01 May 2009 |
|
The debacle in Ekiti By Reuben Abati ON February 17, 2009, the Court of Appeal sitting in Ilorin determined the April 2007 Gubernatorial election petition in Ekiti State. The court ruled in favour of Kayode Fayemi, candidate of the Action Congress and appellant in the matter, and ordered a re-run in 65 wards covering 10 local councils in the state. The results of the Gubernatorial election in the six remaining local councils in the state were upheld, and this gave Fayemi an advantage of 11, 000 plus votes over his PDP rival who had already spent 21 months in office as Governor of Ekiti State. Even before that ruling, there had been much tension in Ekiti State, with the House of Assembly having been turned into a war zone, and supporters of the two contending political parties constantly clashing, often violently with each other. On Saturday, April 25, the re-run elections were held, but it was akin to a state of war. Results in five of the local councils were announced, in one local council - Oye-Ekiti, the election was postponed due to violence, and in another local council, Ido-Osi, although the elections had been concluded, and the results of three wards had been announced, something went wrong along the line. The collation of the results was reportedly moved away from the INEC headquarters and taken to a police station. When the results tally was brought back to the Resident Electoral Commissioner, 74-year old Chief (Mrs) Ayoka Adebayo, she refused to announce the results because the Form EC8 was not counter-signed by party agents as required by law. Mrs Adebayo alleged that she was being put under pressure to go against her Christian conscience, and so she left Ekiti, she literally abandoned her assignment, so much happened within the next 72 hours. There were concerns about her whereabouts but on Monday, April 27, the INEC Chairman, Professor Maurice Iwu informed the public that she was ill. By the following morning, it became known that she was indeed hale and hearty, but she had to flee from Ekiti because the pressures were unbearable. The AC immediately concluded that she was referring to the PDP and its riotous band of election riggers. The PDP asked her to give the names of the persons who were pressurizing her. On Tuesday, the embattled Resident Electoral Commissioner tendered her letter of resignation. This was promptly ignored by INEC and the Federal Government which claimed not to have seen the letter, a copy of which was published by the newspapers. The Inspector General of Police then declared Mrs Adebayo wanted asking her to make herself available within 12 hours to explain certain issues bordering on national security. This was the equivalent of a warrant of arrest. By Wednesday, however, the Federal Government had succeeded in making Mrs Adebayo change her mind. Was she threatened or persuaded? What exactly happened is a story that must be told. What we know for now, is her latest declaration that she is still a "member of the INEC family as Resident Electoral Commissioner for Ekiti State". Thus the Ekiti re-run Gubernatorial election has been a ding-dong affair, and with the reports of massive violence, an entirely shameful occasion. South Africa held its general elections on April 22 just before the elections in Ekiti. This was conducted most peacefully and concluded within 48 hours; the South Africans had to count and collate over 17.9 million votes nationwide. The number of votes at stake in the Ekiti election is a meagre total of 71,000 votes and that is precisely what INEC cannot collate and count properly. Again, the world must be laughing at Nigeria. Ghana is ahead of us. Kenyans are slowly learning their own lessons. Nigeria's INEC is infernally incompetent. The mayhem in Ekiti proves the point that Nigeria is not yet ready for electoral reform. As a litmus test for the Yar'Adua administration's avowed commitment to the rule of law and electoral integrity, the re-run election in Ekiti is embarrassing. Electoral reform is not just about the amendment of the existing framework. It means that on election day, the votes will count, that the process will be peaceful, free and fair, that candidates, their political parties and polling agents would conduct themselves as patriots and not pirates, that all institutions of state involved in the management of the process, including the police and the SSS will be impartial, and that public interest would reign supreme. All of these were in short supply in Ekiti on April 25 and the days after. On display was the desperation of the professional political class as they carved the 10 local councils in dispute into armed zones. Election observers and monitors as well as journalists were brutally assaulted and humiliated, but the police looked the other way. The police claim to have arrested up to about 125 persons. Does this figure include the seven civil society representatives who were beaten by political thugs in the presence of the police in Ifaki-Ekiti and who ended up being arrested while their assailants were allowed to go? That is - Dr Abubakar Momoh, Foaud Oki, Olusegun Olusoga, Wahab Oyedokun, Dr Azeez Olaniyan and Babatunde Awodeinde. The breakdown of law and order in the full view of the police is difficult to justify, except on the grounds of their usual incompetence and complicity. Where were the 10,000 policemen that were reportedly posted to Ekiti for the re-run election? Of what use was the special allowance that they purportedly collected? The Deputy Inspector General of Police that led the operation must be queried. He failed. The Nigerian Government has been most unfair to Mrs Ayoka Adebayo. In the first place, she is too old for the assignment. 74? Why send a 74-year old to such a difficult political terrain as Ekiti state? If the appointment must perforce go to her, one of her sons or daughters could have been appointed to do the job. And why was she not given enough police protection? She had only one mobile policeman guarding her whereas many of the political chieftains who had relocated to the state for a "do-or-die battle" had truck-loads of policemen protecting them. Even the INEC office had no security, which made it easy for aggrieved protesters to set a section of it ablaze. And when the woman fled out of fear for her life, and threw in a letter of resignation, the Inspector General of Police declared her wanted. If she had refused to respond to the warrant issued by the Police and INEC and the Presidency, what would they have done to her? Forcing her to go back to Ekiti, apparently against her wish, but in deference to national security considerations (such cheap blackmail) is untidy. The people to be declared wanted if government is sincere about concluding the election in Ekiti, are those politicians who have been boasting that they will do "everything" to win Ekiti , and who indeed seized the state on April 25. If the police and the SSS would do their job, they should know who these big masquerades are and bring them to book. This is not the first time that a public official would protest about undue pressures. It will be recalled that in the Bola Ige murder case, three different judges had to abandon the case. Two of them - Justices Abass and John Ige - cited undue pressures from certain quarters as their reason. Now that Mrs Adebayo has changed her mind about the resignation letter which the government claims was never received, Mr Okiro must get his men to do their job by protecting her. Her going back to Ekiti however may not make much difference. There is no guarantee that those who want to intimidate her would desist from doing so. Passions run too deep in Ekiti. the gladiators are too desperate; the level of anxiety among the people is at an all-time high. This week, there were women protesters on the streets of Ado-Ekiti demanding that Fayemi must be declared the winner of the election. The old women among the protesters - 60-80-years old chose to bare their breasts in a symbolic show of anger, while the younger women kept their clothes on. It would have been a far more engaging protest if the younger women- 20 - 50 - followed the older women's example but perhaps that is another matter. In the meantime, the Ekiti PDP is protesting that Mrs Adebayo is no longer an impartial arbiter in the election. The AC insists that she is a heroine of the revolution, and that they trust her and her Christian conscience. The Christian Association of Nigeria has issued a statement in her support, proclaiming her a good ambassador of Christ. Suppose at the end of it all, the PDP candidate is declared winner of the election. Will that be acceptable to the Action Congress? Or if the AC candidate were to be declared winner, would the PDP lick its wounds and go home? What is unfolding in Ekiti is frightening. With Fayemi (AC) and Oni (PDP) both claiming victory, and with a band of thugs chanting - "rig and roast", Ekiti's future hangs in the balance. We can only appeal to the politicians to put the interest of the state first. It is the ordinary people of Ekiti that are being short-changed, they are the biggest losers in this war of attrition. While the politicians are adopting absolutist positions and raising the temperature of the state, not much has been heard about the people and their future. More disturbing is the realisation that the quality of leadership in this country is so pedestrian. The same men who are empowering thugs in Ekiti and giving them arms and ammunitions are the same people who in other circumstances boast of national honours and important-sounding profiles within the public sphere. Whatever be the case however, a winner must emerge at the end of the day in the Ekiti Gubernatorial contest. There is no dispute over the five local councils whose results in the April 25 election have been announced. When Mrs Adebayo returns to Ekiti, fresh elections can be conducted in the remaining five councils, including Ido-Osi and Oye-Ekiti. Concluding the election in Ekiti must be seen by President Yar'Adua as a personal challenge. The people of Ekiti deserve better. Their votes should be allowed to count.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
# 
Your Comments
Please make The Square an enjoyable experience for everyone by refraining from gratuitous ad-hominem contributions, defamatory comments and off-topic posting. Such posts will be removed.