I have provided my opinion on the elections held in Kogi state on November 22 and December 5, 2015 earlier in this column (Absurdity in Kogi-December 9, 2015). In my view, what happened in that state in the name of governorship elections was an extreme absurdity and a charade! A situation in which a gentleman who was neither a contestant or running-mate in the substantive election on November 22 was permitted by INEC, the APC and the federal government, represented by the Attorney General of the Federation to usurp the candidacy of the deceased Alhaji Abubakar Audu when a running-mate was alive and willing to sustain the ticket was pure gerrymandering by certain interests to produce a desired outcome. The fact that Alhaji Farouk Bello now claims the office of Kogi state governor on the basis of 6,885 votes secured in a supplementary election whereas he wasn’t a candidate in the main election is offensive to the constitution, and to commonsense! I agree completely with James Faleke and his lawyers that what happened in that strange electoral process was a coup, unfathomable under the Nigerian constitution.
The elections in Bayelsa state was also in two parts-the substantive election on December 5, 2015 and a supplementary in Southern Ijaw local government and 101 polling units in six local governments across the state. While the deficiency of the Kogi polls was official political gerrymandering, the Bayelsa elections were marred by extreme violence. An objective observer will surmise from events in Bayelsa that APC candidate, former Bayelsa Governor Timipre Silva was determined to achieve the politically-impossible outcome of winning the state governorship by whatever means possible, including or especially through violence. The result was an unfortunate bloodbath in which several citizens needlessly lost their lives. I am sure that in the end, both sides were probably guilty of deploying violence in aid of political objectives, which makes nonsense of elections and the constitution. The impression a dispassionate observer would have from the failure of security and law enforcement during the Bayelsa election (which was conducted in Nigeria’s smallest state with the lowest number of registered voters) would be that the federal government permitted or condoned the strong-arm tactics of the ruling party’s candidate in his ultimately vain effort to secure that state’s rulership by force. Unfortunately I am in possession of credible information which suggests the president indeed refused to allow federal agencies to be used to defeat the will of the people, but what remains difficult to understand is why government and security agencies allowed such large-scale violence and deaths.
The re-run Rivers state polls were different from Kogi and Bayelsa in that (thank God!) it was not a governorship election. The Supreme Court had ruled in favour of incumbent Governor Nyesom Wike whereas multiple state and National Assembly rerun elections were ordered by the Court of Appeal and conducted by INEC on March 19, 2016. Even though the elections were for state and national assembly constituencies, it was clear from the build-up that in reality, the rerun elections were a proxy war between former Rivers state Governor, Rotimi Amaechi who is current Minister for Transportation and his former and estranged ally, his former Chief of Staff and former nominee for federal ministerial office, current Rivers state Governor Nyesom Wike. It is clear that Amaechi would love nothing other than to depose Wike from Port Harcourt government house. It also appears that some people have introduced a so-called “security argument”-that the control of the resource-rich Niger-Delta states by the opposition PDP is a security risk. Whatever the motivation, it is clear that beyond Amaechi’s personal politics, the federal government (and its security agency, the Department of State Security-DSS) would love to secure at least one of Rivers, Akwa-Ibom and/or Bayelsa states from PDP’s stranglehold! On the other hand, Wike’s public perception is of a warrior, a non-nonsense fighter who was willing to spare no effort in retaining control of the state. The result of this background was that the rerun elections were worse than the Bayelsa bloodbath!
The sum total of all these is that one unqualified achievement of Nigeria’s democracy-the fact that INEC has conducted reasonably free and fair elections since 2011 in which the will of voters was freely offered resulting in opposition victories, especially in the 2015 presidential elections, is now endangered. It is sad that in each of the three elections discussed above, the first votes were “inconclusive” and the exercise had to be repeated. Each of the votes were marked by violence, and in the case of Bayelsa and Rivers, extreme violence; and in all of them, the fact that the federal government desired a predetermined outcome, even if it did not go so far as to outrightly impose its preference, was clearly evident. We have subsequently recorded a series of other “inconclusive” elections in the FCT and other constituencies across the nation. It is important that INEC, the federal government, civil society and the international community rise up to reverse this negative trend before it subverts and discredits our democratic transition.
Opeyemi Agbaje
