Election postponement and lessons for political parties

THE Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) became the whipping boy of the botched February 16 presidential and National Assembly elections. With the postponement came gloomy faces, crushed hopes and suspended animation. Plans for celebration by those who believed they were assured of victory had to hang in the balance for another day.

The feeling of despondency was widespread, covering the 469 senatorial and federal constituency seats that were up for grabs in that election as well as the presidential seat which has the entire Nigeria as its constituency. The soundbites of doom and gloom ricocheted across the land.

Some of the actors called for the head of the chairman of INEC, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, and some alleged collusion with either the ruling or the opposition among staff of INEC; while some others asked the government of the day to hit INEC hard and put it in “shape” even before the rescheduled polls.

Chairmen of the two leading parties, All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) were both full of condemnation for INEC. While APC’s Oshiomhole alleged collusion between the electoral body and the main opposition PDP. He also called for an overhaul of the election body.  PDP chairman, Uche Secondus, asked INEC chairman to resign. The president added a dangerous one when he spoke at the National Caucus of the APC on February 18 alleging that INEC was “incompetent.”

Maybe we have to excuse the vituperations and fire-spitting comments by party chieftains and government officials in the wake of the last minute postponement of the February 16 election on the basis of human frailties. Every human being is susceptible to emotions. Tears flow uncontrollably, even when you try to ‘be a man;’ you yell at someone sitting next to you when a whisper could do. That’s the nature of the human anger.

So, when our president spoke emotionally and gave the shoot-on-sight order and when Adams Oshiomhole’s anger boiled over, making him to release unsubstantiated allegations, you could find space to forgive them as having fallen for human frailty. You could say the same of Secondus, who called for the head of Mahmud Yakubu, the INEC Chairman.

Yes, INEC was an Ophan , a promoter of failed promises and ineffectual handler of logistics as we can deduce from the February 16 debacle. But if you listen to one of the experienced party managers and election observers on the platform of Democrat Union of Africa (DUA), one of the Election Observation Missions on duty at Nigeria 2019, you will give perhaps only some 40 percent blame to the election body.

My interaction with the election observer, who chose to remain anonymous, was insightful. It reveals quite clearly that our political parties are doing less of party management here. What the parties bother about are not issues that promote or deepen democracy. Issues like crowd renting, mobilisation of thugs, getting security to their sides and securing the favour of strategic election managers easily seize the attention of party officers in Nigeria, whereas, their counterparts in “small” Ghana and South Africa busy themselves with building the party as an institution of democracy.

Like the unnamed Observer noted, the postponement of the February 16 election would not have taken serious party managers by surprise. According to him, the announcement made by INEC at 2.59am on February 16 was not only belated but should have come from the political parties not later than 4pm of February 15.

He told me that in his country, where political parties track election materials from the point of departure from the vaults of the Electoral Commission, the hitches experienced in the distribution channels for the sensitive materials would have become obvious from early evening.

• We must find a way to defeat our demons

“Your country is a large country. You have 36 states, you have the Federal Capital Territory. If the parties are not sleeping, they should have been tracking the election materials and if a state capital has not received the bulk of sensitive items as at 4pm of the election eve, the alarm should have been raised,” he said, adding that what happened in Nigeria on February 16 would not happen elsewhere.

True to that submission, a closer look would confirm the major parties that were spitting fire on Sunday and Monday last week merely concerned themselves with bread and butter issues while the house was burning. Maybe we can excuse their theatrics. They refused to close mark INEC, they prefer to shift all the blames on the Commission.

What stopped the parties from demanding to track the materials so they can account for each item at every stage; just as INEC also keeps its own records?

Why are the parties standing akimbo in the process when they are expected to roll up their sleeves and get to real work? Why were they waiting until INEC would call them for inspections at the state capitals?

If they had done the basic things, they won’t be wasting time sharing money to party agents in a state where ballot papers were not even delivered.

If you see a party leader lament that INEC made his party to spend double as a result of the postponement, tell him to go for refresher courses on party management and election administration in the place they like to refer to as “small” Ghana and even South Africa.