Combating electoral violence in Nigeria

Every election since the independence of Ni­geria in 1960 always has one tale of violence or the other trailing it and the present demo­cratic dispensation is no exception. Recent rerun elections in Bayelsa and Rivers states were marred by massive violence. OLAJIDE OMOJOLOMOJU examines the history of electoral violence in the electoral process in Nigeria, the causes and the possible solutions.

Election is an integral part of the democrat­ic process which gives the citizenry the op­portunity to freely determine who leads them at every strata of government at specific pe­riods and take decisions that that shape or mar their socio-economic and political desti­ny.

 It also provides opportu­nity for the citizenry to also recall their elected represent­atives when they fail or vote them out at the next available opportunity.

However, Nigeria’s politi­cal history in recent times has become replete with violence before, during and after elec­tions, be it general elections, supplementary or rerun elec­tions. And this has not au­gured well for the sustenance of democracy in the country.

An anonymous author has written that “the surest way to encourage violence is to give in to it,” but also, no matter how formidable violence has become in the electoral pro­cess, the people can overcome it with unity.

How do we describe elec­toral violence? It has been very difficult to give particu­lar definition to electoral vio­lence, perhaps because of the popular maxim that ‘violence begets violence” developed by Frantz Fanon in the era of an­ti-colonial struggles.

And because violence be­gets violence, those who retal­iate to first violence do not see themselves as perpetuating vi­olence. They simply argue that they are countering violence. However, one can attempt an operational definition of elec­toral violence. Electoral violence is all forms of violence, physical, psychological, ad­ministrative, legal and struc­tural, at different stages of an electoral process, engaged in by participants, their support­ers, and sympathizers, includ­ing security and election man­agement body staff.

These forms of violence take place before, during and after elections. Electoral vio­lence could also be intra or interparty.

Perhaps, for a better un­derstanding, a historical per­spective of electoral violence in Nigeria’s electoral process from independence will suf­fice.

Nigeria’s political histo­ry is replete with instanc­es of electoral violence, right from independence on Oc­tober 1, 1960. The Human Rights Watch, in 2007, in its follow up of post-independ­ence events, described Nige­ria’s post-independence his­tory as being overshadowed by the depredations of a se­ries of corrupt, abusive, and unaccountable governments.

The nation seems to have acquired a culture of electoral violence as seven of the eight general elections conducted since independence in 1960 have been violence-ridden – 1964/1965, 1979, 1983, 1999, 2003, 2007, 2011 and 2015.

At independence, the na­tion adopted the parliamenta­ry system of government after the British, which colonised Nigeria. The first post-inde­pendence election organized by the government of Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa and President Nnamdi Azikiwe in 1964 and 1965 were charac­terized by widespread com­plaints of fraud, violence and intimidation. Protest in the wake of the regional elections, which in some areas degener­ated into violence and inter-communal rioting, claimed more than 200 lives. This per­haps contributed to the first coup in 1966.

The next election was held in 1979, when a civilian ad­ministration headed by Alhaji Shehu Shagari of the defunct National Party of Nigeria (NPN), was installed by the Olusegun Obasanjo-led junta.

The Shagari-led govern­ment organized a civilian to civilian transition elec­tion, but unfortunately, hav­ing failed to learn from its First Republic counterparts, repeated history and mas­sively rigged the 1983 gener­al elections through very vi­olent means in connivance with the election manage­ment body, the Federal Elec­tion Commission (FEDECO) and security forces.

The massive rigging and violence that trailed that elec­tion set the tone for another wave of military intervention on December 31, 1983, which lasted till May 29, 1999, when the present democratic dis­pensation was instituted.

Since the advent of the ongoing democratic dispen­sation, the nation has only added to her litany of fraud­ulent and violent elections, as the 1999, 2003 and 2007 gen­eral elections that brought President Olusegun Obasan­jo and later, the late President Umaru Yar’Adua to power, were marred by widespread violence and fraud.

For example, the US-based Jimmy Carter Centre for De­mocracy, which monitored the 1999 election as an inter­national observer, concluded its report on the outcome of the presidential election like the others before it this way: “It is not possible for us to make an accurate judgment about the outcome of the presidential election.”

The 2003 election was even more pervasively and openly rigged than the flawed 1999 polls, and far more bloody.

These two elections set the stage for the 2007 elec­tions, with the Obasanjo max­im of do-or-die election, and which both local and interna­tional observers succinctly de­scribed as the worst election in Nigeria’s history. The 2007 elections even ranked among the worst conducted any­where in the world in recent times, according to HRW’s in­terviews with voters and ob­servers on the April 2007 elec­tions.

US-based National Dem­ocratic Institute (NDI), stated in its post-election statement that the electoral process “failed the Nigerian people,” while the HRW, which also monitored the election, re­ported that the failed April 2007 polls “cast a harsh and very public light on patterns of violence, corruption and outright criminality that have come to characterize Nigeria’s political system – and on the extent to which officials and institutions at all levels of government accept, encour­age and participate in those abuses.”

The 2011 elections did not fare any better as it was char­acterized again by pervasive violence before, during and after the elections. It is per­haps the 2015 general elec­tions that one can say with all certainty that was free of vi­olence, although it also had its fair share of violence be­fore and during the elections in some states, but it could pass and has been described as one of the best to be con­ducted in the political histo­ry of Nigeria.

It follows from the above that in almost every election year since independence, elec­toral violence has become part and parcel of the Nigerian electoral process. About 800 Nigerians, including 10 youth corps members, lost their lives to electoral violence, aside the millions of naira worth of property destroyed.

There is a legal framework guiding the electoral process at every point of election in Nigeria, but despite this, the elections are always viewed as a contest between those who want to acquire power and those who are likely to lose power.

This contest between two contending forces normally put the toga of violence be­cause many politicians usu­ally want to cut corners.

Nigeria’s democratic his­tory has showed an electoral and political violence that of­ten times threaten the coun­try to its very foundations, and this has made it near im­possible to consolidate de­mocracy and thus making it difficult for the country to be referred to as a democratic state though operators vehe­mently lay claim to it.

Although it has been es­tablished historically that vi­olence is a major feature of politics everywhere around the world, politically-relat­ed violence varies in inten­sity, trends and dimensions from one political system to another and from one coun­try to the other.

Causes of electoral violence

Many reasons could be ad­duced for perpetrating elec­toral violence, especially in the Nigerian political land­scape. Former governor of Lagos State and Minister of Works, Power and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, put the blame of electoral violence on alleged disempowerment of the electorate.

Fashola, while blaming the electoral umpire for con­tributing to electoral violence, said: “The seed of violence is sown when people perceive that they are being disen­franchised either by deny­ing them the freedom to vote or through delay of elector­al materials. If we are talking about electoral violence, pre, during and post, some things have happened to which, per­haps, we haven’t paid enough attention to, which is the most recent evidence of people snatching ballot boxes.

“And what is the recent evidence of electoral failures; people being disenfranchised, prevented from voting be­cause electoral materials don’t get to them or their votes are cancelled or delayed.”

He also added that other possible reasons for electoral violence is the refusal of pol­iticians to accept defeat, add­ing that: “Another possible cause of electoral violence is a reaction to a possible stim­ulus, a stimulus that suggests that, ‘well, we will do what we like to get power and you go and do what you like’.”

Also, the do-or-die pol­itics, introduced during the tail end of the Obasanjo pres­idency has also, in no small measure, contributed to the spate of electoral violence in the land.

Again, the humongous salary that elected represent­atives of the people collect every month has also been identified as one of the rea­sons the electoral process is always marred with pervasive violence, as every contestant in the electoral process wants to win at all cost and also get a share of the huge emoluments that elected officials collect from the national treasury.

Greed and avarice have also played an important role in election violence in Nige­

 

 ria. Greed on the part of the politicians, who go to the ex­tent of imposing themselves on the populace for their own selfish interest which borders on wealth acquisition through the power bestowed on them through the ballot, is also one of the major causes of elector­al violence.

And also of importance is ignorance; ignorance on the part of the youths who are used to perpetrate violence during election. Such igno­rance is occasioned by lack of education and knowledge, to understand that politicians are only using them to perpe­trate violence at election time to satisfy their own selfish in­terest.

Other causes of elector­al violence include: elector­al abuses, and rigging of elec­tions; abuse of political power; alienation, marginalization and exclusion; and the po­litical economy of oil; pov­erty/unemployment; inef­fectiveness of security forces and the culture of impunity; weak penalties; weak govern­ance and corruption and, pro­liferation of arms and ammu­nitions.

Other related causes of violence during election are: lack of security; partisanship of traditional rulers, who are supposed to be the custodi­ans of our cultural heritage; abuse of office by elected offi­cials; zero-sum politics or the winner takes it all syndrome; lucrative nature of political of­fice; poor handling of election petitions, and lack of faith in the judiciary; lack of compli­ance with the extant elector­al law and enforcement of the enabling laws; partisan dispo­sition of the police, and oth­er security agencies detailed to monitor elections, and se­cure lives and property; cor­rupt INEC staff and ad-hoc officials, who connive with the politicians; conflict of inter­ests between and among pol­iticians; and greed and selfish interests of politicians coupled with ideological bankruptcy.

Of important note is that, most perpetrators of elector­al violence and/or the brains behind them are more of­ten than not, never brought to book, as no one has been comprehensively prosecut­ed for election violence in the country. This has continued to embolden the perpetrators to become entrenched in the act.

According to the HRW, ar­chitects, sponsors, and perpe­trators of this violence gener­ally enjoy complete impunity because of both the powers of intimidation they wield and the tacit acceptance of their conduct by police and gov­ernment officials at all levels.

It is therefore against this background that Nigeria’s governing elites have been widely implicated in acts of electoral violence, corrup­tion and fraud, which have become pervasive and en­trenched in the politics of the nation.

Pains of electoral violence

Of course, every violence, whether electoral or other­wise, leaves in its wake, tears sorrow and devastation. So, electoral violence always leave behind tales of deaths, inju­ries, destruction of property and displacement of people.

In most cases, innocent lives are always lost in the wake of election-related vio­lence. A vivid example is the recent violence that trailed the rerun state and National As­semblies elections in Rivers State where no less than 10 people including a member of the National Youths Service Corps (NYSC), lost their lives.

Apart from the loss of lives, property worth trillions of naira have been lost to electoral violence. An exam­ple is the violence that trailed the 1983 general elections in many parts of the country. A case study is the old Ondo State example where person­al property and those of gov­ernment were wantonly de­stroyed.

In most cases, it is not the direct victims that suffer from the effects of elector­al violence. More often than not, those who have nothing to do with the electoral pro­cess also suffer the effects of electoral violence. Many peo­ple have one time or the oth­er been displaced and become refugees in their fatherland.

Electoral violence also af­fects the credibility of the elec­toral system, the democratic system and the rule of law, as it raises doubts over the out­come of such electoral process where violence pervades.

Panacea to electoral violence

Since ignorance has been identified as one of the major causes of electoral violence, it’s imperative that the citi­zenry be educated politically and strategically, which is the most effective way of curbing electoral violence.

The reason for this is not far-fetched. Political edu­cation is the conduit-pipe through which political cul­tural values and behavioural patterns of the society are im­bibed and internalized.

Government should edu­cate the citizenry on the in­herent dangers of allowing an entrenched culture of elec­toral and political violence as part of the features of the po­litical and electoral system.

Having identified ed­ucation as the launch-pad of a nation-state’s develop­ment agenda, political edu­cation constitutes a hercule­an task for the several agents of education in Nigeria and as soon as we get this right, eve­ry other remedy to elector­al violence will fall in place and these include: constitu­tional amendment; elector­al reforms; pressure from civil society groups through agenda-setting; change in the character of the political elites; among others.

There is also the need for the establishment of Elec­tion Malpractice Tribunal as recommended by the Justice Muhammadu Lawal Uwais’ Electoral Reform Commit­tee to punish manipulators of the electoral process.

When electoral offenders get punished adequately for the infractions, it will serve as deterrent to other would-be perpetrators of electoral offences and make electoral crimes less attractive.

There is also the need to make elected offices less at­tractive, especially in terms of the emoluments attached to such offices. This was the contention of the senator rep­resenting Bayelsa-East sena­torial district in the upper chamber of the National As­sembly, Ben Murray-Bruce, who advocated for reduced salaries for political office­holders.

Senator Murray-Bruce charged Nigerians to vehe­mently push for demoneti­zation of politics at all levels as a way of doing away with do-or-die politics, adding that the huge salary of politicians was responsible for electoral violence.

He said this in a series of tweets he posted on his Twit­ter handle recently, add­ing that do-or-die politics, which breeds electoral vio­lence, happen because “pres­idents and governors have too much power over the treas­ury of their domains,” noting that do-or-die politics, and by extension, electoral violence, will end when political office­holders stop getting access to huge allocations.

Also, the electoral um­pire must remain transpar­ent in all engagements and strive to resolve tensions, suspicion and speculations that could lead to election vi­olence and also work closely with state institutions such as the security agencies to iden­tify early enough, areas prone to violence in order to mount preventive actions.

The political class too has a role to play in curbing elec­toral violence. Politicians must eschew politics of bitter­ness and hate and also learn to accept defeat gallantly and winners too should learn to be magnanimous in victory.

And of course, the youths should stop making them­selves a willing tool in the hands of politicians to desta­bilise the electoral process. A lecturer at the Centre for Peace and Strategic Studies, University of Ilorin, Dr Jo­seph Fayeye, urged youths to resist being used to cause mayhem in elections.

He charged them thus: “Do not lay down your lives on the altar of petty politics for anyone to win election,’’ even as he urged them to en­gage aspirants seeking elec­tive offices in debates about their programmes and man­ifestos, especially for the youths.

Fayeye said that youths who allowed themselves to be recruited as agents of destruc­tion are as good as “devalu­ing themselves,” adding that: “Therefore, Nigerian youths cannot afford to be used as cheap labour to disrupt elec­tions and foment troubles.”

Finally, the government also has to provide adequate employment opportunities for the youths to make polit­ical thuggery less attractive to them.