After the presidential election, came the rains

By Owei Lakemfa

Nigeria has a long way to go, but with this election and the momentum it has created, we can begin to build the foundations of a great country based on peoples democracy.

AFTER the presidential election on Saturday, February 25, 2023, the rains came down in Abuja. No, they were not pitiful tears even when Nigeria, an otherwise prosperous country has been reduced to a beggarly state. Rather, they were rains cleansing the country, starting with a thorough wash of the county’s seat of government to prepare the people for new occupants after the outgoing caretakers had thoroughly desecrated the land.

Things have so degenerated and gross incompetence so rife that Nigerians have to buy their own country’s currency at premium price just to be able to pay for something as basic as a loaf of bread. Patience had worn thin and before the elections, it seemed the country was in danger of slipping down the slope.

Nigerians are doubtlessly the winners of the elections as they are a major indicator that the exit of the Buhari regime has become an irreversible process.

The ultimate loser is President Muhammadu Buhari who apparently is not trusted by any of the leading political parties. To me, it is humiliating that a retired General, former Military Head of State and incumbent President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces had to violate the electoral rules by displaying publicly before the cameras, his marked ballot paper to show who he voted for. This violation of the secrecy of the voting system, is a display of the integrity-deficit between him and his party. It is like the trust between him and the leading lights of a party he once presided over as the supreme overlord had been torn into shreds. He now has to convince the doubting ‘Thomases’ that he has not betrayed either the party or its presidential candidate. If the ruling party which feels he has de-marketed it does not appear to trust the President, does he think the opposition would trust him? If the mass of those who just a few years ago deified ‘Sai Baba’ now see him as clay-footed, is it not time he makes an honest assessment of himself and his place in history? It is like a man who used to sleep quite comfortably on a cozy bed, struggling to avoid being

By Chidi Odinkalu

The citizens deserved better than the INEC served up. Third, whatever the outcome that the INEC chooses to announce, the winner in these elections will almost certainly receive less than 50% of the votes cast and will need to run a government of all talents, GOAT, seeking and finding ways to ensure that every part of the country takes a stake in the government that emerges.

Africa’s largest experiment in electoral democracy is underway as Nigeria counts the votes cast in its presidential and parliamentary elections, which occurred on Saturday, February 25, 2023. It is too soon to say who Nigeria’s next president will be and it may be a few days yet before the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, announces the results.

The early evidence appears to confirm pre-election suggestions that the race will be a close one between Atiku Abubakar of the main opposition, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP; Peter Obi of the insurgent Labour Party, LP, and Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, with Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria People’s Party, NNPP, in a respectable showing.

The election season has been full of incidents many of which will affect the credibility of whatever the INEC chooses to announce as the results when they do. Two days before the opening of voting in Africa’s largest elections, the candidates in Nigeria’s presidential elections met in Abuja, the Federal Capital, on February 23 2023, to sign a “peace accord”, promising to eschew violence and hate speech in the ballot and to accept the outcome peacefully. The accord is the idea of the National Peace Committee, a leadership initiative led by Abdulsalami Abubakar, the former Army General who transitioned Nigeria to civil rule in May 1999.

This was the second of such accords by the candidates in the campaign season preceding the vote. A similar accord signed in September 2022 did not much preclude a campaign season in which reports of intolerance and violence sign-posted a fractured political landscape that very much sums up the toxic legacies of nearly eight years of Muhammadu Buhari’s second misadventure in power. It was not entirely clear how or why the National Peace Committee divined that two peace accords were needed to police one election. The fact that it considered a second accord essential suggests that the first was insufficient or ineffective. If the Committee bothered to report on why the first accord failed or as to what it did to preclude such an outcome, it did not make such a report public.

All the evidence suggests that the parties and their candidates did not much regard the peace accord. A report issued on the eve of commencement of voting on February 24, 2022 by the Incident pushed to the cold floor. After these elections, it appears the Buhari presidency has become lame dock and many would begin to distance themselves from it.

The presidential election came at a high cost with some paying with their lives, and quite a number, may have to live with the scars. There is the iconic photograph of the lady, Efidi Bina Jennifer, who was on Dipolubi Street, Surulere, Lagos to cast her vote when thugs stabbed her twice in the face. She was taken for treatment but returned to cast her vote with the upper and lower parts of her left eye in plasters, her face dripping blood and her T-shirt soaked in blood. The thugs might have thought they were victorious over the ballot box, but she showed that the human will can withstand bayonets. She demonstrated that evil can only win if the victims succumb.

There were cases of electoral officials arriving very late and voters refusing to disperse even as late as 3am Sunday. Antidemocratic forces threw all they had into the mix, including snatching ballot papers, arson, stabbing, thuggery, banditry and terrorism, yet Nigerians stood their ground.

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, might not have followed through on its promise to immediately upload election results on its portal as they are sorted, counted and collated across the country. However, it was not a source for concern; technology has moved in such pace that verifiable results are propping up from various sources.

These elections have also transformed the country from a two-party system, to a tripod with the Labour Party emerging as an uncontested third leg. However, it would be a different matter whether this genetic engineering would survive or is sustainable.

It is not so much an issue of who wins the elections at various levels, but the insistence of the electorate that their votes must count. A new momentum has been unleashed in the country; the sustenance is more important than individual victories.

Last week’s elections raise once again fundamental challenges in the electoral system. Yes, most cases of electoral violations were possible due to the absence of governance, security failures, intimidation of voters, impunity, untamed desperation and the transformation of elections into mini wars. But there are also issues

Centre for Election Atrocities, ICEA, a civic coalition that tracks election-related violence in Nigeria, compiled in two month period beginning in December 2022 “at least 89 incidents of politicallymotivated killings (including of 30 security personnel) and 18 abductions (including of one Police Officer). There were at least 13 attacks on political campaign rallies. Within the period, there were at least seven arson attacks on INEC facilities and at least 12 brazen attacks on police, military and para-military facilities.” At least one senior politician was beheaded in Imo State in SouthEast Nigeria; another was incinerated in the week of the ballot.

Voting itself took place in a context of considerable public anxiety. A re-design of the country’s currency implemented shortly before the election, resulted in what the New York Times described as “chaos and suffering” which threatened to tip the country into mass unrest. Deprived of their loot of cash with which to induce voters or buy election officials to skew the results, state governors mostly belonging to the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, claimed to have secured a controversial and unclear temporary order from Nigeria’s Supreme Court to defer implementation of the currency change, adding to the air of uncertainty around the elections. President Muhammadu Buhari, who had communicated a desire to create a level playing field for the vote, gave his support to the Central Bank to see through the implementation of the currency reform, effectively drying up much of the usual flow of money used to corrupt Nigeria’s elections and infinitely escalating the costs for anyone wishing to buy votes.

Voting day witnessed significant incidents of violence across the country. In many parts of Lagos and in parts of Rivers State, reports suggested patterns of violence consistent with voter intimidation and suppression. In Lagos, there were rampant reports of attacks on voters in parts not considered friendly to the candidacy of the ruling APC or on polling units considered to have a majority of such voters. Despite these attacks, voters showed remarkable resilience and courage. In Surulere, Lagos, a young woman attacked and stabbed in the face by thugs suspected to be from the ruling party returned bloodied and bandaged to cast her vote.

Contrary to the repeated assurance of INEC’s leadership, election day appears to have caught the Commission unprepared. In many places, the flaws were too evident: shoddy election logistics; confusion over the location of polling units or the allocation of voters to units; misleading configuration of data into the Bi-Modal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS; misconduct or suspected collusion by polling officials with party political interested were reported.

Equally contrary to the assurances of the Commission, the of our refusal to develop the electoral process we started about seven decades ago. If we have a credible national identity card system, we do not need the long processes of voter registration, verification, issuance of voters cards, use of card readers and BVAS. There would also be no issue of underage voting.

There is no reason why in a country where a person can sit in his car and transfer millions of Naira from one account to another, that same person cannot from the safety of his bedroom cast his vote electronically. If we were to aim at such inexpensive system of elections, the cases of attacks by thugs, snatching ballot boxes, shutting the borders, locking down the country, turning the armed forces out on the streets and virtually declaring a state of emergency each time elections are held, will be greatly reduced.

There is also the fact that we are forced to run a unitary system where one man, because he is the President, would dictate to the rest of us and seek to control not just the legislature but also the judiciary and our lives.

If we were to abide by the Constitution that Nigeria is a federation, we may not need more than three items on the Exclusive List; perhaps monetary and foreign affairs while all others would be on the concurrent list. Were we to run such a system, there would be far less contention vying for political office, including the presidency. If we run a country where the federating units control their resources and pay agreed taxes to the common purse, the country would become more productive and prosperous and we would be saved from the present system of parasitism. That would be the true meaning of moving from consumption to production. That would create a country where no part will feel marginalised. This would be true restructuring not the monkey business presented as restructuring.

Nigeria has a long way to go, but with this election and the momentum it has created, we can begin to build the foundations of a great country based on peoples democracy.

After the presidential election, came the rains, after the rains, the sun will rise and we can make hay while the sun shines. God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Owei Lakemfa is a Public Policy Analyst.

BVAS failed or disappointed in many locations. Some of its highprofile victims include the Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike and the Director-General of the World Trade Organisation, WTO, and Nigeria’s former Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. As a result, in many places around the country, voting continued well into the night or resumed on Sunday February 26.

Where voters braved the hurdles erected by the INEC and the polling officials showed up and coaxed performance out of the BVAS machines, in many cases, the results transmission process became hostage to Nigerian arrangements. Long after voting had closed, on Saturday night, the INEC’s results viewing portal had not yet logged any results and a significant number of locations reported refusal of polling officials to upload result sheets to the INEC results portal, raising suspicions of results manipulation to the end of achieving co-ordinated substitution and replacement of results from the polling units with manufactured outcomes that bear no relationship to what occurred at voting.

In many parts of the country, a substantial number of reported anomalies occurred under the watch of security agencies. In Kano, the Commissioner of Police, Mohammed Yakubu, was asked why the police took no action against what appeared to be a systematic pattern of voting by persons who were manifestly children. Far from denying it, he stuttered his way to an extraordinary mea culpa, claiming: “It is very difficult to determine by mere appearance who is a minor or not. Most of the ones you are seeing, may be their growth rate might be impaired.”

As the count got underway, three things already seem very clear. First, Nigerian citizens took this election seriously and their collective belief in the destiny of their country is the biggest single good news in this election. Second, the assurances of the INEC about competent management of the election were always empty and lacking in credibility. The citizens deserved better than the INEC served up. Third, whatever the outcome that the INEC chooses to announce, the winner in these elections will almost certainly receive less than 50% of the votes cast and will need to run a government of all talents, GOAT, seeking and finding ways to ensure that every part of the country takes a stake in the government that emerges.

This will be important because Nigeria’s new president will need more than just a good bank of political capital to spend on the country’s myriad problems when he takes over at the end of May 2023. He will also need the talent to bind the country’s wounds. For that, INEC needs to guarantee a credible count; for absent that, whoever is announced as winner will lack the authority needed to put Nigeria back on the map as Africa’s anchor country.

Prof. Chidi Odinkalu is a Public Policy Analyst.

Sanwo-Olu inaugurates maternal centre, couples clinic in Orile Agege

Mrs Ibijoke Sanwo-olu, the Wife of the Lagos State Governor has inaugurated a 30-bed Maternal Maternity Centre and a Couples Clinic at the Orile Agege General Hospital (OAGH) to further enhance antenatal care and child delivery in the state.

Speaking during the inauguration, Sanwo-olu said the facilities were in line with the THEMES agenda of the current government to provide affordable and quality healthcare for all in the state.

“This is another effort put in place by the Babajide Sanwo-olu government to further raise the standard of services rendered in all government owned hospital in Lagos.

“I was also in Orile Agege last week to commission a primary healthcare centre to increase the accessibility of health services for the people.

“Mr governor will do more to further uplift healthcare in the state if reelected back to his position,” she said.

Sanwo-olu commended the management and staff of the hospital for rendering selfless service.

Speaking earlier, Dr Sola Pitan, the Medical Director of OAGH, said the hospital has been upgraded with modern facilities, more beds and the obstetrics high dependency unit.

Pitan said the couple clinic was launched to educate pregnant women and their husbands on some of the challenges of pregnancy and what they need to know during delivery.

“The Sanwo-olu administration has done a great job by upgrading our maternal centre and ante natal clinic.

“This development will enable us attend to more pregnant women in Orile Agege for seamless process during and after their delivery.

“The couples clinic will help to address some of the psychological challenges that comes with pregnancy and how their spouses can be of help during the period,” he said. (NAN)