By Rotimi Fasan

I HAD in respect of the February 25 elections made the point that all might go well on election day with the real crunch coming when the elections are over. The criticisms that have trailed the elections should tell us that the courts might be the next destination of quite a few of the contestants. There is a lot to worry about this given our past experiences with electoral disputes that were resolved not by the votes of the electorate but by judges whose predisposition to judicial technicalities leaves much to be desired. We saw that recently in the way the Supreme Court resolved the Ahmad Lawan’s case in Yobe State where a man that didn’t take part in the primaries of a party, forfeiting it in order to be part of a presidential contest he was drafted into at the last minute, was adjudged to be the legitimate contestant as against the one who actually participated in the primaries. 

The case was for many Nigerians a straight forward one that favoured Bashir Machina, Lawan’s opponent, but the court’s decision, when it came, appeared both counterfactual and counter-intuitive, taking many by surprise. Today, Ahmad Lawan, the President of the Senate, stands elected as a senator in the tenth Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. All of this simply goes to confirm my observation that in spite of the climate of fear and anxiety that heralded the elections, they could go without a major incident while the following days and weeks would be more consequential. Except for the All Progressives Congress, there was not much worry on the part of the other political parties that the influence of money had been reduced to the barest minimum, if not totally eliminated. They went into the elections very hopeful of favourable outcomes. 

The fact that not many Nigerians are complaining about voter-inducement through money could be proof that money didn’t play a huge role in the results that have emerged from the elections. Yes, there were cases of party operatives caught with money obviously meant to buy votes and some were said to have made electronic transfers of funds. But all of these would seem to be isolated cases unlike in the past when the use of money was everywhere in evidence.

If Bola Tinubu could lose Lagos, what more evidence do we need that the tide is turning in Nigeria’s electoral practice? Shall we then say that the cash confiscation activities of the Central Bank that followed its naira change policy have been successful? Well, it may have achieved its targeted aim of hobbling politicians (even if it looks like it was designed to do far more damage than that) who planned to influence electoral outcomes with money.

But for it to be deemed successful we would have to weigh the price Nigerians have had to pay against the expected gains that have been recorded. We may need to also ask ourselves if we have to tie monetary policies like the naira change to our electoral cycles in order to curtail the influence of money, and hope that whoever would implement such a policy would not be standing in an election. Let us do the cost benefit analysis and thereafter weigh the potential effect of such a move if we feel we have succeeded this time.  

The long-term effect or damage of the naira change (given its implementation) is yet to be fully understood in light of its implications for job creation, manufacturing of goods and provision of services. What are the pitfalls ahead with the planned removal of oil subsidy and the inevitable rise in inflation figures? Are we not on the road to another recession? As we speak, Nigerians are still hungry both for food and cash to engage in everyday transactions and economic activities. A lot also hangs on the expected decision of the Supreme Court on the naira change matter. Whichever way it goes, Nigerians still have a lot of misery to endure.

But since the Presidential and National Assembly elections, criticisms have shifted from vote-buyers and those using violence to the Independent National Electoral Commission. Nigerians have been very critical of INEC’s handling of the elections’ results. The major point at issue is about the initial delays that attended the announcement of the results and the uploading of the results on INEC’s portal. Why, the critics have wondered, did it take the electoral umpire so long before it started uploading the results of the election across the country, leaving the social media as the main avenue for the distribution of mostly dubious results? A few of the political parties have all but called INEC an agent of the ruling party, working to pre-written scripts to return the APC to power. The confidence of Nigerians in the electoral process could be undermined by the delays if nothing is done to ameliorate it. What happened was viewed as deliberate acts of sabotage. 

INEC’s response has been to blame glitches in internet connectivity for the problem. Simplistic as this explanation might be, it shouldn’t be dismissed by a wave of the hand. While internet penetration might be improving nationwide, there is no doubt that the country still has a long way to go to achieve a stable and expansive bandwidth. Neither INEC nor its chair has control over this. We also cannot deny the fact that at the back of the minds of INEC’s critics is the relative success achieved by the electoral body in recent elections in states like Osun, Ekiti and Anambra. But these elections, we shouldn’t forget, happened off-season which then meant that INEC was able to concentrate its energy and resources within limited areas. The security agencies also had far less to contend with in terms of their areas of operation. 

It would be uncharitable to compare the conduct of elections in one or two small states with almost the entire country and across tiers such as the Presidential, House of Representatives and the Senate. This calls for and demands more effort. The reliance of INEC on ad hoc staff that have to be trained and retrained for very limited time on each electoral cycle also means that many of the body’s staff lack the basic knowledge required to operate some of the devices deployed for the exercise. INEC does not appear to have done anything that could make it the subject of unbridled suspicion as some critics have made out. Given the last-minute conduct of the outgoing president and his less than enthusiastic attitude to the fortunes of his party’s candidate, INEC couldn’t be under such pressure to work in favour of the ruling party’s candidate as they could have otherwise been, were the incumbent president on the ballot.