Politics as they say, especially in Africa, is sometimes a game of betrayal, destruction of lives and property, violence and do-or-die affairs. This is because human beings are organically very selfish and brutal in nature, unless otherwise controlled by morality and law. In view of this, Thomas Hobbes in his social contract theory described life in such situations as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” and we cannot agree more with him if we compare the way politicians are handling/dealing with other humans in this country.
As an independent observer who served as the Alliance for Credible Elections (ACE) state coordinator in Kano and state mobiliser for Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre (PLAC)/Situation Room in Jigawa State, I received a call on Friday March 22 from the acting secretary of ACE Nigeria, asking me about the possibility of our deploying observers to monitor the just concluded re-run election of March 23 in Kano State. I was initially so passionate about this electoral observation and full of hopes due to the sanity of the presidential and governorship elections we witnessed in the past few weeks. But I had read so many disturbing reports, listened to so many speeches by major political party officials in the State prior to the election, which made me to become subsequently skeptical about it. I therefore responded to the secretary, telling her that “considering the exchange of words by leaders of the two major political parties, it will not be advisable to go near those rascals calling themselves politicians”. That was how we ended the conversation.
As the saying goes, it is only when you read history that you will know your past. Elections in Africa, especially in Nigeria from 1960 to date, have been marred by violence, destruction of property, killing of innocent people, ballot box snatching, and voter inducement, etc. In recent times, we have seen how elections in Rivers and other South-South states became do-or-die affairs, in which armed thugs, militants and security personnel were used to win elections in peace or in pieces, thus stealing the mandates of the people in broad daylight. In 2018, similar incidents happened in Osun State, where the election was declared inconclusive, giving the ruling party the opportunity to re-strategise and find the best possible way to hijack the process, which it eventually did. This is not to say that it is only of recent that this ugly display of madness started in the country. In previous years, we witnessed similar, if not worse incidents.
On March 9, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which is the lead umpire of the electoral process in Nigeria conducted governorship and state Houses of Assembly elections in the country. The elections in Kano were strange and Nigeria had not witnessed such, prior to the 2018 Osun election that many in Kano were not aware of. The candidate of the Peoples Democracy Party (PDP), Engineer Abba Kabir Yusuf was leading with 1,014,474 votes, while Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje of the All Progressives Congress (APC) scored 987,819 votes in the first round of the gubernatorial election. It was clear that PDP’s candidate was leading with almost 30,000 votes. Of course, his followers believed he had won the election and should thus be declared the winner. The problem was that the total number of votes cancelled during the election was more than the number of votes that Abba Gida Gida, as he is popularly called in the State, was leading with. To many in Kano, who were not aware of the content of the Electoral Act, they saw it as a strange law introduced by APC. Many who hold that view believed that since recourse had never been sought to the law, it wouldn’t happen now, forgetting that as long as a law has not been removed, amended or replaced, it still holds its potency.
What happened in Kano on March 23 was a daylight robbery of the people’s mandate, intimidation, inducement and the use of state security to unleash terror upon the people who came out to exercise their constitutional civic right. The people of Kano witnessed an unprecedented level of voter inducement. Immediately INEC declared the initial election inconclusive in the State, all attention turned to one particular Registration Area (Gama) in the State, being the ward with highest number of registered voters (over 40,000). The All Progressives Congress and its candidate, who is the sitting governor in the State, thereafter started magic projects in the ward. In a space of one week, the state government constructed a road, which had been abandoned for years in the area, constructed more than 20 boreholes, renovated the old Primary Health Care in the area, and distributed empowerment materials to the women in the community and football kits to youth in the area. All these magic projects happened in less than 10 days.
The silence or connivance of the security agencies in the State was the most unfortunate part of the ordeal of the rerun election. People were left on their own as political thugs intimidated, threatened, beat, and in some places even killed people in the presence of the security personnel, who were seemingly deployed to protect the interest of some few individuals, as opposed to protecting the lives and property of the citizenry. A friend who served as an observer during the rerun in Gama ward, narrated how he and his fellow observers were chased away from the polling unit they were observing, after they rejected a bribe offer to not report what they witnessed. The failure of security happened despite the decision of the police high command to deploy a deputy inspector general of polic (DIG), assistant inspector generals of police (AIGs), commissioners of police (CPs) and other high-ranking police officers to reinforce the police’s might in the State. With all these deployments, the police failed to secure less than 250 polling units. In the previous two elections, one single CP was able to bring sanity to the people of Kano State. The reason behind the deployment of these high-ranking police officers is known to all but we must learn a lesson as we grow older. One thing which is important is we must learn when to talk and when to keep quiet, and to keep our plans within us until the right time. Kano Police Commissioner Wakili became a threat, not only to the ruling party in the State but he was also trying to overshadow his masters, and one of the 44 laws of power has this admonition: “never outshine the master”.
Ali Sabo works with Centre for Information Technology and Development in Dutse, Jigawa State. You can reach him either through email: aliyuncee@gmail.com or twitter: @alygee124
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