by Debo Adejugbe

The case of disenfranchisement of voters was brought to the fore by the PDP candidate’s failure to cast his vote because his name was not found in the voters register, along with that of several family members and associates. 

The political terrain in Nigeria presents a very unique case for political scientists, willing to learn about the intrigues that extreme and unorthodox political scheming entails, to further their knowledge on ‘things that are absolutely ridiculous and improbable’ but nevertheless occurs.

Anambra State has presented its own form of tragi-comedy over and over again that we have finally come to expect the impossible, while consciously hoping things would get better. It wasn’t a coincidence that the state became the first state to break away from our norm of conducting all governorship elections simultaneously across the nation.

The Chris Uba/Ngige menace of 2003 through 2006 and the subsequent swearing-in of Peter Obi as governor in 2006; the Obi/House of Assembly/Etiaba debacle that lasted a little over three months and the illegal two weeks reign of Andy Uba over the people of Anambra to the tribunal judgment that confirmed Peter Obi as governor for a second term in 2010 were some of the notable battles that politicians in Anambra have waged against the people of the state.

In a judgment with close resemblance to the Shagari/Awolowo Supreme Court’s judgment of September 26, 1979; tribunal Judges ruled that Obi had satisfied the requirement of winning 25% votes in 2/3 of the LGAs in Anambra. They arrived at this conclusion by using the total number of valid votes cast as against the total votes cast, which was the requirement by law.

The above scenario points to the fact that Anambrarians are not cursed. They are only bedeviled with a situation where external forces are keenly involved in their politics as witnessed in the scenario I just explained above, leading up to the 2011 presidential elections. It is rather curious that in the 2011 presidential elections which wasn’t a local election, President Jonathan polled 1,145,169 of 1,157,239 votes. The turnout in that election compared to the recent governorship election held in the state, leaves much to the imagination.

Of the total 1,763,751 voters registered for the election, 451,826 were accredited and 413,005 represented the valid votes, while 16,544 votes were rejected. So many issues were encountered in the course of conducting the elections. The first serious problem was logistics. Late arrival or non-arrival (in some cases) to large scale disenfranchisement of voters, collusion of Polling Officers to rig and shortage of electoral materials which has called into question the readiness and sincerity of INEC to conduct a free and fair election even if their lives depended on it.

The case of disenfranchisement of voters was brought to the fore by the PDP candidate’s failure to cast his vote because his name was not found in the voters register, along with that of several family members and associates. And in areas with very high number of voters, this became the norm which means that in the end, only a fraction of those eligible to vote (24%) could do so.

The failure of INEC was further compounded by the embarrassing turn of events which placed the number of cancelled votes (113,113) second in the election, with a number clearly more than the difference (79,754) between the two leading candidates: APGA at 174, 710; PDP at 94,956 and APC at 92,300.

INEC’s first admission of guilt was the ‘inconclusive’ verdict it pronounced on the election citing the difference between leading candidates and number of cancelled votes. This has failed, however, to address the problem of large scale disenfranchisement. In just over two years, Anambra moved from a state that churned over-a-million votes to one candidate to a state where 23 candidates were fighting for less-than 0.5million votes.

What best way to explain INEC’s woeful and miserable failure than pointing out that Anambra was the only state (of 36) where they had to conduct an election and they still bungled it? What happened to the Voters Register used in 2011 elections that produced such awesome result for President Jonathan? How come all the resources of INEC were directed to only one location (at least 15 RECs were available) and they still couldn’t conduct an acceptable election? More pertinently, who takes the blame?

If the President appoints the Chairman of the commission as well as the Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs), who are they answerable to? If the Chairman of the commission shoulders majority of the blame (or praise when right) when things go wrong; does it infer to him needing more control over what INEC does? It is important to note that Electoral Reforms represents a big chunk of the solution to our electoral problems.

If June 12, 1993 elections, as widely accepted, was actually free and fair, maybe we should go back to the basics to reform our electoral process. From the constitution of the electoral body, to staff welfare and ensuring minimum interference from the Presidency and politicians, to adopting the much heralded Open Ballot System/Modified Open Ballot System, Option A4 (the non-conventional method of selecting presidential candidates) and proper framework for funding, constitution of election tribunal, determination of election petitions and most of all, giving room to a proper time frame to be established between actual election and date of swearing-in of candidates.

June 12 could have been the moment our history was changed forever, but as we have seen, it became the poisoned chalice that our elections and politics have to live up to. What if the Abiola/Kingibe candidacy – that defied ethnic and religious permutations – had worked out? We will never know what might have happened but we saw Nigerians speak out in unison, pouring onto the streets exercising their guaranteed rights to vote, maintaining their queue not minding the discomforts. We need to learn a thing or two from that, and demand that INEC live up to such standards as set 20 years ago.

When will our democracy, after 14 years, switch from the ‘nascent’ gear used in explaining our continuous failures away? When will the politicians and INEC finally concede to the will of the people and conduct an election seen and accepted to be free and fair? When are we doing away with phantom elections like the one seen in Anambra recently?

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Debo Adejugbe is a trained Telecommunications/Electronics Engineer and a certified IT professional living in Lagos. Dad to amazing Hailey and an advocate against Sexual and Domestic Abuses. Debo has political sympathy for the Labour Party. He tweets from @deboadejugbe

 

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