By Chris O. O. Biose
At about 2.35 am on Saturday, February 16, 2019, the Chairman of Independent Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mamood Yakubu, announced the postponement of the Presidential and National Assembly elections scheduled to commence at 8.00 am on that day. He set a new date, February 23 and March 9, 2019, for the two main elections. Nigerians from all walks of life felt justifiably disappointed and angry.
At a well-attended stakeholders’ forum at 2.00 pm the same day, the INEC chairman attributed the postponement of the election to logistic challenges which made it impossible for the Commission to deliver requisite election materials to all parts of the country to enable elections commence at the same time in all parts of the country. This, he said necessitated postponement of the election.
In spite of his persuasive presentation, most Nigerians took the explanations of the INEC chairman with a pinch of salt. They wondered why the Commission had to wait for six hours before the commencement of polls to discover the logistic challenges facing it.
At an emergency caucus meeting in Abuja on February 18, 2019, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) unleashed a flurry of unsubstantiated allegations against the Commission. The APC National Chairman, Mr. Adams Oshiomhole alleged that INEC shared information relating to the postponed election with the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP). On his part, former Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Mr. Godswill Akpabio who defected from PDP to APC in August 2018 alleged that the REC for Akwa Ibom State, Mr. Mike Igini was working hand in hand with the Government of the state. The two party chiefs failed to produce any iota of evidence to support their weighty allegations.
President Muhammadu Buhari questioned the credibility of INEC and threatened that the electoral body would have to explain its “incompetence”. More ominously, he said among other things: “I am going to warn anybody who decides to snatch ballot boxes or lead thugs to disturb it (elections) may be that would be the last unlawful action he would take.
“I have directed the police and the military to be ruthless…. I am going to warn anybody who thinks he has enough influence in his locality to lead a body of thugs to snatch boxes to disturb the voting system, he would do it at the expense of his own life.”
This call to extra-judicial killings and jungle justice by the President of a democratic state was roundly criticized by all well-meaning citizens.
In the afternoon of the same day, the Department of State Services (DSS) invited Professor Ibeanu, INEC Commissioner in charge of logistics and four other officals of the Commission for questioning. Some persons reportedly invaded Professor Ibeanu’s home in Enugu. Unknown persons also broke into his car and removed valuable personal equipment including laptops and iPADs. APC supporters also staged protests demanding removal of RECs for Akwa Ibom, Cross River and Rivers States.
Keen observers of the Nigerian political turf place the reactions of APC leaders to shift in the election date within a pattern of cowing the electorate as well as intimidating and arm-twisting the Commission to dance to the tune of the ruling party. In the circumstance, the Commission faces a daunting moral burden to maintain the requisite level of impartiality in executing its onerous task, which is even more challenging than the logistic nightmares that prompted the initial postponement of the election.
Therefore, the most critical factor that would make or mar the credibility of the 2019 elections is the moral status or impartiality of the electoral umpire.
Moral status of the electoral umpires
Given an impartial electoral body, the triune factors of inadequate legal framework, devious government and subversive party machine would not succeed in subverting the electoral process. This fact is borne out by the determined effort of the Chairman of the defunct National Electoral Commission (NEC) that conducted the June 12, 1993 presidential election which earned the acclaim of local and international observers for its transparency and credibility.
Professor Humphrey Nwosu was appointed Chairman of NEC in 1989. To address the weak legal regulatory framework and scant logistics provided for the election by the military junta, the astute professor of political science and his team crafted and implemented a novel and cost-effective method of voting known as Option A4. It arose from several models put forward by the NEC. There were Options A, B, C, etcetera with options like A1, A2, A3, A4, B1, B2, B3 and so on. Eventually, Option A sub 4, popularly referred to as Option A4 was adopted by the NEC.
Option A4 did not require massive expenditure. No elaborate election materials were required. The NEC did not wait for construction of polling booths and it dispensed with intricate paper work or bureaucracy. There were no ballot papers or ballot boxes. In fact, the Commission did not wait for allocation of funds from the military dictator to prepare for the election.
Voting was done at designated public open spaces, particularly public school compounds. The process involved accreditation of voters to determine the exact number of voters presenting themselves at each polling booth. Voters were simply required to line up openly in front of the posters (photographs and party symbols) representing the candidates of their choice. This was followed by loud and open counting of the number of voters on each queue. The score of each of the two presidential candidates was recorded and announced on the spot in each polling booth. The results were recorded and signed by the presiding electoral officer, representatives of both candidates, the Nigeria Police, the security services and announced to the voters, at each polling booth. The entire process was done in the open.
Voting began and ended at the same time throughout the country. It was transparent and credible.
Booth by booth results were collated at each ward headquarters and again duly authenticated by designated officials and again announced. Ward totals were forwarded to each Local Government Area (LGA) Headquarters. LGA totals were in turn forwarded to state NEC headquarters to obtain figures for each state.
It was a seamless election. Local and international observers were unanimous in applauding it as the freest and fairest in Nigeria’s electoral history. There was no intimidation of voters by the Nigerian Army. The electoral umpire was impartial and police did not interfere in the process.
Nwosu’s steadfastness
Prior to the election on June 12, 1993, one Abimbola Davies representing an organization named Association for Better Nigeria (ABN) led by Chief Francis Arthur Nzeribe, filed a suit at an Abuja High Court on June 10, asking that the election be suspended on grounds of unsubstantiated allegations of corruption among politicians.
In the night of the same day, Justice Bassey Ikpeme of the High Court, Abuja, granted an order restraining the NEC from conducting the presidential election.
However, in the afternoon of the next day, June, 11, Prof. Nwosu, announced that the election would go on in spite of Justice Ikpeme’s ruling. He cited Section 19 of Decree 13 of 1993 which set out regulations for the conduct of the presidential election which ousted the jurisdiction of the courts in the matter.
The Presidential election was held on June 12, 1993. By June 14, 1993, NEC Chairman had announced the results for 22 out of 30 states that then existed in Nigeria at the NEC Headquarters, Abuja. The results from all states had been declared at the state capitals. Some newspapers had published the results from all the states which showed clearly that Alhaji M. K. O. Abiola of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP) won the election. He beat his National Republican Convention (NRC) opponent, Alhaji Bashir Tofa,
But as the chairman was about to announce the results for the remaining eight states, which had all been received at NEC National Headquarters at Abuja, the former Military Dictator, General Ibrahim Babangida stopped him.
On June 15, then Chief Judge of Abuja, Justice Dahiru Saleh made a ruling suspending further release of the results of the election and issued a bench warrant for the arrest of Nwosu and his principal staff for non-compliance with earlier ruling of Justice Ikpeme.
It was argued in support of Prof. Nwosu that the Ikpeme and Saleh judgements were rendered nugatory by an earlier verdict of Justice G. A. Oguntade at the Court of Appeal that “when a court makes an order in contravention of a statutory provision which forbids it from making such order, the order so made is null and void and no appeal need be filed against the order.”
On June 18, 1993, the Campaign for Democracy (CD) defied the court ruling and released the full result of the election.
On June 23, the junta announced annulment of the presidential election. In a special broadcast on June 24, 1993, junta leader, General Babangida (retd.) alleged that the election had been annulled. He also suspended the NEC and the transition programme.
On the same day, Nwosu appealed against the Abuja High Court ruling at the Federal Court of Appeal, Kaduna. He also challenged what he regarded as interference of the military junta in the successful election, at the High Court Abuja. To support its case that elections had been successfully concluded, NEC attached full results of the presidential election.
When Prof. Nwosu insisted on announcing the remaining results, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida simply sacked the NEC Chairman and dissolved the electoral body. Consequently, the court case instituted by the NEC chairman lapsed since the NEC no longer existed and there was no longer a plaintiff or complainant. Professor Nwosu was no longer chairman of anything. Thus, Abiola’s victory was extinguished by the controversial annulment of the election.
National crisis
The annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election was greeted with spontaneous riots and violent protests in several parts of the country, including Lagos, Ibadan, Osogbo, Okiti-pupa, Ijebu-Ode, Benin City and others. During the riots, hundreds of innocent Nigerians were murdered by Nigerian soldiers protecting the heartless junta leaders.
In his attempts to manage the violent protests that attended his annulment of the election, the junta leader inaugurated an Interim National Government (ING) on August 26, 1993 under the leadership of late Chief Ernest Shonekan who hails from the same town as Abiola, Abeokuta in the South West. However, on November 17, 1993, after 83 days of its creation, late General Sani Abacha easily shoved away the ING contraption and assumed the post of Head of State and Commander in Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces.
Several organisations demanded exit of Abacha from power and the validation of the June 12 electoral mandate of Chief Abiola. Principal among thsew ere the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO), Campaign for Democracy (CD) National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) and several civil and human rights groups.
The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) spearheaded a series of protests asking Abacha to release Abiola from prison and validate his election. NUPENG called out all petrol tanker drivers on an indefinite strike. The junta threatened leadership of NLC with mass arrest of its leaders and trial for treason and economic sabotage. Barely 24 hours after NUPENG drivers stopped lifting fuel from both the Ejigbo (Lagos) and Ibadan depots, fuel scarcity hit the Lagos metropolis leading to confusion at filling stations in the metropolis. In response, the junta leader (Abacha) sent out army tankers with military drivers and escorts to lift fuel from the depots and supply to major filling stations.
This action infuriated Lagos youths many of whose members had been killed by troops while protesting the annulment. The youths mobilized to set bonfires on major roads that military tankers would pass through. It became a running battle between youths and military tanker drivers who on stopping to clear the road of bonfire, were faced with barrage of missiles from stone throwing youths at strategic places. Needless to say, Lagos degenerated into a war zone as hundreds of youths were shot and killed by soldiers as the battle raged on for weeks.
Fearing imminent outbreak of another civil war, a lot of citizens started leaving their place of residence to their places of origin.
As fate would have it, Gen. Abacha died suddenly on June 8, 1998, a few weeks before the onset of his seemingly assured civilian presidency. With the death of Abacha, the junta decided that it was the turn of Abiola to die. Consequently, on July 7, 1998, after four years in detention without trial and barely a month after the death of Abacha, Abiola died in controversial circumstances in prison where he had been kept in since June1994.
The determined struggle of pro-democracy activists to check the excesses of military dictators and sustained agitation for democratic rule eventually came to fruition with the onset of the Fourth Republic on May 29, 1999.
The challenge of democracy
This brief account shows the extent to which military tyrants could go to thwart democratic ideals to serve their devious political objectives at the cost of severe human suffering which they inflict on the populace to achieve their anti-democratic ambitions. It also shows that democratic values can only be defended through the determined action of civil society, not the presumed voluntary goodness of military tyrants.
June 12, 1993 presidential election also cleared the air that a Nigerian could be trusted to be firm and fair. Prof. Nwosu, Chairman of the defunct NEC and his team performed creditably. He did not share the company of those who brought shame and dishonour to Nigerian intellectuals as the ready handmade of devils in Nigerian politics. His performance is abundant evidence that Nigeria does not lack men of honour and integrity as is generally presumed. It is proof of the fact that some Nigerians still have courage enough to embrace and hold on to the truth despite threats by merchants of violence.
The presidential election rescheduled for February 23 and March 9, 2019, presents Prof. Mahmood Yakubu and his team with the grimmest challenge of their lives. There is no doubt that they face intense pressure from the cabal that is currently running Nigeria including agents planted in the Commission by the cabal. Like Prof. Nwosu in 1993, Prof. Yakubu must choose whether to satisfy transient hustlers for power and go down in history as the man who let the country down in its hour of great need. He is also free to face the odds with courage and maintain a solid personal integrity in defence of democracy. By so doing, he stands to write his name in gold in Nigeria’s electoral and political history.
Biose, a former lecturer and human rights activist, is National Coordinator,Team Niger Delta for Atiku/Obi
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