Even as the candidates of the Nigerian political parties for the 2023 General Elections are restlessly touching places, emotionally connecting with various groups of the electorate and expectedly raising issues about themselves and the country or their respective states and constituencies, the expression of pessimism over the possibility of the conduct of the exercise in a lot of the parts of the country is continuously and, of course, justifiably becoming ceaseless and more pronounced. Critical stakeholders including the electoral body, security organs, Civil Society Organizations and the media have already raised enough alarm over the persistence of some threats to the peaceful conduct of the elections.
All those stakeholders’ concerns were voiced out either before or after some foreign countries, with the United States of America as the most loquacious of them, complained about the prevailing insecurity in the country. As Nigeria nears 2023, in the early part of which the elections will take place, the stakeholders and the various categories of the citizenry are speedily and visibly manifesting reservations over the capacity and readiness of the relevant agencies to organize and/or supervise the forthcoming elections.
Although in a reaction to the latest attack, last Monday, on its office in Imo State capital, Owerri, which is the eighth in the recent times, INEC assured that it would go ahead with the plan for the conduct of the elections and even commended security as well as emergency agencies for their roles in bringing the incidents under control, there are still fears that the rising violence is most likely to make the conduct of elections in some parts of the country impossible. A lot of the Commission’s earlier warnings have, in fact, re-enforced such a pessimism.
The explanation, by INEC, that the elections are not likely to hold in about eight Local Government Areas of Katsina State because of the activities of violent criminals is about the strongest confirmation or validation of the widespread fear that the exercise will not be as comprehensive and successful as it is expected to be. It is an acknowledgement of the reality of the situation which has clearly pointed to the impracticability of the Commission’s arrangements for the elections in those areas that are worst hit by various forms of violence.
The various components of the security architecture have also raised alarm over the intention of several violent groups to disrupt the on-going electioneering with a view to making the actual conduct of the polls a complete impossibility. While the police authorities have consistently been drawing the attention of the public to the effects of the persistent insecurity in several parts of the country which are threats to the forthcoming elections, the military found it most necessary to, at a certain point, forewarn about the desperation of some elements in the country to ensure that security is compromised before or during the elections.
As a group of senior journalists of Northern extraction, the Northern Media Forum (NMF) also issued a statement with a title–Advisories in respect of 2023 elections–in which it mentioned a lot of the existing ugly realities that have been threats to every aspect of the current democratic governance, particularly the electoral process. The Forum which, for the past several years, has been monitoring and analyzing events, issues and situations in the Northern part of the country expressed dismay over reports that “in Zamfara and Kebbi States, bandits dictate to politicians on where to take campaigns to and when to hold them.”
The NMF openly described the North where there is 86 million poverty-stricken people who have constituted 65 percent of the 133 million poor Nigerians as revealed by the National Bureau of Statistics as the most dangerous place to live in, which is a corroboration of an opinion that was once expressed by the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar. The Boko Haram in the North-East that has persisted for more than a decade, farmers-herders clash in the North-Central as well as the banditry and kidnap in the North-West are, according to the Forum, “dangerous and alarming.”
If the situation in the North is not as frightening as the NMF has portrayed it or was not created and now being sustained just to stop the elections from taking place, the violence in the South-East that is being perpetrated by the members of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPoB) really is. The IPoB activists have been quite clear about their intention to abort the political and electoral processes as evident in the intensification of their attacks on INEC facilities and other unlawful acts which have continued to make politicking in most areas in the zone extremely difficult, if not impossible.
Nigerians are not unaware of all the crippling threats to the next elections in particular and democracy in general. It is in full realization of the huge dangers that the activities of the various groups of violent criminals portend for the survival of Nigeria as a democratic country that they continuously lament the inability of the government to curb all those excesses.
At the same time, they also have not forgotten the promise repeatedly made by President Muhammadu Buhari to ensure the conduct of credible elections and finally leave behind a decent political culture. It is even the constant remembrance of this promise that makes some of the citizens to continue to be hopeful that the elections will hold in even those places where there is a pronounced violence.
Clearly, majority of the people in the country are somewhere between fear and hope as while the circumstances in which the preparations for the election are being made are far from being encouraging or even normal, the usual pronouncements of President Buhari on the forthcoming elections are weighty enough to convince the people that he is serious. Even as the elections are fast approaching, it is still difficult for most Nigerians to either believe that they will not hold in some places because of the violence or they will be conducted everywhere because of the commitment of the president.
Meanwhile, above all the confusion or even the varying conclusions is the vital expectation that all the stakeholders in the conduct of 2023 elections will properly identify all the challenges and the resultant concerns as well as realistically work to address them. In the execution of this kind of enormous assignment, the basic requirements are patriotism, vigilance and diligence which exist in abundance in a lot of Nigerians.
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