BEVERLY HILLS, January 16, (THEWILL) – Over the years, electoral violence has remained a recurring decimal in Nigeria. Despite professed efforts by government to stop it, it has continued to grow in leaps and bounds. This raises the fear that government has failed in its basic responsibility of protecting lives and property. Unfortunately, the police whose duty it is to enforce electoral laws have been over-powered or compromised by the very powerful political class.
At the just-concluded governorship election in Bayelsa State, violence reached its climax, culminating in the cancellation of elections in the entire Southern Ijaw and other polling units in the state. Electoral violence has been the regular trademark of our elections since the 1960s. After each military interregnum, subsequent elections held in 1979, 1983, 1999, 2003, 2007, 2011 and to an extent 2015, have been characterized by violence. These disturbances often manifest before, during or after elections. Over time, experience has shown that the imposition of candidates at parties’ primaries and desperation by politicians to win at all costs, are the main reasons for electoral violence.
THEWILL condemns every form of electoral violence and urge government to sanitize the political and electoral fields so that the tide of violence can be stemmed. In 2011, post-election violence took a higher dimension, as it brought ethnic and religious divides into electoral violence. In the ensuing battles, hundreds of people were killed and property worth billions of naira destroyed, particularly in the northern part of the country. Unfortunately, no section of the country has been isolated from this violence. But for providence, the 2015 elections would have resulted in civil war, given the arsenals of war that had been amassed.
Despite provisions of the law which criminalizes violence, it has continued unabated. For instance, Section 227 of the 1999 Constitution as amended, and Section 81 of the Electoral Act 2010, provides that “No association shall retain, organize, train or equip any person or group of persons, for the purpose of enabling them to be employed for the use of display of physical force, or coercion, in promoting any political objective or interest, or in any such manner as arouse reasonable apprehension that they are organized and trained or equipped for that purpose.”
Notwithstanding the stipulated punishment upon conviction, no remarkable headway has been reached, as those indicted in past electoral violence are habitually let off the hook on the orders of powerful politicians.
THEWILL calls on government to commence the process of amending the Electoral Act 2010, so as to effect the establishment of the Election Offences Tribunal, which has been stuck in the National Assembly since the last dispensation. The National Assembly on its part must rise to the challenge, and give the Bill an accelerated attention before the next general elections.
Nothing must be spared by stakeholders to ensure that electoral violence is curtailed. In saner climes, people subject themselves to elections for an opportunity to serve, but the desperate approach of our politicians has created apathy for genuine aspirants who cannot stand or promote violence. If electoral violence must be nipped in the bud, arms importation into the country must be strictly monitored. THEWILL believes that that will contribute in stopping arms flow to political thugs.
Reports have shown that policemen face deprivations from their superiors, in terms of monies and grants approved for their optimal performance during elections. The complicity arising from this systemic failure has permeated governance, where leaders have defaulted in statutory provisions regarding free and fair elections.
The police must be adequately equipped to boost the morale of those deployed to cover elections. For effective performance, deployment of security agents for elections should consider population density and mapping of areas with history of electoral violence, instead of concentrating them in areas where powerful politicians reside.
The popular excuse that police lack operational vehicles, communication gadgets and improved intelligence gathering needed to stem the wave of violence, has remained loud. THEWILL therefore tasks the Police Service Commission (PSC) to look into several breaches in its code of conduct, and enforce appropriate sanctions against offenders.
It has been argued that the police perform better if they operate in combination with other armed forces, especially when elections are staggered. If that is partly the solution, government must give it a trial. However, post-election violence has proved a hard nut to crack due to the do or die approach of politicians at elections. This has created the trend for politicians to have police top brass on their payroll, to do their bidding at the detriment of the electorate.
THEWILL recommends that the civil society and observer groups should be sensitized to keep tab on the performance of police in the process of elections. In the same vein, activities of desperate politicians must be monitored through intelligence gathering, with a view to punishing those indicted. These will go a long way in curtailing the monster of electoral violence.
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