Dr. Sam Amadi is the Director of Abuja School of Social and Political Thoughts and former chairman and CEO of Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC). In this interview he speaks on the Saturday’s Edo State gubernatorial election, why the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and police should be professional in conduct during elections, among other issues. JOY ANIGBOGU brings the excerpts:
Governor Godwin Obaseki has said that the election is going to be a ‘do or die affair’ What can you say about the Saturday Edo State governorship election in terms of whether the citizens will feel free to come out and cast their votes?
In terms of what political parties need to do and less violent statements. President Obasanjo was reputed with that phrase of ‘do or die’. It has now become how politicians take elections in Nigeria. Maybe Governor Obaseki spoke about the bad act. Clearly the build-up doesn’t give confidence and points to the fact that maybe Obaseki was right in actually describing what the state is, not where it should be. So, the state here is in a situation where two leading political parties, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the ruling party in the state, the PDP are marshalling out their arsenals to win the election. We see maybe for the first time in seven years the Vice President of the country is leading APC governors, storming Benin and we saw Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate in the last election leading almost all the governors of PDP and hitting Benin City. I have seen Peter Obi with the only governor in the Labour Party, Alex Otti also building up strong teams and campaigning for days in Edo State. So, this election is looking like a preparation for 2027 where all the parties seem to be basically fighting hard to win. Again, it is okay to fight hard but what I see now is that PDP has come frontally and unmistakably about the bias of the Nigerian police force and the state chairman of the party has told the IGP, Kayode Egbetokun to his face that they haveno confidence in him because he has been arresting some of their chieftains. Short of a real crime, any attempt to arrest political leaders of a party a few days before polls is election interference, by definition, that is short of real urgent crime that cannot wait. Because essentially you are decapitating them and so perhaps a malicious or mischievous way in which the party in the state, which feels that the police is perhaps working with the opposition and the ruling party with the Federal Government, APC to wrest power from them. This is real in Nigeria politics. The fact that our institutions are not independent in their behaviour. We have seen several elections, not just this election, the off season elections, the report about security involvement has been almost, if not despicable, it has been intolerable the way they have been part of allegations here and there about manipulations, involvement, aiding and abetting, sometimes being frontal in election manipulation, intimidated of voters and all that. This is the legacy that we have not been able to overcome, which is to have a security system basically not beholden to any of the political leaders. Again, it is difficult for the Nigeria security to suddenly develop an independence election if they are not that independent in managing their mandates. So, if the security officials in the state can arrest you because you wrote against the governor in expressing your freedom of speech and the Commissioner of police or IGP can arrest you and put you away for two weeks because the governor is not happy with you. There is no reason to assume that when a governor is about to lose an election that the same police cannot be used to manipulate the election. So, to me you might want to sound politically correct but there is no evidence why you might think that the police without being constrained, without being forced to do that would be fair. Whether it is for APC or PDP, it doesn’t matter. It is difficult from evidence to assume they will play fair. So, you can now understand why Obaseki said this election is a ‘do or die’ because we can feel the other party using the coercive force of the state. So, we have to find a way to protect ourselves. That is the problem. If we are going to have a free and fair election, policeinvolvement should be minimal. At the level of protecting an environment that allows for a free and fairelection, but in the history of elections in Nigeria, theinvolvement has not been minimal. It has been intrusive and mostly negative.
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You talked about the do it die phrase being made popular by former President Obasanjo but I do know a former President in that same party who said that his political ambition is not worth the blood of any Nigerian. So why is that not resonating with our politician?
He was the most abused president. People lied against him but that sense of peacefulness that surrounded him, the lack of desperation and being grateful that he moved from director in Oil Minerals Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC), deputy governor and became governor without really fighting for it, became vice president without even struggling for it and then became president without even struggling for it. So I think he has internalized the idea that somehow he doesn’t have to be desperate and that is why we had the first transition from incumbent party to opposition. Jonathan is a special kind of person not because he is too smart but because he basically lacks that level of desperation or immorality. He doesn’t even care. We haveseen a president in this country saying, ‘do or die’. We have seen a president who said, snatch, get it, power is not served a la carte. We have seen another political leader who served this country, who said there are going to be body bags, all kinds of talk. This is not peculiar to Obaseki. He speaks to the dominant idea of desperation, forgetting the principles. The point is this, even if you are desperate, if the institutions of state are neutral, independent, and can disregard you, what will he do? Obaseki for example, how powerful is he physically? Is he going to snatch ballot boxes? No, he is going to rely on the state enforcement institutions. How powerful is whoever is in APC? Is he physically too powerful? No. So when you hear Nigerians boast about their policy capabilities, it is basically that they are boasting about the capacity to manipulate and capture instruments of power and that is where the problem is. If the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), for example, is independent and the INEC chairman can marshal his men and control them and they are not as corrupt as they are, even the chairman knows that if he wants to conduct a credible election, because cannot control the rank and file, he can still have challenges. If you have INEC that is independent, focused for election, if you havea security that is not beholden to political actors and leaders, then ‘do or die’ is mere rhetoric. You don’t haveany capacity to do it or die, you just go there and lose the election. By the way if you look at whole elections you can actually say that party A or B has no chance of winning. You will see evidence. You have a bad candidate, you don’t have the structure to win, you don’t have acceptability but somehow you are buoyant, you are confident, you are almost over optimistic, why? Because there are subtexts about rigging and manipulation. The next thing you will hear is ‘go to court’. I haveseen where fourth became first. We haveseen several un-cautionable actions. It speaks to where a political Economist said, when you weaponize elections, when you criminalizeelections, chaos will thrive in the electioneering process. Criminalizing electionsis a device for criminals to come in. If you don’t arrest this spiral of criminality and violence and impunity in the electoral process, you will see less of the type of Jonathan and see the type of do or die more. Because the electoral system condones violence and those who have the temperament for violence, who don’t care about moral outcomes will be more powerful and successful with their fellows to come in and the good guys drop off because they can’t compete. They don’t have the comparative advantage in this game. So that is the danger we are faced with. It is easy to reverse gear. If you begin to see the electoral system credible, these people who ought not to win but who believe they can manipulate the system keep losing then why bother to try if you can’t succeed. That is why it is important to have at least an electoral crime commission. If you can’t, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) and some established Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) should be empowered to prosecute. If we haveevidence of a politician sponsoring violence, a public official, whether a police officer or INEC official involved in any of these infractions, then the NBA prosecution unit can find an independent prosecution and prosecute that person. We must find a creative institutional way to deal with these. Attorney Generals and political appointees may not prosecute these political criminals but if we havea private prosecution like we had in Lagos State before Babangida removed it, Gani Fawenhmi used it against Ibrahim Babangida for the murder of Dele Giwa. The military had to abolish that law. We would have succeeded if a private person could prosecute public officials for electoral crime then you will see these crimes abate. We have an era where there is total impunity. The Attorney General cannot prosecute, the police themselves havebeen complicit in some of these issues and nobody prosecuted them. The only time we had this prosecution was a private person, Mike Igini as INEC commissioner in Cross Rivers State. He had the courage to prosecute a professor and he was jailed. How many professors havemanipulated electionsin this country in the last four or five electoral cycles? In fact Mike Igini was opposed, the INEC headquarters didn’t even support him. It was the only instance of an electoral commissioner who prosecuted a professor who was a returning officer who conspired to manipulate an election. We are facing the consequence of this immunity where electoral criminals are free, rewarded with victory by the courts and by INEC. The INEC will just declare results whether they are procured by corruption, by violence, they will just declare the results. When they get to court the same INEC will defend their declaration. So why wouldn’t elections be about ‘do or die’.
There is also the issue of peace accord which the PDP refused to sign and I heard some analysts say that PDP is simply borrowing a leaf from the president because he also refused to sign the peace accord during the 2023 president election, what does this say to voters, the fact that the peace accord was not signed and how important is the peace accord in maintaining law and order during elections?
The peace accord is very important. It has no enforcement value. Society is segmented by formal and informal rules, norms and convention. Many scholars will tell you that you don’t need hard laws, sometimes soft laws. Some people will come and submit themselves to a process, they go to a ceremony speeches are made, it is symbolic, it indicates that they understand the value of peace and they submit to process but what would havehappened is that after the election and this processes are breached you will expect that those who respected the peace accord to speak out. If Tinubu didn’t sign and you didn’t call him out, if after signing and candidates went ahead and did something contrary to the letter of the commitment and you didn’t call them out, then what the heck is the peace accord? The fact that Bishop Matthew Kukah is credible, Abdulsalam Abubakar is credible, doesn’t cut it. It is basically valueless. The only value it has is the value to condition behaviour and if the proponents have failed and the political correctness is not going to say that the peace accord was breached in this particular way, so that there can be some sort of informal restriction. If anybody violated the terms and nothing happens, then what is the point? Ordinarily it is part of the tool for social conditioning. For inculcating, enlightening and changing narrative. People should take ownership of the peace process so that the people hold those people accountable. But if there is no process for even saying who didn’t comply, not talk about prosecution, then it doesn’t account. Again, what that signals to voters is if Obaseki is telling his people don’t be fooled they’re leading you to an entrapment. If you sign up to this peace accord, then one party is given a free pass to use violence so you are caught napping. So everybody is wiser to the fact. We shouldn’t get ourselves trapped here, let’s be clear we are facing a danger and therefore we want to say, go out there, be smart, protect yourselves, don’t agree with this. It is just a distraction. I think he has demystified that process and it’s unfortunate. I think that Kukah and Abdulsalam should go back to the draw board and think of what to do better. It signals to voters, maybe this is going to be a violent election, maybe we shouldn’t even border to come out. One of the casualties is voter turnout. Don’t forget that the IGP pronounced that the state security service is illegal. Though he doesn’t have the power to say so. But essentially when the state government says they don’t support it means they want to trust their own state security.
