Tony Olutomiwa, Yenagoa
The Electoral Act amendment bill scaled second reading in the Senate last week with many observers showing interest in the contents of the bill which hopefully could be passed into law.
Titled “A bill for an act to amend the Electoral Act No. 6, 2010 and for other related matters, 2010 (SB. 122), the bill seeks to compel the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to accommodate new technologies in the accreditation of voters during elections.
The bill, sponsored by the Deputy President of the Senate, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege (APC, Delta) and co-sponsored by Senator Abubakar Kyari (APC, Borno), also seeks to prohibit members of political parties from taking up employment in INEC while compelling the electoral umpire to publish the voters register for public scrutiny at every registration area and its website seven days before a general election.
It further seeks the reduction of nomination fees charged by political parties and grants party agents the right to inspect original electoral materials before the commencement of polls.
According to Omo-Agege, the proposed bill will not only strengthen the nation’s electoral process in line with global best practices but also remove the lacuna in the current electoral law.
The current effort is coming after eleven years when a similar move was made by the Yar’Adua administration to sanitise the nation’s electoral system, which clearly made conduct of elections so problematic. Election after election in this 4th Republic have been very controversial with loud complaints of rigging, violence, killings and alleged complicity by the major institutions charged with the responsibilities of ensuring a smooth and credible exercise.
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Regrettably, the situation is worsening, as the recent elections in Osun, Edo and Ekiti states have shown. And, indeed, the November 16 elections in Kogi and Bayelsa have now made it imperative that urgent actions must be taken to institute a leeway towards making our electoral process free of the inhibiting drawbacks.
Looking at the Bayelsa election in particular, as a measure of the sordid decline in the integrity of the process, one begins to see the interrelated issues that have made our elections cumbersome, which analysts have also raised as major concerns even as the senate now considers an amendment of the process for saner outcome.
Although, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Bayelsa State, Chief David Lyon, has been declared winner and issued Certificate of Return by INEC as duly elected, verbal protests, criticisms and controversies have continued to trail the election.
Both the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Douye Diri and the state governor, Seriake Dickson, have condemned the exercise and consequently rejected the results. Diri has actually declared himself winner of the election, accusing INEC and security institutions of conniving with the APC to rig the election.
He said that the results monitored by his party’s situation room in the eight local government areas showed in clear terms that he won the election.
Condemnations have also come from the PDP national leadership as well as well as the party’s senators, who have equally rejected the election results.
Diri, at a press conference, said what played out in the Bayelsa election confirmed his earlier warning that certain areas were red flag zones where, without guaranteed security, election could not hold peacefully. He claimed that there were plots by the APC to use the military in the state to rig the election. He also said critical stakeholders in Ogbia and several PDP supporters were arrested and detained by the army to prevent them from participating in the elections. Also, the military was accused of invading collation centres contrary to constitutional provisions.
Similar actions, he said, were also meted to PDP leaders in Southern Ijaw and Nembe. In Nembe Local Government, materials for wards 7, 8, 9, 10 12 and 13 never got to their destinations, Diri further said.
“We have very credible information that the Nigerian Army have been conniving with our opponents, the All Progressives Congress (APC), to hijack the process and manipulate the already known results,” Diri said.
On his part, Governor Dickson, while rejecting the results, tendered videos of fraud allegedly perpetrated in some polling units, saying the election was a charade carefully orchestrated to forcibly take over Bayelsa State. The governor condemned what he described as “brazen connivance of security agents with the APC to hijack electoral materials in many local government areas.”
He called on the Federal Government to take drastic action in safeguarding the country’s democratic principles and protecting the fundamental rights of Nigerians in every election.
“This is not the first time that we are having elections. People were killed, some ripped open and thrown into the river and up till now no arrest.
“As democrats, we believe in using democratic procedures in challenging what happened in Ogbia. In Ogbia, there was no collation of voting. The soldiers came and rounded up everybody and forcibly took them to Ogbia town and asked all PDP leaders to leave to enable them present pre-written results. And so the results announced for Southern Ijaw and Nembe were not real
“What has happened in Bayelsa is one of the most brazen acts of distortion and rape of our democracy.
“What took place was not a democratic election. It was a military coup. It was the reign of conspiracy by the Federal Government and security agencies to subvert the democratic rights of our people for the sole purpose of foisting the APC on the people.
“It has never been like this before. In 2015, it wasn’t as bad as this. In this case, not only was the army directed to take over our place, but to collude with the APC thugs to unleash terror on our people,” the governor disclosed.
In condemning the election, the National Working Committee of the PDP also criticised the alleged roles of the various institutions for their collusion, as it backed legal redress. It said in a statement by the National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan: “We have taken the decision of going to court but beyond that, we are going to take measures, which the national chairman will address soon.”
Yet, the PDP senators led by the Minority Leader, Enyinnaya Abaribe, have taken a swipe at the process and outcome, noting that “we totally reject the pronouncement after the elections by INEC and we are worried about the trend of what happened during the election. We know that the results that were announced were not a true reflection of what happened in the field.”
Meanwhile, reactions by the civil society organisations that monitored the election have also called to question the integrity of the Bayelsa poll just as it raised doubts about the sanctity of the process.
A coalition of 400 civil rights organisations under the aegis of Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room, NCSSR, had expressed disappointment over the election.
The convener, NCSSR, Clement Nwankwo, in a statement in Abuja, described the election as “a major dent to Nigeria’s democratic process.”
He added: “Situation Room is disappointed with the conduct of the two governorship elections in Kogi and Bayelsa states. The elections fall below the standard expected of a free, fair and credible election.
“Accordingly, Situation Room is calling for cancellation of the entirety of the elections.”
In its report on the election, Centre for Democracy and Development, CDD, criticised the conduct of the election and warned against the consequences of allowing such to persist in the nation’s electoral system.
CDD Director, Ms Idayat Hassan, who made this observation in a report, said what happened in Bayelsa on November 16 was an assault on the 20-year-old democratic order in the country. She stated that the observation in the polls was a call to action to save Nigeria’s democracy.
Hassan stated: “On November 16 in Kogi and Bayelsa states, the very foundation of our 20-year-old democratic order came under a grievous assault.
“CDD calls on President Muhammadu Buhari to urgently provide the leadership needed to rescue the electoral process and by extension the entire democratic system from imminent collapse
“In section 14 (2c), the constitution goes on to direct that the ‘participation by the people in their government shall be ensured’.
“Therefore, there can be no controversy about the fact that the recurring violations of the electoral process amount to an assault on the constitution of our country.
“If constitutionally-sanctioned opportunities presented by the electoral process to enable citizens to elect their leaders continue to be violently upended by desperate political actors, the consequences could better be imagined.”
But reaction by the Presidency to the Bayelsa election does not seem to recognise much of the alleged infractions as President Buhari has since congratulated Chief Lyon, as validly elected.
In a statement by his media adviser, Femi Adesina, the president said Lyon’s victory was “impressive”.
The president commended APC supporters in particular who, he said, exercised their rights in a peaceful manner, notwithstanding the pockets of unrest recorded in some locations.
He noted that while officials of INEC and security agencies did their best “within the ambit of the law to ensure free, fair and credible elections”, it was unfortunate that pockets of unrest, mostly sponsored by desperate politicians (were) recorded during the poll.
“The president looks forward to working with the incoming government to improve the lives of the people in Bayelsa State,” the statement quoted the president as saying.
The spokesman of the Senate, Godiya Akwashiki, in reaction to the PDP Senators’ position, said he did not think it was right for the senate to say anything about the election and its outcome.
“Nigeria is not a lawless country and we must obey it. The Electoral Act has spelt out everything that there should be primaries between aspirants in political parties so a candidate will emerge.
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“After the primaries, INEC will set aside a day for general election. Based on the Electoral Act, the elections have come and gone. If anyone has any grievances, they know what to do,” he said.
Indeed, the aggrieved parties know what to do and that has informed the decision of Senator Diri to press for legal adjudication of his alleged grievances of electoral fraud at the court, a move also supported by the NWC of the PDP.
But beyond the usual intervention of the courts in determining winners in elections, not a few are worried that the situation is becoming a ritual in our democratic system, which analysts believe is at cross purposes with the basic tenet of actually allowing the people to decide by making their votes count in a clean process of free, fair and credible election.
These are fundamental issues as the senate tries again to institute a framework for sanitising the process of our elections via the current electoral reform bill, which, when passed into law, could possibly make a difference. Nonetheless, informed watchers of the nation’s political system are wont to think that no matter the reform, without the necessary cultivation of democratic culture by the political actors and critical institutions, such efforts will hardly go far.
