By SKC Ogbonnia
The desperate attempts by President Donald Trump to overturn a free and
fair U.S. presidential election of 2020 ought to create every sense of
urgency for Nigeria to explore a bi-partisan body for the conduct of
elections.
Trump’s behavior was delusional and does not represent any good example
of a democratic mien, but it can serve as a blessing in disguise,
especially for nations prone to dictatorship and electoral
controversies. That is precisely where Nigeria comes in.
Nigeria has seen its fair share of dictators donning a democratic toga,
as well as electoral controversies. Instances abound, but the most
relative is the tendency of the Nigerian leaders to pervert the laws
that govern the country’s electoral body, the Independent National
Electoral Commission, INEC.
As the name suggests, the INEC was envisioned as an independent
organization in line with item F,14(2c) of the Third Schedule of the
1999 Nigerian Constitution (as amended). This section states that any of
its members must “be nonpartisan and a person of unquestionable
integrity.” The Constitution also vests the appointment of principal
INEC officials with the president of the country. Unfortunately, most of
the appointees have been neither nonpartisan nor independent.
A prevailing example is the case of Lorretta Onochie, who has been
nominated as a National Commissioner for the INEC. Not only is she a
rabid promoter of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, and
currently the Senior Special Assistant on Social Media to President
Muhammadu Buhari, Onochie is also a virally controversial figure and
super spreader of toxic fictions. In short, her every rhetoric is
emblematic of an extremist rabble-rouser who clowns around the country
spewing offensive fallacies as federal decrees.
The objective motive behind Onochie’s nomination, therefore, is nothing
but trumpish—deliberately designed to wreak havoc and stoke
controversies.
But the dictatorial intrigue within the INEC did not start with
Muhammadu Buhari and the ruling APC. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo
and the Peoples’ Democratic Party were no different or even worse while
they were in power.
Such partisan grip of the INEC has been the major reason Nigerian
elections are hardly mentioned in the same breath with the term “free
and fair.” However, instead of placing the blame squarely where it
belongs, the INEC Chairman is typically the scapegoat.
For instance, as the country geared for the 2011 election, the debate
centered on Maurice Iwu, a renowned Professor of Pharmacognosy, who
served as the INEC boss in the controversial elections of 2007. To many
Nigerians, Mr. Iwu was the problem, and the problem was Mr. Iwu.
It was generally believed that a mere change in leadership of the INEC
was the sole panacea for a free and fair election in the country.
Accordingly, President Goodluck Jonathan appointed a new chairman in
Professor Attahiru Jega, another astute intellectual, a move widely
hailed. Yet, after the 2011 general elections, despite the fact that its
conduct showed significant improvement, the opposition groups claimed
that the ruling party colluded with the INEC to falsify electoral
results.
In the words of Muhammadu Buhari, the main opposition candidate in the
2011 elections, the magnitude of malpractices in the 2007 elections
“eclipsed all the other elections in the depth and scope of forgery and
rigging. Initially, there were high hopes that after 2003 and 2007 a
semblance of electoral propriety would be witnessed. The new chairman of
INEC, Professor Jega, was touted as competent and a man of integrity. He
has proved neither.”
Upon gaining power in 2015, President Buhari quickly ousted Jega and
brought in an equally distinguished professor, Mahmud Yakubu, who would
go on to oversee the 2019 elections. But the situation only seemed to
worsen. In short, a post-2019 election survey by the International
Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) found that, while 61% of the
electorate perceived the 2015 elections headed by Jega as fair, only 37%
would say so for the 2019 exercises conducted under Yakubu.
In rejecting the results of the 2019 presidential elections, Atiku
Abubakar, the runner-up candidate, remarked as follows: “the electoral
fraud perpetrated by the Buhari administration this past Saturday cannot
produce a government of the people for the simple reason that it does
not reflect the will of the Nigerian people.” An influential
pro-opposition pundit, Femi Aribisala, was more direct: “INEC is
supposed to be an impartial umpire in elections in Nigeria. However, it
is now obvious that Mahmood Yakubu’s INEC operated essentially as an arm
of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).”
A salient factor that has not received adequate attention in the
contextual analysis of INEC is that, besides its Chairman, the other
principal officers who represent the electoral body from the national to
the ward levels are typically the sympathizers or card-carrying members
of the ruling party. To that end, even where the INEC was able to
produce a semblance of a free and fair election, the opposition usually
hides behind the partisan shade of the commission to occasion a flood of
conspiracies to wash away the credibility of the election. This distrust
only goes to undermine the sanctity of the elections and deepen the
depth of the disrepute commonly associated with the country’s democracy.
To improve the system, Nigeria should explore a bi-partisan electoral
commission. A bi-partisan structure, with members presented by the
different political parties, will strengthen the needed checks and
balances within the commission itself. This approach should extend to
the recruitment of electoral officers from the national down to the ward
levels and polling booths.
A bi-partisan structure can restore confidence and ensure trust
throughout the width and breadth of the commission. This proposal
parallels the position of the main opposition party in the 2007
election, the All Nigeria’s Peoples Party (ANPP), where Emmanuel
Eneukwu, its National Publicity Secretary at the time, canvassed for a
review of the electoral laws to include members of the different
political parties in the leadership of National Election Commission.
The bi-partisan electoral model is the core of the American system,
which remains a paragon of democracy, Trump’s shenanigans
notwithstanding. Members to both the federal and state election
commissions are drawn from the country’s two major political parties.
The apparent political equipoise profoundly promotes internal checks and
balances within the system. Thus, even if any trumpish character in any
of the states must nominate someone with questionable integrity to an
electoral commission, the opposition party would reject or counter such
nomination accordingly.
The partisan balance within the U.S. electoral system, more than any
other factor, accounts for the widely celebrated vitality of the
American institutions. It also accounts for why and how Donald Trump
could not succeed in his asinine scheme to compel some state electoral
bodies, including those controlled by his party, to overturn the 2020
U.S. presidential election.
Perhaps Nigeria has explored various strategies over the years to
checkmate partisan maneuvers within the INEC. The electoral body has
recruited members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and
university professors to assist in recent exercises. There were equally
past efforts, for example, the 2008 Electoral Reform Committee (ERC),
which proposed, among other things, that a neutral body, particularly
the National Judicial Council, should appoint all the INEC officials,
including its chairman. The ERC also called for the members of INEC to
include representatives of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and the
News Media, etc.
The idea of a neutral electoral body is superficially attractive. But
recruiting people from a cadre of pliant Nigerian institutions and
expecting them to be impartial is no different from perceiving a stench
as an aroma. Not surprisingly, the university recruits are always
accused of partiality or being wholly subservient to the parties in
power either at the states or the federal level.
Unlike other institutions, the political party has the potential to
provoke steadfast allegiance from the people—far more than tribe,
religion, and even more than blood relationships, especially in Nigeria,
where prebendal politics dictates the content and character of
socio-economic wellbeing. True independence or neutrality of INEC is
more attainable in an environment where two or more independent parties
can checkmate each other from acting contrary to the stated objectives.
A pertinent backdrop is that the American society is by no means closer
to sainthood than its Nigerian counterpart. America’s saving grace is
merely the presence of a system that can compel the leaders and the
people to act in line with the law of the land.
Dr. SKC Ogbonnia writes from Houston, Texas, USA.
Twitter: #SKCOgbonnia