BY every measure, every standard, the supplementary election last Saturday that took place in five states – Bauchi, Benue, Plateau, Kano and Sokoto – was a sham. I don’t think it met the minimum best international practice. The process and the outcome, have put the nation in full-tilt tizzy. Even in the states where the incumbent governors were either reelected or upstaged by the opposition, the mood was neither high-spirited nor festive. The little merriment that followed immediately the results were announced has ceased. Now, it’s as if an invisible force has entered the states.
Few people are happy and comfortable with the outcome, even those who won knew their victory was a pyrrhic one. Governor Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto state will one day relive his slimmest margin of victory in any governorship contest in the electoral history of Nigeria.
There’s tension in the air. Storm clouds are gathering because many people are yet to come to terms with what manner of rerun election they had in their states. If you are in doubt of the foreboding atmosphere, gauge the mood in Kano state. Yes, Kano represents the cemetery of some sort of the March 23, Supplementary elections.
Two weeks ago when I wrote on this page that the Presidential and National Assembly elections conducted on February 23, might go down as the most manipulated in this democratic dispensation, I didn’t know that the worst was yet to come in the governorship poll and subsequent make-up polls that were declared “inconclusive” by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Based on what we saw in Benue, and Kano in particular, how political thugs, armed to the hilt, invaded the polling booths, chased away voters, manhandled journalists, took some hostage, overwhelmed some security officials, took over polling units, allegedly wrote election results, you may weep for Nigeria.
In such atmosphere, when the process is rigged, the outcome couldn’t have been anything but a predetermined script. That’s exactly what unravelled in Kano and elsewhere where the supplementary election took place. It’s, therefore, fair to say that any governor who emerged through this deceitful process, should consider himself as illegitimate, a naked man with no public trust, a pretender to the throne, an illegal usurper that may not escape public shame, sooner or later. This is because power, authority, acquired through such manipulation, almost always, is accompanied by deep insecurity. The consequence that is deeply concealed from conscious awareness is that such power had been wrongfully acquired, indeed, stolen. Clearly, this was what happened during last Saturday’s supplementary polls, and a state of shock and disappointment and anguish still pervade the affected states.
With the 2019 general elections almost over now, nobody needs to tell anybody how credible, free and transparent the outcome of the elections have been, whether Nigerian were allowed to freely choose their leaders, whether all our votes really counted. This is despite the promises made by President Muhammadu Buhari and INEC, to ensure free, fair, credible and transparent polls. If what we saw in the elections, including the reruns rankles, it’s because democracy is not only about the voting process, it requires a strong commitment from political actors, the police and security agencies to be truly impartial and to uphold the democratic ideal. Where military interference in the process was open and vote buying manifestly seen and intimidation and violence part of the game to grab power at all cost, the efforts to achieve democracy become a battle of winners-take- all. It shouldn’t be so.
But politics matters. That’s why any sane and patriotic Nigerian or friend of our country should feel embarrassed by what happened during the supplementary elections. For me, the political path forward is, first, that our politicians should play the game of politics by its rules, not by their own rules. It’s a painful regret that our politicians are yet to accept that “all votes must count”. The mindset of an average Nigerian politician is, “win first, let the loser go to Court”. Some of the politicians are constantly at work, always ahead of any strategy the electoral umpire and security agencies may deploy. Here, therefore, lies perhaps the biggest challenge to credible electoral process in Nigeria.
It is in this connection that I think the idea of inconclusive, or supplementary election, or whatever contraption so-called, should be scrapped. It has brought so much trauma and heavy cost to the citizens and the electoral agency. I totally agree with the Nigerian Civil Society Situation Room, that rerun elections should be done away with. It is clear that make-up elections have become a manipulating tool to circumvent the electoral process through the use of thuggery, voter intimidation and other forms of irregularities.
Reruns, as we have seen, are nothing but the fiercest political battle in which only the politicians with the biggest war chest, who can hire the toughest thugs, armed with the most sophisticated weapons can prevail. In this battle of the fittest, idea’s men with little cash don’t survive. Money is what counts. It has become the lifeblood of politics.
If we agree that inconclusive elections that lead to supplementary polls have failed us, that they have brought more evil than good to our politics, we must admit that nothing is a better teacher than failure. The way forward is to make it an important talking point in the post-election discourse as part of our electoral reforms. Specifically, Sections 26 and 53, of the Electoral Act needs to be reviewed, possibly, expunged. These sections empower the Returning Officer to decline to make a return when the margin of lead between the two candidates is not in excess of the total number of registered voters of the polling units where election was cancelled or did not hold until polls have taken place in the affected polling units and results included for the declaration of return. This provision, many believe, gives ample room for manipulation by the government in power.
Altogether, looking back, looking forward, there is no doubt that democracy is a significant and enduring experience. If it must flourish, difficult and formidable obstacles should be identified and removed. Nations where democracies have deepened are those that learned the lessons of their own failures and did the needful.
Therefore, any attempt to continue with inconclusive/supplementary election in future polls, will be a fatal mistake to our electoral process and our democracy. It will be for the common good to scrap it.