Abia North rerun election: Matters arising

With only 195 votes difference between the two leading contestants – Kalu and Ohuabunwa – and with elections cancelled in many wards, the Returning Officer had initially decided to await the conduct of supplementary elections in the wards where elections were cancelled before announcing a substantive winner. He, however, strangely upturned his position just a few hours later at the INEC office in the state capital, Umuahia, and gave the victory to Ohuabunwa. Some reports on the poll said he capitulated to pressure from PDP members to go ahead and announce their candidate as the winner.

This volte -face by INEC has been generating ripples among stakeholders in the senatorial zone and all lovers of democracy in the country.  A number of legal practitioners have also expressed the view that when a substantial number of votes cast in an election are cancelled, common sense and the demand for fairness dictate that the election should be cancelled and a new one fixed for another day. This is more so as the number of votes cancelled in the affected wards are much more than the difference between the votes of the two leading contestants.  They also dismissed the reported claim by INEC that a supplementary election is not legally approved in a rerun election, and described the idea as having no basis in Nigeria’s laws. The widespread legal   opinion on the matter is that a rerun election such as the one in Abia North is of the same status as the initial election and it allows for supplementary polls in areas where they are deemed necessary. Their submission is that it is reprehensible for INEC to cancel elections in so many wards in a district election and still go ahead to declare a winner, thereby disenfranchising many voters.

The INEC’s tardy handling of the poll results is raising questions on its neutrality in this matter. The rerun election was reportedly marred in some wards by violence, use of security agents to intimidate voters by an unnamed senator, inducement of voters with money and falsification of results at the collation point, which are a good enough justification for the conduct of supplementary elections in the affected areas. But sadly, the decision to cancel the votes from these areas has deprived the voters in the wards the right to participate in the election of their representative in the Senate.

The battle for the Abia North senatorial seat has been a controversial and hotly contested one. The returning officer for the initial election held on March 28, 2015, Dr. Ihekweaba Chukwugoziem, had stoutly refused   to declare the result of the poll at Ohafia Local Government headquarters, because of what he described as the falsification, mutilation and inflation of the election figures in favour of the PDP candidate. The INEC at the state capital Umuahia, however, strangely appointed another Returning Officer, to declare Ohuabunwa the winner.

Dr. Orji Kalu, on the basis of the mutilated results on which Ohuabunwa was declared winner, headed to the Elections Petitions Tribunal, and later to the Court of Appeal, which nullified Ohuabunwa’s election and ordered a rerun, which held last Saturday.

The expectations of the people that the rerun poll would, however, be fair and free of manipulation this time, however, collapsed as the exercise was marred by irregularities which led to the initial cancellation of the elections in some wards.

Under the circumstance, what was expected of INEC, as an impartial umpire, was to uphold its initial order for supplementary elections, but it chose to reverse itself, thereby holding itself up for questioning.

The decision of INEC to overlook the irregularities that led to its initial order for supplementary elections is a mockery of the electoral process. It led to a situation in which an election was declared inconclusive in the morning, and ruled as conclusive, in the afternoon.

This scenario does not give confidence to the people on the fairness of INEC on this matter. The impression that has, wittingly or unwittingly, been created is that something untoward might have happened to make the agency change its mind.

The explanation by INEC that a winner must always emerge in a rerun election is not good enough. The course of justice can only be served when the choice of all the voters in an election is respected, not when voters in some wards are disenfranchised and their votes made irrelevant to the process.Fairness demands that the supplementary elections earlier ordered should have been allowed to hold, and the voters in the affected wards not shut out of the process for the election of their representative in the Senate.

If the objective of democracy is about the right of the people to choose their representatives in the government, that objective cannot be said to have been achieved when so many voters are advertently shut out of the electoral process through violence, inducement of voters,   willful manipulation of electoral results and the failure of INEC to stand by its decision.