THE issue of deployment of troops for elections in Nigeria has been an enduring dialectic in the annals of our democracy. Many chroniclers of the crises that led to the truncation of our democracy in the First and Second Republics have often blamed military intervention on the use soldiers to manipulate elections.
It is, therefore, not surprising that in this impending, possibly most contested general election, the debate is on the front burner once again. Specifically, the All Progressives Congress (APC), being the leading opposition party, is all out against the deployment of soldiers for the general elections. They are suspicious that the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) might use the army to gain unmerited advantages. They are struggling to use the Judiciary and the National Assembly to prevent the President, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, from deploying the forces for the elections based on his constitutional powers under Sections 217 and 218 of the 1999 Constitution.
A Federal High Court in Sokoto, presided over by Justice RM Aikawa, ruled that the constitution does not grant the president powers to deploy soldiers “for elections”. The Appeal Court in Abuja has also affirmed that the deployment of soldiers in the Ekiti governorship election was wrong. The case is putatively at the Supreme Court, where a final decision is expected. It is one of the unintended benefits of the shift of the general elections by six weeks that we have enough time for a definitive judicial resolution of this matter.
This issue is so hot that it disrupted the sitting of the House of Representatives last week Wednesady, presided over by the Deputy Speaker, Hon. Emeka Ihedioha. The APC members of the House staged a walkout, accusing Ihedioha of trampling on their parliamentary rights in their strenuous bid to wrest a resolution barring the President from deploying troops for the elections.
The way I see it, there are two issues involved here, though politicians, in their blind quest for selfish gain, tend to obfuscate them. One is “deploying troops for the election”. The other is “delopying troops to protect Nigerians during the election”. If the intendment of the federal government is to deploy troops “for the elections”, count me out. Even as a layman when it comes to constitutional law, I do not think the constitution allows that.
If deploying troops for elections means they are allowed to move electoral materials, mann the polling units, escort polling officials and results to collation centres and such activities, I do not think the Constitution and the Electoral Act permit that. Many scholarly accounts have collated enough facts to depict the dangers in doing so. One of them is Prof. Remi Anifowose’s Violence And Politics In Nigeria, The Tiv And Yoruba Experience (Nok Publishers 1982). It traces one of the remote causes of the fall of the First Republic to the deployment of troops to manipulate elections in favour of privileged political parties.
The opposition APC is probably afraid that the troops, if deployed for the forthcoming elections, might work for the ruling PDP. APC says they lost the Ekiti governorship election to Ayo Fayose because of the deployment of soldiers. Yet, soldiers have always been deployed in our elections, including those conducted under the watch of President Goodluck Jonathan, which opposition parties won.
These included the election in Ondo, which the Labour Party (LP’s) Rahman Mimiko won; Edo which the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN’s) Adams Oshiomhole won; Anambra, which Willie Obiano of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) won, and Osun state, which Rauf Aregbesola of the All Progressives Congress (APC) won. PDP fielded strong candidates for these elections, but they lost in spite of the use of soldiers to secure them.
It was only the Ekiti Election that Fayose of PDP won. Empirical evidence, does not, therefore, support the use of soldiers to win elections. Otherwise, the ruling party would have swept most of these elections. This fear was raised by Oshiomhole before the Edo election, but at the end, the Comrade, ever the pragmatist, went to thank the federal government for deploying troops.
The Ekiti election, which a purportedly “leaked tape” circulating in the social media is being used to demonise, was adjudged free, fair and acceptable by the Ekiti people; and the defeated Governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, congratulated the winner. It was his party that decided to fight dirty.
The truth of the matter is that if the military were being used under the watch of President Goodluck Jonathan to rig elections for the PDP, we would not be enjoying a flourishing democracy as we do, which gave the impetus for the opposition to coalesce, grow and mount the intrepid challenge that we are seeing. There is abundant evidence that, unlike some of his predecessors (including the new romance of the opposition, former President Olusegun Obasanjo) President Jonathan has deployed troops responsibly.
He has not given them the task of interfering unlawfully in the electoral activities. He has merely deployed them to guarantee the security of the voters and the electoral staff. The opposition should insist that the role of the military in the forthcoming elections must be confined to guaranteeing the security of the electorate and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) staff in all parts of the country. The soldiersmust not come near the polling units or be in direct contact with the electoral personnel or materials.
All I am interested in, is that the election should and FREE, FAIR AND CREDIBLE. The armed forces and the Police have played leading roles in making elections held in this country in the past four years highly successful, and I believe the situation in Nigeria right now demands that we cannot do without the protection of the military during the polls. Even the INEC Chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega, has conceded that he cannot deploy his staff to certain parts of the country until their security is guaranteed.
Politicians in both the PDP and APC are desperate for power. Unless firm measures are put in place, those who have cloned the INEC database, those who have bought up or hijacked the permanent voters cards and are lying in wait for the result sheets, the ballot snatchers, armed thugs waiting to unleash mayhem on their opponents when they suspect their sponsors are losing, will have a field day.
Also, those who have been threatening that the blood of dogs and baboons will mix if they lose, will freely re-enact the bloody ritual of 2011, when innocent Youth Corps members were brutally murdered in the North in post-election violence. Even the open sore of insurgency in the North demands total mobilisation of the armed forces to secure Nigerians, especially as Boko Haram has vowed to disrupt the elections through suicide bombing and, perhaps, coordinated gun attacks.
President Jonathan, subject to the final determination of the suit challenging his powers under Sections 217 and 218 of the constitution at the Supreme Court, must, as usual, deploy the security agencies of this country in a patriotic and non-partisan manner to safeguard Nigerians during the impending elections. The buck stops on his table. If anything goes wrong he will carry the can. Our security is more important than the elections because without security there is no country, let alone elections.
VANGUARD
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