The Abuja School
Being Text of Statement by Dr. Sam Amadi, Director, Abuja School of Social and Political Thought on Tuesday, September 24, 2024
Gentlemen of the Press, a few months ago I gave a speech at the IPAC public lecture on the role of the judiciary on elections in Nigeria. In that viral speech I pointed out that the only valid strategy for winning elections in Nigeria is to bribe INEC, bribe the judiciary and commandeer the security agencies.
Today, I want to warn Nigerians again that our beloved country is matching to the precipices on account of the reckless manipulations of elections which has got worse with every electoral circle since 2015. By this press conference, I want to wake from slumber political leaders across the political divides to recognize the danger that the current brazen manipulation of elections in Nigeria poses to both good governance and survival of democracy in Nigeria and take radical actions to save the country from the debilitations of flawed, rigged and manipulated elections.
In my IPAC speech, I concluded that the trinity of corrupt INEC officials, corrupt judicial officers and suborned security officials have destroyed the credibility of our election. I argued that it was INEC’s criminal refusal to follow the law that it enacted that ruined the 2003 presidential election. Right from when Justice Nsofor of the Supreme Court noted that the 2007 presidential election was a sham till today, Nigeria has been progressing on the dangerous curve of shambolic elections. This conclusion on the nature of electoral victory is a sad testimony to the degeneration of democracy in Nigeria to the extent that Nigeria is now rated as ‘an electoral autocracy’, not a democracy by the respected Verities of Democracy (V-DEM) report. It is painful to me to see how terrible Nigeria’s elections have become over the years.
The problem is Nigeria’s terrible electoral system will ensure Nigeria does not develop out of the current pervasive poverty hunger and insecurity. Today in Nigeria life is almost brutish, short and poor. It is remarkable that as electoral manipulation increases, Nigeria’s social and economic welfare worsens. The tragedy of flawed electoral system is not just about how it creates a disincentive for development and good governance. The tragedy of flawed electoral system goes as far as compromising political stability and peaceful coexistence in plural societies. Free and fair elections help to guarantee both good governance and social stability. A credible electoral system helps to prevent and mitigate conflict, while a flawed and manipulated elections easily fuel conflict and lead to breakdown of social order.
It is painful that Nigerian politicians and their ruling elites do not realise the danger that gross manipulation of electoral process poses to the stability of the country. We are surrounded in the West Africa region with concrete evidence of how flawed and manipulations have led to military coups. Coups occurred in these former democracies because political leaders grossly manipulated electoral process in a defiant and lawless struggle to take and retain political power. The same thing is happening in Nigeria. As a patriot who leads a school of social and political, it is my responsibility to alert Nigerians of the urgency of taking bold action to radically reform the electoral system in order to deaccelerate the march to state failure in the near future.
The immediate context of this press conference is the recently concluded governorship election in Edo State. I would wish we can all congratulate the winner of Edo State and move on to Ondo. But we cannot. We have to speak about the Edo governorship election and the continuing evidence of the pathetic state of elections in Nigeria and what it means for the sustenance of democratic governance in Nigeria. My statements in this press conference has nothing to do with which party won the governorship election in Edo State, or which candidate was declared winner. The only motivation for these statements is that the threat to the survival of democracy and the national project posed by the growing spate of flawed, reckless and lawless elections is getting worse by the day.
There is no doubt that the Edo governorship election conducted last Saturday did not meet the criteria of a free and fair election. The leading political parties and observer groups have slammed the conduct of the election, both in terms of logistical failure, deliberate abuse of procedure and unfair and unlawful decision-making. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has notably failed again to meet the threshold of credibility and fairness required in election management. The fact that the major party in the election, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had to announce results collected from the INEC Result Viewing (IREV) portal which is at variance with the final result declared by INEC rehash the controversies and illegalities of the 2024. Evidence coming out of Edo shows as reported by Observer groups like Yiaga Africa, Civil Society Situation Room and the Nigerian Bar Association show that many results of polling units announced at the collection centers were grossly different from the actual result uploaded to the iREV portal in real time. There hundreds of such manipulated results. The reports accused INEC’s officials and staff of these gross manipulation of the rules and guidelines for the conduct of the election.
We should note that there is no difference in effect between what happened in Edo governorship election and what happened in the February 2023 presidential election when INEC gratuitously shut down electronical transmission of results to the IREV which resulted in multiple result mutilations across the states, especially in Rivers State. This time around, in many cases, INEC official collated results different from those uploaded on the IREV. Expected both the PDP and the LP have rejected the result and accused INEC of manipulation and collation of fake results. The truth is that INEC is the reason we cannot have a free and fair election.
INEC has proved to be an irredeemably corrupt commission. Its characteristic corruption derives from the fact that it is manned mostly by members of the ruling party and agents of politicians. The partisan nature of INEC has always been a problem because of the mode of appointment of national and resident commissioners. The pathology has worsened under the current administration where cousins and political aides of political leaders have been appointed national and resident commissioners. A notable case is that of Dr. Onuoha, the cousin of Nyesom Wike, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory who is appointed as the Resident Electoral Commission in Edo. His involvement in the last Edo State governorship election has elicited a lot of complaining before and after the results. He is being fingered by the PDP as one of those who rigged the election for APC, the party that Wike supports in the election.
Credible allegations against INEC has become a dangerous pattern since 2015. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has continued to fail to organize free and fair election. At every electoral circle, its top officials will be credibly accused of manipulating results of election. Today, INEC has lost credibility, and according to the Afrobarometer, more than 75% of Nigerians do not trust the integrity and credibility of the commission. With the exception of 2015 for a specific reason, INEC has largely rigged elections in favour of ruling whether the party is PDP or APC. In 2007, President Yaradua was the beneficiary of this electoral manipulation. After escaping a 5-4 Supreme Court decision, President Yaradua admitted that his election was grossly flawed and commissioned Nigeria’s leading jurists, scholars and professional leaders under the leadership of the former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Uwais, to recommendation radical reform of the electoral system to guarantee free and fair elections. The highpoint of the recommendation is the reconstitution of the election management agency to become truly independent. Uwais Committee recommended that the President should no long appoint members of the electoral commission. The electoral commissioners should be appointed through a non-partisan and non-political method that does not authorise the President to appoint men and women who will supervise his re-election.
unfortunately, the recommendation to stop partisan appointment of election commissioners was not enacted into the electoral law. This failure has been the reason Nigerian elections have continued to flawed and shambolic. INEC has remained biased and partial to the ruling party, whether PDP or APC because Presidents appoint political associates or sympathisers to rig elections for the ruling party.
Since 2023, with the pathetic performance of INEC in the presidential election, one expected that the opposition parties will make the implementation of Uwais recommendation on the restructuring of INEC an urgent and pressing need that must precede any further election. It is surprising that a dysfunctional INEC is expected to conduct free and fair election. It is more surprising and annoying that instead of leading opposition leaders working hard to implement the Uwais report on reconstituting INEC, they are busy scrambling for how to be candidates for the 2027 election.
The outrage about the conduct of the Edo governorship election illustrates the extreme urgency of disbanding INEC and reconstituting it in line with the Uwais recommendation. How to do so is easy. All that is needed is for opposition parties to mobilize to make the amendment of the constitution to remove the power of the president to appoint INEC officials a priority and a condition for further participation in national election.
It should be noted that the Electoral Act 2023 is a good law and contains provisions that can guarantee free and fair election. Electoral reform in Nigeria is not necessarily about amending the electoral act. Again, there are enough rules in the constitution and the other laws to ensure free and fair election. The missing fundamental for free and fair election in Nigeria is the human element. What is missing is a commission appointed in a manner to guarantee its independence from control of politicians. The Uwais Report provides the way to solve the human problem by establishing an electoral commission made up of representatives of parties and professional association and executive members appointed through a competitive process managed by a body like the Nigerian Judicial Commission.
It is now time to terminate the life of the current INEC and constitute a new INEC according to the Uwais report. This requires simple steps.
First, amend the Constitution to remove the power of the president to appoint INEC members and replace it with competitive recruitment through the National Judicial Council. Also, include representatives of NLC, NBA, and MMA, etc
split INEC into three bodies, namely, (1) Party Registration and Management Commission, to regulate political parties, (2) Electoral Crimes Commission, to prosecute electoral offences, and (3) independent electoral management commission, to conduct elections.
The existing staff of INEC will be distributed to the agencies spined off from the old INEC. The tenure of existing INEC commissioners will come to an end through constitutional abrogation. This constitutional change can complete in less than a year to allow the new INEC to commence the process of conducting a truly free and fair election.
By constituting a non-partisan and representative electoral management body as recommended by the Uwais committee, we remove the cancer that has eaten into the prospect for free and fair elections in Nigeria. Disbanding INEC and reconstituting it according to the recommendations of the Uwais Committee is the low-hanging fruit in the reform of the electoral system to guarantee good governance and survival of democracy.
The Abuja is worried that Nigeria today is more politically divided, politically unstable, insecure and poorer than it has been at any time. If we were able to survive grossly flawed elections in the past, we cannot survive at this time that we are very weak and unstable. We are now a vulnerable people who need to be wiser and cautious. But out political leadership across political parties are reckless and insensitive and may not restrain themselves from desperate fight for political power.
The Abuja School is worried that the Nigerian political class continues to chase shadow in the name of electoral reform, leaving the substance. The substance is restructuring INEC to become an independent, non-partisan electoral manager. Template to use to do this is readily available in the Uwais Committee report.
We call on all political leaders across all political platforms, especially opposition legislators to come together to immediate propose the amendment of the constitution to recreate the INEC in the light of the Uwais Committee report. These legislators should be supported by civil society organization, the international development partners and religious and cultural leaders to make this amendment an important matter of national security.
In the days ahead, the Abuja School will develop a national action plan on radical electoral reform, and undertake consultative meetings with political, religious and cultural leaders on how to create an electoral management body that can guarantee free and fair elections and save our democracy and our country severe danger.