…As CSOs Hinge Poor Polls Outcome on Desperation by Politicians, Massive Military Deployment

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has called for the setting up of the Electoral Offences Tribunal to try electoral offenders in the country.

Chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, said this at the Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room Stakeholders’ Forum on Future of Elections in Nigeria, organised on Monday by a Coalition of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), in Abuja.

Yakubu, who was represented by Mr Festus Okoye, INEC’s National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, said the Commission was in full support of the establishment of Electoral Offences Commission to punish offenders.

“It is time to take decisive action to break the cycle of impunity through the promulgation of an Electoral Offences Commission/Tribunal to handle matters relating to electoral offences. The Commission has made it clear that it lacks the capacity and wherewithal to continue the prosecution of electoral offenders.”

“And it is for this reason that the Commission supports and will continue to support the creation of an Electoral Offences Commission/Tribunal to process, arrest, investigate and prosecute electoral offenders.”

Yakubu said that INEC was set to design strategies to checkmate the act of vote buying and selling.

He said that vote buying and vote selling did not only undermine the cardinal democratic principles of representation, accountability and participation but compromised the inalienable rights of voters to free choice.

Yakubu said that the INEC redesigned the entire environment where polling units were located to ensure that vote buyers did not gain access to the voters and compromise the secrecy of the votes in the 2019 elections.

He said that the more the Commission tried to put in measures to ensure that the secrecy of the votes was not compromised, some of the politicians also designed new methods of compromising the secrecy of the votes.

“So I believe that both the civil society groups and organisations, the media, the security agencies and all the critical stakeholders must work in synergy to make sure that the secrecy of the vote is protected at all times.”

“I believe that guaranteeing the secrecy of the vote and making sure that the votes count is not only the function of INEC but it involves all the critical stakeholders in the election process.”

Mr Clement Nwankwo, convener of Situation Room, said that the elections came with a lot of irregularities and raised questions that CSOs needed answers to, such as the postponement of elections few hours to polls.

He said that there were situations where election officials were left fearing for their lives and being threatened or in most cases brutalised by the military.

According to him, in most cases the nature of voter suppression deliberately disenfranchises many voters.

He said that with the elections gone the way they did, it was a good opportunity for the electorate to begin to ask questions, not to blame people but talk about people taking responsibility for some failures.

“On the part of civil society, yes we must take responsibility for not finding a mechanism of investigating and reporting on the assurances that INEC was giving to us so; we were all caught napping.”

“On the part of INEC, I think there is a huge important need for it to take responsibility for failures that are very manifest and blatant and unacceptable.”

“And one of those failures is the nature, quality and character of the voter register that we have in Nigeria today.”

“We did have a situation where INEC reported a voter register of about 84 million and then suddenly this decreased just before the elections.”

“And then there were discrepancies regarding the numbers that were actually supposed to be on the voter register.”

Nwankwo said that Nigeria could not afford to continue in the light of that direction, adding that there was an important need for reflections on what should be done to pull the nation back from the depth into which it had sunk and to save democracy.

“As citizens of the country, we have a responsibility to pull this back and that is why we are asking for a review and questions as to what happened in the 2019 elections because it was not what we asked for.”

“What we saw in 2019 elections was not the election we were promised and when people begin to say what is the comparison between 2015 and 2019, I must tell you that 2019 was a relapse compared to 2015.”

Nwankwo urged INEC to launch an investigation into what happened in the 2019 elections by joining forces with CSOs to ask questions on what happened.

Prof. Okey Ibeanu, INEC National Commissioner, said that the Commission had logistics challenges due to the complex nature of the nation’s electoral process.

Ibeanu said that for instance, ballots papers were printed in currency quality from abroad and so transportation alone was a great challenge.

He advised that going forward, there was need to consider the discentralisation of the electoral process for effective management.

Officers of the Nigeria Army, Police, Civil Defense and the Inter-party Advisory Committee (IPAC) also attended the forum to share their experiences.

A coalition of civil society groups have also traced lapses experienced in the polls on the desperation of politicians and massive deployment of security personnel to various polling units.

In a report assessing the entire electoral process, which was unveiled on Monday in Abuja, the CSOs faulted attempts by politicians to put the blame of the hitches witnessed during the elections solely at the doorstep of the electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The report, which is a summary of the 2019 election by the coalition of CSOs, led by the Centre for Transparency Advocacy (CTA), claimed that there was an institutional conspiracy by the political class and state actors to sabotage INEC’s preparations and processes.

The report identified vote buying, violent attacks on opponents, intimidation and abduction of INEC officials, snatching and destruction of ballot boxes and papers to burning up of INEC offices and electoral materials as some of the ways the political class ruined the election.

The report stated in part: “The politicians, their agents and thugs constituted the greatest menace in the conduct of the 2019 general elections.”

“From brazen acts of vote buying, violent attacks on perceived opponents, intimidation and abduction of INEC officials, snatching and destruction of ballot boxes and papers to burning up of INEC offices and electoral materials in Plateau, Anambra, Akwa Ibom, Imo, Benue, and Abia states, the political parties and politicians showed their desperation for power.”

“The resultant losses of lives and property in such places as Lagos, Rivers, Kogi, Plateau and so on and the widespread violence that attended these were recorded by our observers as perpetrated by politicians and their political thugs.”

“The recruitment of thugs by the political class from one part of the country to another before the elections evidenced by the arrest of young men travelling en mass at Uyo was as never seen in the history of our elections.”

“The violence that followed the elections was as a result of the hate speeches by the political class at campaigns and the conduct of some of the party primaries ended in violence.”

“Most political party agents seen on the field did not have proper identification tags from INEC; the parties printed their own tags for their agents. It has become a recurrent problem of the political parties not to follow the guidelines for party agents’ accreditation.”

The report noted that under such circumstances, there was little the INEC could do since it didn’t control the security apparatus and other relevant institutions such as Nigeria Air Force and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) which were key stakeholders in the electoral process.

“What happens when politicians collaborate with state institutions to sabotage INEC and its carefully laid out plans and preparations at the last minute, which was exactly what happened leading to the postponement of the Presidential and National Assembly election that was supposed to be held on Saturday, February 16, 2019?”

“Some ad-hoc staff became suborned by politicians, considering that they are not permanent staff of the Commission and with a lot of them susceptible to the temptation of immediate gratification for a day’s work without consideration for the consequences,” the report stated.

On the role of security agencies during the elections, the report stated that in many places, security personnel deployed for the election turned a blind eye to breaches by overzealous party agents and their thugs.

It stated that in both elections, the number of security agents deployed per polling unit was inadequate and in terms of their response to incidences that occurred in their polling units, they were grossly inefficient.

In her address during the unveiling, CTA Acting Executive Director, Ms Faith Nwadishi, commended some INEC staff for exhibiting courage and refusal to be bought over by politicians.

She said: “Of course, we did not expect that the political class would accept INEC’s exercise of its independence without a fight, but what shocked Nigerians was the extent they could go to undermine INEC.”

“The brazen manner the security services were used to intimidate INEC officials in their offices and on the field was terrible.”

“Yet, INEC officials nationwide refused to be intimidated by threats and violence unleashed on its officials and ad-hoc staff.”

“Indeed, INEC’s brave conduct may have saved our nation from conflagration because it was obvious that elements of the political class, including elements of the ruling class, were bent on mayhem if they didn’t get their way.”