Professor Lai Olurode, a former National Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and professor of Sociology, in this interview with WALE AKINSELURE, assesses last Saturday’s off-season governorship elections, the nation’s electoral system and the involvement of the judiciary in the electoral process.
WHAT is your assessment of last Saturday’s off-cycle elections, putting into perspective the assurances of the stakeholders like the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) before the election?
I will say that the elections fell short of general expectation. People had relied on the promises by key stakeholders in the election, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the security agents and the electorate. Generally speaking, INEC can be said to have gotten deployment of election materials right. But I think the challenge is with the actual electoral process itself. And some of the factors that militated against free and fair elections can be said to be beyond INEC. Of course, there have been some reports of unscrupulous conduct on the part of some INEC staff, either adhoc or permanent staff, but I think such cases can be investigated by INEC. We heard of results being rewritten, elections not being concluded in some places and results were made available, which can all be investigated. Some of these sharp practices have come to be part of our electoral experiences but whether they are massive or not, we have to await further investigation. The issue of violence, for example, I think there have been allegations of collusion and the excessive use of the power of incumbency in the three states. You and I know that whenever a sitting governor is a candidate in the election, he will want to resist any attempt to unseat him.
Also, where the sitting governor is having his last shot, that is, his second term getting exhausted but he has a stooge or a candidate of his party standing in in his shoe, and there is no faction within the party, and there is no basis for him to support another candidate, he will most likely be more than keenly interested in the outcome of the election. He will want to deploy all the resources of his office to make sure that his candidate, stooge or not, has an upper hand. In Kogi State, Governor Yahaya Bello is getting out of the Government House. Usman Ododo is the candidate of the party and the power of incumbency will also be exercised in favour of Ododo and we have seen the outcome. Of course, Kogi and Imo are All Progressives Congress (APC) states, by whatever means. In Imo State, we have the severest allegation of sharp practices. You and I know the history of Imo State. It was the judiciary that gave victory to Governor Hope Uzodimma, in the first instance. But, I think Uzodimma somehow has also mastered the art and has used the last four years to get himself entrenched in the governance machinery. So, it is always very difficult to have an incumbent defeated. That is the picture of what we have seen. But I think the security agencies need to a lot more work. There have been instances where security agencies connived with the sitting governor or surrogate to make sure that electoral malfeasance is visited on the state. Again, there is the over deployment of security agents, which you cannot blame the security agents for. They wanted to create a level-playing field for all the candidates and wanted to be sure that voters perceive a sense of security that will lure the people to want to come out to exercise their franchise. But I think that seems to have been counterproductive as we see that the voters turnout seems to have been very low. This is probably because of the absence of believability of the electorate that the environment will be peaceful; they say to themselves that whether they go out to vote or not, already, the big guys have determined the winner, even where that is not so, and they stay away from the polling units and fail to exercise their franchise probably because of their previous experience. So, the transparency and credibility of the elections are called into question. But with all the challenges we have with election, I still believe that there is room for improvement. However, one would have expected that these three elections, being off-season, should have witnessed more transparency, should have attracted more confidence in the electorate that they will feel strongly and safe enough to come out to cast their vote.
Are you saying there are no marked improvements in Saturday’s off-season elections compared to the last general election?
If you look at all the indicators of credible election, if you look at the perception of critical stakeholders and the roles that they played, I would say that the last presidential election was far better than what we had last Saturday. That was also because the last president was taking his final shot at the presidency, as he was exhausting his remaining term. Also, this was because APC did not go into that election as a cohesive force; it got factionalised and there were all kinds of tendencies within the APC but President Bola Tinubu was nevertheless lucky to have had a shot at the presidency. Otherwise, if the power of incumbency had been deployed, to a greater extent, by the then president, I am sure we would not have had a freer environment. You can see the results were quite competitive; no landslide victories.
INEC continues to deploy more and more technologies to better the electoral process but we continue to record usual sharp practices. Why does is seem Nigerians continue to outsmart these innovations?
If you want to look at the role that technology has played, you know there were issues with deployment of technology in the February 2023 election and the Supreme Court that the failure of INEC to upload the result of the presidential election to IReV is not a fundamental breach of election procedure; that even if it had not deployed technology at all, that would not have invalidated the result as it is just a guideline; that INEC just wanted to add value to the election. On the failure to upload, it ruled that it was not a big deal. So, if you want to look at the role of technology in our electoral process, the election to look at will be 2015 and 2019. To some extent, the people have a fixated mindset that they won’t allow Nigeria to enjoy free and fair election; they are the ones singling out technology for attack. They are attacking BVAS, election infrastructure, especially election technology. Sometimes, they know that even if they snatch the ballot boxes, that will not destroy what has been declared at the polling unit. My worry is the mindset of Nigerians. You can’t see any foreign element in terms of the disruptive nature of our electoral process; these persons are Nigerians bent on allowing political upheaval, who are bent that the electorate’s vote should not count; that they want to drown the voices of the electors and just use gangsterism, violence to decide who wins the game. But elections are supposed to be a simple, civic obligation that should be done in a peaceful environment like the June 12, 1993 presidential election, 2015 election and particularly the 2011 election where we introduced technology for the first time; where we stopped the use of temporary voter card and we issued permanent voter card. I think it is our mindset. It is not the president or governor, we, ourselves are to blame. They funded INEC very well; what else can government do? It is our mindset. Everybody goes in with a rigging mindset that if I am not declared winner of the election, it means I have been cheated out. Everybody goes in with a mindset of win-at-all-cost. We see politics as a very strong game. That is why people are advocating for proportional representation in parliament, so if the Labour Party (LP) knows that it may not win the election finally, but if it has a certain percentage of seats in the National Assembly; it will have that proportion of ministers that it will nominate. So, it will become a matter of life or death, the way it is. It is like you lose everything if you lost that election or you win everything when you win the election. It is a very strong approach to politics activating and breathing life to election violence in Nigeria. We need to change our electoral system, in ways that can provoke a better election environment where everybody will be a winner at the end of the day.
Are you saying adopting proportional representation will reduce the violence and chaos that comes with our winner-takes-all election style?
Yes, this is because everybody will take; you take according to your contributions; you don’t lose all your investments. Look at PDP in the last election, PDP and LP gave APC a tough time. Where is their gain except for states where they won governorship? They lost out. Look at the electoral investments by Atiku Abubakar, by Peter Obi, and other contestants. They lost everything. They should have a part in the big cake. Labour Party won in Lagos and a few places but it cannot go beyond having legislative representation; it does not matter the number of votes it was able to muster. The PDP and LP had millions of votes in the presidential election but the voters lost, except for the number of senators and House of Representatives members it was able to have. But, in terms of representation in that government, it is zero. That is a calamitous loss. But if the candidate knows he won’t lose all, probably have 30 percent representation in that government, why will he rock the boat?
The popular slogan is ‘Go to Court’ if you feel aggrieved at the election result. Why do we continue to rely on the courts for a final verdict regarding what happened at polling units on Election Day?
It does not augur well for democracy where about 20 million people have voted, ignoring that and going to court as if the judiciary has no label, political leaning, is politically or socially detached. It is not the right way to go. It will be better to resolve elections at the polling units. The Court of law should not be turned into a voting platform where the judges will be casting their votes on behalf of the electorate. That is breaching the rights of citizenship and participation. They are not angels there; they have political preferences; they are also not immune from the pressure that the political class is constantly responding to. They are human beings, they are from our society. Those saying, ‘Go to Court,’ have their reasons. They know, for example, that the court process will travel at a snail speed. And once you have sworn in a governor, president, he will do everything to make sure that the election outcome that has given him victory is not upturned. The judges can’t be free from the state machinery; they can’t be free to decide independently because they know that the nation is at stake. They know that the nation will go under and they wouldn’t want to be seen to be part of the process that makes Nigeria to go under. It is much easier to upturn governorship election than presidential election because the whole country can be negatively impacted by that decision of the judiciary. I do not support the idea that the court should be used to resolve political debacles, electoral fiasco; that is not the role of the court. There is no way the court can decide rightly; the court will become labeled; they will be seen as taking up electoral roles; taking up the role of electoral umpire which in itself is being questioned as to its neutrality and detachment. It will be the end of society once the judiciary is tainted. If the judiciary is allowed to go under, where else do we go? It is an invitation to chaos. Look at the apprehension that the nation went through before the Supreme Court delivered its verdict on the last presidential election. Look at the states where gubernatorial elections are still being contested. You can’t be comfortable. Look at Kano, they don’t know what the final decision will be. So, it is better for electoral disputes to be resolved at the polling units. I wish INEC can have the final say, whether wrongly or rightly. Once it declares a winner, let it stay, so that we continue to oil, improve on our electoral bureaucracy rather than asking the court to take up purely political roles.
YOU SHOULD NOT MISS THESE HEADLINES FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE
Nigeria has highest cement price in the world — Producers
FOR about 10 years now, Nigeria has remained the country with the highest cement price in the world, national chairman, Cement Producers Association of…
Kogi: INEC to hold fresh elections in 59 polling units Nov 18
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has disclosed its intention to conduct fresh elections in…
Twins who graduated First Class in UNILORIN say school separated them during exams
Taiwo Hassanah Subair and Kehinde Aishah Subair are identical twin sisters and First Class graduates of…
FULL LIST: ‘Shanty Town’, ‘Herdsmen’, ‘Underbelly’ top BON Awards nomination
Best of Nollywood Awards has officially released nominations lists and categories for the 2023 Nollywood award ceremony. Stylised as…
Helen Paul and other bastardy stories
Everyone has a history; how you act and tell your story defines you. Ace comedian and celebrity, Helen Paul, trended wildly last…
Nigeria will host befitting African Canoe Sprint Championship — Porbeni
President Nigeria Rowing, Canoeing and Sailing Federation (NRCSF), Rear Admiral Festus Porbeni (rtd) has…
