Why poll violence persists

Most observer reports on the recent Nigerian general election highlighted poor electoral culture by political actors, rather than the very conduct of the poll by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), as the biggest hobble yet on this country’s democracy. While the electoral body may not have been perfect with its processes, there is a consensus that it fared commendably with the poll. Hence, the bottleneck of inconclusiveness that characterised the elections in some areas derived from primitive desperation by the political elite, which manifested in the rash of deadly violence and some other abuses that tainted the poll.  

In its interim report after the March 23^rd supplementary election in some states, the European Union (EU) election observer mission red flagged voter intimidation, obstruction of the electoral process and ineffective security shield for eligible citizens to exercise their voting right, which it said its observers witnessed during the poll. “In particular, parts of Kano were largely inaccessible to EU observers and citizen observers, and journalists were also obstructed. EU observers also witnessed increased interference by party agents and cases of vote buying. Party leaderships did not appear to take steps to rein in their supporters,” it said.

But regarding INEC’s conduct of the poll itself, the observer mission stated: “In the polling units that could be fully observed, there were improved logistical arrangements and procedures were mostly followed, although there were problems with secrecy of the ballot.”

Those observations were really not peculiar to the EU team, as domestic observers posted similar reports. Among others, reputed Situation Room, which is a broad ranged coalition of civil society groups working for credible and transparent poll in Nigeria, decried crippling electoral violence and perceived ineffectiveness of the security arrangement in certain areas during the supplementary election, but “acknowledges the efforts of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in ensuring timely deployment of materials, officials and the commencement of polls, for the most part.”

In its statement, the group cited reports from its observers and partner organisations, which indicated that the poll was largely peaceful in states like Sokoto and Plateau, but blighted by violence in others like Bauchi and Kano. It stated that Kano, in particular, “witnessed widespread violence, intimidation and electoral abuse,” adding: “There were widespread reports of thuggery and intimidation of voters, observers and INEC officials by political party agents seeking to disrupt the electoral process and influence voters…”

The Situation Room also faulted the security architecture for the poll, saying inter alia: “Some reports received showed instances of over-deployment of security personnel such as in Plateau State, where there were at least 20 security personnel per polling unit…Situation Room is puzzled by the situation in Kano State wherein the deployment of senior Police officers could not stem the incidents of political thuggery and intimidation…”

Earlier, the United States embassy, in a statement, decried “the low voter turnout as well as credible reports of voter intimidation, vote buying, interference by security forces and violence in some locations” during the national elections on February 23^rd and state elections on March 9^th.

During the lately concluded supplementary poll, there were reports of hoodlums overrunning polling units in Kano and armed marauders shooting a collation officer in Benue. Electoral officials were as well reported abducted in Bauchi, while journalists and observers escaped being killed in some areas by just a hair’s breadth. Besides the casualties linked to the supplementary poll, more than 36 persons were reckoned to have died in cases of violence connected with the 2019 general election. The incidents of violence perhaps didn’t get more frontal than in Abonnema, Rivers State, where the Army said a Lieutenant and six gunmen died in a firefight that broke out when an armed gang barricaded a major road leading into the town and ambushed soldiers.

To be sure, the rash of violence was not at all limited to the 2019 poll. The International Crisis Group estimated that as many as 100 people were killed in incidents connected with the 2015 general election. And that figure pales grossly when compared with some 800 persons reckoned to have died in the wildcat violence that trailed the 2011 general election.

‘Nigeria (needs) to rethink how victors manage their electoral victory as would lessen the desperation of gladiators’

So, why is our political culture in Nigeria, like in many other African countries, jinxed as it seems with perennial violence?

To answer that question, let’s get it settled upfront that: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves, that we are underlings,” as nobleman Cassius makes us know in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. In other words, the persistent challenge of electoral violence that we encounter derives, not from our genetic make-up as a people, but from how our political system is designed.

Researchers Mimmi Söderberg Kovacs and Jesper Bjarnesen, in their book titled Violence in African Elections, interrogate this trend and show up a complex interplay between the processes of multiparty elections, which have become the most legitimate route to political office and a universal benchmark by which all democracies are measured,  and the older, patronage-based system of ‘Big Man’ politics. According to them, African elections are prone to conflict because the stakes are simply too high. Among other options, they propose that the stakes be lessened if the proclivity to violence would be defused.

One of their deconstructions of electoral violence state as follows: “Power and resources are still largely concentrated at the centre, raising the stakes of elections. The winner literally takes it all, while the loser is left ‘standing small’. In a strongly politicised ‘Big Man’ system, individuals (want to) be sure they have backed the right horse in the lead-up to elections to protect their own interests.” Remedial policy recommendations made by Söderberg and Bjarnesen include that respective African country should lower the stakes of elections, support democratisation beyond elections, expand election monitoring, rethink electoral security, and address unresolved conflicts at local levels.

The moral here for Nigeria is to rethink how victors manage their electoral victory as would lessen the desperation of gladiators. Political actors are unduly aggressive and instigate their supporters too readily to violence in their quest for power because a loss leaves the loser bereft and empty, while the winner takes it all. That, of course, is what our ‘first-past-the-post’ majority electoral system provides for, and that is what has been the practice for much of our nationhood history.  But that, obviously, is also why we have always had the challenge of rash electoral violence to contend with; and it is by no means a reason we should submit to that challenge as fatalistically inevitable in our nationhood.

Utterances and comportments of victors across the partisan spectrum in the recent Nigerian elections have already amply illustrated the winner-takes-it-all mentality. At the federal level, the disposition is not at all peculiar to currently ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), because the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) fared worse in its 16 years at the helm – indeed extending that trait to its monopolistic mismanagement of the Nigerian treasury. But if we would pull back from the brink as a country, there must be a point of departure from this historical disposition. And the onus squarely rests on the present power elite to lead the way.   

Considering that it is too long a shot to seek constitutional redesign of our electoral system – say, to the proportional representation model – the political elite could at least recalibrate how they manage electoral victory so to defuse the desperation for power before the next round of elections.