When the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced that governorship elections would hold in Edo and Ondo States on September 10 and November 28, 2016 respectively, i had cause to suspect that the dates would not be kept and that if the elections managed to hold as scheduled, they would not be free or fair.
My suspicion was based on precedents. It is public knowledge that the average politician is not interested in playing the game of elections by the rules. What they normally do is to grossly circumvent the rules of the game to the extent that both the election and the electoral body would lose public confidence.
This they do by compromising any personnel that has a role to play in the electoral process, be he in the Judiciary, Security, media or INEC. In 1964, government instructed electoral officers to collect only the nomination papers of the candidates of the ruling party and to disappear thereafter making it impossible for candidates of the opposition parties to submit their nomination forms for that year’s elections into the Federal House of Representatives. At the close of nominations, the officers came out of hiding only to announce that the candidates of the ruling party were elected unopposed.
Since then, the manipulation of officials has continued in different forms as designed by the government in power. Events have shown that anyone including the military could be compromised as was done in the case of the Ekiti State governorship election in 2014. The evidence came through an audio recording provided by a Captain in the 32nd Artillery Brigade stationed in Ekiti State. It revealed how some top officials of the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) planned and successfully rigged the gubernatorial elections in Ekiti State, and plotted a similar scenario in Osun in 2014.
The said Captain reportedly recorded the conversation on 20th June 2014 when he accompanied his Commanding Officer, a Brigadier to the meeting of the plot at Spotless Hotel, Ado-Ekiti. The army has since sanctioned the military offenders Another example concerns the plot to disqualify candidate Muhammadu Buhari from contesting the 2015 Presidential elections. The army through which the candidate had completed a meritorious service culminating in his attainment of the rank of General and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces suddenly announced that it did not have the academic credentials of the former Head of State.
How then did the man pass through the ranks? If he didn’t academically qualify for the 2015 elections, with what did INEC clear him to contest the elections of 2003, 2007 and 2011? The politicians had earlier tried to use a University Teaching Hospital to validate the same candidate’s alleged ill-health? The truth however was that the government of the day had become apprehensive of daily reports that incumbent President Jonathan was likely to lose to candidate Buhari.
Consequently, it sought to generate a number of rumours which would be made to look like truth using excessive media publicity to leave the subject in the sub-consciousness of Nigerians. When all options failed, resort was made to security which would easily be believed in view of the general tense atmosphere caused by insurgency in the country.
The then National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki had to travel to as far as the United Kingdom to advice INEC which he left behind in Nigeria on the adverse security implications of holding the Presidential election as scheduled. Although the nation was in shock over the development, the election had to be shifted by six weeks to “enable” the security risks which supposedly threatened the election to be dealt with. I knew that the strategy would for a long time in our nation’s history serve as a reference point but I must confess I didn’t know it would recur in about a year.
It was a major surprise to me and many other Nigerians when it served again as the reason for postponing the Edo governorship election scheduled for yesterday. Like the Dasuki episode, the advice to INEC to postpone the event came from our security forces not to INEC but to the nation at large through a joint press conference by the Police and the Department of State Security.
Not many were amused by the dramatic presentation. Credible sources according the spokesman of the group had revealed that a few hours after President Buhari concluded his peaceful visit to Benin City, insurgents and or militants who were probably hiding in the borders of Edo State found their way in.
For this reason, it was expedient to postpone the election. INEC almost surprised me when it initially made the suicidal decision to resist the plot. Anyway wise counsel prevailed and INEC fell in line.
Analysts and scholars argued in vain that “cogent and verifiable reasons” which in the words of our constitution should justify the postponement didn’t exist. Did the constitution say that it is analysts that are to verify the weight of the reasons? On my part i took the security statement the way i always listen helplessly to airline staff that are trained to permanently announce before the departure and arrival of any flight that whatever delay in a flight arrangement “was due logistics reasons”.
They don’t expect anyone to seek to verify their logistics reasons. The reasons for the postponement of the Edo polls were quite instructive to me because I happen to know that a few days earlier, the state governor irked by the failure of the federal government owned NTA Benin to function as a ruling party organ threatened to sanitize the place.
He consequently made the necessary moves and the Zonal Director, the Head of News and all her immediate assistants in the news department were quickly transferred far away from Benin to other NTA stations. They have since been replaced. The offence of the staff was that they adopted professional coverage of events as directed by their organization.
For someone who in the past was sacked five times but luckily got reinstated, I didn’t bother to identify who implemented the governor’s wish. I only note that those who accused the previous government of media censorship are probably more intolerant making it obvious that NTA’s problem as I have said severally is government control. This leaves our democracy in chains.
VANGUARD
