Thuggery and violence have been awful parts of our democracy from the beginning. The recent elections in Bayelsa and Kogi states bore all the imprints of a nation, sinking further into the abyss of electing public officers through violent and fraudulent means.
It should be of great concern that our politicians are not weaning themselves from this despicable conducts in their bid to grab or hold on to power.
The foretaste of the brigandage that characterised the Kogi gubernatorial poll was seen in the viral campaign videos of supporters of the incumbent governor, Yahaya Bello, and candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, happily mimicking gunshots, as what awaited opponents at the polls. The main opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, also had its own schemes, but the APC obviously had the upper hand.
There were many incidents of political thugs, invading polling units, shooting to scare aware voters and carting away voting materials. This action was more prevalent in areas where the opponents were believed to be strong.
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In the areas considered as the strongholds of the perpetrators, natives, who belong to the rival political parties were chased away.
In Bayelsa, many PDP leaders could not return to their communities to vote for fear of being killed by thugs.
And with the connivance of electoral officers and security agents, ballot papers were thumb printed and votes allocated to the contestants.
The Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, in an attempt to absolve the police of blame, claimed that the men in uniform seen snatching ballot boxes and disrupting the election were fake policemen. He did not explain what happened to the real policemen deployed for the elections while the show of shame lasted.
In the Kogi election, political thugs murdered, at least, four persons and in Bayelsa where violence had erupted before the elections, no fewer than three lives were lost. The victims in Bayelsa included police personnel.
The Kogi political thugs stretched their impunity to an incredible extent with the burning alive of a PDP woman leader during an attack on her home days after the election.
In spite of the blatant undermining of the political process and its own usual inadequacies, which manifested in malfunctioning card readers and poor logistics, the umpire, Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, as always, returned winners.
Those declared losers are left with the options of accepting the defeat or seeking justice in court. And going to court to prove election rigging successfully is an almost impossible feat.
The blatant rape of democracy witnessed during the last general elections has been reenacted and perfected at the Bayelsa and Kogi polls. The template will be handy for the Edo and Ondo states gubernatorial polls next year and Anambra before the 2023 general elections.
The message being passed, unfortunately, is that once you have political thugs armed with guns and Hilux vans, and if you get the buy-in of INEC officials and the security agents, you can always win an election. In this dangerous arrangement, the electorate is dispensable and good governance also does not matter.
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Well-meaning Nigerians must speak out in defence of our democracy before the ordinary citizens, who genuinely desire to elect those, who govern them completely lose faith in the ballot box.
The foundation for good governance is predicated on the sanctity of the ballot box.
And when the lawmakers, who are supposed to toughen the electoral laws and members of the executive empowered under the law to arrest and punish offenders are the sponsors of the criminals, who perpetrate violence and electoral fraud, then our democracy is in severe peril.
The ongoing assault of our democratic process was a problem when the PDP was ruling at the centre. The prospect of the emergence of a positive shift with the APC has unfortunately remained elusive.
President Muhammadu Buhari, who said he himself had been a victim of rigging until he eventually triumphed in 2015 appears not interested so far in leaving a legacy of free and fair elections after his tenure and this is not only sad but most painful.
We re-emphasise that President Buhari is in the best position to reform our electoral processes to avert bloodshed and fraudulent practices in future.
The president must deliver the nation from politicians who would stop at nothing to realise their inordinate ambitions.
