Elections, as they say, have consequences, but so does the entire electoral system, and in a more significant manner. When odd candidates are thrown up by political parties through dubious processes, the system is inevitably imperiled. If developments since the return to civil rule in 1999 are any indication, it is clear that the party system has short-changed voters. Nigeria’s current status as the world’s capital of poverty, out-of-school children, poor electrification and, worse still, open defecation is due in large part to the current administration, but it would be quite uncharitable to ignore the contributions of past administrations at all levels to the present rot. In October 2019, The Economist magazine suggested that about $582bn had been stolen from Nigeria since independence, and a report by the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDC), released this week, suggested that the anti-graft agencies had recovered about $2.2bn in stolen assets since the return to civil rule. But the real tragedy is that vast sums of money are being stolen right now which would effectively clamp future generations in jail.
Between 1999 and now, there have been hardly any political parties: what we have had are mechanisms for capturing power and cornering the commonwealth for crooked politicians. And in general, what we have had are misfits in Government House. Of course there have been exceptions–Olusegun Mimiko and Babatunde Fashola, say–but they have been few and far between. As governor, Mimiko invented the Abiye (safe motherhood) initiative that was adopted by the World Bank as a benchmark for Africa, among other landmark strides, and Fashola brought sanity into our usually sad, bad and mad Lagos life, giving the state a brand new outlook. Fashola reinvented the transport sector in ways that are difficult to ignore even now, and Mimiko’s gesture of giving pregnant women phones to locate health rangers even in the remotest parts of Ondo State can never be forgotten.
There was a governor that failed to pay teachers for two years, a governor that borrowed a once-thriving state into bankruptcy and promoted religious strife; a governor that busied himself with demolishing the homes of his political opponents and then mandated his media team to “find a justification” for the action; and a governor that told a stunned populace that since he had failed, he should be allowed to “repeat the class” (that is, be reelected). I can go on and on, but perhaps the most potent indictment of the characters that people Government Houses at the moment is the appallingly dirty state of most states and the total lack of pipe-borne water. Here’s what someone wrote recently: “Pure water is now N20. Drink responsibly.” Indeed, there are graduates today who have never seen pipe-borne water, whereas we fetched water from the pipes even under the military. Water is everywhere but there is none to drink, and yet we are supposed to have water corporations. That’s what you get when the leadership recruitment process throws up only “ritualists’ and yahoo boys.
Nigeria’s political parties are funded and controlled exclusively by moneybags who carry on like confused sailors. The parties do not carry out voter education, do not campaign for votes in any meaningful sense, and are generally of no use beyond filling the vacancies in Government House. Indeed, it seems that the only bright spot in the system is the electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). While the commission is not without drawbacks, there is no doubt that it has at least taken steps over the years to improve on its game, particularly under its present leadership. In April this year, it expanded voter access to polling units, bringing the total number of polling units to 176,846. Determined to deepen the use of technology and reduce human intervention in the critical stages of the electoral process, it has, as pointed out by its chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, introduced new innovations. There is now an INEC Voter Enrolment Device (IVED) that captures physical registration of voters, fingerprint and facial authentication on election day while uploading unit result sheets to the INEV Result Viewing (IReV) portal, another innovation in itself. Nigerians can now view polling results in real time. We are all familiar with the Smart Card Reader and the huge impact it has had on election transparency, and the Yakubu-led INEC must in fact be commended for introducing, among other things, the People’s Result Sheet at polling units.
Determined to rig elections, politicians suborned photographers who had old negatives of photographs in their possession, then affixed names to the photographs, telling the world that they are new voters! They also cut out pictures from old almanacs in other to short-change the electoral process, but INEC was able to catch them in their game through the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) which goes beyond fingerprints to require facial authentication using state-of-the-art technology. However, INEC has to address the issues of late arrival of materials at polling units and inconclusive elections. But it is at least a moving organism, unlike the political parties which have remained on the same spot since 1999. It is a tragedy that political parties are the weakest link in the electoral process.
Politicians do not tour the nooks and crannies of their states, looking for votes: they do so taking money to those that matter and putting thugs in strategic positions. These days, they are no longer using the prepaid method (giving voters money before voting): they use the post-paid method whereby voters are paid only after they have voted and lifted their ballot papers up for party agents to witness their act. The security agents look on and INEC cannot arrest anybody. Indeed, politicians import thugs from neighbouring states, particularly when they are the party in power and have greater access to the security agencies.
We need credible political parties and politicians: good people must seize control of the existing parties and change the narrative. Young people need to start this conversation on social media. Sadly, nothing much can be achieved without addressing poverty.
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