EDITORIAL: 2023 Polls: Containing escalating electoral violence

Alarm bells have started ringing over the recent spate of violence in the country ahead of the 2023 general elections. The situation was so alarming that Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the National Security Adviser (NSA) and other stakeholders, gathered hard last week to review it. INEC Chairman Mahmood Yakubu called on security agencies to act swiftly to arrest and prosecute perpetrators of election-related violence in accordance with the law and to strengthen security around election personnel and infrastructure. The peddlers of violence are toxins in Nigeria’s electoral system who can no longer be treated as petty criminals.

Shockingly, within a month – from October 8 to November 9, a total of 52 acts of election-related violence were recorded in 22 states. The NSA, Babagana Monguno, who made the announcement at a meeting of the Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Electoral Security (ICCES), described the development as a “bad sign”. He noted that some people, whom he described as evil, appear determined to disrupt the 2023 elections. ICCES’s speedy collection in Abeokuta, Ogun State resulted in the burning down of the INEC office, which destroyed 65,900 uncollected Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs), eight power generators, 904 ballot boxes, among others. A similar attack on INEC office in Osun State took place earlier.

A fortnight ago, the campaign caravan of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar was attacked in Maiduguri, Borno State. A similar fate befell the party in Kaduna State earlier. In October, supporters of the Labor Party were attacked during a rally in Nasarawa state, and some of them were physically harmed.

Reports of candidates being denied the use of public spaces such as stadiums for campaigning, town halls for meetings, destruction of campaign posters, defacement of posters are abundantly evidenced. In Oyigbo, Rivers State, miscreants prevented Social Democratic Party (SDP) governorship candidate Magnus Abek from using a Town Hall he built as a constituency project while in the Senate for a meeting.

With the election still three months away and the rate at which these nefarious behaviors are occurring, the 52 reported cases may be rehearsals for bigger problems that may pass. The actual voting will take place between February and March next year. Election periods in Nigeria have become a season for crooks to go for the highest bids. Coupled with proliferation of arms and ammunition, indiscriminate and mindless killings of hapless citizens by bandits across the country, attacks on the electoral process by outlaws should be a source of concern to all concerned. Before now, some centrifugal forces opposed the conduct of the 2023 elections and emphasized this by suspending the registration of voters, along with killing and burning INEC offices as indicated in the April incident in Imo State. The commission’s offices in several other states were also destroyed earlier.

Now that these voter rogues have exposed their fingers, the only thing left is for the Federal Government to unleash its might along with the NSA threat issued by President Muhammadu Buhari, which is: “As long as you decide to disrupt the electoral process, the law enforcement agencies will be uninhibited and equally you will be visited with the consequences of your actions”. This is critical. Criminal penalties against electoral violence and other criminals are abundantly contained in the Electoral Act. What has been sorely lacking is the will to enforce them. Inspector General of Police Usman Baba said that some arrests of these saboteurs have been made and that the investigation is ongoing.Unfortunately, the story may end there, looking at the future.

Voters do not act alone. They are mainly protected by politicians, who do everything in their power to get rid of them once they are caught. Unfortunately, the big masquerades behind their nefarious actions are never revealed by the security agencies. Without breaking this disease, PREMIUM TIMES believes that election-related violence will remain an incubus in our system and attempts to combat it will be mere shadow boxing.

Indeed, the stakes are high for next year’s election, as the incumbent president will not be on the ballot and the economic hardship will take a heavy toll on the lives of average Nigerians. For some candidates, therefore, every trick in the Machiavellian playbook must be used to win. This has resulted in a wide embrace of ethnic and religious divisions, inflammatory rhetoric, hate speech, misinformation and intolerance. These provide fertile grounds for violence. But democratic contests are based on the noble ideals of tolerance, mutual respect and the triumph of the will of the majority.

No democracy thrives anywhere with an “at all costs” mindset or the political elite’s garrison mentality for elections. The failure of the Nigerian state to properly address this aberration explains why violence and high death tolls plague every election cycle. The EU Election Observation Mission, in a rigorous analysis of the 2015 polls, noted that 160 people had died in election-related violence between January and the elections. The killers were never found. It is worth noting that any act of violence is a criminal indulgence to subvert the electoral process and seize power. This shortcut to public office can never be inspired by a desire to serve the people, but rather by a desperation to get into the public treasury by any means possible. Therefore, these electoral bandits – the most dangerous of all bandits – must be checkmate.

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Ironically, this task is a tall order with the duplicitous display of some of the country’s security personnel, who throw professionalism to the winds with their partisanship, while covering up crimes and corrupting politicians. The Borno State Police High Command’s brazen denial of recent PDP presidential campaign violence in Maiduguri, which was broadcast in the media and confirmed by Abubakar, apart from the testimony of an aggrieved journalist, highlights this issue in bold terms.

The President has issued numerous directives to the security agencies that were not followed. The mandate given to NSA Monguno by the perpetrators of the electoral violence must not be ignored. It is a sure way to strengthen our current democracy. In carrying out this responsibility, security agencies should guard against professional mistakes, as identified by former Interior Minister and Army Chief of Staff Abdulrahman Dambazau in a public speech on security in August, where: “They operate in silos; they accumulate information; and they don’t want to share intelligence, as if they were in competition.’

INEC, since the time of Attahiru Jega’s leadership, has admitted that it lacks the capacity to effectively handle the increasing electoral crimes. Therefore, ICCES, which consists of the Police, the Army, the Air Force, the State Security Service and others, has a lot of work to do. He has to face it head on.