Any nation that does not punish violators is doomed”. This refrain was the thread that ran through the interactions between the INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu and Media Executives as he visited the offices of four national newspapers, namely: The Tribune, Punch, Nation and Guardian on Thursday and Friday last week.
Professor Yakubu who made clarion calls for the establishment of the Electoral Offences Commission and Tribunal as prescribed by the Justice Mohammed Uwais and Ahmed Lemu Commissions at each of his visits noted that inconclusive elections were brought about largely by violence and that the only way to put to rest this spectre of violence that continues to haunt our elections was to put in place a mechanism that punished offenders, arguing that “there are people who believe that they can do anything and get away with it.”
Eventhough inconclusive elections were caused by violence and overvoting, Professor Yakubu observed that they were also compounded by the recent evolution of two strong parties as opposed to the past where we had one mega party and smaller ones. The import of this evolution (of two formidable parties), Professor Yakubu noted was that the contestation for political office was keener and the margins between the winners and runner ups was so narrow that any incidents of violence could mar the elections and render them inconclusive. To buttress his point, he cited the instance of the last presidential election where the margin between the winner and the runner up was 2.5 million and a Councillorship election in Gwagwalada, in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), where the winner outbested his runner up with a mere eleven votes. He declared: “The days of landslide election victory are gone, and gone for good.”
Professor Yakubu who traced the history of inconclusive elections to the 1979 presidential election observed, however, that inconclusive elections were not strange to our laws. He emphasized that the Commission under his watch was irrevocably determined to ensure that each vote counted.
The INEC Chairman noted that logistics which used to be one of the perennial Achilles heels of the Commission had been addressed squarely by the creation of SUPER RACs and that the consequence of this was that the Commission recorded 92% opening of Polling Units on Election Day in the Kogi governorship election and 100% in the recent Ife and Minjibir State Constituency bye elections in Oyo and Kano States respectively.
He expressed optimism that following representations made by the Commission to the Presidency, the outstanding six (6) National Commissioners and twenty-one (21) Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) would soon be appointed to replace those whose tenures have lapsed. He stressed that the prerogative of nominating or appointing the Commissioners was that of the President.
Professor Yakubu disclosed that thus far, not less than one hundred (100) staff of the Commission had been invited by the EFCC and that based on revelations, the number kept increasing. Said he: “So far, over a hundred staff of INEC had been invited. At a point, we toyed with the idea of speaking to the EFCC to see the weight of evidence they have so that we can take administrative action against our staff, but they are innocent until they are proven guilty. They have to be charged to court, but we have taken notice and we have a complete list.”
Though the list of invited staff kept increasing, he emphasized that the Commission was co-operating with the EFCC and that ultimately staff who were culpable would “be shown the way out.”