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Not long after he was sworn-in after the controversial April 2007 elections, President Umar Musa Yar’adua had the basic sense of honesty to acknowledge that the set of elections that produced him and the present crop of leaders were flawed. This frank admission mollified a lot of Nigerians who were angry and ashamed at the same time about the charade that took place in the name of election and were vociferously calling for the voiding of the whole exercise.
Yar’adua did not stop at the expression of guilt at the process that threw him up. He went ahead to promise Nigerians some sort of restitution. He said he was going to ensure that subsequent elections under his tenure would be free, fair and credible. Some Nigerians believed him. Those who did not quite believe him adopted a wait-and-see attitude. When he went a step further to set up the Electoral Reform Panel composed of fairly credible Nigerians with a mandate to come up with suggestions as to how the country can have a dependable process to superintend the recruitment of political leaders, some who did not quite trust the promise of a politician were compelled to give him the benefit of the doubt. Ten months down the line since that presidential promise and series of elections under Yar’adua’s watch, what can we make of the electoral situation? Is it business as usual or is there hope that elections will become a true reflection of the wishes of the voters? The state of affairs so far, we dare say, does not offer any hope. It is still very much business as usual, if not worse. We say it is even worse because even under Obasanjo, there was a semblance of election in some cases and in some places. But it is remarkable that since this dispensation, true election has hardly taken place anywhere. It started with the local government elections. In one state after another, the real people never took part in electing the officials to govern them. What happened all over the states was that the chairmanship and councillorship candidates were said to have been elected by consensus. Inspite of all the foregoing, this newspaper believes that it is not too late for the president and other leaders to reconsider and commit themselves to free and fair election as the only way to an enduring democracy in Nigeria. In all the states, parties controlling the state government had a clean sweep of all the chairmanship and councillorship seats in a manner that made it clear that the so-called elections were manipulated by a clique and the people had little or nothing to do with the choices of people forced on them as their leaders. Those who sought to confirm whether the president was sincere or not waited eagerly for the local government election in his home state of Katsina where his handpicked successor holds court. As in other states, the Katsina vote was ‘won’ by the PDP. It is true that some of the elections that have so far been conducted were organised by the so-called State Independent Electoral Commission and so the Federal Government cannot be held accountable for their conduct. But given the enormous moral weight and influence of the office of the president, Yar’adua could easily and successfully have persuaded the state governors who control the state electoral bodies to do the right thing. That is, if the president’s heart is really in doing the right thing. The truth of the matter from what we have so far seen is that Yar’adua’s heart is not in Nigeria having a free and fair election. He has conveniently looked the other way while the state governors use their state electoral commission to produce winners without real election because it serves the interest of his party the PDP which benefits more from such fraudulent exercise. We also have cause to believe that the president has been reluctant to persuade the governors to toe the line of credible election because he does not want to be challenged by anyone, especially the governors who are becoming increasingly assertive about how he himself came to power. But other elections, such as the state congresses and national convention of the PDP and the rerun vote of the Kogi State governorship have proven conclusively that the promise of free and fair election by Yar’adua is a hollow one.
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