The Mahmood Yakubu-led Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the last three-and-half years in the saddle suspended and declared 68 elections inconclusive, BDSUNDAY investigations show.
This development has not just raised concerns among political watchers but citizens who see this as unprecedented in Nigeria’s political landscape.
Appointed in October 2015, Yakubu has so far superintended about 195 elections with an enormous 68 of those not tidied up.
Forty-six (46) of those polls were declared inconclusive while 22 were suspended according figures which BDSUNDAY has analysed.
The contentious elections range from governorship, Senatorial, House of Representatives, State Assembly to Area Council seats.
Commenting on the matter, a serving Senator, Rose Oko, regretted that the current INEC leadership has conducted the highest number of inconclusive elections in the nation’s history.
The lawmaker, who was recently re-elected, however, attributed the problem to a number of factors.
“We had a mix of too many things. It was a mix of vote-buying, vandalism and hooliganism, ballot box snatching, militarisation of the elections. You had a mix of everything that you thought would be wrong
in an election and all of them came to play. We need to be able to sanitise our electoral process if we are going to make progress in this country,” the PDP lawmaker said.
For her, the conduct of the 2019 General Elections fell below acceptable democratic standards.
Yakubu was appointed the INEC chair by President Buhari in 2015 after being elected earlier in the year through an electoral process many described as reasonably credible.
He had promised to even surpass Attahiru Jega – his predecessor’s feat especially coming from an academic background as a professor and having assembled his university colleagues for the polls which were mainly marred by outright rigging, vote buying, violence, militarisation, killings and widely criticised as least fair and credible.
Breakdown of the figures show that while the Yakubu-led electoral body declared two inconclusive elections in 2015, 21 polls were suspended in 2016. Also, the Commission declared two polls inconclusive in 2018. Those of 2019 witnessed a record-breaking 42 inconclusive polls and one suspension.
Details of the 2019 exercise also showed that the Commission declared governorship elections in six states of Benue, Sokoto, Bauchi, Adamawa, Plateau, Kano; nine Senatorial districts, 25 House of
Representatives and two Area Councils (Kuje and Bwari) seats inconclusive. In like manner, the Commission suspended the March 9 governorship election in Rivers State for widespread violence.
Some of the previous elections which could not be completed on the first ballot include: Kogi and Bayelsa gubernatorial polls in 2015, Osun governorship election as well as the Port Harcourt III state assembly by-election in 2018.
The 21 constituencies where by-elections were suspended in 2016 in Rivers State include: Rivers East Senatorial District, Rivers West Senatorial District and Rivers South East Senatorial District.
Others are Akuku-Toru/Asari Toru Federal Constituency, Degema/Bonny Federal Constituency, Okrika/Ogu-Bolo Federal Constituency, Etche/Omuma Federal Constituency, Ikwere/Emohua Federal Constituency,
Khana Gokana Federal Constituency, Eleme/Tai/Oyigbo Federal Constituency and Opobo/Nkoro/Andoni Federal Constituency.
Others state assembly seats affected in the oil-rich state include Eleme State Constituency, Gokana State Constituency, Asari-Toru I State Constituency, Asari-Toru II State Constituency, Andoni State
Constituency, Khana II State Constituency, Etche II State Constituency, Ikwere State Constituency, Bonny State Constituency and Degema State Constituency.
Following this, Nigerians on social media continue to make a mockery of the Commission and have even recently changed the name to ‘Inconclusive National Electoral Commission (INEC)’.
Investigations also showed that it is not only in this regime that INEC would declare elections inconclusive. One time INEC chair, Maurice Iwu had declared governorship elections in Ekiti and Imo States in 2007 and 2015 respectively, inconclusive.
Jude Ohanele, Executive Director, Development Dynamics, blamed the situation on do-or-die posture of the politicians.
Ohanele, who called for severe punishment to be meted out to politicians, who disrupt elections, argued that this will serve as a deterrent to others.
His words: “When election is inconclusive, it means that there are some places that elections didn’t hold. And from what you are seeing so far, elections didn’t hold in those places not because INEC didn’t deploy men and materials but because other stakeholders made it impossible for elections to hold in those locations. If it where the fault of INEC, we will definitely blame INEC. But where it is the fault of violent actors in the system who made it impossible for citizens to vote, it is important that we put the blame on those involved.
“We have seen a pattern where politicians are disrupting elections in areas where they think they are not popular, thinking that they can then win in areas they are popular and returned elected. Because if a politician disrupts election, we should be able to understand that that can lead to inconclusive election.
“For me, an extension of it is to call out those who are causing this inconclusive elections. Because if a politician hire thugs to disrupt election and it becomes inconclusive, there should be a way we should punish that person by making him pay for the conduct of the supplementary election. Because a situation where a politician disrupts election and the entire country will now pay for a supplementary election, it is something we need to examine going forward”.
Ralph Agama, a constitutional lawyer, however, absolved the Commission of any wrongdoing.
He pointed out that the Electoral Act and INEC Regulations and Guidelines empower the Commission to suspend or declare an election inconclusive if it is characterised by violence and other irregularities.
The legal practitioner, however, laid the blame on the doorstep of ‘desperate politicians’.
Agama also justified the Commission’s suspension of the March 9 Rivers State governorship election, stressing that the exercise was marred by widespread violence and other irregularities.
“We are a democratic society that is just evolving. The question is: if election is marred with irregularities of one sort or the other – take instance ballot box snatching, insecurity – do we blame INEC or the desperate politicians who want to make sure that they win by all means? And I believe that most politicians are still practising the Machiavellian theory: the end justifies the means.
“So, we cannot holistically blame the INEC for the inconclusiveness of some of those elections or where elections are suspended for reasons contemplated by law because framers of the law envisaged that instances like that could happen. And if there is no provision on how they would be handled, that is where vacuum would be created”.
In a statement, the Commission explained that it would conduct supplementary elections in the six states where governorship elections were declared inconclusive on March 23, even as supplementary polls for the contentious National Assembly seats were conducted alongside the rescheduled March 9 governorship elections.
Although the Commission said it would publish the list of State Assembly seats where elections were inconclusive on Wednesday, March 13, as of the time of filing this report, the Commission was yet to do so.
“The elections were declared inconclusive for a combination of reasons mainly the discontinuation of use of the Smart Card Readers midway into the elections or the failure to deploy them, over-voting and widespread disruption in many Polling Units,” Festus Okoye, INEC National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education
Committee, said in a press statement.
Declaration of the polls inconclusive, he explained, was in line with the Commission’s Margin of Lead Principle, derived from Sections 26 and 53 of the Electoral Act 2010 (as amended) and Paragraph 41 (e) and 43 (b) of the INEC Regulations and Guidelines for the Conduct of Elections.
OWEDE AGBAJILEKE, Abuja
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