Polls and the genie of violence

If recent elections in Kogi and Bayelsa states correctly indexed Nigeria’s current standing as regards universal hallmarks of pluralist electoral democracy, we have a virulent relapse of political incivility on our hands.

Primitive brigandage is back with force in our political environment. Thus, the November 16 off-season governorship and constituency polls in the two states were characterised by raw violence and impunitous electoral violations, which raged with such brazenness you would think we should’ve outgrown over the past 20 years of unbroken electoral democracy in our country. The prime motivation for this tendency was elemental desperation for power by political gladiators at whose respective instance thugs deployed as foot soldiers, leveraging a brutal sleigh of hand to advantage their candidates in disregard for genuine preferences of rational voters.

That was the undercurrent of wanton violence, banditry and other ill practices witnessed in the Kogi and Bayelsa elections penultimate weekend. On election day, besides widespread ballot snatching, hoodlums roved foot-loose among polling centres, firing random shots that endangered the lives of voters, as well as electoral officials deployed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Before the day was over, at least two voters were reported killed in Kogi State, with many others injured. Civil society observers cited a higher toll. “At the last count, our observer reports from Kogi State have recorded the death of 10 people in various shooting incidents and attacks across the state,” Executive Director of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), Idayat Hassan, told journalists as she noted: “The sheer magnitude of the violent assault on the sanctity of the ballot was shocking beyond description.” She was not a lone voice. Among others, umbrella CSO election observation platform, the Nigerian Civil Society Situation Room, spoke in similar vein. “The levels of violence witnessed in the two state governorship elections were unprecedented, alarming and raises questions about credibility of the elections,” it said in a statement.

The rage of violence was not limited to the election day, as thugs had also rampaged during electioneering activities leading up to the day of voting in both states. In Bayelsa, one person was killed at a campaign rally of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Nembe council area three days before the November 16 poll. And that isn’t counting others who had been similarly killed across party lines in earlier stages of electioneering.

Even the regulatory authorities were not spared a taste of hazardous fallouts of the bitter contestation by political gladiators. For instance, early in the election week, Police Inspector-General Mohammed Adamu and INEC Chairman Mahmood Yakubu were present in Lokoja, the Kogi State capital, when security agents unleashed tear gas to contain a fracas at a stakeholders meeting convened for political parties and their candidates to sign a peace accord. Reports said the recourse by the police to heavy hand followed a rowdy standoff between thugs suspected to be supporters of ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Governor Yahaya Bello, and those of Social Democratic Party (SDP) governorship candidate Natasha Akpoti, who the other crowd of supporters had sought to prevent from gaining entrance into the event venue while her own crowd insisted on getting her in. As both groups refused to be persuaded to yield ground, policemen fired tear gas to disperse them and restore normalcy – with the whiff of tear gas permeating the hall and discomfiting occupants, including the police boss who was reportedly seen covering his nose.

‘The awkward gaps in security architecture for Kogi and Bayelsa elections suggest severe deficit in intelligence gathering and risk mapping ahead of the polls’

Given the way hoodlums had a field day, questions have been raised in many quarters about the effectiveness of security architecture for the polls. The police had said they were deploying in excess of 66,000 personnel, out of which 35,200 were on posting to Kogi State and 31,041 to Bayelsa. Speaking on the eve of election day, Deputy Inspector-General Abdulmajid Ali added that these would be complemented by squads from the Police Mobile Force, Special Protection Unit and Counter-terrorism Unit. And that was not to mention personnel deployed by the other service formations that have been co-opted into election security operations under the auspices of the Inter-Consultative Committee on Election Security (ICCES).

Among other observers, CDD argued that the huge numbers of security agents deployed for the elections did not translate to adequate security. “In some places, they actually turned away their faces while the onslaught was going on, while in some (other areas) they were completely overpowered,” Idayat Hassan said. Another chieftain of the group and professor of political science, Jibrin Ibrahim, outrightly accused security agents of complicity in the several attacks on polling centres. “Specifically, we are concerned about the direct contradiction we saw of massive police deployment – over 30,000 (apiece) for both Kogi and Bayelsa states – but on ground that massive deployment was not visible to the eyes,” he said.

Eyewitnesses went a notch higher to cite practical involvement of persons kitted in police gear in the sundry malpractices that occurred at polling centres. It was apparently to this particular charge Police IG Adamu responded last week when he said persons observed to have been involved in malpractices on election day donning police outfit were fake policemen. But that leaves unanswered the question: how did the service rank get infiltrated by uniformed phonies despite humongous numbers officially deployed for the off-season polls? Then, how much worse could it get in the 2023 general election when security operations will be intense in all 36 states nationwide and the Federal Capital Territory?

I hold that there is a further question to ask about the effectiveness / coordination of security intelligence and risk mapping ahead of the recent elections. Besides the Election Risk Management (ERM) tool of the electoral body, there are civil society groups and development stakeholders with specialization in risk assessment and mapping, which all feed into the security services’ intelligence gathering and risk prognostications for the elections. The awkward gaps in security architecture for the Kogi and Bayelsa elections suggest severe deficit in intelligence gathering and risk mapping ahead of the polls.

Perhaps the greatest challenge is the nature of conversation by the political class, which seems to fuel animalistic instincts in their supporters. Rather than debate policies and ideas during electioneering, gladiators bandy wild allegations against one another about sponsorship of violence and dark plots to infract the electoral process – thereby (if unwittingly) inflaming supporters to mutually assured aggression.  

In Kogi, there was a spillover of primitive violence early last week when the women leader of PDP’s Wada/Aro campaign council was incinerated in her home in Ofu council area by suspected political thugs. The assailants reportedly locked her in from outside before soaking the property with petrol and setting it ablaze; and worse, obstructed feeble attempts she made to escape until she was burnt to ashes along with the house. In confirming the incident, the Kogi police command linked the extreme bestiality to apparent retaliation for the death of an identified member of the APC who was earlier that day stabbed by an equally identified member of the PDP in the heat of argument.

The bestiality early last week took on a more ominous ring with the backdrop of reported election day killings in the state. Two voters were done with casting their ballots in Aboncho community, Kogi East, and were standing by to converse when hoodlums stormed in, in a vehicle and took premeditated aim at them, killing both before zooming off again.

There is mounting clamour on INEC to clean up the electoral process. But unless the political class comes to terms with sanitising the political culture, I doubt there is much the electoral body can do to good effect.