By Emeka Alex Duru
Every election is local, it is commonly said. Many considerations inform the expression. There are, for instance, inherent peculiarities of any electoral contest. The difference may be in the number of political parties or candidates for any poll. It may also be by way of sentiments by the electorate towards a certain particular party. This is why some electoral units are often regarded as strongholds of some political parties.
But in our system, the idea of every election being local, is being replaced by do-or-die tendency. Closer to this is the bizarre expression of capturing position under contestation first and the opponent going to court, where as it is becoming difficult for the complainant to get justice. This is why our elections are increasingly assuming the dimensions of war. And in war, as they say, all is fair, as long as victory is attained. Every contestant in Nigerian election, wants to win at all costs. In the process, candidates go to extreme bounds to ensure that they emerge winners at the end of the exercise. When a present day Nigerian politician prances about with claim of having structures, it is not a matter of his acceptability to the masses or legacies that will sell him to the people. It is another way of announcing his capability at mobilization and deployment of violence against his opponent at short notice.
This is the only way to explain the madness going on Bayelsa and Kogi over the Saturday November 16 governorship election in the states. In Kogi, the leading candidates for the exercise are Ibrahim Wada of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Governor Yahaya Bello, of All Progressives Congress (APC) and Natasha Akpoti of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). In Bayelsa, unless the court order against the APC subsists, it is a straight contest between its candidate, David Lyon and the PDP flag bearer, Senator Douye Diri. The expectation had been that few days to the election, the candidates and the political parties would be traversing all parts of the states presenting the voters with their manifestos and programmes. Sadly, that has not been the case. Rather than wooing the electorate with convincing argument on why their principals should be voted for, thugs suspected to be working at the behest of some of the candidates, are unleashing mayhem on their opponents and other citizens in the states.
For instance, on Wednesday, the last leg of the Bayelsa PDP campaign in Nembe, was disrupted by gun-wielding youths, who were said to have been commissioned to ensure that the rally did not hold in the city. By the time the dust of the fracas had settled, three people were confirmed dead. This was perhaps, the worst in the pockets of disturbances that had rocked the state since processes leading to the election began to gather steam.
Similar show of shame had taken place in Kogi, earlier. In it, a forum by the Independent national Electoral Commission (INEC) for candidates of the political parties to sign peace deal abhorring violence, was hijacked by supporters of Governor Bello in a bid to prevent Akpoti from participating in the peace signing process. The next day, Akpoti’s campaign headquarters was destroyed in Lokoja. Incidentally the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu and INEC chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, as well as security agents were present at the scene of the attack. But as in the case in Bayelsa later, the police did not do much at reining in the attackers.
This is the major problem facing the country’s democracy. On occasions as in Kogi and Bayelsa, the police has carried on in manners that suggest complicity or cowardice in the face of odds. I cannot, therefore, but agree with a colleague, Kemi Yesufu on her brilliant outing in her Facebook Wall on Thursday, November 9, over the disturbances in Kogi and Bayelsa. She said, “I am not impressed with the prostrate response of the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu to the sickening level of electoral violence in Kogi and Bayelsa. As head of the lead security agency for elections, Adamu, who witnessed the attack on the SDP gubernatorial candidate, Natasha Akpoti, should have issued a stern warning and taken action against the beasts that have been unleashed by desperate politicians in both states”
She added that it has become glaring that the Buhari administration can’t or won’t be scored high for deepening our democracy through credible and violence-free polls, adding; “We made some progress before Buhari came. Now, past gains are largely eroded, with local and international observers scoring Nigeria low for the 2019 election”. Yesufu stated the facts as they are, currently.
Yes, it can be argued that the scorecard on the Nigerian election had actually not been fantastic even before the Buhari administration. In fact, what could pass as the salutary conduct of the Goodluck Jonathan administration in the 2014 general election, was an isolated occurrence and a redeeming mission to the culture of intolerance which the Olusegun Obasanjo had injected in the system in 2003 with his do-or-die mantra. What rankles however, is that the Buhari government which had benefitted from the good example of the Jonathan era, has dumped that commendable initiative and opted for the Obasanjo tactics. And the President does not appear to see anything bad with the trend. This is the extent one can be consumed by the banalities of office. While he pushed to be elected in 2014, having failed in three previous attempts, he had cut a picture of piety, austerity and sincerity. That impression of integrity was what particularly advertised him to the voters, especially of the average and lower classes. He was seen as one that would change the face of the country’s politics. But since his ascension to power, there have not been pronounced attempts at steering the country away from incidences of flawed elections. If anything, the trend has acquired wider and more frightening dimensions. What seems to excite the President and his colleagues in APC is appropriating all the electoral victories in the land, no matter what it takes to achieve that. PDP was like that while it ruled. It will be recalled that at a time, the party had carried on with such brazen audacity at election manipulation that its henchmen, had boasted that it would rule the country unchallenged for at least, 60 years. It was however not up to six years after the thoughtless remark that PDP commenced a dive that saw it crashing out of power in 2014.
APC is already toeing that line, incidentally. The party may still be lucky in chalking up controversial victories with the brand of violence-driving politics in the country but it is obviously on the path to perdition.
