“When problems come, they bring along all their relations”. African proverb.
At a Roundtable on Electoral Reforms organized by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) last in Abuja, the Chairman of the Commission made an important foray into the forest of challenges which our electoral system needs to address. Please note I did not say our democratic system. This is deliberate. There is a lot more to democracy than the institutions and processes for deciding leaders. Quality of elections (not just voting and collation) has massive influence on growth and development of democratic systems. Chairman Mahmood Yakubu chose to touch on a number of problems, some going back to 1999 and others occupying space in very worrying manners. Together they tie up and progressively under-develop our democracy. There have always been solutions to these problems, but they benefit those who should solve them. As we speak, they will become everyone’s problem.
(Prof) Yakubu flagged what is being loudly denounced as contempt and impunity in the practice of open election campaigns by politicians, including President Tinubu in spite of provisions which limit them to defined periods in election circles. He also pointed at the absence of specified penalties for breaches against electoral laws relating to campaigning. There are also ambiguities around what constitutes campaigning. These problems, among others, offend clear democratic ideals that electoral activities will not impinge on long periods set for routine governance. If the Roundtable was about weaknesses of our electoral system and failures to correct them before now, with the consequence that they have turned our elections into insulting charade, the Roundtable would be fairly described at a belated wake- up call. I know enough, however, not to accuse current leadership of INEC of attempted tokenism. The Roundtable raises alarm that much is wrong with our election processes, and alerts the nation to do more than lament or walk away from a seemingly intractable problem.We should see more of these activities by INEC and civil society as Chairman Yakubu counts his remaining days as Chair of the Commission.
Today, our leaders who swore to protect our democracy, a legal and rule-based system, look every inch like some of our worst problems. When a president, governors and legislators engage in flagrant violations of basic campaign rules, they send signals that they will violate other rules. And, indeed, they do. The manner political violence, vote-buying and abuse of regulatory and judicial institutions are becoming more entrenched as key elements of our democratic culture suggests that politicians will compound the deficits of our democracy as we move towards 2027. These abuses also cost money. Our money. Millions of citizens, not just defeated politicians, recognize abuses against free and fair elections. Many become more apathetic. Others become more bitter at the seeming immunity from penalties for rigging, violence and institutionalized abuses, and they become more desperate in affecting the political process. Many politicians are deeply involved in instigating violence when they are on the receiving end of subversion of basic rules, or when violence gives them covers to de-legitimize results. A leadership that steals a mandate or subverts the electoral process forfeits the right to govern and will find it difficult to enforce the law.
Ideally, all who seek elective offices should place the highest premium on integrity of electoral processes. Apart from many compelling constitutional obligations for doing so, they are in many ways potential victims of rogue electoral processes.The truth is that few of our elected representatives are particularly interested in level playing fields. Someone said it is a lot easier to steal an election in Nigeria than win one. Late President ‘Yar Adua made a heroic effort at undertaking deep and comprehensive electoral reforms. His efforts were subverted by his own people who basically argued that an electoral system with high levels of integrity would destroy his party’s chances of retaining advantages over many oppositions to come. During his eight years in power, a number of initiatives were made to address many issues that would improve integrity of the electoral process, but late President Buhari scratched their surface and, characteristically, left the rest for someone else. INEC has been substantially left to limp from one limitation to another obstruction. We now face the distinct possibility that bitter politics, an angry and exasperated population, a broken electoral process and a weak leadership could combine to make the 2027 elections the most challenging we have had since 1999.
This is where patriotic Nigerians need to move from lamentation to organizing and applying pressure on the present leadership to undertake major electoral reforms. Nigerians have never needed a deep and level-headed scrutiny of our country’s limitation as we do now. The demand for comprehensive electoral reforms sits at the head of problems threatening our nation’s basic survival because without it, most others will just walk in. We have to survive the 2027 elections with low level threats to our national security which is already swamped. We have not had elections in a context defined by as much bitterness over economic conditions of the biggest segment of the population, an administration that cannot afford to fail to get a second term facing a determined opposition desperate to oust it, an electoral process whose weaknesses are all exposed and a political process that has alienated all citizens who are not intimately connected to a wealthy politician or his cronies.
The 2027 elections must not weaken our national security which is already on its knees from severe governance challenges and an alarming perception that we may have run out of ideas and elite who can rise and mobilize Nigerians to change course towards peace, growth and unity. Civil society needs to recover its most eminent of missions, which is to stand for the citizen when the state is failing to do so. No issue demands more attention at this stage than a genuine enquiry into why our elections threaten our democracy, and what must be done about it, between now and 2027. INEC must speak up louder, and more frequently. This administration should avoid being just another administration that rides to power on the back of our problems, and thinks it can avoid being their victims. We must have credible elections in 2027, the type that will strengthen our democratic traditions and avoid deepening crises from which it will be difficult to recover.