By Cudjoe Kpor
The 120,827 registered voters in Southern Ijaw Local Government (LG) of Bayelsa State will vote for their favourite governorship candidate next Saturday, January 9. However, given the widespread violence and electoral malpractices across the state during the December 5 and 6 elections, the question arises, can the police guarantee that thugs would keep their peace this time? In other words, will voters cast their votes in a civilised, peaceful atmosphere devoid of intimidation and harassment?
For, speculation is rife that the compromised police will turn blind eyes while hired thugs, hoodlums and other riffraff paid by illiterate godfathers of some candidates spread mayhem. Then the godfathers’ confederates would cook up figures and declare unpopular candidates winners.
Elections were successfully held in the seven other LGs on December 5 and extended into the next day. Despite some hitches in about 101 polling units, results were declared. But the widespread disruptions in South Ijaw LG made Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) cancel the result and declared the polls inconclusive.
As Bayelsa State Resident Electoral Commissioner Baritor Kpagih justified it: “Reports about the election conducted on December 6, 2015 in Southern Ijaw LGA reveal that the election was substantially marred by violence, ballot box snatching and hostage-taking of election officials.”
About two weeks later, on December 18, INEC in consultation with all the 21 political parties which fielded candidates, collectively rescheduled the supplementary election for January 9.
Now, with Election Day this weekend, the question everyone asks is, can the police, as the apex civil law enforcer, guarantee a peaceful atmosphere to enable the electoral umpire to conduct free and fair elections in only one local government?
Only the Inspector General of Police Solomon Arase and his officers and men in the state can answer the question. For, first, without the police shielding them, the rich and powerful illiterate godfathers who sponsor the disruptive thugs would not dare send one thug to snatch a ballot paper from any voter at a polling unit. Secondly, without the godfathers’ financial muscle, no other individual or group has the disruptive clout to hire thugs who send voters and election officials fleeing once they start their scare-mongering attacks at polling units.
The candidates
On December 18, INEC’s bulletin announced its consultative meeting with all the 21 political parties which fielded candidates in the December 5 and 6 governorship election. All of them re-affirmed their commitment to the Peace Accord they signed in Yenagoa on November 11, 2015 for free, fair and credible election; but this time only in South Ijaw LG. The two front-runners, incumbent Governor of the state and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate Seriake Dickson and the leading challenger, All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Chief Timipre Sylva were joined by Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM) candidate Moses Siasia, Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA) National Chairman, Chief Peter Ameh, PDP acting National Chairman, Prince Uche Secondus, among others. All pledged to work with INEC to enlighten Bayelsa voters to come out and vote peacefully on Election Day.
Results so far
The two front-runners are far ahead of the pack in the obvious two-horse race: Dickson has 105,748 votes from winning six of the seven LGs’ results collated so far. Sylva got 72,594 votes, a difference of 33,154 votes. Sylva won one LGA. Dickson won the six others.
Before INEC cancelled the Southern Ijaw results, the Sylva Campaign Organisation had announced that it won the LG with 78,000 votes. With 120,827 registered voters in the LG, Sylva would have stunningly upset Dickson’s re-election bid. INEC, however, cancelled the results after kidnap of some 40 of its election staff. Now, INEC must cancel the results as many times as necessary for credible election to be confirmed, frustrating the candidates and their supporters alike. So, the police must guarantee the atmosphere conducive to free and fair elections.
Preparations
The freedom to elect leaders of the electorate’s choice is the first pillar of democracy. It is thus the height of ignorance, hypocrisy or both for any democrat to say he is establishing democracy in any society without such election. For, the democratic ethos is concretised in freedom of choice. Whether informed choice, or even obtuse choice, is not relevant to peaceful conduct of elections. Indispensably, anyone choosing his leader for any elective post in a democracy must do so without coercion, hidden guidance or manipulated consent, all of which vitiate the process of free choice.
Nigeria’s tragedy is that illiterate godfathers who should leave the atmosphere free for election without molestation, are invariably the ignoramuses who take every undemocratic, uninformed and unenlightened step to rig an election with pre-determined outcome according to their wish. They readily resort to violence to kill, maim and injure opponents, security agents, election officials and sometimes even voters caught up in crossfire. But disrupt the process to rig, the godfathers must. In fact, one was so proud of his rigging prowess that he boasted to his victorious candidate that the latter had no idea how the election was rigged for his victory. Thus, while the enlightened candidates criss-cross the country selling their manifesto and themselves to the electorate, the illiterate godfathers are ensconced in cocoons plotting to rig.
The mentality
Any democrat who is not a beneficiary would hate the godfathers’ methods and the execrable consequences of their disruptions. They spread violence, fear and intimidation across otherwise civilized, peaceful and orderly election landscape. But one would hardly fault their primitive reasoning. To them, planting their godsons and daughters in public offices is strictly an investment. Once they succeed, the returns are immediate. In fact, some godfathers make their candidates sign irrevocable payment vouchers on their treasuries if they hold executive posts. Or they take their candidates to juju shrines to swear oaths to pay up on victory.
The late Chief Lamidi Adedibu, the one-time strongman of Ibadan politics, once explained the twisted rationale behind the thuggery and violence that they imposed on elections they rigged.
“That is the way we played politics even during the anti-British colonial struggle days in the 1950s and 60s,” Adedibu had told a reporter in an interview. Very simple.
He did not see anything wrong with importing the anti-colonial struggle era practice into the democratic self-rule era. But when his godson refused to pay up on installing him in office, the godfather took his grouse public: His godson was getting about N5 billion as security vote. Twenty-five percent of that would be “good compensation” for installing him, he told the reporter with naïve candour.
One wonders if the godfathers ever pause to consider the “compensation” as no different from treasury-looting. The next elections are awaited while the treasury-looting godfathers, the real election-wreckers, look around for who to bribe or buy influence from. As ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo also put it, to the illiterate godfathers, it is always “do-or-die politics” or “amala politics”: All malpractices are allowed, no decency, no decorum, victory must be achieved at all cost and the end justified every means deployed to win, however uncouth.
The culprits
All the 21 candidates who pledged to contest peacefully on January 9 are the intellectual grains in the registered parties. The chaffs of the electoral process, the godfathers who disrupt the elections, are well-hidden. As a tradition, every candidate has his “private army” or thugs. These do his dirty jobs when the “Oga’s” opponents have the upper hand in opposition strongholds. However, the political godfathers and other unenlightened brutes who make their tax-free wealth through sponsorship of candidates into elective offices at all the three tiers of the Federation are the professional promoters of election violence and thuggery who got their primitive mentality as a way of life during the British colonial rule.
Like it or hate it, the unchangeable primitive mentality undermines the most sacred democratic, civic duty to elect leaders freely. The godfathers’ relish the election violence and chaos their thugs perpetrate. Scandalous though by civilized standards, the violence also reflects the deeper malaise of the tragedy which befell Nigeria with the collapse of its education system, especially university education. By the 2015 ranking last October, only one Nigerian university made it into the top 800 in the world: University of Ibadan.
Police role
In view of the prime importance of free and fair election in a democratic society, one would expect the premier civil security agency, Nigeria Police Force, to devote its attention to securing the environment for peaceful election nationwide on Election Day.
But no. The Force makes all the promises, and threats – and break them. But the fact is, if the police want to end all election day shenanigans, falsification of results at the collation centres, and all the vices associated with the mockery which passes for elections in Nigeria, the police know what to do. They even know the perpetrators. But corruption would not let them do it. For, the election wreckers are the same “gold mines” to the police as well as to the corrupt politicians.
The test
A little test will prove this assertion. Start with the Oga patapata, the IGP himself. Let him take a plain sheet of paper. From his days while he was climbing the success ladder as a CP in any state. He should make a list of all the illiterate godfathers who had invited him to hotel rooms and residences to give him GMG bags filled with bribe money. The value of the bribe is not important. Only the names of the system corrupters, and wreckers, are necessary. Down the ladder to his DIGs, AIGs, to the commissioners of police, all must write the list of their corrupters. Fortunately, the police are now very IT-compliant; tabulating all these names by their states or wards should not take more than 48 hours.
Voila!
The police have their names nationwide. Which illiterate godfather will dare organise thugs after that in Nigeria to disrupt election at any level? The only possibility is the Nigerian way: Some will deliberately go to disrupt election in others’ wards to incriminate their political opponents. Otherwise, any disturbance one kilometer away from a polling booth, the police will make the culprit face the music.
Why would the police not do it? The same reason the godfathers would disrupt elections to plant their unpopular stooges in elective offices and manipulate them to be thieves looting treasury for them permanently.
Women’s protests in Southern Ijaw
When INEC declared the election inconclusive, Madam Faith Opuen, Bayelsa Women Leader of PDP, took to the streets with others in black carrying placards with inscriptions like, “Leadership is about building and not destroying!” , ‘’INEC, are you still independent?”, “Buhari, are you still for everybody and nobody?” “No vote in Southern Ijaw wards!”
They accused INEC of colluding with APC to disenfranchise the people of the state. Opuen conceded it was normal for INEC to reschedule the election, but INEC’s refusal to put in place the necessary machinery to protect lives and election materials for the election invalidated the poll in Southern Ijaw. She was wrong. The police and their ancillary security agencies must guarantee the peaceful environment for INEC to conduct elections.
If the police fail, there is nothing INEC can do except cancel elections.