By Emeka Alex Duru
Editor, Politics/Features
Two weighty considerations easily come to mind as voters file out for federal and state legislative re-run elections in Rivers State, on Saturday, December 10. The first is if the exercise will ever hold, while the second question centres on how free and fair the poll would be. Both arise from uncertain developments in the state.
Ordinarily, the rescheduled date for outstanding legislative elections should elicit excitement among the electorate in the state and other Nigerians desirous of entrenching democracy in the land.
The elections involving all three Senate seats and 10 House of Representatives are holding mostly on account of judicial decisions which upturned the outcome of the elections that took place during the 2015 general elections.
Attempts to hold the elections within the time stipulated by the courts and the Electoral Act were thwarted on account of violence and other vices that had marred the exercise.
The Saturday poll, is thus, instructive in many instances. The outcome should offer a section of the people who had been denied representation at the State Assembly, House of Representatives and the Senate, an opportunity to start closing gaps on all they had lost all this while.
The exercise should also offer the citizens a chance to make up for the March 19 earlier election date that was marred by violence in some parts of the state.
However, developments in the state seem to make suggestions to the contrary. If anything, there are unsettling signals that may affect the entire poll.
Incidentally, elections in Rivers, since the commencement of the current dispensation, have not been entirely exemplary.
There had been incidences of violence and undemocratic engagements. It was against this backdrop that the relative long period that the state has been out of representation in many layers of the legislature, should have made the key actors of the state’s politics, wiser.
But there seem to be more dangers ahead. Certain frightening developments in recent time, indicate serious threats to the sanctity of the election.
One is the recent shocking discovery of sensitive electoral materials at a private printing press in Port Harcourt, the state capital.
The governor, Nyesom Wike, who made the disclosure, had alleged that the printing press belonged to a chieftain of All Progressives Congress (APC), stressing that it was part of the antics of the party to rig the election even before the ballots.
APC has however put a lie to the claim, adding that none of its members was involved in it.
Curiously, neither the Police nor the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), had demonstrated any serious commitment in investigating the incident. They appear to have practically waved off the incidence, even without investigating it.
Both institutions has in fact, been on war of words with the governor. While he accuses them of working for the APC in the election, leadership of the two agencies, had during the week, literally dismissed Wike as making a mounting out of a molehill.
Aside INEC and the Police, Wike also has Rotimi Amaechi, the former governor of the state and Minister of Transport, to contend with.
Since the two fell apart in the middle of the Goodluck Jonathan administration when Wike was Minister of State (Education), they have not made pretensions on their animosity towards each other.
Their foot soldiers have also lashed on their disagreement to wreak havoc on one another, with occasional loss of life and property.
In the process, peace, governance and development have been the immediate victims. And the people, the greatest losers.
So deep is the disdain by the two gladiators on one another that the governor, has on occasions, casually dismissed the minister as lacking in substance and decency.
Amaechi has also not spared the governor.
At a recent forum with APC supporters in Bera, Gokana local government area, in Ogoniland he was quoted to have vowed to match the ruling Peoples Democratic (PDP) in the state, threat for threat.
“Anything he (Wike), wants to deploy, let him deploy. We will deploy our own”, the Minister allegedly threatened.
Analysts have been concerned at the level of threats from both camps, noting that they were among the declarations and postures that worked against the peaceful conduct of the elections in the state on March 19.
With the Saturday election just some days ahead, the stakes are, again, high. Victory by any of the parties, means a lot to any of the leading combatants.
The issue at stake, is basically the control of the state politics. A win by the PDP, would consolidate Wike’s hold on the state and in fact, the needed breather in the remaining years of his governorship.
A loss to APC, would, on the other hand, guarantee more influence for Amaechi on the affairs of the state. It would also be a bad news for the governor.
It is against this backdrop that the tension generated in Rivers by Saturday legislative election would be understood.
By last Tuesday, there were fears that the unfolding threats and developments in the state, if not properly handled by the appropriate authorities, may endanger the smooth conduct, sanctity and transparency of the polls.
They may also expose the country’s obvious fragile democratic experiment to further shocks.
This is also why the ostrich disposition of both the INEC and the Police in the printing press saga, remains shocking to informed commentators.
Records indicate that the two occasions – 1966 and 1983 – that the nation’s democracy was truncated, were brought about by poor handling of elections. It was the same ugly experience that resulted in the March 19 inconclusive legislative elections in Rivers.
But how ready and committed the authorities are in ensuring that the Saturday legislative election in the state does not follow this ignoble path, remains to be seen.
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