Ekiti State, Saturday, June 21, went to the polls to elect a governor in one of the off-cycle gubernatorial elections. What transpired should give Nigerians a glimpse of what 2027 portends. On the positive side, there had been testimonies of peaceful polls unlike in the past elections where guns boomed, skulls were cracked and ballot boxes suffered the grab-snatch-run-with-it syndrome in the hands of zealous thugs. The police spokesperson in the state beat his chest when he reported about an incident of ballot box snatching where the culprit was readily apprehended.
Arrival of voting materials significantly improved and collation done in an atmosphere devoid of the Godswill Orubebe behaviour. In the end, the incumbent, All Progressives Congress, APC’s Biodun Oyebanji swept the polls, garnering 319,224 votes, approximately 85 per cent of votes cast.
Some friends of INEC would also give credit to the commission for uploading results to the IReV portal in accordance with the popular expectation. There were no glitches to obscure the authenticity of the results. In other words, we seem to be far onto our road to electronic voting.
A round of applause for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)? Far from it. Like an unfaithful wife in the eyes of her husband, it will be an uphill task for the electoral body to regain the confidence and trust of Nigerians.
Let’s examine comments of observers and interested parties. Just before collation and announcement of the winner, Isaac Fayose, brother to a former governor of the state, had rushed a video post into the social media in which he alleged that the INEC gave unclaimed personal voters’ cards to the APC members who distributed them to non-indigenes, along with money as inducement to use the cards and boost APC’s showing at the ballot.
Fayose alleged that more than 400,000 PVCs were not collected by their rightful owners, contrary to INEC’s claims that they were about 30,000. Baffled, he concluded that no party can win in any election against APC.
It may sound impracticable, that someone else could use another person’s card despite various checks and accreditation rigours. The fact is that we are dealing with computers, machines that unscrupulous experts can manipulate at ease. In Nigeria, indeed, everything is possible. The BVAS can be manipulated even with all the inbuilt security mechanisms. The INEC server is open to the ruling party as it has been suspected in the case of an APC stalwart who obtained secret profiles of actor Emeka Ike from the INEC server so easily as if he was an INEC IT personnel member.
Many reactions, specifically, point to the disturbing situation that all is not well yet with the country’s electoral system. In Ekiti, there was no answer to the question of the horse trading called votes-buying that goes around polling booths every voting day. So shall it be, most likely, in 2027.
Politicians have a thousand and one formulae for rigging to win and they seem to be working perfectly for them. Yiaga Africa, which monitored the Ekiti election gave kudos to INEC for a a significant improvement in the administration of the election. The non-governmental civil rights organisation, however, flew the red flag against vote-buying and voter inducement that put a question mark on the integrity of the whole exercise.
The Africa Democratic Congress (ADC) candidate, Oluwadare Bejide, who scored a mere 12, 872 in the guber elections put it succinctly when he told Seun Okinbaloye in Channels TV, Politics Today: “My pooling booth was a market place.” He said that a lady was stationed there with a big bag of money, protected by 50 policemen. He had no doubts that the ruling APC were behind the illegal market which thrived at the connivance of security personnel.
Bejide alleged full compromise of the police in the act, stating that when his driver attempted to record them on video, they beat him up. One point he made which I find valid was that if the ruling party had performed well, they would not have needed to buy votes. Allegedly, amounts ranging from N10,000 to N20,000 bought individual voters. Doubts about this were further erased by some other videos that popped up in the social media, one of which showed a lady waving wads of cash that she claimed came from the politicians.
The Ekiti polls witnessed intimidation as well. Campaign posters of opponents were torn off and voters were visibly warded off the booths located at the strongholds of opposition candidates. That stands as a major infringement on the rules of engagement which, were it in a soccer field of play, could attract heavy consequences against whoever gains from such a breach. The umpire, in this case INEC, needs to do something about it if they are to be seen as truly independent and non-partisan.
No sermon is strong enough to eliminate these barriers in our democratic journey as long as politics remains attractive and appears to be the major portal to the world of wealth in Nigeria. The trappings of politics, obtained by hook and crook, is the big elephant trampling upon our democracy and governance. The stakes are so high that a politician is ready to die fighting over a position.
The fuel for this overwhelming ambition in our politics is the upside-down federalism that we run. Genuine citizens have shouted their voices hoarse over a restructuring of this federation to truly reflect what it is. No federal structure in the whole wide world creates federating units and gives allocations to them from the centre.
On a Candid Note, a lot needs to change for there to be a 2027 every Nigerian would be proud of. Ekiti has told us this.
Dr. Odu can be reached through [email protected] or SMS 07016722929.
