and without proof that the election was “rigged” in favour of Trump, the winner, just because their candidate lost.
It is exactly the opposite here. Those hell-bent on discrediting our electoral process smear the re-election of Buhari with the patently false and unfounded allegation of “widespread rigging” in his favour.
And yet, this was an election in which Vice President Yemi Osinbajo lost in his Victoria Garden City (VGC) polling unit and a sitting governor did not rig his contest for a Senate seat. Indeed, the shocks and upsets recorded across the country and across party lines on February 23 should convince the hardest doubter that the election results reflected the genuine choices made by Nigerians, as attested to by international poll observers who were on ground.
Besides, there have been no single report that any state party agent refused to append his or her signature to the broad results sheets presented on live television one after the other by university vice chancellors and handed over to Mahmood Yakubu. So, at what point were the results rigged without the knowledge of party agents?
To be sure, the entire spectrum of our electoral system and institution needs constant fine-tuning, amendments and adjustments. The process can only get better. After all, after more than three centuries of conducting elections the US is still doing just that.
•Akanni is a public policy analyst based in Lagos