Ghanaians went to the polls on December 7, 2012 to elect the president and members of parliament in 275 electoral constituencies.
Nigerians will do same on March 28 and April 11.
Just as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has vowed to use biometric verification machines, known as card readers, to authenticate the Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs), the Electoral Commission of Ghana (ECG) also deployed the card reader machines.
Because of the breakdown of some of the machines in Ghana, some voters could not vote, and voting was extended to December 8, 2012. A run-off was scheduled for December 28, 2012 if no presidential candidate received an absolute majority of 50 per cent plus one vote.
The election was contested by President John Dramani Mahama, of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Nana Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), and six others.
Mahama was re-elected with 50.7 per cent of the vote, just a few thousand votes over the threshold for avoiding a run-off less than five months as president, having succeeded John Atta Mills who died in office in July 2012. Akufo-Addo received 47.74 percent.
The main opposition, the NPP, alleged that the ECG tampered with the result and filed a petition at the Ghanaian Supreme Court. The NPP produced more than 11,000 so-called “pink sheets” at the court which compared them with similar papers from the ECG, the NDC and other parties.
The pink sheets stated the results as counted in single polling stations before aggregating them to any higher level, such as municipality, district and region. The NPP claimed that there were differences between the results as stated immediately after their counting at polling stations, and those which were used in aggregations, insisting that the alleged fraud could be proven by the pink sheets.
The Supreme Court validated Mahama’s victory. Ghanaians moved on with their lives. No civil war was declared.
I cited the example of Ghana because some Nigerians are quick to dismiss any attempt to compare our democracy with that of the United States or any of the older, more established Western democracies.
What they fail to understand is that even if comparisons are made with Western countries, Nigeria is not re-inventing the democratic wheel and will therefore not wait for eons to get it right.
The 2012 elections in Ghana were held on a Friday, a working day. Many parents dropped off their wards in school in the morning, went to the polling booths to cast their ballot, before going to their offices to earn a decent living for the day.
Ghana was not shut down. Schools, markets and businesses were open. There was no restriction of movement. The elections were conducted successfully.
But in Nigeria, the reverse is the case. Election is war. Politicians and their supporters don’t prepare for elections, they prepare for war.
Granted, contest for power is never a child’s play. But when the game is played on the canvass of ideas and civility, when politicians appreciate the fact that it is all about the country and the people, things don’t get as heated up as we experience every four years in this country.
I ran into a friend of mine and a professional colleague at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja on Thursday, February 19. He lives in Abuja. When he told me he was going to Kano to see his family, I enquired when they relocated and why.
He said he sent them “home” a week before the original February 14 date scheduled for the presidential and National Assembly (NASS) elections. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen and didn’t want to take chances.
For him, the only place that is home in Nigeria is his ancestral home in Kano and that is the only place he could feel safe.
I could not believe it. I used to think that it was only the Igbo that are endangered species in Nigeria.
Of course, many Igbo, knowing what happened in the 1960s and seeing a very good nexus between the First Republic politics and the vitriolic, malicious, spiteful and bombastic pontifications of our politicians decided long before the postponement to leave for “home” from wherever they were residing in the North.
Some vowed never to return and relocated permanently. Those who wanted to stay away from “the wild, wild North” until after the elections found themselves in a dilemma after the six-week postponement.
On every Election Day, Nigeria is completely shut down. You ask yourself why? What is the tension all about? What purpose will the hate speeches and war mongering achieve? Why is freedom of movement severely curtailed because of elections?
Why will somebody living in Ikeja when he registered four years ago be disenfranchised because he now lives in Surulere and dare not leave his house on the Election Day because he will most likely not get to his destination?
Four years ago, a policeman nearly killed me at Ojodu-Berger in Lagos because I was going to the office to monitor the election. He was dead drunk and all my explanation that as a journalist, I was on duty, fell on deaf ears.
Even before the elections are held, violence is spiraling out of control. The governorship campaign rally of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Okrika Counci in Rivers State was again disrupted last week as several explosions rocked the Okrika National Field venue of the event.
Penultimate week, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) said no fewer than 58 people have been killed in election-related violence in 22 states from December 3, 2014 to date.
Chairman, Governing Council of the Commission, Chidi Odinkalu, made the disclosure in Abuja while presenting a report entitled, “Pre-election Report and Advisory on Violence in Nigeria’s 2015 General Elections.’’
Odinkalu said within 50 days from December 3, 2014, the NHRC had confirmed 61 incidences of election violence with the majority of the cases recorded in three key economic and politically significant states.
“In Lagos, we have tracked at least 11 incidences producing 22 dead people, an average of two people killed over a span of just 52 days. In Kaduna State, we have three incidents and nine killings; Rivers has six incidents, including the detonation of explosives and attacks on courts.
“This degree of pre-election violence is unacceptable, we have seen too much blood and this must be stopped,’’ he warned.
This was before the last attack in Okirika where one policeman was killed, and 50 other people were injured, including a journalist stabbed in the neck. If you listen to politicians, you will think they are preparing for war rather than election. All manner of peace committees have been set up, including the one headed by former Head of State, Abdulsalami Abubakar.
The international community has waded in, sending peace ambassadors like former Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, and his counterpart in the Commonwealth, Emeka Anyaoku, to woo the political gladiators into signing a peace accord.
The United States has sent its Secretary of State, John Kerry, to admonish our political leaders on the need for free, fair and peaceful polls.
Yet, the tension keeps getting worse.
We have boxed ourselves into a corner where some believe that no matter who wins between the two major contestants, President Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP and Muhammadu Buhari of the APC, there will be violence.
If Jonathan wins, there will be violent reactions in the North. If Buhari wins, there will be violent reactions in the South South.
Yet, elections are conducted in other countries without fuss.
Forty-year-old Alexis Tsipras was sworn in as the 186th Prime Minister of Greece on January 26, after he led his SYRIZA party to victory in a snap general election, receiving 36 per cent of the vote and 149 out of the 300 seats in the Parliament. There was no violence, no blood was shed. The welfare of the people is the core issue. Patriotism is the watchword. National interest is the overriding issue.
Why is our case different?