A
rare opportunity for APC to reclaim some moral mileage seems squandered with
its new flirtation with political leper, Ali Modu-Sheriff. We had thought the
cold shoulders shown the hireling from Borno a fortnight ago following reports
that the national secretariat more or less locked him out in Abuja was
conclusive.
Invoking all the diplomatese possible that day, the APC leadership
in Abuja had told Modu-Sheriff (aka SAS) and his hangers-on that the
Federal Capital is the station of last resort. He was counseled to return to
his ward in his native Borno to rejoin the party if indeed he was
serious.
Of course, no proposition could be more humiliating, given his
frosty relationship with Governor Kashim Shettima, ironically his political
godson of yesterday.
Like a rain-beaten chicken, Modu-Sheriff eventually crawled back
home last weekend. In exchange for accommodation, he shamelessly declared
acceptance of Shettima’s leadership, terming his return a homecoming of sorts.
But whoever opened the back-door for Modu-Sheriff in Borno has only
succeeded in de-marketing APC. Branding him “a Prodigal Son back home” would
amount to lending some dignity to a political reprobate who, time and again,
has proved to be incorrigible. He cheapens whatever he touches and leaves a trail
of infamy wherever he goes.
As two-term governor of Borno, he has the dark distinction of
incubating the evil virus that later transformed to Boko Haram. As ANPP
Governor, he was known to be informant to OBJ’s PDP government.
When he couldn’t find a foothold in then emergent APC in 2014, this
political snake slithered to PDP where the leading denizens were naive enough
to quickly entrust him with the party’s leadership. By the time they realized
their folly, SAS had begun to literally auction off all the family silver.
Rivers Governor, Nyesom Wike, once shared a rather hilarious
testimony in an interview. He recalled being called by Modu-Sheriff while the
legal battle to save PDP from then factional chairman was still raging at the
Supreme Court: “He was quick to tell me he was in the holy land in Mecca. And I
told him there is no way God can answer your prayer with the kind of political
evil you are committing in Nigeria.”
Could this be the same character being welcomed back to APC?
2019 and Yakubu’s wake-up call
Though he set out to tackle the allegation of complicity in reported
underage voting in recent Kano polls, INEC boss, Mahmood Yakubu, has
inadvertently reopened the extant debate on the forces undermining the
integrity of the electoral process in Nigeria.
Back in February, tongues naturally began to wag across the land
after the social media was awash with footages of kids purportedly voting in
the council polls in which the ruling party recorded almost 100 percent
victory. With the opposition Peoples Democratic Party at the receiving
end, fingers were expectedly pointed at the electoral umpire as culpable by
enabling such underage registrants to collude with the All
Progressives Congress to steal victory.
The report presented by INEC last weekend however put a lie to that.
If anything at all, argued Yakubu, the local electoral commission in Kano
should be held responsible.
INEC’s defence could be winnowed to three broad conclusions: the
same voters register being discredited was in use in 2011 and 2015; the copy
availed KANSIEC was not widely deployed during the exercise under review and
the images of underage voters on the social media were not only contrived but
also recycled as they were not fresh.
Well, the case presented by Yakubu is water-tight enough. Only those
unfamiliar with the workings and relations of both the national umpire and the
coordinates in the 36 states would have been tempted to aim any arrow at the
former in the first case on perceived irregularities in state elections.
At this writing, KANSIEC was yet to muster a counter to Yakubu’s
weighty charges. I doubt if there is any solid grounds left for it to
articulate a sensible response.
If the voters register was scarcely displayed that day, it
was probably because the state authorities felt they needed to save cost since
the results were already pre-determined.
Truth be told, KANSIEC, like others in the 35 states, is
filled with cronies of the ruling party.
So, what would then appear perplexing is the expectation in any
quarters that a different outcome could have resulted from the exercise held in
Kano in February.
To illustrate further, let us recall the rather comical drama that
had played out in Edo State at the inauguration of a new board for the state
electoral umpire during the PDP administration of Lucky Igbinedion.
After the customary rite of subscribing to the oath of office before
the governor that day, it was time for the elderly man to make an acceptance
speech to a packed audience including media correspondents. Unable to conceal
his excitement at the offer, what first came out of his lips with a clenched
fist thrust skyward was: “Up P-D-P!!!”
Needless to add that the microphone was instantly wrestled from his
hand to save further embarrassment.
In the circumstance, the only option before such a lackey is to help
his employer work from the answer to the question.
It explains why the ruling party in any state across the country
always wins 100 percent in local elections. Of course, the question then: how
healthy is this situation? What’s to be done?
These are questions for another day.
Now, one feels the national apprehension ought to be
centred more on 2019 and how INEC is bracing for the challenge ahead. Of
course, what ails the nation’s electoral process has long been diagnosed; what
has been lacking is the will to execute the recommended therapeutic surgery.
The roadmap is clearly laid out in the Uwais Report.
With the executive and legislative arms of government presently
caught in a cold war over partisan interests, it definitely would
amount to carrying optimism too far to expect that any of the prayers in the
Uwais Report can still be realized before the next polls.
Yet, these recommendations don’t appear too difficult or prohibitive
if truly patriotism runs in the veins of present actors and if indeed our
politicians were thinking of the future generations rather than the next
elections. Otherwise, they would not need further prompting to accept Uwais’
counsel that the first step to making the electoral umpire truly independent
requires that it be given financial autonomy.
The second prayer yet unanswered is the unbundling of INEC. For
efficiency, three units are supposed to be carved out of the present behemoth.
One should cater for registration and regulation of parties, another for
electoral offences and the other for constituency delimitation commission.
The second one is, of course, intended to create incentives against
electoral crimes.
Another key reform Uwais report canvasses is to ensure that disputes
arising from elections are dispensed with before the inauguration of the new
dispensation. This is to ensure litigations don’t last forever or give
custodian of a disputed mandate the unfair advantage of using public funds to
fight their legal battle.
However, it is pleasing to hear that Yakubu, in his own modest way,
is pushing ahead with few innovations within reach with a view to deepening the
electioneering process. For instance, insisting that presidential candidates
submit themselves to a public debate ahead of the D-Day will not only help
clarify the choices before the voters but also ultimately enrich the democratic
culture.
Two, ushering in electronic collation and results transmission will
rule out manual collation, thus helping to minimize the possibility of
manipulation. Experience has shown that rigging of seismic scale often
transpires between polling booth and the collation centre.
The actual theft is barely feasible at the former with the vigilance
of glaze-eyed party agents and just anyone around participating in the process
of counting ballot papers and recording of scores.
The innovation of electronic collation and transmission would appear
the logical follow-up to the revolutionary card-reader technology deployed in
the 2015 polls. The good news is that the senate has now furnished the
card-reader a legal basis to become part of our electioneering process. This
followed the lacuna laid bare by the Supreme Court rulings on Delta, Rivers and
Akwa Ibom state governorship polls where it was pointed out that no
section of the existing Electoral Law granted it legal status.
While these may sound reassuring, however, the real red flags are
surely fluttering just ahead already. With barely nine months to the eagerly
awaited next general elections, INEC is yet to be provided funds to work
with, even though it submitted a budget of N300bn.
Without cashing the funds timely, the timelines set to achieve
certain targets will definitely be affected.
Needless to add that situations like this are what ultimately
predispose the electoral process to compromise. The testimony provided by
Donald Duke, should suffice here. Speaking from experience, the one-time Cross
Rivers State governor revealed that the capture of the resident electoral
commissioner is usually enabled when they arrived their station of assignment
empty-handed. With little or no provisions made by the employer for their
operations, least of their personal welfare.
In the circumstance, such operatives resort to self-help.
Once they start occupying swanky hotel suites and drinking wine
supplied by the host governor, it is only naturally they would soon begin to
pander to the benefactor’s machinations.
So far, nothing on the horizon suggests that the story is about to
change.
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