The Shortcomings in 2019 General Elections, By Gidado Yushau Shuaib

The Shortcomings in 2019 General Elections, By Gidado
Yushau Shuaib

The 2019 general election is the most expensive poll ever
organised by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
It incurred an additional N69 billion than the penultimate exercise
in 2015. However, when teeming Nigerian electorate were preparing
to cast their ballot on February 16, something ‘mysterious’
happened.

In the dead of the night, the INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood
Yakubu, summoned a press conference to postpone the election to the
following week. He cited delay in delivering election materials and
deployment of staff to the nooks and cranny of the country as
reasons for the postponement. Other reasons included poor weather
condition, unresolved candidate registration issues and rumoured
plans for sabotage by desperate elements.

Many electorates who had travelled for the election were
disappointed over the postponement barely six hours to the
commencement of the exercise.

So, what happened when INEC finally conducted the
Presidential/NASS and Governorship/State Assemblies’ polls?
Incidences of vote-buying by the two leading political parties were
widely recorded.

Vote-buying by politicians and their agents, which has taken a
centre-stage in political sphere, is the act of exchanging votes
for money and other material items between politicians and the
electorate.

In fact the federal government was accused of vote-buying with
its TraderMoni economic intervention. The Nigeria’s Head of
Transparency International, Mr. Auwal Rafsanjani, in a media chat
posited that such initiative was not a part and parcel of the
manifesto of the ruling APC and it is not in the Nigerian
constitution. He bluntly stated that, “the allegation by many
Nigerians that this is clearly a case of vote buying using public
funds goes contrary to our constitution and to having a free and
fair election.”

If at all what Mr Rafsanjani said is anything to go by, one must
begin to wonder what hope a Nigerian has when such a policy of the
government is meant to woo support during elections, rather than
compete fairly for votes. This shows a blatant disregard for
democratic norms as well as the fact the current administration is
losing popularity by the day.

Responding to the accusations, Laolu Akande, the spokesperson of
the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, flatly denied such allegation,
saying that TraderMoni was not an act of vote buying, but rather a
means to empower petty traders. “It will be an absurdity to call
TraderMoni vote-buying. You can see it for yourself that this is a
program that has affected millions of lives,” he said.

Meanwhile, militarization of the electoral process, mostly in
the opposition’s stronghold also received bashing. This is despite
valid, subsisting court judgments that prohibited the use of the
military for election purposes.

Series of video clips have trended online which captured
soldiers overrunning the home of a state official as well as INEC
officials lamenting the besieging of collation centres by the army.
This act stands condemnable even as the Chief of Army Staff, Lt
General Tukur Buratai, had set up a panel to investigate the role
of the military in the just-concluded elections, although nobody
seems to be impressed by the development. Thanks to social media
for breaking barriers and making citizens aware of happenings
around the nation.

A seemingly worrisome electoral malpractices, is the deployment
of thugs to polling units in various but most endemic in Kano. A
situation where a keenly-contested election between two leading
parties turned out to be a landslide during the supplementary
elections raises a lot of unanswered questions. It is unfortunate
seeing how thugs took over streets, and strangely with security
cover provided by the Nigerian Police.

After wild allegation of fraud from the stakeholders involved in
the elections most especially the opposition, the African Union
(AU) said the elections were “largely peaceful and conducive for
the conducting of credible elections.”

Moving forward, there is a need for INEC to go back to the
drawing board and re-evaluate their performance in the 2019 polls.
They should, thereafter, put all necessary machineries in place to
correct the identified lapses. INEC should also endeavour to
eradicate the growing culture of inconclusive elections.

There is also a need for a political-will towards ensuring
peaceful, transparent election while also urging the authorities
concerned to improve voter education for the benefit of the
electorate on their expectations.

While we pray that future elections would have less military
interference, the youths should also resist the temptation of
serving as political thugs desperate and power-hungry politicians
during elections. They should rather identify ways to grab
leadership and put the nation back on the track of socio-economic
development and growth.

Above all, the progress we envision for our electoral system
will remain elusive if necessary and progressive amendments are not
carried out on the Electoral Act. Now is the time to act. A stitch
in time, they say, saves nine.

Gidado Yushau Shuaib, editor of Youths Digest, writes from
Abuja. Twitter: @GidadoYS; Email: giddyshuaib@gmail.com