The off-cycle elections in Kogi, Imo and Bayelsa states have come and gone; the INEC has announced the winners and given them their certificates of return. Even though there are disputes here and there by the losers, it does appear that the elections were largely free and fair and violence-free. No human enterprise is perfect so there was evidence of imperfection in the elections but the elections were better organised than the one of February 25 this year. The reasons are easy to see. There were only 5.4 million voters to deal with, not 87 million that we had in February. There were only 10,470 Polling Units, not 176,846 that we had in February. INEC had to deploy 27 Resident Electoral Commissioners and 14 National Commissioners for the elections in the three states to support the staff on the ground. The security agencies also had the opportunity of sending as many security personnel as they wanted to police the elections this time without any big gap in other areas of security enforcement.
A few days before the elections, there was an intense drama in Imo State. The NLC President Mr. Joe Ajaero led a group of labour personnel on a mission to demonstrate against the alleged failure of the State Governor, Senator Hope Uzodimma to pay 20 months salaries that he was allegedly owing the workers. Ajaero was severely brutalized by some thugs allegedly hired for that purpose by the State government. The State Governor denied owing anyone any money.
Since he denied owing staff salaries one expected the NLC in Imo State to contradict him but they didn’t which meant that the Governor probably said the truth. He even said that he would be paying the 13th month salary to the staff for their Christmas enjoyment. You can call that month’s salary Uzodimber. Also, if the Governor was owing salaries for so many months there is the likelihood that the workers and their relations would have voted against him. Instead, they gave him 540,000 votes while the PDP candidate Mr. Samuel Anyanwu got 71,500 votes and Mr. Athan Achonu of LP earned 64,000 votes. After Uzodimma’s victory was announced large groups of Imo workers trooped down to the State House to celebrate his victory. He must be doing something right that gladdened the hearts of Imolites. Even where the NLC announced a nationwide strike for November 14, Imo workers refused to participate in the strike. They simply continued to work as if they were giving the Governor a second vote of confidence. Perhaps it is the development strides that he has made in the last four years that won him the election or it might be his promise to rotate power to the numerically strong Owerri Zone after his tenure that led them into voting for him or it might be the fact that Imo, an oil producing State, had decided that it would be a better idea to hang out with those who wield the federal might, rather than stay in the opposition. For some people being in the centre is a big deal in the sense that the State can get some goodies from under the table. For Uzodimma this victory offers him a high level of excitement, a strong feeling of triumphalism because of the hurdles that he had to scale over to arrive at the victory podium.
In the Kogi election the major candidates were Mr. Ahmed Usman Ododo of the APC, Mr. Murtala Ajaka of the SDP and Mr. Dino Melaye of the PDP. Ododo won overwhelmingly with 446,237 votes while Ajaka and Melaye got 259,052 and 46,362 respectively. Ododo won massively in his Kogi Central Senatorial District as well as in Kogi West, both of which gave him the edge over the other candidates. Some analysis also think that Bello’s influence may have also contributed to giving Ododo the nod of many voters.
In Bayelsa State the sitting Governor Mr. Duoye Diri of the PDP won with 175,000 votes to 110,000 scored by a former Governor of the State, Mr. Timipre Silva. Silva has rejected the results which he claimed was a product of massive irregularities. There are a number of factors why Diri won: incumbency being an important factor even though he belongs to an opposition party. Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, a former Governor of the State and a former President of the country campaigned vigorously for Diri in the State. Jonathan is much respected as a statesman since he accepted defeat in the 2015 Presidential election and he is a toast of the global community. There was no evidence that President Bola Tinubu made any attempt to use federal might to win Bayelsa for the APC. He did not go to campaign for the party there; he meanly handed over the party’s flag to Silva and the other two APC candidates. This non-interference by the President in the election worked in Diri’s favour.
Former Vice President and Presidential candidate of the PDP Mr. Atiku Abubakar congratulated Diri for his victory which he said he won “against all odds” He did not say what the odds were. When he received the Executive Committee of the Inter-Party Advisory Committee Nigeria, Atiku advocated for a merger of the opposition parties to present a formidable front against the ruling party in future elections to avoid having a one party State. He warned: “If we don’t come together to challenge what the ruling party is trying to create our democracy will suffer for it and the consequences of it will affect generations yet unborn.”
Atiku’s call for a merger of the opposition parties is a reflection of the pain that division has inflicted on the PDP since the election of 2019. The PDP has been splintered since then with Peter Obi who was Atiku’s running mate in 2019 deserting him and PDP pitching tent with the Labour Party (LP). Dr. Musa Kwankwaso, former Governor of Kano State and member of PDP also left the party and formed the NNPP which is now making waves in the North West. That departure also created a gaping hole in the party. To compound the situation further for the party five of its Governors called G5 gave the party and Atiku hell some months to the elections. This friendly five complicated the problems of the party and led to its loss of the recent elections. That Atiku is calling for a merger of the opposition parties now is an unspoken admission that he actually lost the February 25 elections and that future elections will be difficult without the opposition parties coming together to face the ruling party.
In Nigeria any ruling party is always at an advantage because politicians are always willing and ready to join the ruling party for the purpose of benefiting from stomach infrastructure Nigerian politics is largely a stomach officer; That is the only known ideology in our politics.
Atiku’s suggestion of a merger is good for Nigeria’s democracy. We now have 18 parties that are just hopeless, hapless and helpless husband and wife parties. They are simply barren and unproductive and can offer nothing tangible for the development of our democracy. We need not more than three strong parties. If Tinubu and co had not cobbled together four parties to form the APC, PDP would have continued to be the only dominant and reigning party today. For us to grow our democracy into a vibrant one we need to have a strong opposition party that can effectively challenge the ruling party in future elections. But will the two other parties LP and NNPP want to merger with the PDP, a party they ran away from. It is like returning to your vomit. Mr. Peter Obi has said he is not interested. The truth is that Nigerians do not like mergers, Whether in politics or in business. We prefer to go it alone. That is sad.
The off-cycle elections in the three States suffered from voter apathy. The reasons are not far to seek. Many Nigerians think that INEC is incompetent and that going out to vote is a waste of their time because the votes may not count. This is an exaggeration. The votes count in most of our elections. People tend to exaggerate on the deficiencies which occur in the election process. These deficiencies are largely caused by politicians and some INEC officials who collude with them. Some voters do multiple registration and INEC is able with the use of modern technology, to detect these multiple registrations and delete them. So the figure of actual and real voters comes down during voting. The other reason for low turn-out is that some voters are afraid to go out to vote for fear of violence on election day. Some do not have money with which to transport themselves to and from polling stations. Some people have lost trust in government at various levels because of the potent evidence of corruption in government. They therefore cynically believe that whether they vote or not there will be no difference in the quality of leadership or governance.
Losers in the elections in the three states have all rejected the results, while the winners have praised INEC for doing a good job. To them, our democracy is flourishing, it has become the custom, the norm in our society, for losers to reject election results. Some of them take the matter to court, go through all the courts and when they lose in the last court they still refuse to accept the outcome. When they win, then INEC is efficient and should be allowed to conduct elections forever. When they lose, then INEC has been compromised, it is incompetent and does not deserve to conduct even Village Council elections. The truth is that we are simply bad losers. Jonathan set an example for us in 2015 by accepting defeat and congratulating Mr. Muhammadu Buhari. We are not ready to follow in his footsteps. In Liberia, the sitting President, Mr. George Weah, has just been defeated by opposition politician, Mr. Joseph Boakai, with a very thin margin. Weah has congratulated the man who has been declared the winner. The trouble here is that we take elections as a do-or-die affair out of our desperation to occupy whichever office we want by hook or crook. I have no idea how we can be cured of that desperation. Do you?