By the time you read this, INEC would have returned the APGA candidate as winner in the Anambra gubernatorial elections held on Saturday, November 16; the opposition parties candidates would have rejected the results outrightly; numerous policemen, soldiers and INEC officials would be leaving and many citized would be wondering whether the election was fair.
A small percentage of registered voters who participated in the election will wonder whose will has been expressed. There is still a long way to go before the final word is heard on the election.Traditionally, the battle will now move to be sorted out in the courts. Lawyers and judges will now make fortunes, but a governor will be sworn in to exercise a questionable mandate.
State money will be used to pay for legal expenses. However, the books will not reflect this.
The courts will rely heavily on INEC to provide evidence against allegations that the elections it conducted were not free and fair. INEC will defend itself with everything at its disposal, which is considerably more than all the defeated candidates can muster.
It will be a miracle if Ngige or Nwoye will become governors of Anambra State before 2017.
Now Anambra may be just another mark in an institutionalised parody of a democratic system that prevents Nigerians from ever knowing if they have elected leaders, or people who govern because every rule in the book was broken to install them into elective offices.
Evidently, INEC is under attacks. Many people expected that INEC would raise its standards after the embarrassingly low-quality of elections for the Delta Central Senatorial seat last month. Though, in vain.
Ngige thought the presence of soldiers would guarantee a free and fair election. As is turned out, security bodies provided just the appearance of a peaceful atmosphere, in the event hat anyone wanted to snatch ballot boxes or break a few heads or chase away voters or opponents’ agents.
Anambra last week exposed a vision for the future. The elections are won beforehand because INEC chooses to exploit all the weaknesses of the system.
Voters’ registers are tampered with on a large scale, but specifically in a manner which guarantees that registered voters in particular areas have their names missing.
This takes considerable local level knowledge which a display of voters register could mitigate.
Thus, you skip this part for numerous reasons, but mainly because voters do not bother to check their names, or time does not allow you to do this.
Then you mix up registers and lose substantial amount of time sorting them out.
By the time you put together registers, ballot papers, result sheets and all electoral materials, it is 4pm or 5pm already.
So the polling process extends to nights, when people are afraid or are not sure what is being done at voting or collation centres. While people wait, agents are threatened, bought over or chased away.
Security agents look the other way, or concentrate on the security of polling officials, not the sanctity of the voting process. Agents cannot complain over abuse of excess ballots, voting by unaccredited voters who turn up with cards, or being prevented from observing. But foreign observers are allowed a carefully-choreographed access to a few selected polling and collation centres.
Their opinion matters, particularly since they have been made to believe that any election conducted in Nigeria without massive violence is virtually free and fair.
As far as local observers are concerned, they are treated with scorn because INEC and politicians all know that most of them have been bought.
Evidently, the major parties that failed to win, will reject the results.
Naturally, even without the formal declaration of the results, APGA will claim victory which it will say was well-deserved.
The quarrels will continue all the way to the highest courts, and even then, Anambra will be governed by people who may largely be seen as stealing mandates and hiding behind the crudest form of ethnic jingoism.
APGA had to fight fair and dirty to retain Anambra. It did, and apparently got it.
The new opposition APC thought it had a good candidate and a good chance to make a loud statement that it is the future. It fought hard, and will now have to learn a bitter lesson: every party will protect his turf with every weapon at its disposal, including INEC.
The PDP will lament that others are fast waking up to its old tricks. Its candidate may have to come to terms with the bitter truth that he will be sacrificed to the imperatives of limiting the spread of the APC, and striking unstable alliances between factions of the APGA and Jonathan’s PDP.
INEC will be promising to improve its standards, but very few people will believe it, although most Nigerians will hope it can.
Depending on how the damaging fights within the PDP play out, the 2015 elections could represent the tipping point for the nation.
If the split in the PDP boosts the opposition APC, Jonathan’s presidential ambitions may have to be realised or damaged on the back of massive security challenges and a near-total loss of credibility by INEC.
If the PDP heals itself, it will face massive opposition in most parts of the North and South West, and bitter competition will deprive elections of any semblance of credibility.
It is a sobering thought that only INEC will conduct all these elections.
The political context of the elections will of course substantially determine their credibility. The more bitter the campaigns and the higher the stakes in terms of political ambitions, the more INEC will be compromised.
Now it is high time to pray that INEC will find the will and the capacity to conduct credible elections in 2015. While the nation prays, INEC needs to undertake a very painful soul search: the entire survival of a democratic Nigeria depends on it.
Vanguard
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