By Chief Bisi Akande
It is said that when bad things happen, it provides a chance for good
people to make things better! The mess that has been made of the
Anambra election by the same body saddled with ensuring that it is
free and fair is indeed a bad thing. While the Anambra debacle, in
which INEC apparently acted out a script written by the presidency
and the PDP, represents a new low in the country's unenviable saga of
electoral impropriety, it must now signal the death knell for electoral
malfeasance and brigandage in Nigeria.
Make no mistake about it: If something drastic but lawful is not done
now to stop this electoral impunity, our country is ultimately heading
for the precipice. This is not about crying wolf where none exists. The
wolf is here and ready to pounce. Our challenge is to stop it before it
is too late. As things stand, we have a dangerous admixture of Power
and Impunity, and the end product cannot but be explosive.
We have a presidency that has no qualms about abusing national
institutions to achieve a pre-set electoral objective, which is to
humiliate a growing opposition party; A ruling party that is ever
willing to sacrifice its own candidate in elections just to get at the
opposition and a conniving electoral body that is packed full of
saboteurs and blatantly amoral individuals is not befitting of any
civilized society. We must be determined to stop it in Nigeria. To be
sure, our party was not caught unawares. Ahead of the Anambra
election, we issued a total of 15 press releases warning against
everything that eventually happened at the elections.
We said INEC was working in cahoots with the presidency and PDP to
rig the elections; We exposed the rigging strategies that included
mass disenfranchisement, starving of opposition strongholds of
electoral materials and the late or none delivery of voting materials
and result sheets; We raised the alarm on the sudden creation of
1,973 voting units, for which our agents got no tags; We criticized
the 22-hour curfew, because we believed it was a ploy to give the
riggers the leeway to carry out their plans without being noticed and
we warned that the results will not be acceptable without voting in all
local governments. Sadly, all our warnings proved prescient.
Before we begin our deliberations on how to resolve this recurring
issue of electoral impunity, let me sound a note of warning: 1. If those
who manipulated Anambra election, and the Delta Central Senatorial
District before it, are allowed to get away with their shenanigans, they
will be further emboldened to ply their devilish trade in Ekiti and Osun
next year, and of course we can forget about the 2015 general
elections.
2. The issues at stake go beyond Anambra State. They have the
potential to affect the whole of Nigeria, with dangerous consequences
for our young democracy. And history should be our guide. This is
exactly how the First Republic unraveled! A power-drunk central
government seized on what is purely an intra-party affair in the then
Action Group in its desperation to humiliate and decimate the
opposition. The consequences of that decimation led to the first
military coup and subsequent reactions that led to civil wars. And
Nigeria has yet to recover from it. The nation cannot afford a repeat!
The Anambra election has been seized upon by an increasingly
desperate presidency/PDP to seek to humiliate our party and portray
us as lacking in electoral value. That is why an unconscionable PDP
spokesman raced to the media to hail the ill-fated election to the
high heavens, even when the PDP candidate and some members of his
family were among the thousands who were disenfranchised and
marooned.
That is why the presidency has maintained a loud silence, because it
was never interested in the Anambra PDP victory or a free and fair
election, having made a devil's deal to work against its own party just
to get at the APC. In the end, the devilish duo of the presidency and
the PDP abandoned their own candidate and threw caution to the
wind, without caring about the implication of their bizarre action.
They discountenanced the opinion of their own candidate, who
condemned the sham of election and joined with other candidates to
call for fresh elections. They celebrated as if their party is APGA even
as their candidate was left stranded. This is an eye opener, and
should end any doubt about the presidency and the PDP's road-map
for future elections. Let me also use this opportunity to re-state our
party's stand, as contained in our Nov. 18th petition to the Chairman
of INEC, Prof. Attahiru Jega: Only a fresh election based on a new
transparent voters' register can correct the litany of grave flaws that
ruined the elections. Nothing else is acceptable to us for the reasons
we have repeated over and over again.
For the avoidance of doubt, we say, for the umpteenth time that there
were serious irregularities and non-compliance with the provisions of
the Electoral Act 2010 as amended; That INEC Chairman Jega himself
acknowledged these irregularities, when he said an official of the
commission compromised the election in Idemili North LG, a
stronghold of our candidate, Dr. Chris Ngige; That the voters' register
used for the election was so tainted that many voters, especially in
Senator Ngige'sstronghold, were disenfranchised; That students were
recruited as Presiding Officers and Polling Assistants, further
compromising the electoral process; That the staff of Nnamdi Azikiwe
University (UNIZIK),Awka, were recruited as Supervisory Presiding
Officers (SPOs), contrary to INEC’s directive that staff of UNIZIK would
not be used in the election since the APGA Deputy Governorship
Candidate, Dr. Nkem Okeke, was a Senior Lecturer with the university
prior to his candidacy; That election materials were not distributed in
a timely manner in many polling units, thus affecting the timely
commencement of accreditation and voting; That INEC failed to
deploy election officials in sufficient numbers to several polling units,
and election officials were recruited at the election venue and
deployed without any form of training; And that results were brought
in without being publicly announced by the LGA Collation Officers.
These are just some of the grave flaws that sealed the fate of the
election.
In conclusion, there is no doubt that our party has totally lost
confidence in the ability and capability of INEC to organize a free, fair
and transparent election anywhere in Nigeria.
We have no iota of confidence in INEC's personnel and the
commission's voters' register, which we believe has been irredeemably
tampered with to such an extent that it can no longer be relied upon
for any election.
We will be forced to take a decision not to participate in any future
election until there is a far-reaching restructuring of INEC that will
see a purge of the bad eggs in the commission, a re-orientation of the
remaining staffers and the compilation of a new and credible voters'
register.
The restructuring of INEC and the compilation of a new voters'
register are the barest minimum requirements for Nigeria's return to
the path of electoral chastity.
I thank you!
Chief Bisi Akande
Interim National Chairman
All Progressives Congress (APC)
