The polity is in suspense in the aftermath of the deferment of the general election, which was due to start saturday. Vincent Obia looks at the anxieties of the moment
An anxious and exasperating atmosphere pervades Nigeria in the wake of the postponement of the general election. The polls had been scheduled for February 14 – for the presidential and National Assembly elections – and February 28 – for the governorship and House of Assembly elections. But penultimate Saturday, the Independent National Electoral Commission shifted the dates to March 28 and April 11 for the presidential/National Assembly and governorship/House of Assembly elections, respectively.
INEC, which had consistently claimed that it was prepared to conduct the polls, said it was pressured by security concerns raised by the military and other security agencies to announce the six-week suspension of the elections. Curiously, the postponement came barely one week after the military and other law enforcement agencies had assured the country of adequate security during the general election. But the National Security Adviser, Colonel Sambo Dasuki (rtd), who was the first official of the administration to canvass the postponement idea, had based the call on shortfalls in the distribution of the permanent voter cards. It was during a speech in London on January 22.
Dasuki was to later base his suggestion of postponement on “new developments” regarding the Boko Haram insurgency in the North-east that would occupy the security forces and make it impossible for them to provide election security.
Civil society groups and the opposition disagree with the rationale behind the postponement. They insist that poor poll forecasts and fear of defeat had forced President Goodluck Jonathan, who is seeking a second term on the platform of Peoples Democratic Party, to use the coercive organs of state to distort the election timetable on purpose to try to fix a favourable outcome for himself. In the alternative, the opposition alleges, Jonathan wants to hand over to an interim national government after a deliberately instigated crisis upon which the interim contraption would be predicated. The whole essence, it is widely believed, is to frustrate the presidential ambition of the All Progressives Congress candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari, whose campaign has continued to gather steam in the country’s most tightly contested election since the inception of the Fourth Republic in 1999.
Misgiving
APC national leader and former governor of Lagos State, Ashiwaju Bola Tinubu, mocked the reason given by the INEC chairman, Professor Atahiru Jega, for postponement of the general election. Tinubu said fear of Jonathan’s imminent defeat, rather than the problem of security, was the real reason behind the shift.
“What happened Saturday was actually not a postponement due to security or logistical reasons. What happened was the by-product of overt political interference undermining the independence of the election management body,” Tinubu stated on Monday.
He said the elections were postponed “because one man, President Jonathan, feared that an election held on February 14 would for him become an election lost…He chose to place our democracy at risk than do what democracy demands by facing and risking the verdict of the people. That he would use our security agencies to provide his excuse only adds insult to injury.”
Buhari appealed for calm among the populace after the poll shift that he blamed on a false alarm by the National Security Adviser.
“This postponement, which comes on the heels of the bogey of the National Security Adviser that half of the registered voters were being disenfranchised, was exposed as a crude and fraudulent attempt to subvert the electoral process,” the former Head of State said. “The PDP administration has now engineered a postponement using the threat that security will not be guaranteed across the length and breadth of Nigeria because of military engagement in some states in the North-east. It is important to note that although INEC acted within its constitutional powers, it is clear that it has been boxed into a situation where it has had to bow to pressure. Thus, the independence of INEC has been gravely compromised.”
APC in a statement in Abuja on Tuesday asked the president to come clean on the widespread rumour about his intention to enthrone an interim government.
During his media chat on Wednesday, Jonathan, though, without being specific, tried to reassure on the swearing in of a new democratically elected government on May 29 and the sanctity of the new election dates.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo also expressed misgiving about the poll shift. Obasanjo, who had helped to ensure Jonathan’s electoral victory in 2011, was quoted as saying, “I don’t know whether a script is being played.”
Civil society organisations read the poll postponement as laden with sinister intentions.
Conscience Reports, a research, advocacy and whistleblower network, said in a statement by its chief executive, Mr. Eneruvie Enakoko, “This about-face by the Nigerian military couldn’t have come just out of the blues; it was a carefully orchestrated plan with the broad knowledge and backing of the Commander-in-Chief and his ruling Peoples Democratic Party. It is nothing but a grand conspiracy, pure and simple.”
The Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room had condemned the attitude of the security organs to the election as a tactic to “blackmail and arm-twist” INEC from its constitutional role of conducting elections. The civil society coalition called for the resignation of the military chiefs and the Inspector General of Police “on account of their inability to exercise their constitutional responsibility to secure lives and property at all times, including during the elections.”
Legal Battle Over PVC
To prevent the possible use of the PVC distribution controversy to achieve outright cancellation of the general election, APC applied last week to be joined as a defendant in a suit at the Federal High Court, Abuja, seeking to stop the use of the PVCs and card readers in the coming polls.
The plaintiff, Society for Advancement and Protection of Public Rights, is praying the court to restrain INEC from issuing the PVCs and revert to the temporary voter cards as the only voting instrument required of voters in the forthcoming general election. The group claimed INEC had not engaged in trial application of the PVCs and card readers to guarantee their effectiveness, saying many eligible voters would be disenfranchised if the two electoral instruments are used in the general election.
APC sees the suit as an appendage to the efforts to frustrate the general election.
Rejection of Complicity
But the president and his party continue to deny complicity in the shift of the polls. Jonathan claimed during the media chat on Wednesday that he was not consulted before the election postponement. “I was not consulted and I don’t need to be consulted,” he alleged.
PDP said last Sunday that the poll shift conferred no special advantage on it. “We state clearly that the postponement neither confers advantage on our party and our candidates, nor can it ever be described as a set back to our democracy,” PDP, which had hailed the postponement as a welcome development that would deepen democracy, said in a statement by its national publicity officer, Mr. Olisa Metuh.
But certain events in the aftermath of the general election delay appear to heighten doubts about the stated intention for the rescheduling.
100 per cent PVC Distribution
On Sunday, PDP said only a full distribution of the PVCs to eligible voters could guarantee the acceptability of the general election even on the new dates.
Media and publicity director of the PDP presidential campaign organisation, Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode, said, “The credibility, acceptability and success of the forthcoming elections are therefore, dependent on two things: first, 100 per cent or just below 100 per cent distribution of the PVCs to eligible registered voters so that no one or no group of people are disenfranchised and, secondly, the deployment of adequate security forces before, during and after the elections, who will ensure that the electorate are able to go out to perform their civic responsibility of voting on the election days. These are our legitimate and genuine concerns.”
These conditions being pushed by PDP, however, raise questions. Many wonder whether the ruling party is not tying the issue of collection of the PVCs to the electoral body’s function of the cards’ distribution, so that it could have an excuse to reject the election in the event of an unfavourable outcome.
INEC has mounted a vigorous enlightenment drive to encourage registered voters to go and pick their PVCs. It has also decentralised the collection process to make it
easy for voters to pick their cards.
But many of the PVCs have remained uncollected at the electoral body’s offices.
INEC says it cannot force people to come and pick their cards – which is obvious. But would PDP see it as such? This is the question on many minds.
Bungled Consultation
Many believe the decision to defer the elections was not the product of the consultations between INEC and the stakeholders, which the National Council of State had recommended. The popular thinking is that Jega had been pressured into the move.
To be sure, INEC held consultations with all the 26 registered political parties, civil society organisations, and Resident Electoral Commissioners from the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. Of the 26 parties, 14 supported postponement, 10 wanted the elections as earlier scheduled, two abstained.
The over 100 civil society groups, under the aegis of Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room (Situation Room), which INEC consulted, rejected the idea of poll postponement. And 21 of the 37 Resident Electoral Commissioners were also reported to have rejected poll shift.
Besides, as at the time of the postponement, INEC had informed the political parties at its fortnightly meetings with them that 96 per cent of the PVCs had been produced and distributed across the 36 states and the FCT, while about 68 per cent of the cards had been collected by their owners. The balance four per cent was said to have been produced and was being distributed for collection before the announcement of the postponement.
The country has recorded up to 60 per cent turnout in a presidential election only once since 1999. There was 69 per cent turnout at the 2003 presidential election. Voter turnout was 52 per cent at the 1999 presidential election, and it was 57 per cent in 2007, and 54 per cent in 2011.
On the question of security, too, only about 24 local government areas in Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe states, of the country’s 774 local council areas, were said to have fallen to the Boko Haram insurgents. Even then, INEC claimed it had made special arrangements for one million of those who had fled the danger zones to cast their votes at the Internally Displaced Persons centres in the affected states. The plan was approved by stakeholders from the affected states a few weeks ago in January.
“If the purpose of the consultations was to sample the opinion of stakeholders and feel the pulse of the electorate, the message would have been made clear to INEC that postponement was not the way to go,” the Coalition of Progressive Political Parties said at a press conference in Abuja on Monday. “In spite of this, INEC went ahead and postponed the elections against the wish of majority of Nigerians and stakeholders for reasons best known to it.”
Siege on APC Leaders’ Homes
Suspicion about the motive of the security forces in insisting on poll postponement is aggravated by their recent conducts.
Tinubu’s private residence, along Bourdillon Road in Ikoyi, Lagos, witnessed a strange troop deployment last week. Battle-ready and helmet-wearing soldiers, with their trucks and vans, were stationed close to the gate of the house. The mission of the soldiers, which residents said they first noticed last Sunday, remained shrouded in secrecy.
Though, the General Officer Commanding 81 Division, Lagos, Major General Tamubomiebi Dibi, denied the dispatch of armed soldiers to Tinubu’s house. “It is all a ruse as no politician in Lagos, including the chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, Tinubu, is under military watch list,” Dibi said on Thursday.
Yet on Wednesday, APC reported a similar deployment of troops around the Imo State Government House official residence of Governor Rochas Okorocha, who is the chairman of the APC governors’ forum. The party said on Thursday that the police had laid siege to the residence of the director of media and publicity of the APC presidential campaign organisation, Shehu Garba, in Abuja.
Shehu said in a statement Wednesday, “This Rambo-style intimidation of opposition figures is not acceptable, and this crude show of power should not take place under any democratically elected government.”
APC warned that the president would be held “personally liable” if anything happened to its leaders, “because he has the overall responsibility for the deployment of troops across the country.”
Critics of the federal government see the besieging of the opposition leaders as part of a psychological warfare being waged to intimidate them ahead of the general election.
Military’s Reassurance
As anxiety over the general election mounted last week, there were fears about the intentions of the military concerning the democratic process.
Obasanjo told the Financial Times in an interview in Nairobi that the use of the military to delay elections might invite a coup. “The signs are not auspicious,” Obasanjo said, stressing, “I sincerely hope that the president is not going for broke and saying ‘look dammit, it’s either I have it or nobody has it’. I hope that we will not have a coup. . . I hope we can avoid it.”
But the defence spokesperson, Chris Olukolade, said on Wednesday that the military will not undermine the democratic process. “The Nigerian Armed Forces believe strongly in the prospects of the country under democratic rule and will continue to discharge its responsibility to support our democracy as constitutionally guaranteed,”Olukolade stated. “Indeed, the leadership, in particular, the Chief of Defence Staff and the Service Chiefs, being products and beneficiaries of the nation’s democratic processes themselves, continue to cherish highly the nation’s democracy.”
Olukolade did not comment on the military deployments to the residences of opposition leaders.
Frosty Relations
But the alleged frosty relationship between Jega and the presidency tended to come to the fore within the past week. There were reports that the president had felt angry at Jega’s attribution of the election postponement to reports by the security chiefs when, according to presidency sources, the election management body was not logistically prepared for the polls. The PDP presidential campaign organisation lampooned INEC for claiming it was prepared for the elections.
A story, which went viral on the social media last Tuesday, that Jega had been sent on terminal leave from March 1 by the president seemed to be the natural corollary of the alleged frosty relations between the INEC chairman and the presidency.
Aides and supporters of the president have long accused Jega of working for APC, with some even calling for his resignation or sack. Some Southern politicians, under the aegis of Southern Nigeria Peoples Assembly, had before the postponement of the general election called for Jega’s sack and arrest for alleged manipulation of the PVCs distribution. The group, peopled mainly by the president’s men, addressed a press conference where allegations were made that Jega had directed the release of PVCs to emirs, district heads, and some top politicians in the North. Those at the conference included former Federal Commissioner for Information, Edwin Clark; former governor of Anambra State, Chukwuemeka Ezeife; a member of the pan-Yoruba socio-political group, Afenifere, Femi Okunrounmu; and a former information minister, Walter Ofonagoro.
The senior special assistant to the president on public affairs, Doyin Okupe, Metuh, and Fani-Kayode have also accused Jega of acting the script of APC, saying he lacks the moral qualification to conduct the polls.
All these had, apparently, powered the rumour mills last week in relation to the subject of Jega’s terminal leave. The leave rumour has been denied by the trio of Jonathan, Jega, and the National Security Adviser. The president said during his media chat, “I have not told anybody that I will remove Jega,” explaining, however, that if there are justifiable reasons to remove the INEC chairman, he would rely on relevant constitutional provisions to sack him. There is a precedent of such sudden removal of the INEC boss under Jonathan. Jega’s predecessor, Professor Maurice Iwu, was sent on terminal leave by Jonathan on April 28, 2010, about two months to the official end of his tenure.
But such treatment does not seem likely at the moment. The constitution requires two-thirds majority senate approval for the president to remove the INEC chairman. It is doubtful if the president can muster such majority in the senate under the current political circumstances.
Besides, Iwu’s removal was a popular decision at the time following local and international outrage over the elections he had supervised in 2007, which were widely condemned as among the most fraudulent the country had seen. Those circumstances are different from the current situation under Jega.
Stability
Jonathan has promised not to sack the INEC chairman or disrupt the new election timetable. Dasuki has commented in a similar vein. And PDP has offered to partner APC to make the PVC distribution process a success.
The general attitude, even among those that oppose the poll postponement, it does seem, is that Nigerians should accept the new election dates in good faith. Everyone appears ultimately interested in avoiding anything that can upset the apple cart. Whether this underlying interest in system stability would make the politicians play by the rules remains to be seen.
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