The bedrock of democracy is the freedom of choice. This choice can only be guaranteed by independent and dispassionate institutions who must be seen to be actively engaged in the display of neutrality, fairness and equity. To achieve this, the entire processes and, especially the personnel deployed to oversee elections must be people of unquestionable character; people known to be nonpartisan in both conduct and utterances.
History has shown that the meddlesomeness of sitting government in Nigerian elections has never augured well for our democracy. Beginning from 1960 when the Federal Electoral Commission (FEC) was established to conduct the immediate post-independence federal and regional elections of 1964 and 1965, based on the general idea of free-ness and fairness so that such elections could be adjudged acceptable both in the eye of the people and the law, to the 1983 elections reported as one of the worst in our chequered history of elections, nowhere has government interference turned out fine.
For instance, prior to the conduct of the 1964 election, the Chief Electoral Officer, Kofo Abayomi resigned on grounds of principle. This raised a lot of questions with some party officials from the NCNC and Action Group doubting the credibility of a free and fair election. As feared, the FEC displayed crass ineptitude by practically rubber-stamping the interest of those in government. Expectedly, the country boiled over with many have attributing much of the problems of the first Republic to that election.
Again, General Olusegun Obasanjo constituted the Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO) which organized the elections of 1979 which ushered in the Nigerian Second Republic under the leadership of Alhaji Shehu Shagari. That experiment too was seriously affected by government interference and the outcome was not pleasant. As averred by Jibrin, (2010:16). “FEDECO was soon to be tested for its competence, impartiality and integrity under the chairmanship of Michael Ani and his successor, justice Victor Ovie –Whisky-sadly the very contentious issue of twothirds of nineteen states “ (of vote cast in 1979) soon turned around to be the acid test for Chief Ani‟s FEDECO. The Apparent allegiance of his successor justice Ovie-whisky, to the federal government and the largely fraudulent elections of 1983 made the commission one of the most scandalous of all Nigeria‟s electoral commission.
Professor Humphrey Nwosu’s National Electoral Commission of Nigeria (NECON) is already in the wrong side of history for the annulment of the June 12 1993 election generally regarded as Nigeria’s freeriest and fairest election in history. Needless to say that it was the meddlesomeness of the Babangida regime that ended what could have been Nigeria’s launching pad to future free and fair elections.
It was perhaps in a bid to avoid the problems that plagued NECON and its ancestors that General Abdulsalam Abubakar replaced it with the Independent National Electoral Commission in 1998. Without labouring the point, the idea behind including Independent in the naming of INEC is to communicate from the word go, that the institution will be empowered to organize election without government interference. How much of the previous elections have gone without interference is a question for another day.
However, this Buhari regime may go down in history as the only government since 1999 to be bursted twice for trying to appoint card carrying members of his party, the APC as National Electoral Commissioners. Nigerians in their numbers rose against the nomination of Lauretta Onochie who was not only a card carrying member of the APC, but someone whose active participation in the politics of the party has earned her rewards in the form of appointments as the president’s special adviser.
And now also, in the full glare of day, Nigeria’s senate under the leadership of Ahmad Lawan have rubber stamped the appointment of Professor Muhammad Lawal Bashar, a known APC party stalwart as the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) for Jigawa state. For those who do not know Prof Lawal, he was the APC gubernatorial candidate for 2015 in Sokoto and has enjoyed tremendous patronage from the APC government at the centre.
I pray tell, how are we to expect fairness and neutrality from a man who owes everything he currently enjoys to the APC? This should not stand. Buhari is on record for saying that he wants to leave a legacy of free and fair elections when the curtains are drawn on his government. Unfortunately, this is surely not how to go about it.
All Nigerians of conscience must, as they did in the case of Lauretta Onochie, rise up to resist this obvious attempt at muzzling the independence of INEC in Jigawa. It is certainly a show of cowardice for a party in the hue of APC to invite other parties into a match where the centre referee has shown without fear of favour that he favours the colours at the centre. The Senate should, as a matter of principle, recall that appointment and write it off a serious error. Whatever happens, allowing Prof Lawal to continue parading himself as the REC of Jigawa will be the greatest rape of democracy. Without mincing words, no outcome out of the Jigawa election in 2023, if elections are conducted under a man so tainted by partisanship will ever enjoy the cloak of legitimacy.
Abubakar writes from Abuja
