Validation quest?

From the prism of dispassion, the visa ban slammed in last week by Washington on Nigerian political actors who violated due processes of the last general election should be seen as a moral rebuke directed at the elemental desperation and primitivity that hobbles our electoral culture.

But partisans can get confoundingly opportunistic wringing out subjective capital from every happenstance; hence from their deductions, you would think the United States government was handing down the ultimate verdict on the validity, or otherwise, of the poll’s outcome.

The U.S. State Department had in a statement on Tuesday announced Washington’s imposition of visa restrictions on unnamed Nigerians believed to have directly or complicitly undermined the country’s democracy in the course of the 2019 elections. State Department spokesman, Morgan Ortagus, said inter alia: “The United States is a steadfast supporter of the Nigerian democracy. We commend all those Nigerians who participated peacefully in the February and March 2019 elections and have worked to strengthen Nigerian democratic institutions and processes… (And) we condemn those whose acts of violence, intimidation or corruption harmed Nigerians or undermined the democratic process.

“In a January 24 statement, the U.S. government said that we would consider consequences – including visa restrictions – for individuals responsible for undermining the Nigerian democratic process or for organising election-related violence. To that end, the Secretary of State is imposing visa restrictions on Nigerians believed to be responsible for, or complicit in undermining democracy in Nigeria. These individuals have operated with impunity at the expense of the Nigerian people and undermined democratic principles and human rights.”

The State department made the point of clarifying that its sanctions were specific to individuals and not directed at the Nigerian people or the government returned elected through the 2019 poll.

In a swift reaction, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, argued that the U.S. measure validated claims the elections were rigged. “The statement is a vindication of our position that the 2019 elections were undermined by the actions of state actors and institutions,” Atiku’s spokesman said in a statement, alleging that after “the daylight robbery that occurred on Election day, President Muhammadu Buhari and his allies went into propaganda overdrive to deny the obvious... After many months of living in denial, the Buhari regime is now faced with the truth in the form of a U.S. visa ban on politicians who undermined Nigeria’s democracy.”

The president’s camp would apparently not be outdone, however, and his supporter base was early on the stump to decode the U.S. statement as actually underscoring his global acceptance. “The visa restriction imposed on a category of Nigerian politicians by the United States government, which clearly exonerated the present administration in the country, is another indication of Buhari’s acceptance and popularity with the comity of nations. It is instructive that the United States is taking the step in spite of efforts by opposition figures led by the presidential candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar, to turn the U.S. government against the newly elected government with false narratives,” the Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) said is a statement, stressing that the State Department’s position showed the futility of efforts made to demonise the government before, during and after the 2019 poll.

“We acknowledge the decision by the American government to impose visa ban on individuals responsible for undermining the last electoral process or organising election-related violence. It is in line with a warning the U.S. issued before the election, and we note that it is within the rights of the Americans to do so. By making it clear that the actions are not directed at the government that emerged from the process, the U.S has tacitly cleared the Buhari administration of involvement in acts of political violence in spite of efforts by lobbyists engaged by the PDP to taint the president’s victory,’’ the organisation further said, adding that it hoped the visa restrictions would extend to individuals who threatened violence if their candidates failed to win in the elections.

‘The level of desperation…that characterises the Nigerian electoral culture is legendary, and it helps when foreign countries apply sanctions against suspected culprits to compel a change of habit’

It isn’t out of place for any set of people to seek external validation of the outcomes of their local vote, or opposition to it as the case may be. After all, the reason most countries invite international observers to their national elections is to ensure acceptability of the poll beyond their shores. The United States itself regularly fields international observers, among them Nigerians, at its general and mid-term elections; even then, its electoral system isn’t perfect as has been shown up in the raging debate on alleged Russian interference in its 2016 presidential poll. On the other hand, Italy numbers among few genuine democracies of the world that do not allow international observers at their internal elections.

Still, the validation-hunting spin that was respectively put on the U.S. visa ban by the Buhari and Atiku camps as afore stated misses the point of the measure by Washington. That ban should not be seen as a magisterial statement one way or the other on the validity of Nigeria’s 2019 poll. Our laws confer the mandate for such a statement on the judiciary, and our collective task as citizens must be to hold the judiciary accountable for its constitutionally endowed independence. Once the judiciary lives up to this billing, political gladiators must learn to submit to its adjudication after they had rejected the administrative verdict of the election manager, namely the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). That is the sure path to ensuring the good health of our nascent democracy.  

Where the election manager and the judiciary are widely seen to have failed the integrity test, the validation or criticism of external observers does help in according reliable value assessment to a particular poll, as was the experience some years past in Nigeria’s electoral history – the 2007 general election, for instance. But it seems obvious that such is not the case with the issue presently on hand. The statement by the American state department last week made clear that the country’s grouse was with the behaviour of some Nigerian political actors against whom it was announcing the imposition of visa restrictions.

Diplomatic conventions apparently hamstrung the American department from identifying the particular Nigerian actors being targeted with visa restrictions, but it said enough that they were directly involved or complicit in “acts of violence, intimidation or corruption (that) harmed Nigerians or undermined the democratic process.” When the United States had a beef with the very conduct of the 2018 presidential election in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), it imposed financial sanctions on three identified chieftains of that country’s electoral body known as CENI. (Never mind that the current administration of President Donald Trump has dawdled endlessly on applying Congress-prescribed sanctions against Russia for alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. poll.)

The level of desperation and allied misdemeanors that characterise the Nigerian electoral culture is legendary, and it surely helps when foreign countries apply pointed sanctions against suspected culprits to compel a change of habit. That is the moral to be made out of the U.S. visa ban. According to a report by SBM Intelligence, a group that monitors sociopolitical and economic developments in Nigeria, no fewer than 620 persons were reported killed in the 2019 election cycle beginning with the campaigns in 2018, owing to sheer violence. Rather than seek validation for partisan perches from the new U.S. measure, the political class should direct their energy at re-acculturating themselves from the menace that warranted the visa ban. Otherwise, we would need many more countries to follow the American lead.