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INEC has reached a dead-end, now a danger to Nigerian democracy – Nwankwo
On Monday, Clement Nwankwo, foremost Nigerian constitutional lawyer and Founding Convener of the Civil Society Monitoring Situation Room, was a guest of Prime Time, a current affairs programme on Arise News Television. There, he painted the picture of the stark reality of Nigeria’s parlous electoral system.
Using the outcomes of the offseason elections that took place in Bayelsa, Kogi and Imo States, to assess the situation, the human rights activists, came to the conclusion that the nation’s electoral process has come to a dead-end and therefore could not carry it beyond this stage, not to talk about the general election in 2027. What would result would not be elections, but chaos. Excerpts:
What is your verdict on the offseason elections in Bayelsa, Kogi and Imo?
The Situation Room has issued a statement on these elections. The verdict is unequivocal, which is it was a huge disappointment. We had thought that given the disappointments in the 2023 general elections that there would been some efforts by INEC to do a better job, but apparently, this is a worse job and for some of us it is extremely sad to see elections conducted this way in this country.
It brings to question how this democracy will continue and how this democracy will thrive if we cannot give citizens the option of deciding who rules them. The electoral system in this country has collapsed and we have to go back to the drawing board. Certainly we cannot build anything to what is now. The system has been captured and it is delivering incredibly sad results, not in terms of who wins or who doesn’t win, but in terms of the process, in terms of the abuses of the process, in terms of citizens’ lack of confidence in elections as a way of running a referendum on those who have ruled them or given a chance for people to take over.
The country has lost its electoral system and we certainly can only revive it if citizens ask the right questions and make the demands that should be made. When you look at the elections and look at the facts before the elections, those who were given responsibilities for the running of the elections, have been seen to be people who have been compromised, where partisan political elements have been appointed into the electoral commission, where half of the electoral commission and officials of the electoral commission have basically allocated themselves to serve political interests, then I think where we are today is a very sad one and this country’s democracy cannot go any further with the kind of election administration system that we have in place today.
But what do you think are responsible? Is it about bread and butter, poverty, corruption, violence, what are the specifics at the heart of this election?
Certainly, bread and butter issues relate to who can halt the slide in which the country is descending into. Certainly when you look at people’s condition, you see a worse trend previously and it doesn’t look like there is anything in the horizon that promises a break from the fall. So, I think for people, it is a major issue. But beyond that is that those who are seeking political power are taking advantage of the huge poverty that has descended on the land and now basically taking advantage of the situation – buying elections, paying people off to vote for them – vote-buying is at an unmitigated proportion. So, it’s like people struggle so hard to purchase the election. They struggle so hard to purchase the election. They struggle so hard when they purchase the election, to use the proceeds of being in office to buy the next election.
So, in my view, is that perhaps we’ve come to a dead-end with the present electoral system and we must ask ourselves what lies ahead.
Is it then a question of incumbency powers because the incumbents won in all the states?
The incumbents won in all the three states which is really not unexpected in normal electoral system, but we don’t have evidence that people voted freely. You set up a process, you decide that people go to vote, you decide election results are calculated, are tabulated, collated at the polling units and then escalated to the different levels of collation, you expect that at the immediate primary unit, you have the polling unit, that immediately the results are counted, the result sheets are uploaded and people can see that real-time. But in this election, we saw results being ready before the election.
We are doing analysis of what has been uploaded and there is a huge discrepancy in what has been uploaded to the IReV. The whole idea of the IReV is that the IReV was supposed to be real-life uploading of results. But now, there is a huge question about the efficiency of the IReV. It is now a tool to upload whatever you feel – not real-time, not real results. So, there is a major question of where we are with elections in this country.
It’s amazing when politicians who are supposed to protect the integrity of these elections and the values of this country, have become the ones who have infiltrated this country and have decimated every institution in it, not the least the ones that have to do with elections. Is that an exaggeration or a fair assessment of how things are?
It’s certainly not an exaggeration. You can see that with what has played out in the elections, you can see that in what has played out with the reports of the election observers. The media, thankfully have been very beautiful in putting out these reports in real time. Everything sacred have been desecrated by the politicians and those given responsibility to uphold their sacredness.
That is the point that I make. If all of these institutions, if the politicians have found a way of manipulating it, if so much fund is taken out of the public treasury to buy election results – and that’s why you’ll see an incumbent would win because they have access to unparalleled resources – whether an incumbent from an opposition party, an incumbent from the ruling party, it’s the same trait.
So how can Nigeria get out of this explosion of irregularities, corruption and violence in elections?
I think in 2007 when an incredibly horrible election was conducted in this country, when President Yar’Adua of blessed memory came into office, he came into office and said, I’m really sorry Nigerians, this election result that brought me into office, lack credibility, now let us see how we can pull ourselves from where we were. That was how the election reform committee was set up, headed by Justice Muhammed Lawal Uwais, which had so many members including Prof. Attahiru Jega, who later became the chairman of the electoral commission.
That President understood what went wrong, admitted it and called people to a conversation. So, that was one way and I think that we in the civil society, we are citizens of this country, we must raise our voices to say that these electoral system has collapsed. We can’t trust those you have appointed into office. You have appointed your political acolytes and put them into the management of elections. So, we don’t trust the electoral system anymore. We don’t trust the officials, we don’t trust the commission and we don’t trust that this process will help us save our democracy.
To save this democracy, this administration must come to the realization that citizens have no more confidence.
But do you detect the will in President Bola Tinubu towards cleaning up the electoral process? If he does, can he or anyone fix such an overwhelmingly corrupt system?
There were recent nominations of state Resident Electoral Commissioners. And these were approved within a few minutes by the plenary at the National Assembly. Now, those nominations, several of them should never have been made because of the political taints of some of those who were in that list. For me, that’s a very sad signal.
But whether the administration likes it or not, whether the President likes it or not, I think it is important that he listens to what Nigerians are saying, which is that this system has failed. If this system has failed and you still have a couple of offseason elections, about four or five, leading up to 2027, it is only going to get worse and in 2027, I don’t know whether it can be called elections. It certainly won’t be if this trajectory continues.
At that stage, it will become clear even to the President that this country’s democracy is on its tatters and will drop and collapse, because certainly what we have today, cannot take us to the next general elections.
So, outside the Justice Uwais recommendations, what other steps do you recommend to maintain the sanctity of the elections?
I think there have been several recommendations made. One is with the electoral commission itself. I think what we have today as electoral commission needs to be set aside in a legal way. The National Assembly needs to be brought into this conversation and the President needs to go back to several of the reports and set up a committee that has people, stakeholders who will sit down and decide which aspects of these recommendations need now to be implemented.
The most important is the method of the appointment of the election management team. I think we have to go back to the drawing board to start this process. I do not think that the electoral management team as it exists today can take this country to the next election. By this I mean INEC. We need to have a new system that creates a new electoral commission, that creates a new election management team and follows the process that has been outlined in various recommendations that have been made, especially in the Uwais Committee reports that have indicated how you can appoint the INEC chairman, how you can appoint INEC National Commissioners.
Indeed, we have to back to the question of whether indeed we need Resident Electoral Commissioners, because when governors send names of nominees to be appointed RECs or where political parties send names, what it does is destroy the system. That’s why you have the Resident Electoral Commissioner acting with arbitrariness without responsibility and without accountability.
We have to do this even before the next off-circle elections. Certainly we can’t go on with this king of electoral management body and we can’t go on with this kind of abused electoral process. This democracy will collapse very soon if we don’t check the type of electoral management system we have in this country, because citizens have lost faith totally in elections in this country.
But are those policies in themselves going to be enough or will government have to go back to social policies, because we know that corruption and electoral malpractices thrive when there is poverty?
But you know you cannot solve poverty quite quickly but you can fix the election system quite quickly. When people understand that they can vote without the process being abused, then you begin to see better electoral officials respond to citizens’ demands. But if you blame the abuses entirely on citizens and refuse to do what we need to do in terms of policy changes, in terms of legal changes in terms of constitutional changes, then we would have to pray that this democracy survives.
What optimistic note can you sound from your observation and analysis of this election?
I think it is difficult to be very optimistic about this election. I think what surprised a few people even though there was a low turnout, what surprised quite a lot of people is that the turnout was as much as it was even though it was low, which means that citizens still have some interest. There are still people saying, look, we could still have confidence in elections if we fix it. So, in some ways, people have not totally given up on the electoral system. But it won’t go on for too long. In fact, it won’t go on till 2027. It won’t.
These points that you made, which are very poignant, which are very important and very pointed remarks, were they incorporated in the situation room report in stark terms?
It is incorporated in very stark terms. The Situation Room report today during a press conference addressed by the Convener Yinousa Y’Au, which basically made the point that these elections represent a huge disappointment and this country cannot continue on this trajectory. That’s very clear.
Dele Farotimi, lawyer and human rights activist, might soon be stepping out of the Ado Ekiti Prison, where has been detained since Wednesday last week on the orders of Abayomi Adeosun, the Presiding Magistrate, at the Chief Magistrate Court in Ado Ekiti, a day before the scheduled date for the verdict on his bail application.
Details are still sketchy, but reports say that the lawyer, who was arrested in his office on Tuesday last week and taken to Ekiti State to face criminal defamation charges against Afe Babolola (SAN) foremost lawyer and educationist, was granted bail by a magistrate court in Ekiti, a day earlier than the December 10 date the court had set to determine on his bail application.
Very little is known about how the sudden turn of events, in the matter which has seized much of the public space since the development in the defamation case, over a book titled: Nigeria and its Criminal Justice System, in which he alleged that the legal luminary corrupted the Supreme Court to procure a fraudulent judgement in the service of his clients – a publication that took the first position as Best Seller on Amazon, hours after his arrest and remand.
The twist in the story was broken by Omoyele Sowore, presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), who also broke that of his arrest, using the same X platform he employed last week to announce the latest development on Monday, where Farotimi, was reportedly granted N50m bail with a surety in the same amount, who must provide landed property as collateral. The case has been adjourned to 29 January 2025.
Sowore, himself a popular activist, friend and ally of Farotimi, leader of the Obidient Movement, and spokesman of Peter Obi, the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate in the 2023 election, wrote: “The first hurdle was crossed. #DeleFarotimi was granted bail of N50 million surety in the like sum with someone with landed property. The case was adjourned to January 29, 2025.”
The development is coming on the heels of what could have been a major confrontation based on the demand by a group of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) for his immediate release from incarceration or be prepared to be met with heavy demonstrations, with the police in the state, serving notice that no such event would be entertained, as it could lead to insecurity.
Even with the police threat in which they warned parents and guardians to advise their wards to shun any act that is inimical to the peace and security of the State, as anyone who ran afoul of the directive would be dealt with in accordance with the law, the CSOs, insisted at the weekend that the protests would go ahead, not only in Ekiti, but across many cities including London.
Sunday Abutu, spokesman of the Ekiti State Police Comman, who conveyed the position of the command, had said on Friday: “The Command, under the leadership of CP Akinwale Kunle Adeniran, is assuring everyone of adequate security during and after this Ember months period while seeking for more support, collaboration and obedience to law and order.
“In view of this, the Command, to sustain the peace, parents and guardians are therefore implored to advise their wards to shun any act that is inimical to the peace and security of the State, as anyone who runs foul of this directive will be dealt with in accordance with the law.”
Regardless, the activists say they are not deterred and even extended their reach to Lagos, Abuja and the United Kingdom to draw global attention to what they termed the illegal arrest, detention and trial of Farotimi.
Apparently buoyed by the groundswell of condemnations from individuals and groups including the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), which in its initial reaction, argued that the offence for which Farorimi was arrested had been decriminalised under the Criminal Law of Lagos State 2011, and repealed by the Supreme Court in a case between Aviomoh v. Commissioner of Police & Anor (2021) in 2021, the activists vowed to press on with Tuesday’s action.
Omoyele Sowore, presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), who is among the leaders spearheading the demonstration, gave a lowdown on the plan, indicating that many Nigerians home and abroad had keyed into the event.
Using his X platform, he gave details of the protest, saying the point of convergence in Abuja would be the Ministry of Justice and Federal High Court, while the convergence point for the Ekiti edition would be the Police Headquarters Ado-Ekiti.
Regarding other locations, Sowore, who is also the publisher of SaharaReporters, an online newspaper, said the convergence point in Lagos would be the Afe Babalola Chambers at Emmanuel House, Plot 1, Block 4, CMD/Jubilee Road, Magodo, while that of the UK would be King’s College London.
Responding to the police threat, he wrote: “The @PoliceNG can’t ban protests anywhere; we are getting loads of Nigerian citizens to shut down Ado-Ekiti on December 10, 2024, from 7 am. Buses are ready for those coming from out of state.
#FreeDeleFarotimiNow 1. Abuja convergence: Ministry of Justice and Federal High Court, Abuja 2. Ekiti parapo convergence: Police Headquarters Ado-Ekiti 3. Lagos convergence: Afe Babalola Chambers, Lagos Address: Emmanuel House, Plot 1, Block 4, CMD/Jubilee Road, Magodo GRA, Lagos 4. London UK CONVERGENCE: King’s College London Address: Strand, London, WC2R 2LS global online and offline revolt against the nigerian judiciary! Date: December 10, 2024. Time: 7 AM West African Time.”
Farotimi’s troubles were linked to his book titled: Nigeria and its Criminal Justice System, in which alleged that the legal luminary corrupted the Supreme Court to procure a fraudulent judgement in the service of his clients – a publication that took the first position as Best Seller on Amazon, hours after his arrest and remand.
The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, is believed to have fled the country his family has ruled over for 50 years as rebels said they had captured the capital after a lightning advance completed in just under two weeks.
Two senior Syrian officers told Reuters that Assad had fled Damascus, his destination unknown. The report could not be independently verified.
The senior Emirati diplomat Anwar Gargash declined to say whether Assad was fleeing to the United Arab Emirates.
“When people ask where is Bashar al-Assad going to, I say, you know, when you really look at this, this is really at the end of the day a footnote in history,” he told reporters at a conference in Bahrain.
The Syrian leader had been publicly absent as Islamist militant insurgents spearheaded a sweeping offensive that began in a small enclave in north-western Syria, and within 11 days appeared to have toppled Assad’s rule.
In their first announcement on state television following the offensive that took the world by surprise, rebels said they had ended Assad’s 24-year authoritarian rule.
A group of people were shown at the state television news studio, with one reading a statement from the “Damascus conquest operations room” announcing “the liberation of the city of Damascus and the fall of the tyrant Bashar al-Assad and the release of all the unjustly detained from the regime prisons”, calling on fighters and citizens to safeguard the “property of the free Syrian state”.
Syria’s army command notified officers on Sunday that Assad’s regime had ended, a Syrian officer who was informed of the move told Reuters. But the Syrian army later said it was continuing operations against “terrorist groups” in the towns of Hama and Homs and Deraa countryside.
Rebels said they had freed prisoners from Damascus’s notorious Sednaya prison, regarded as a symbol of the Assad regime’s brutality, while video from Damascus showed a man climbing on top of a hospital sign to tear down a poster of Assad’s face. In the capital’s central square, people climbed on top of tanks and cheered as they trampled on a toppled statue of Assad’s father, Hafez, AFPTV images showed.
In Syria’s second city of Aleppo, claimed by insurgent forces just one week before, celebratory singing broadcast from the speakers of mosques was interspersed with the sound of ululating and cheering ringing out across the rooftops.
The Assad family have ruled Syria since 1971 when Hafez al-Assad seized power in a military coup, before his son Bashar inherited the presidency in 2000. Their control of the country was enforced through a vast security state, crushing dissent through a broad network of detention centres and government surveillance.
Bashar al-Assad suppressed a popular uprising against him in 2011, when Syrians first took to the streets of major cities to demand his overthrow. What began as peaceful demonstrations later spilled over into a civil war that is estimated to have killed more than 300,000 people in 10 years of fighting.
Assad willingly turned the full might of the state on his own people in order to maintain control, including pummelling the civilian population with airstrikes and using chemical weapons including the deadly nerve agent sarin.
“Today is the end of 54 years of the reign of Assad family in Syria. This is the only regime I knew all of my life,” said doctor Zaher Sahloul, a Syrian-American physician who organised medical missions into Syria, including hospitals in Aleppo that were targeted by Syrian and Russian airstrikes.
“I don’t cry often in my adult life but today I did. It has been 14 long years of horror. This is our Berlin Wall moment,” he said.
Intervention from Russia and Iran had allowed Assad to survive almost 14 years of unrest and civil strife, leaving him in charge of a fractured state. His rule over Syria had appeared inevitable, until an insurgent advance led by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham began to seize control of major towns along a highway leading to Damascus.
As the insurgency drew closer along the highway that leads to the capital, rebel groups across southern Syria took control of a swath of towns south of Damascus. Armed opposition groups closed in on the capital from three directions as Syrian army officers retreated, or fled. Video from Damascus showed soldiers rapidly changing into civilian clothes on the streets of the capital before dispersing.
The prime minister, Mohammed Ghazi Jalali, said in a video statement that the government was ready to “extend its hand” to the opposition, offering to work with a transitional government.
“I am in my house and I have not left, and this is because of my belonging to this country,” Jalili said, without addressing Assad’s whereabouts.
Promising a “new Syria” in their own statement, the insurgents said: “We turn the page on the dark past, and open a new horizon for the future.”
As armed rebels swept cities across the country, they flung open detention facilities where rights groups estimated that at least 100,000 people were considered missing or forcibly disappeared since 2011 at the hands of the state.
This included the Sednaya military prison, a facility notorious as the site of particularly brutal and humiliating methods of torture. Video circulating online showed tens of people streaming into the streets around the facility, running into the night.
The exiled Syrian human rights defender Ranim Badenjki of the Syria Campaign said she was crying tears of joy at the news of Assad’s departure, as “it’s all too good to be true”.
“We always thought that Assad was lucky, supported by strong allies, and world leaders rushing to shake hands with him. But I’m happy to see that Syrians themselves made this dream come true,” she said.
“I am thinking of everyone we lost in recent years, killed for protesting or writing a post on social media. I think of the people tortured to death because they provided medicine or help to people in need. I think of my grandpa who was tortured by Hafez al-Assad,” she said.
Badenjki said her joy was also tinged with sorrow, fearful to learn the fate of some of the people missing or potentially lost in Syria’s labyrinthine detention facilities.
“I want to be happy – but I also want to see my friend’s father alive. He was forcibly disappeared by the regime 11 years ago. I want to know he is still alive and that he can be released. I want to know the fate of my missing cousin.”
Moayad Hokan, a Syrian analyst living in exile, said the events of the past day were “unbelievable.”
“Just a few months ago all of us were operating under the assumption that this day would never come,” he said. “Every time I say to myself the words the Assad regime has fallen, I still can’t really believe it.”
Culled from The Guardian
News
BREKING: Ghana’s ruling party loses again! Dramani bounces back as President *Ruling party loses again
John Dramani Mahama on Ghanaian President from 24 July 2012 to 7 January 2017, has bounced back to power eight years after losing power, defeating Mahamudu Bawumia, incumbent Vice President, who ran as candidate of New Patriotic Party (NPP), currently in power in the West African country.
Bawumia conceded defeat in a speech delivered on Sunday, where he acknowledged that internal data from his party indicated the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) had secured victory in both the presidential and parliamentary polls.
“Let me say that the data from our own internal collation of the election results indicate that former President John Dramani Mahama has won the presidential election decisively. The NDC has also won the parliamentary election. Even though we await the final collation of a number of seats, I believe ultimately these will not change the outcome.
“I am making this concession speech before the official announcement by the electoral commission to avoid further tension and preserve the peace of our country. It is important that the world investor community continues to believe in the peaceful and democratic character of Ghana. I accept defeat with all humility.”
Mahama, who succeeded Attah Mills, the Ganaian President, who died in office, had in 2016, lost his re-election bid to Nana Akufo-Addo, who the late President defeated in 2008, assuming power in a sort of relay race between the two dominant parties in the country and is expected to take office as president in January 2025.
BREAKING: Farotimi freed! *Granted bail hours to Ekiti ‘mother of all protests’
BREAKING: Assad flees Syria after 24 years in office *Rebels take over poser
BREKING: Ghana’s ruling party loses again! Dramani bounces back as President *Ruling party loses again
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