THE Rivers State legislative re-run elections conducted penultimate weekend, again, raised concerns about the health of the nation’s democracy. The elections conducted in an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion, were generally marred by violence, large-scale irregularities and violence.
At least three lives were lost including policemen. This was despite the deployment of 28,000 policemen and large contingents of officers and men of other security agencies and the armed forces.
The plans to hold the elections in March 2016 were quickly called off midway after the eruption of violence that claimed among others, a member of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).
The ruling party in the state, the People’s Democratic Party, (PDP) was, for 16 years in control of the government in Abuja. It was alleged to have collaborated with security agencies to suppress the opposition. However, the advent of a new administration in Abuja led by the All Progressives Congress (APC) which espoused change, had been the basis for hope that the elections would be fair.
That hope, however, was crudely squashed since it took over in 2015, leaving obvious concerns about the health of the nation’s democracy.
If elections cannot be peacefully conducted in one of the nation’s 36 states, we are worried about the prospects of free and fair elections in all 36 states of the country in 2019. Inconclusive elections seem to have become the pattern for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), recently.
The performance of the Commission in the Edo and Ondo governorship polls and the Rivers State legislative re-run has left many Nigerians complaining that INEC has given up much of its independence, gradually nurtured in the last sixteen years. The blame is not only for INEC. The Presidency which controls the security agencies is also faulted for its failure to provide the needed confidence for all parties involved in elections. Acts of institutional bias against the opposition have been the norm since the return of our democracy.
That, unfortunately, has not changed. Even more depressing is the reluctance by President Buhari to fully constitute the Board of the INEC and appoint Resident Electoral Commissioners for the 36 states of the federation.
This failure has denied the Commission the needed complement of human resources that would help to strengthen the integrity of elections. The desperation of politicians to win at all costs because of the resource base of the state has also not helped matters. We call on the Federal Government and the INEC to take Nigeria’s democracy back to the high level of internationally-applauded sophistication that made change possible in 2015. We are gradually sliding back to the odious days of “do-or-die” elections, a situation we are sure Nigerians find unacceptable.
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