The details of the stalemate in Kogi’s governorship election held on Saturday, November 21, 2015, are by now well known. Essentially, the leading candidate in the election, Abubakar Audu, died on the day the results of the election were announced. The results indicated that he garnered 240,867 votes, while his closest rival and incumbent Governor, Idris Wada, had 199,514 votes. Going by the collated results already announced in all local government areas, many media outlets had declared Audu as the winner of the election.
However, the Independent National Electoral Commission declared the results of the election inconclusive on the grounds that Audu’s margin of victory of 41, 353 votes was less than 49,953, being the number of registered voters in the 91 polling units whose results were cancelled in 18 out of 21 LGAs. Shortly after INEC’s announcement, Audu’s death was confirmed.
Clearly, it was Audu’s sudden death that complicated the inconclusiveness of the Kogi election results. Nevertheless, his death should not have wiped out our memory about the conditions for inconclusive election results as laid out by INEC, and which guided elections since 2011.
This, of course, does not mean that INEC is right about the conditions for declaring results inconclusive, as indicated above in the Kogi case. Ideally, INEC should have declared Audu the winner, having satisfied the two necessary conditions of winning the majority of votes and winning 25 per cent of the votes in as many as two-thirds of the LGAs in the state. The details and the controversies should then have been left for the election tribunal to sort out. Had that been done, James Faleke, Audu’s running mate, would have automatically become the governor, following Audu’s death.
However, Kucha would have violated INEC’s guidelines and the precedents already set had he declared a winner in the Kogi governorship election. Besides, we have long had the opportunity to complain about INEC’s imposition of the so-called inconclusive results on the electoral process and the courts have been lame in pointing out the dangers should a situation like Audu’s arise.
The above notwithstanding, nothing prevents the APC from asking the court to prevail on INEC to declare a winner and stop the nonsense about inconclusive results. If votes were cancelled due to fraud, let them remain cancelled since such cancellation would affect the overall results for all candidates involved. The condition that the results be based on the number of valid votes cast in an election already envisaged that some votes would be cancelled, while some registered voters would not vote at all. That was what happened in 2007, when the Ondo State Election Petitions Tribunal nullified the results fraudulently obtained in certain LGAs in favour of the late Dr Olusegun Agagu, and declared Dr.` Olusegun Mimiko as the winner of the election.
But then, we missed the opportunity to complain when INEC changed the rules by calling for a supplementary election, where the margin of victory was less than the number of registered voters in polling booths where elections were cancelled. This has raised far more questions than could be readily answered. Who votes in the supplementary election? Will it be limited to only voters accredited on the day of the election proper? If so, what about accredited voters, who never returned to vote on that day? Will those who didn’t t show up at all be allowed to vote because their names are on the register at the polling units in question? If so, why not give all other voters in the state a second chance?
But, perhaps, the most critical question now is: Which candidate would be standing for the election, when the APC candidate died before the supplementary election? Who is most entitled to the APC ticket as a replacement candidate among James Faleke, Audu’s running mate; Yahaya Bello, the runner-up in the primary election; and Audu’s son, Mohammed Audu, who is laying claim to his father’s candidacy?
The attempt to answer this question is partly responsible for the ongoing electoral confusion in Kogi. Faleke, who would have been the governor-elect by default, had Audu been declared the winner of the election, was ruled out by the party leaders because he belongs to the minority Okun ethnic group in the West Senatorial District, rather than Igala in the East Senatorial District, the politically dominant ethnic group to which both Audu and Wada belong. Since most of the cancelled votes occurred in the East Senatorial District, it is feared that selecting Faleke may be an electoral liability during the supplementary election.
The replacement must be Igala for ethnic reasons, which explains why the choice was between Bello and Audu’s son, who was proposed as a legacy candidate by the party leaders in the East Senatorial District. However, Bello was chosen, being the runner-up during the primary. Faleke rejected the choice and went to court, praying INEC to declare him as the governor-elect.
But, then, the question of a replacement candidate, after the election has been concluded and results collated, raises the technical question as to whether votes could be inherited by a replacement candidate, when he never campaigned for them and when voters never had him in mind when they voted. If political parties were the candidates for election, as argued by the Attorney-General of the Federation, then why all the fuss about vetting human candidates and making them go through party primaries?
In the meantime, Wada, the PDP candidate, had gone to court, praying INEC to declare him the winner of the election, being the leading candidate alive at its conclusion. Clearly, that would be unfair to the APC, whose candidate was leading into the supplementary election yet to be held.
Since both political parties have directed their legal battle at INEC, it will be very interesting if they both boycotted the supplementary election, and allowed the courts to sort out the mess. Indeed, participating in the election would undermine their court cases. It is, however, doubtful if a successful campaign could be waged to jointly boycott the election, without one party ambushing the other.
Undoubtedly, the PDP is mindful of the APC’s possible victory in the supplementary election, given Audu’s present margin of victory, which could not be readily overcome. That’s why the PDP is taking every opportunity to exploit the impasse to its own advantage. The in-fighting within the APC over Audu’s replacement could not but be to the PDP’s delight.
However, the issues raised by the controversies surrounding the Kogi electoral quagmire are much more far-reaching. First, given the genesis of the controversy in Audu’s sudden death, the question of election candidates’ health status is once again before us: Was Audu’s health status ever vetted, and was he healthy enough to stand election? True, no one could be sure about when someone would die; but caution should be taken in fielding old and sick candidates in this age of sudden deaths, caused by complications from diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
Second, once fraudulent votes are cancelled, why would INEC allow for a supplementary election and not leave the court to determine whether or not one should hold? Until the limits of INEC’s powers to tinker with electoral rules are curbed, our elections will continue to be victims of changing guidelines.
NATION
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