Even at the best of times, election is a controversial issue in Nigeria and understandably so. Ordinarily, the process of electing men into power elicits more than passing interests even in more stable climes, it is therefore understandable why it generates frenetic motions here, where access to power is construed as life itself and lack of it the opposite of life.
Even at the best of times, election is a controversial issue in Nigeria and understandably so. Ordinarily, the process of electing men into power elicits more than passing interests even in more stable climes, it is therefore understandable why it generates frenetic motions here, where access to power is construed as life itself and lack of it the opposite of life.
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Except for the acutely undiscerning, no one would think elections became a “do-or-die” affair in Nigeria only in 2007 when Chief Olusegun Obasanjo patented the ominous mantra for his party and himself. To be fair, the vociferous declaration by the then president in the heat of an election campaign was just an apt affirmation of an endemic concept. Obasanjo merely foisted a formal stamp on an enduring national malaise.
Think of it, how else could you have described the combustive power plays along the ethnic major fault-lines in the count-down to the 1959 elections? Even if you discount its fatal culmination of January 15 1966, how better could one have tagged the cyanide-laced politics of the 1960s? Add 1979 and 1983 and you will see that “do-or-die” is an apt ellipsis for elections in Nigeria, not even Noah Webster could have thought of a better ellipsis.
Now President Goodluck Jonathan has sworn it would be different this time around; come 2011. Fair and credible elections would be held by the new-improved INEC and we will do away with do-or-die politics. Like Paul on the road to Damascus, our president sounds like he has seen the light. No better signal demonstrated the expressed resolve than the removal of Maurice Iwu as INEC Chairman and the appointment of Professor Attahiru Jega, a man whose credentials on integrity stretch as far back as his first incarnation at ASUU.
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But since the hood is not the monk, scepticism still abounds that the government could deliver on its promise, especially with obvious contempt expressed for most of the far-reaching recommendations in the Uwais Report. That Professor Jega a member of the Uwais Committee could accept to serve on government terms indicates how far he wishes to stretch as far as the Uwais report is concerned. Recent events appear to vindicate the sceptics that you don't get to solve the endemic electoral malaise just by the appointment of someone of Jega’s status to Maurice Iwu’s chair. Regardless of Jega’s credentials, indications are that INEC may in fact be going to the next general elections like a leopard with all its spots, especially if the new man does not stop acting as if Maurice Iwu was the only problem at INEC.
No example can better illustrate the Jega mindset than his current stance on Mrs. Adebayo Ayoka, a major player in the Ekiti mess who he recently deployed to Ondo State as Resident Electoral Commissioner. It beggars belief that the most vivid metaphor on Iwu’s incompetence could surface in a state where a controversial election has only been decided through a tortuous court process that gave INEC a bloodied nose and Jega would be nonplussed.
The response of the INEC Chairman to the furore generated by Madam Ayoka’s posting is in fact puzzling. The man neither told us why Ayoka had to flee Ekiti the last time around like a thief in the night, why things went the way they did at Ido Osi, or why the woman has to be refurbished again for this new job. Rather Jega reportedly ascribed the reasons for her current posting to geography and not history. He explained that it is in line with INEC policy to ensure that RECs are not posted out of their geographical zones and to states that share geographical contiguity with their states of origin. That policy, he was said, was to forestall accommodation problems, “getting schools for their children…. (and) avoid(ing) truancy so the RECs can give their full attention to preparation for the voters’ registration …. (and) the election itself” On Madam Ayoka, the logic was even more mysterious: “…. (t)he person people are talking about (i.e. Msdam Ayoka) was in Ekiti. Originally, she is from Ogun State. So, clearly she cannot be taken back to Ekiti or Ogun. If she is taken to Lagos, it will be contiguous to her state of origin. (Now) People are saying … that this lady who was alleged; a wild allegation yet to be proven, to have done some dirty work in Ekiti now is being taken to Ondo so that she can do allegedly another dirty work against opposition."
It may be unnecessary to join issues with INEC on why senior public officials ought to be posted nearer home to forestall truancy, but it would be interesting to know why INEC should place much premium on filial considerations and geography over competence and transparency on the posting of principal electoral officers. That could be especially confounding when you know the absence of those trait is the main fulcrum of electoral malaise in Nigeria. Also, the treatise on geography by Jega still did not help to explain Madam Ayoka’s current posting. As Jega may now well have known, the current duty post of the subject, Ondo state and her home state of origin, Ogun State, are in fact geographically contiguous.
Beyond the contiguity postulations, it is worrisome that the learned professor could construe the 2009 somersaults on Madam Ayoka’s Christian conscience as “wild allegations”. True, the Professor is right that no courts has yet convicted the woman on her past roles, but how many electoral officials have been so arraigned since the government admitted to conducting flawed elections in 2007? How many have also been prosecuted over any of the polls already upturned by the courts? Could it be that the officials are beyond prosecution? Or that those who should ensure prosecution are direct beneficiaries and would rather prefer to keep such officials handy for future use?
One could understand why the Professor feels overly convinced that “clearly she (Madam Ayoka) cannot be taken back to Ekiti” but not why he chose to deploy her to a neighbouring state while the Ekiti mess lingers. Jega should therefore address history rather than geography on this issue in order to assure that this particular deployment is not meant to serve the familiar “do-or-die” end. He must to come up with clearer explanations on why Ondo State is the right destination for Madam Ayoka at this time. Otherwise, he should kindly spare the state another needless controversy by reversing the posting. The logic is simple enough: In a land where rape is norm and rapists are never prosecuted, it is within the right of a former victim to protest the presence of a suspected rapist in her neighbourhood. The protest cannot justifiably be called a “wild allegation”; especially if the authorities are serious about righting the wrongs of the past.
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