Guiltier Than INEC(?)

Electoral bodies such as the Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) are, anywhere in the world, the strongest guarantors and facilitators of democratic governance. As agencies that are solely responsible for the conduct of elections and announcement of results, they   are therefore the providers of the oxygen on which democracies depend for survival.

This clearly means that INEC is the life support for Nigeria’s democracy to which the citizens look up for the effective sustenance of the system. The amount of the effectiveness of the electoral body is definitely the biggest determinant of the state of health of democracy which appears in the way and manner the operators conduct themselves.

Each of the past cycle of elections since 1999 when democracy was restored to the country was a test for INEC that either strengthened or weakened it. The combination of the circumstances in which those elections were conducted, their respective outcomes and the reactions to them served as bases upon which all kinds of judgements were passed on the Commission.

The people’s diverse perceptions of INEC prior to the conduct of the last elections early this year were heavily informed by the varied verdicts on its past performances. Some other related developments that unfolded, particularly between 2019 and now, only re-enforced all the correspondingly varied attitudes of the citizens to the last exercise.

The 2023 elections were obviously an exercise that was approached with a lot of determination, on the part of the various stakeholders, to make it a reality as a result of which various segments of the citizenry simply believed that it would hold. Even with all the prevalent challenges in the area of security, the apparent commitment of the stakeholders with the INEC as the biggest of them, made the confidence of most Nigerians  to thicken.

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However, the last elections have appeared to be the severest test for the Commission, considering the security and some operational challenges caused by the cashless policy of the federal government that were all experienced in the course of the preparations and actual conduct of the exercise. It took much more than a normal effort for the electoral body to keep itself together, sustain the courage and finally discharge this most fundamental responsibility.

Those who have been consistently suspicious of INEC have, since the release of the outcome of the elections, stepped up their own show of disapproval of it. Either as political parties, candidates or just support groups, the aggrieved forces and elements have already expressed total resolve to fight to the end the decision of the Commission, hence the adoption of strategies that are abundantly unsettling to fair-minded analysts of all the issues about the elections.

It is neither the rejection of the results nor the decision to challenge the matter in court that is the problem. Even under the most normal of circumstances, outcomes of elections are disputed and challenged and in some cases reversals of the decision of electoral umpires are effected by the courts, all of which are parts of political and democratic processes that strengthen public confidence in the system.

All these are reactions with which INEC is not only always familiar but must have also now been adequately prepared to tackle. Expression of dissatisfaction over the fairness of the Commission which, more often than not, leads to litigation are, in fact, major features of the entire electioneering that are conveniently accommodated by the system.

Meanwhile, either in courts or outside of them, the Commission not only tirelessly puts up a defence for all its actions and decisions, but also makes complaints over certain tendencies of the various stakeholder groups that are terribly inimical to the conduct of credible elections. A summary of the defence and the complaints shows that a lot of the attitudes of the stakeholders are such that are inconsistent with the required disposition of patriotic citizens towards the exercise.

As confirmed by the Head of Kurfi District in Katsina State who also served as the Secretary of the defunct Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO), Alhaji Ahmadu Kurfi (Maradin Katsina), in a keynote address he presented at a workshop on elections in Nigeria  which took place in Katsina on 15th October 2003, post-election crises that are normally caused by the recklessness of the citizens “have been recurring decimals in Nigeria since independence in 1960”. Although the prevailing crises may, in terms of scope and intensity, be far different from the past ones, their nature and the devastating effects on the country’s democracy are the same.

As a competent election manager, Kurfi recommended that stakeholders should “join hands to achieve the objectives of successful management of the electoral process with a view to producing election results that will be acceptable” to all; the same kind of call that is continuously being made since then. It is a recommendation that indicates the absolute need for, not only the electoral body, but all the other stakeholders to always consciously adopt the right attitudes to every aspect of the process.

Even the immediate past Chairman of INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega, during whose tenure an opposition party, for the first time, took over government in Nigeria, which was akin to a political revolution, once bitterly complained about the attitudes of the stakeholders, particularly the politicians whom he accused of indulgence in ‘do-or-die politics’. While in one presentation he made in 2011 at a conference on “Managing Conflicts in Africa” which took place in the Kennesaw State University, Georgia-USA, Jega described as difficult the execution of elections in Nigeria “given its size, large population, terrain and ethno-religious diversity”, in another presentation in 2012 at Chatham House London, he stated that the major challenge “is how to change the mindset of politicians.”

All these are pieces of evidence to support the argument that some other stakeholders can be or have already been found to be a lot guiltier than INEC in the creation of an atmosphere that makes the conduct of credible elections impossible. Are, for example, political parties/candidates that manipulate sentiments for campaigns or buy votes, security agents who compromise, Civil Society Organizations that carry out their observation duties with prejudices and socio-cultural groups that use hate speech against candidates other than the ones they support not guiltier than INEC?

It must have been noticed that there are manifestations of all those misconducts in the reactions of the various stakeholders to the outcome of the last elections. Most of them have openly deprived the Commission the fairness it deserves, thereby making a lot of Nigerians to just dismiss them as biased complainants.