2019 Polls

Newswatch Now May, 2019 | 1

Cover

No 2 MAY 2019

500N

• Buhari’s victory

Hiccups and crises•

Shocks & surprises•

2019 Polls2019 Polls Atiku’s challenge•

| Newswatch Now May, 20192 cCall: 07080601156


Outline

29

35

21

05

4144

07

27Goodbye 8thNational Assembly

How the mighty fell

Battle for supremacy

A long trek to our political Eldorado

We learnt nothing, forgot nothing

Why we don’t vote

How Nigeria voted in 2019

Buhari: why andhow he won

MAY, 2019. No. 2

MayFive Media Limited

Newswatch Now is published by MayFive Me-dia Limited, 10B Acme Road, off Lateef Jakande Road, Agidingbi, Ikeja Lagos. E-mail: [email protected]. Website: www.mayfivemedia.com. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any form, in whole or in part, without permission is forbidden. Printed in Nigeria by AFKAR Printing & Publishing Company Limited, Plot 151, Acme Road, Ikeja, Lagos.

No 2 MAY 2019

No 2 MAY 2019

500N

• Buhari’s victory

Hiccups and crises•

Shocks & surprises•

2019 Polls2019 Polls Atiku’s challenge•

| Newswatch Now May, 20194

No 2 MAY 2019

From the Editorial SuiteNewswatch Now debuted in February. With cover headline Nigeria Decides, the publication was dedi-cated to the election: how the politicians and their respective poliitcal parties positioned themselves for the biggest event of the year. We ex-rayed the chances of all the contestants especially the most prominent presidential candidates – President Muhammadu Bu-hari of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC and former vice-president, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. We also reviewed preparations of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. From the various reports and analyses, it ap-peared all was set. Now, the elections have come and gone. In this second issue of the magazine, we have exhaustively reported the processes and the outcome of the elec-tions, highlighting the shocks and the surprises as well as the fall of some mighty political titans. Unlike in

the debut issue, we have had to rely on the assistance of some of our old Newswatch hands. This issue has profited immensely from their reportorial experience. The likes of Olu Ojewale, Pita Ochai, Augustine Ada, Ademola Abimboye and Ishaya Ibrahim were excited about the new magazine and they did not hesitate to offer a helping hand. An up-and-coming enterpris-ing reporter, Yusuf Mohammed, made an excellent contribution to the story written by Soji Akinrinade on How the mighty fell. We value their assistance as well as the contribution of Conrad Akwu, former Newswatch Photo Editor, who provided most of the pictures in this issue.

Yakubu MohammedEditor-in-chief

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEFYakubu Mohammed

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Democracy is the only form of government that recognises the people as the locus of political power. Perhaps that is why democ-racy was originally an exclusive means of allocating power. Even among the Romans, the right to vote was restricted to men of prop-erty. Women and slaves were denied the right to vote. This carried on into the modern times. It took a determined struggle to win the battle for adult suffrage and turn democracy from an exclusive and limited system of government into the people’s government in the 18th century.

The Romans gave us a simple system. They did not invent the ballot paper, the ballot box and the voting booth. We have man-aged to clothe democracy and the process of choosing our leaders with these complexities. We have refined the Roman method over and over again and replaced the voice vote with the ballot paper and the ballot box. As often happens in human progress, the law of unintended consequences surfaced here and these refinements have become part of the problems of democracy. Democracy is not just

The Romans had a better hang of it then than we do now. They gathered at the amphitheatre to elect their political leaders with a voice vote. If the ayes had it, that was it; if the nays had it, that was it too. The voice of the people was

the voice of the gods. Whoever they chose to bless as their leaders, the gods also blessed them. The ends of democracy were served because the leadership that emerged was by the popular choice of the people.

Through that simple act, the Romans gave us democracy, a sys-tem of government that gives the poor and the deprived the power and the right to be the masters of those who wish to lead them. That right is arguably the most respected right in the world today. Democracy owes its relevance to the full exercise of that right by the people. It led Abraham Lincoln to see democracy as the government of the people by the people for the people. No one has bettered his definition of democracy.

By Dan Agbese

A long trek to our political Eldorado


about voting; it is more importantly about winning or capturing or holding on to political power. Modern man has thereby made democracy the most competitive form of government. It brings out the best in men and women; and it brings out the worst in them too.

The problem lies largely with the evolutionary process in elevat-ing democracy to a higher form of decision-making than the Ro-mans conceived of it. We make laws laying down the conditions that those who seek our votes must meet before they are even considered eligible to canvass the people’s votes. We created the executive and the legislative branches of government as centres of political power. We instituted elections through the instrumentality of the ballot pa-pers and the ballot boxes because the elections make it possible for the people to choose their preferred leaders, all things being equal, from among the contestants for power.

These then, are the main problems with democracy. There is no democracy anywhere in the world so advanced that it does not confront the challenges thrown up by the competition and the greed for power. Man must always seek to dominate his fellow men and women. Power, political power, is the veritable instrument for that domination. Let us face it: none of us, if given the chance, would refuse to let others serve him. Playing God feels good too.

There is an element of democracy in every form of government. This goes for the most sophisticated as well as the most primitive form of societal co-operation in which people come together and surrender their rights and privileges to a group of men who look out for the common good. Think of the chief priest and his power over his unenlightened community. But modern democracy is an alien system of government with its own culture and tradition and nuances. On the one hand, where democracy is sufficiently cultur-ized, it is fairly easy to observe the basic rules of the competition for political power. This is what happens in the settled democracies of the Western world that passed what it inherited from the Romans to the rest of the world. On the other hand, where democracy and the electoral system are transplants and thus alien to the people’s culture and their own appreciation of the nuances of their power resident in the ballot paper, the system has problems. You do not need any tutoring to see why developing countries have problems with their elections. We speak in general terms, of course.

Our own country has had a long trudge through the woods since 1959 when we conducted our first general elections. Those elec-tions were conducted by our departing British colonial masters. The centre firmly held. When the sons of the soil conducted their first post-independence general elections in 1964, we knew, as the Onitsha man would say, this would not be easy. The elections were mired in controversies because we knew then as we know now, that the competition for elective offices is not cricket. There are, obvi-ously, gentlemen and ladies in politics but it is no game for gentle-men and ladies.

The centre began to shake visibly when the Eastern Region boy-cotted the 1964 general elections. Although the rest of the country ignored them and went to the polls, it took some shine off the ability of the sons of the soil, only four years after the British returned home and left the affairs of the country in their hands at the federal and regional centres of power. The fall out from those elections led to the political crises later seized by the young majors to put a bloody end to the Tafawa Balewa regime. It changed for ever the ar-chitecture of our national politics. Nothing has been the same.

The generals locked the gates against democracy in our country for nearly fourteen years. They then wrote a new constitution and

supervised the elections that returned the country to civil rule on October 1, 1979. Believing that the fault was not in our civilian lead-ers but in the parliamentary system of government bequeathed to us, they imported the executive presidential system from the United States.

We thought the new executive presidential system would help moderate the competition for power. We were wrong. In any case, the generals served notice more or less that this would not be so when they decided to constitute electoral tribunals to which those who felt cheated at the ballot box could seek redress through the judicial interpretation of winning and losing. When the civilians conducted the first post-military general elections in 1983, the same primordial forces surfaced again and the same problems compli-cated the simple democratic process of the people being allowed to choose their leaders. Again, the generals took advantage of the controversies generated by the disputes over the elections and duly returned to the political turf. And again, we had a long chilly harmattan period of military dictatorship. Our country was put through many twists and turns in political engineering to ostensibly prepare it for the challenges of democracy.

Where are we? We are right here battling with the basics of the conduct of elections. And we have been trying to stand on our feet since the generals returned to the barracks in 1999; 2003; 2007; 2011; 2015 and now 2019. Five times on our own. We should expect to be getting steadier and sturdier on our feet. So far, no such luck. Each of those elections was a subject of disputes and controversies. In some cases, the tribunals saved the cheated but in most cases, not even the tribunals could do much to turn the table against the cheaters.

For a modern election to be adjudged successful it must sat-isfy two fundamental conditions. It must be free and it must be fair. Both words must be understood in their basic and ordinary meanings. Free means that the people must not be denied the right to freely choose those for whom they wish to support with their votes; fair means there must be a level playing field for the candi-dates.

Modern elections have often crashed on these two rocks because of intervening variables. Resources available to the candidates are not uniform, thus making it difficult to talk of a level playing field. The most vicious of these intervening variables is called rigging. It refers to the crass manipulation of the electoral system and the elections before, during and after an election. The Romans knew nothing about election rigging. Good for them. We know election rigging. Bad for us. No one knows for sure who invented elec-tion rigging. It is not unreasonable to suggest that election rigging became an instrument for capturing or retaining power the day the politicians realised that capturing power is not a straight forward business. It is crooked. Election rigging has come in handy as the illegal process by which one candidate denies another victory at the polls. If Otunba Gbenga Daniel, former governor of Ogun State, is to be believed, there are some 200 ways to rig elections in Nigeria. That is huge. Spare a thought for ballot box snatching, ballot stuff-ing, crass intimidation of voters, under-age voting and vote buying and the adverse effects they have had and continue to have on our ambition to conduct free and fair elections. We rig, therefore, we win. All is fair in politics as it is in war.

The roots of democracy grow and deepen ever so slowly. Can we ever get it right such that our elections are sources of national pride rather than sources of shame? Keep hope alive.


President Buhari casts his ballot as his wife, Aisha, watches

How Nigeria voted in 2019

Nigerians re-elect President Muhammadu Buhari for a second term but his victory looks more like a personal endorsement


The results of the 2019 presidential election held on Satur-day, February 23 are already in the public domain. The election results released by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in the early hours of Feb-ruary 27, 2019 showed that Buhari polled 15,191,847 votes, representing 55.60 percent of the total votes cast

while Abubakar received 11,262,978, representing 41.22 percent of total the votes cast. Buhari, the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, won 19 out of the 36 states, while Atiku Abubakar, his closest rival and the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, won in 17 states, including the federal territory. None of the other 71 contestants won any state or scored as many as one mil-lion votes. In fact, coming distant third is Nicolas Felix of the Peoples Coalition Party, PCP, who polled 110,196 or 0.40 percent.

By the election results, Buhari has the mandate for a second term in office. But Abubakar and the PDP are not convinced. They have both filed their petitions before the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal on March 17, challenging the president’s victory. Three other presi-

dential candidates have also separately approached the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Abuja, demanding it to void the results of the February 23 presidential election. The three presidential challengers are Ambrose Owuru of the Hope Democratic Party, HDP; Aminchi Habu of the Peoples Democratic Movement, PDM, and Geff Chizee Ojinka, the candidate of the Coalition for Change, C4C, who all urged the tribunal to invoke its powers and quash the declaration of Buhari as the bonafide winner of the 2019 presidential election.

In their separate petitions, they all alleged that the election was marred by various forms of irregularities, and that the Electoral Act was not substantially complied with by the INEC.

That notwithstanding, the reaction to the result of the 2019 presi-dential election was a great departure from that of the 2015. In the 2015 presidential election, the then President Goodluck Jonathan and candidate of the PDP, conceded defeat and even congratulated Buhari before the final results were announced. But Abubakar was not so magnanimous because of what he perceived as injustice done to him. Hence, he rejected the president’s victory alleging premeditated malpractices in many states which negated the results announced by the INEC.

By Olu Ojewale

Former Vice President Abubakar and his wife Titi cast their ballots


In a statement issued on Wednesday, February 27 entitled: ‘De-mocracy Will Not Be Emasculated in Nigeria,’ Abubakar alleged that Nigeria’s democracy was debased in the conduct of the elections. “One obvious red flag is the statistical impossibility of states ravaged by the war on terror generating much higher voter turnouts than peaceful states.

“The suppressed votes in my strongholds are so apparent and ama-teurish, that I am ashamed as a Nigerian that such could be allowed to happen. How can total votes in Akwa-Ibom, for instance, be 50 per cent less than what they were in 2015?

“Another glaring anomaly is the disruption of voting in strongholds of the Peoples Democratic Party in Lagos, Akwa-Ibom, Rivers and diverse other states, with the authorities doing little or nothing and in some cases facilitating these unfortunate situations,” he charged.

Besides, Abubakar said: “The militarisation of the electoral process is a disservice to our democracy and a throwback to the jackboot era of military dictatorship. In some areas of the country, such as, Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Imo states, troops deployed for the elections turned their guns on the very citizens they were meant to protect. This is condemnable and should not be associated with our electoral process in the future.”

In his acceptance speech as soon as he was declared the winner of the poll, Buhari thanked Nigerians for their support. “I also thank the millions of volunteers, self-appointed overseers, canvassers, agents, es-corts and sentries who sacrificed so much of their time and resources to ensure the success of these elections. I do not have the words adequate to thank them,” he said.

Nevertheless, the president was also mindful of some anomalies reported during the election. He said: “Although Saturday’s elections were relatively peaceful, troublemakers in a handful of states attempted to disrupt an otherwise orderly process. Security agencies will bring to justice all those arrested in the process.

“I am very sad at the grievous loss of lives during these elections. Security agencies will step up their efforts to protect voters in the forthcoming state elections.”

That notwithstanding, as things have turned out, the president and his challengers will have their days at the tribunal to argue whether the election was a true representation of how Nigerians voted.

In any case, the analysis of the 2019 presidential election has shown some interesting developments. According to the data released by INEC, only 34.75 percent of registered voters actually participated in the 2019 presidential election. The percentage represents 28,614,190 people who cast their votes during the elections, while accredited voters were 29,364,209 voters. And the number of valid votes, which led to the final decision were 27,324,583, representing 33.18 percent of the 82,344,107 registered voters.

Comparatively, there was voter apathy because in the 2015 presi-dential election out of the 68,833,476 registered voters, the turnout was 43.65 percent. At that election Buhari had won in 21 states polling 15,424,921 votes, representing 53.96 percent of the total votes cast, while Jonathan won 15 states, including FCT, with the total votes of 12,853,162, representing 44.96 percent.

In the 2019 presidential election, other available facts showed that Kano State had the highest votes cast with 1,964,751 and 1,891,134 valid votes. Jigawa State had the highest rate of voter turnout with 1,171,801 voters, representing 55.67 percent of its registered voters showing up for accreditation. However, about 52.55 percent of its registered voters had valid votes.

Katsina State followed with 1,555,473 voters or 48.45 percent and then Sokoto State, which had 871,891 valid voters or 46 percent.

In the category of lowest number of voter turnout, Lagos State led with 1,089,567 voters or 17.25 percent. It was followed by Abia State with 323,291 votes or 18 percent and Rivers State which had 642,165

valid votes or 19.97 percent. Incidentally, in 2015, more than 1.5 million people voted in the

Rivers State presidential election in which President Buhari got 69,238 votes or four percent. But in 2019, of the 642,165 valid votes in the Rivers State presidential election, Buhari got 150,710 votes or 23 percent, while Abubakar got 473,971 votes.

The major surprise in the election was 41 percent turnout of voters in Borno State. According to the election results, Buhari got 836,496 votes or 90.94 percent of all the votes cast in Borno State, being his highest margin of victory in the 2019 elections, while Abubakar received 71,788 votes.

What has made this surprising is the fact that the state that has been under ferocious attacks of Boko Haram, an Islamic terrorist group, for more than five years and even on Election Day, the state experienced bombings in certain places. However, the explanation put forward by the state authorities is that voting was made accessible to the internal displaced persons, IDPs, inside their camps, making it easy to ensure voters showed up.

Nevertheless, an interesting analysis of the election showed that

Ballot box at a polling station


Buhari had more than 75 percent in seven states in this election, while Abubakar secured over 75 percent of the vote in just two states, namely Anambra and Enugu. The PDP candidate’s performance in Anambra State was attributed to the fact that Peter Obi, his running mate is from the state.

In comparison with 2015 presidential election, the president did not really do well. In 2015 election, Buhari received more than 75 percent of the votes in 11 states, while Jonathan got the same in 10 states.

Nevertheless, there were other surprises that could not be ignored from the 2019 presidential election results.

For instance, in Kwara State, the departure of Bukola Saraki, the Senate President, from the ruling APC to the PDP was expected to give Abubakar an edge in the state. But that was not the case as the president won the state with 308,984 votes as against Abubakar’s 138,184 votes. To crown it all, Saraki himself also lost his re-election bid to return to the Senate. He was defeated by Yahaya Oloriegbe, the APC candidate in the contest for the Kwara Central Senatorial District. Oloriegbe polled a total of 123, 808 votes to defeat Saraki who polled 68, 994 votes in the four local governments of Kwara Central Senatorial District.

Similarly the president won in Nasarawa State. What makes his vic-tory remarkable is that it was the first time for him since 2003 as he polled 289,903 votes to defeat Abubakar who got 283,847 votes. Buhari had scored 236,838 in the 2015 presidential election, while Jonathan received 273,460 votes.

Unlike 2015, the president marginally lost in Oyo State despite the fact that Governor Abiola Ajimobi is of the ruling APC. Buhari scored 365,229 votes, while Abubakar got 366,690 votes. Not surprisingly, Ajimobi himself lost his bid to return to the Senate after losing to Kola Balogun of the PDP. The governor polled 92,218 votes while Balogun got 105,720 votes.

Similarly, Buhari lost in Ondo State, where Governor Rotimi Ak-eredolu of the APC holds sway. The president had 241,769 votes while Abubakar got 275,901 votes.

“The outcome of the presidential election results have clearly shown that they were not based on regional sentiments this time. If you compare with the 2015 election, Atiku Abubakar did better than Goodluck Jonathan in many states. Unfortunately, Atiku did not per-

Voting in progress


form well very well in many states in particular. Even in Adamawa, his own state, he only got 51 percent of the votes, compared to 99 percent for Goodluck Jonathan in Bayelsa State in 2015. President Buhari on the other hand won his state, Katsina by about 93 percent in 2015 and 79 percent in 2019,” Lekan Bolarinwa, a political analyst told Newswatch Now.

“The performances of Abubakar have also shown that he does not have any political strong base, perhaps because the two leading can-didates are from the North,” he further said.

Besides, also not to be dismissed is the fact that the presidential election showed that there was considerable voter apathy in the South than in the North. In the North, 41 percent of the eligible voters turned out for the election, while the South recorded 27 percent.

“The regional trend has persisted for many years and this tends to reinforce the argument that Northerners are more politically aware than Southerners. And when you look at how the North voted in this election you would discover that it was not issued-based. Buhari has cult-like following in the North, some of them are ready to lay down their lives for the president. But Atiku does not have such fundamental followers.

region to be more interested in the presidential election than their Southern counterparts.

“The absence of any prominent candidate with widespread appeal in the South also explained why some voters were not enthusiastic to exercise their franchise,” he said.

That notwithstanding, the performances of the Third Force in the 2019 presidential election cannot be discounted. Although an un-written zone formula had given it to the North to produce the next president for the country for another four years, the South still had the highest number of persons gunning for the president. Even then, only a handful of them actually showed up in terms of visibility and all of them performed dismally during the poll itself.

Indeed, from the outcome of the 2019 presidential election, the impact of the Third Force appeared to have come from the People’s Coalition Party, PCP, founded by Nicholas Felix, an Edo-State born Nigerian pastor based in the United States. He came third in the presidential election with 110,196 votes, about one percent of what the PDP candidate got.

But analysts suspected that the PCP candidate possibly benefitted

“The presidential election was not based on objectivity in the North or the party manifesto but loyalty of Buhari followers. But you can also see that Atiku won in the South South and South East because they were mainly PDP. Besides, the APC had intra-party squabbles in Ogun, Ondo, Lagos, Oyo states which reflected in the results of the presidential election,” Tomi Vincent, a lawyer and lecturer at the Pan-Atlantic University, said in an interview with Newswatch Now.

In the same vein, Vincent said that the South East had always voted for the PDP and the fact that Abubakar promised restructuring of the country also helped the PDP presidential candidate. The univer-sity don dismissed the argument that the election could have been based on party manifestoes.

Similarly, Bolarinwa told News-watch Now that party manifestoes had little or no impact on how Nigerians voted. He pointed at allegation of intimidation of vot-ers in many places as one of the reasons why Nigerians could not vote objectively. He opined that voter apathy was also caused the militarilisation of the election, intimidation of voters, vote buying and rigging as some of the prob-lems encountered by the electorate in exercising their franchise.

He also spoke of political aware-ness in the North. “The fact that the two main candidates are from the North encouraged voters in the


from the fact that the logo of his party was right above that of the PDP on the ballot paper, and that the party’s green-white-red logo was likely mistaken for the PDP’s by thousands of voters.

Another new entrant into the Nigerian political fray is Kingsley Moghalu, the candidate of the Young Progressive Party, YPP. Moghalu was a bundle of ideas, but a greenhorn in the Nigerian politics. After he was adjudged by many observers to have won the alternative can-didate during the electioneering, he nonetheless failed to defeat his rivals at the polls. Despite the fact he got just 21,886 or 0.0008 percent of the total votes, he beat likes of Fela Durotoye of the Alliance for New Nigeria, who polled 16,779 votes and Oby Ezekwesili of the Al-lied Congress Party of Nigeria, ACPN, who pulled out the race on Thursday, January 24 and still received 7,223 votes.

Omoyele Sowore, the candidate of the African Action Congress, got 34,003 votes in the election. Interestingly, the combined votes for all

the alternative third parties only accounted for less than four percent of the votes cast. This, therefore, undermined the argument that they would have done better by binding together.

“In spite of their strong TV performances and general positive sentiments across the country, the seemingly public support did not translate to votes. On the other hand, it is also possible that voters simply chose not to vote third parties to avoid wasting their votes. So, this is a big challenge for the third parties to prove their mettle and inspire more confidence in future elections if they want to remain relevant in Nigeria politics,” Bolarinwa said.

Nevertheless, he opined that the participation of this new crop of politicians in the presidential election may have lifted the standard of presidential candidates in the country and have also encouraged more participation of young Nigerians.

“If the third force strength is harnessed, 2023 could be an oppor-

tunity to break the two-party hold on Nigerian politics. The only caveat is that there is an expectation that the 2023 president will come from the South-East of Nigeria,” another analyst said.

But before the 2023 elections, the Presidential Election Tribunal would have decided on the petitions of Abubakar and three others against Buhari. Then, a lesson or two would have been learnt on how to organise a more acceptable election.

But in the meantime, President Buhari has promised to leave behind a legacy of credible election by the time he leaves office in 2023. And that he will leave office better than he met it. He said: “The new administration will intensify its efforts in security, restructuring the economy and fight-ing corruption. We have laid down the foundation and we are commit-ted to seeing matters to the end. We will strive not to feel left behind or left out.”

Nevertheless, analysts said that the conduct of the 2019 elections left much to be desired and that the presi-dent would do Nigeria a lot of good by signing the 2019 electoral bill which he had rejected before the election. “The whole world is going digital; the best time to introduce electronic voting is now; and signing the new electoral bill is a step in the right direction,” Vincent said.

So, should Nigerians expect subse-quent elections in the country to be electronically conducted to eliminate rigging? The ball is now in the court of the president and Nigerian legisla-tors to make this a reality. But whether they have the political will to do so is a matter of conjecture.

Results of presidential elections 2019 and 2015 President 2019 Buhari 55.60% Atiku 41.22% others 3.18% Margin: 3,918,870


Candidate Party Votes %

MuhammaduBuhari

All Progressives Congress

15,191,847 55.60

AtikuAbubakar

People's Democratic Party

11,262,978 41.22

Felix Nicolas

Peoples Coalition Party

110,196 0.40

Obadiah Mailafia

African Democratic Congress

97,874 0.36

Gbor John Wilson Terwase

All Progressives Grand Alliance

66,851 0.24

YabagiSani Yusuf

Action Democratic Party

54,930 0.20

Akhimien Davidson Isibor

Grassroots Development Party of Nigeria

41,852 0.15

Ibrahim Aliyu Hassan

African Peoples Alliance

36,866 0.13

Donald Duke

Social Democratic

34,746 0.13


Party

Omoyele Sowore

African Action Congress

33,953 0.12

Da-Silva Thomas Ayo Save Nigeria

Congress 28,680 0.10

Shitu Mohammed Kabir

Advanced Peoples Democratic Alliance

26,558 0.10

Yusuf MammanDantalle

Allied Peoples' Movement

26,039 0.10

Kingsley Moghalu

Young Progressive Party

21,886 0.08

Ameh Peter Ojonugwa

Progressive Peoples Alliance

21,822 0.08

Ositelu Isaac Babatunde Accord Party 19,209 0.07

FelaDurotoye

Alliance for New Nigeria

16,779 0.06

Bashayi Isa Dansarki

Masses Movement of Nigeria

14,540 0.05

Osakwe Felix Johnson Democratic

People's 14,483 0.05


Party

Abdulrashid Hassan Baba Action

Alliance 14,380 0.05

NwokeaforIkechukwuNdubuisi

Advanced Congress of Democrats

11,325 0.04

MainaMaimunaKyari

Northern People's Congress

10,081 0.04

Victor Okhai

Providence Peoples Congress

8,979 0.03

ChikeUkaegbu

Advanced Allied Party 8,902 0.03

ObyEzekwesili

Allied Congress Party of Nigeria

7,223 0.03

Ibrahim Usman Alhaji

National Rescue Movement

6,229 0.02

Ike Keke

New Nigeria People's Party

6,111 0.02

Moses Ayibiowu National

Unity Party 5,323 0.02

Awosola Williams Olusola Democratic

Peoples 5,242 0.02


Congress

Muhammed Usman Zaki Labour Party 5,074 0.02

Eke Samuel Chukwuma Green Party

of Nigeria 4,924 0.02

NwachukwuChuksNwabuikwu

All Grassroots Alliance

4,689 0.02

Hamza Al Mustafa Peoples Party


Shipi Moses Godia All Blended

Party

4,523 0.02

Chris Okotie

Fresh Democratic Party

4,554 0.02

Tope Fasua

Abundant Nigeria Renewal Party

4,340 0.02

Onwubuya Freedom And

Justice Party 4,174 0.02

AsukwoMendieArchibong Nigeria For

Democracy 4,096 0.01

Ahmed Buhari

Sustainable National Party

3,941 0.01


SalisuYunusaTanko

National Conscience Party

3,799 0.01

ShittuMoshoodAsiwaju

Alliance National Party

3,586 0.01

ObinnaUchechukwuIkeagwuonu All People's

Party

3,585 0.01

BalogunIsiakaIshola

United Democratic Party

3,170 0.01

ObajeYusufuAmeh

Advanced Nigeria Democratic Party

3,104 0.01

Chief Umenwa Godwin

All Grand Alliance Party

3,071 0.01

Israel Nonyerem Davidson,

Reform and Advancement Party

2,972 0.01

Ukonga Frank Democratic

Alternative

2,769 0.01

SanturakiHamisu Mega Party


Adesanya-Davies Mercy Olufunmilayo

Mass Action Joint Alliance

2,651 0.01


Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim Peoples Trust 2,613 0.01

Ali Soyode

Yes Electorates Solidarity

2,394 0.01

NseheNseobong

Restoration Party of Nigeria

2,388 0.01

OjinikaGeffChizee Coalition for

Change 2,391 0.01

RabiaYasai Hassan Cengiz

National Action Council

2,279 0.01

Eunice Atuejide

National Interest Party

2,248 0.01

Dara John

Alliance of Social Democrats

2,146 0.01

Fagbenro-byron Samuel Adesina Kowa Party 1,911 0.01

Emmanuel Etim

Change Nigeria Party 1,874 0.01

Chukwu-Eguzolugo Sunday Chikendu

Justice Must Prevail Party

1,853 0.01

MaduNnamdiEdozie Independent

Democrats 1,845 0.01


Osuala Chukwudi John Re-build

Nigeria Party 1,792 0.01

Albert Owuru Ambrose

Hope Democratic Party

1,663 0.01

David EsosaIze-Iyamu

Better Nigeria Progressive Party

1,649 0.01

Inwa Ahmed Sakil Unity Party

of Nigeria

1,631 0.01

Akpua Robinson

National Democratic Liberty Party

1,588 0.01

Mark Emmanuel Audu United

Patriots 1,561 0.01

Ishaka Paul Ofemile

Nigeria Elements Progressive Party

1,524 0.01

Kriz D avid Liberation

Movement 1,438 0.01

Ademola Babatunde Abidemi

Nigeria Community Movement Party

1,378 0.01

A. Edosomwan Johnson

National Democratic Liberty Party

1,192 0.00


Angela Johnson

Alliance for a United Nigeria

1,092 0.00

Abah Lewis Elaigwu

Change Advocacy Party

1,111 0.00

Nwangwu Uchenna Peter

We The People Nigeria

732 0.00

Invalid/blank votes 1,289,607 –

Total 28,614,190 100

Registered voters/turnout 82,344,107 34.75

Source: Vanguard

By state

State Buhari Atiku Sowore Moghalu Durotoye Duke Mailafia

Abia 85,058 219,698 212 88 720 472 336

Adamawa 378,078 410,266 282 109 162 978 3,989

AkwaIbom 175,429 395,832 222 118 95 92 230

Anambra 33,298 524,738 124 4,091 45 932 227

Bauchi 798,428 209,313 183 112 46 516 296


It was no doubt a battle for supremacy between the ruling All Progressives Con-gress and the main opposition, the Peo-ples Democratic Party, PDP, in this year’s

governorship elections. In the contest, which held between Saturday, March 9 for the main election and supplementary poll of March 23, Nigerians elected new governors in 29 states out of the 36 states of the federation. The seven other states are not due for gubernatorial elec-tion until later.

Of the 29 candidates elected governors, 19 of them are serving governors seeking for a sec-ond term in office, while 10 are new faces. The states where the governorship run-off poll took place on Saturday, March 23 are Bauchi, Benue, Kano, Plateau and Sokoto. Adamawa State had its own on Thursday, March 28 in obedience to court orders.

Nevertheless, the two leading national politi-cal parties were the victors even though more than 70 other political parties featured in the gubernatorial contest. At the end of the exercise, the APC won in 15 states and the PDP won in 14 states.

The outcome of the election from the results released by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, somewhat rubbished the myth about the power incumbency in some states. The experience of the states such as Adamawa, Bauchi, Kwara, Gombe, Oyo, Ogun, and Imo showed that incumbent governors either lost election or could not impose their candidates. Observers say this has demonstrated that Nigerians are becoming more politically sophisticated to determine who they want as their leaders.

Of all the 19 incumbent governors who sought for a second term in office only two of them lost to their opponents. They are the governors of Adamawa and Bauchi states who contested on the platform of the APC. Their opponents from the PDP won convincingly.

Indeed, Governor Jubrilla Bindow of Ad-amawa State failed to get re-elected as he lost to Hammadu Fintiri, his main challenger and candidate of the PDP. After a legal battle, which had temporarily put the supplementary election in the state on hold, the re-run was eventually held March 28, leading to the victory of Fintiri. The challenger won by polling 376,552 votes to defeat the incumbent governor, who got 336,386 votes. Abdul-Azeez Nyako of the ADC scored 113,237 votes to place third, followed by Em-manuel Bello of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, who garnered 29,792 votes.

Fintiri, who was the speaker of the Adamawa House of Assembly in 2014, also served as acting governor in July 2014, following the impeachment of the then Governor Murtala Nyako.

According to available information, Bindow could not be re-elected because of the strong presence of Atiku Abubakar, the defeated presi-dential candidate of the PDP, who is an indigene of the state. Besides, there was no outstanding performance on the side of the incumbent gov-ernor to give him an edge over his rival.

Contrary to speculations and because the APC had won in the presidential race, Gover-nor Mohammed Abubakar of Bauchi State was expected to win. But he lost to Bala Mohammed, a former minister of Federal Capital Territory and candidate of the PDP. Muhammed Kyari, the state returning officer, while declaring re-sult said: “PDP candidate polled a total 515,113 votes, while his closest rival, Governor Mu-hammad Abubakar of the ruling APC scored 500,625.”

Kyari said Muhammed of the PDP having scored the highest number of votes of 515,113 votes was declared the winner and therefore returned as governor-elect on March 25.

Earlier in the day, a federal high court in Abuja had dismissed a suit filed by Abubakar, and the APC challenging the decision of the

INEC to resume collation of results of the state’s gubernatorial election. The INEC had declared the Bauchi election inconclusive on the grounds that the number of cancelled votes was higher than the margin of lead between the two top political parties.

The electoral body later announced that it would resume collation because it found out that the number of cancelled votes was tampered with, a decision Abubakar and the APC chal-lenged in court.

But in a judgment delivered on Monday, March 25 Justice Inyang Ekwo, a federal high court judge ordered the INEC to proceed with its activities geared at concluding the governorship election in the state.

In any case, the Governor Abubakar has since congratulated the governor-elect and offered him a hand of friendship to make the handover smooth.

Fintiri and Muhammed are the first incum-bent governors in their states to be defeated since the return to democracy in 1999.

Another intriguing thing about the governor-ship election is that some powerful godfathers lost their might. The political machineries of the erstwhile godfathers in their various states failed to deliver the goods as new formidable power blocs emerged. Hence, the likes of Bukola Saraki, the Senate president, from Kwara State; Godswill Akpabio, a former governor and chieftain of Akwa-Ibom State; George Akume, a former governor of Benue State and Aliyu Wammako, a senator and former governor of Sokoto State, had their political ego seriously bruised as their chosen candidates lost in the election.

Indeed, the departure of Saraki from the APC to the PDP was expected to leave the APC prostrate in the state as the Senate president was regarded the father of politics in the state. But this was not so in the last election. Even the senator’s re-election bid suffered a surprise defeat. Saraki lost to Yahaya Oloriegbe, the APC

Battle for supremacy In closely fought governorship polls, the ruling All Progressives Congress and Peoples Democratic Party, shoved aside more than 70 parties to emerge winners

By Olu Ojewale

| Newswatch Now May, 201922 | Newswatch Now February, 201922

candidate in the contest for the Kwara Central Senatorial District. Oloriegbe polled a total of 123, 808 votes to defeat Saraki who polled 68, 994 votes in the four local governments of Kwara Central Senatorial District.

To crown Saraki’s electoral debacle, Abdul-Rahman Abdulrasaq, the governorship can-didate of the APC, won the poll with 331,546 votes, while Rasak Atunwa, the PDP candidate lost and Saraki’s anointed candidate lost, having garnered 114,754 votes.

Just like Saraki, Akpabio’s hold on the politics of Akwa Ibom State similarly suffered in the last general election. In the manner Saraki dumped the APC, Akpabio dumped the PDP and moved to the APC. Apart from losing his senatorial re-election bid on the platform of his new party, the former governor was also unable to deliver Akwa Ibom for the APC. Nsima Nkere, his preferred candidate, who served as his deputy in the state house, lost to Governor Udom Emmanuel, his former political son who refused to follow him to the APC. Emmanuel scored 520,163 votes to defeat Nkere who scored 172,244 votes.

Another godfather who lost in the election is Aliyu Wamakko, a former governor of Sokoto State, who lost to Governor Aminu Tambuwal, his estranged godson. In the governorship race

which had 30 contestants, Wamakko, formerly of the PDP, now in the APC, supported Ahmad Aliyu Sokoto, his new godson against Tambuwal, a former PDP member, who later went to the APC, and now back to the PDP.

Indeed, Tambuwal was elected to office in 2015 on the platform of the APC, before he dumped the party in 2018 and returned to the PDP. Consequently, Wamakko supported Aliyu-Sokoto in the March 9 gubernatorial election.

Eventually, Tambuwal won the election by polling 512,002 votes, while Aliyu-Sokoto gar-nered 511,660 votes. Meaning that Tambuwal won with a slim margin of 342 votes; the lowest margin of votes in the election.

Similar efforts by Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State to install Uche Nwosu, his son-law, as his successor failed right from the state primary of the APC. Having failed in his plan to secure the APC governorship ticket for him, Nwosu moved to the Action Alliance, AA, to realise his ambition.

So, in the state where there were 65 candidates, Hope Uzodinma, a senator, got the APC ticket, while Emeka Ihedioha, a former deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, won the PDP ticket. Also in the race were Ikedi Ohakim, a for-

mer governor, the candidate of the Accord Party, AP, and Ifeanyi Araraume, the candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA.

The Imo State electorate eventually elected Ihedioha of the PDP with 273,404 votes to defeat Nwosu of the AA, who scored 190,364 votes. Ararume of the APGA came third, scor-ing 114,676 votes, while APC’s Uzodinma came fourth with 96,458 votes.

What happened in Imo State re-echoed in Ogun State. Just like in Imo State, Governor Ibi-kunle Amosun had pencilled down a successor in Adekunle Akinlade. But when the governor failed to swing the primary election in favour of Akinlade, he advised his protégé to move to the Allied Peoples Movement, APM.

Although Amosun is generally seen as a big factor in Ogun State as he campaigned vigor-ously for Akinlade, his anointed successor, Dapo Abiodun, the APC governorship candidate, won the poll on March 9.

In any case, Amosun’s plan to enthrone a suc-cessor was seen by many political watchers of the Ogun State as struggle between Amosun on one hand and Bola Tinubu and Segun Osoba, former governors of Lagos and Ogun State, as well as Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on the other.

Trouble started as far back as 2011 when

Accreditation of voters


and Ipokia Federal Constituency, had the sup-port of the vice-president and other national leaders of the APC, got the APC.

Another reason for resisting Amosun’s choice of Akinlade was the purported violation of the formula of allowing power to oscillate between the Ijebu-Remo on one side and Egba-Egbado axis on the other. For trying to install Akinlade, Amosun was seen as trying to impose someone from his geographical zone as his successor. Akinlade is from Yelwa, the Egbado area.

Nevertheless, Abiodun won the election hav-ing polled 241,670, while Akinlade got 222,153 votes.

Governor Isiaka Ajimobi of Oyo State is an-other governor who failed in his bid to install a successor as well as his bid to return to the Senate. The APC governorship was rejected at the poll for the Senate and so was Adebayo Adelabu, the APC candidate in the gubernato-rial election.

To ensure Adelabu’s defeat, on Tuesday, March 5, five opposition parties in the state went into a coalition to run against him. The parties in the coalition, including African Democratic Con-gress, ADC; Zenith Labour Party, ZLP; Social Democratic Party, SDP; the New Progressive Movement, NPM, and the PDP. The coalition adopted Seyi Makinde, the PDP candidate, for the governorship poll while retaining their separate structures for the House of Assembly elections.

Rashidi Ladoja, a former governor, who is also the Osi Olubadan of Ibadanland and a chieftain of the ZLP, led the coalition. In the public pres-entation of the joint candidate during a press conference, which held at the NUJ Press Cen-tre, Iyaganku, Ibadan, raising Makinde’s hand, Ladoja said: “It is my pleasure to present to you the agreed candidate for the election coming up on Saturday March 9, and who Insha Allah, will

become governor-elect on that day, and will be subsequently sworn in on May 29 as governor of Oyo State.

Ladoja’s prediction came to pass. Makinde was declared the winner of the poll with 515,621 votes, while Adelabu, popularly called Pen-kelemesi and the APC candidate got 357,982 votes.

Another testing ground for the ruling APC was Benue State. In July, 2018, Governor Samuel Ortom with his supporters defected to the PDP over incessant attacks of herdsmen on farmers in the state. But some prominent politicians such as George Akume, a former governor of the state, decided to remain in the APC.

With his political clout in Benue State, Akume supported Emmanuel Jime, a former member of the House of Representatives and former managing director, Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority, NEPZA, and the candidate of the APC. He faced Ortom who was vying for a second term in the election. Despite the allegation of unpaid salaries and sundry allega-tions, the incumbent governor eventually won the election.

Sebastine Maimako, the Benue State gover-norship returning officer declared Ortom as the winner having polled 434,473 votes to defeat Jime, his closest opponent, who got 345,155 votes.

Ortom had polled 410,576 votes, while Jime received 329,022 votes in the March 9 election. But the election was declared inconclusive. So, the supplementary election results of March 23, gave Ortom another 23,897 votes while Jime got 16,133 votes.

In his analysis of how Ortom won the poll, Maimako said: “Number of total registered voters is 2,471,894 while accredited voters are 858,947, number of valid votes is 830,954, rejected votes, 15,268 and the number of total

votes cast is 846,222.“Ortom scored 434,473 votes while Jime

scored 345,155 votes. That Samuel Ortom of the PDP, having satisfied the requirements of the law and scored the highest number of votes is hereby declared the winner and is returned elected.”

Another incumbent governor who got re-elected after the supplementary poll is Solomon Lalong of Plateau State. In the March 9 election contested by 21 candidates, Lalong had scored 583,255 votes, while Useni received 538,321, thereby prompting the INEC to declare the elec-tion inconclusive because the 44,929 margin of lead was less than the total number of cancelled votes which the commission put at 49,377.

In any case, at the end of the rerun poll, Richard Kimbir, the INEC returning officer in the state, who announced the results in Jos, said Lalong polled 595,582 votes to defeat 23 other candidates, including Useni, who got 546,813 votes.

Kimbir said that the results for the nine LGAs that took part in the supplementary poll, including Barkin Ladi, Bassa, Bokkos, Jos North, Kanam, Langtang South, Mangu, Pankshin and Shendam, showed that Lalong scored additional 12,327 new votes, while Useni got 8,487.

He added that there was no cancellation of results during the supplementary poll.

In his acceptance speech shortly after he was declared winner, Lalong said his victory was a referendum by the people to move the state to the next level. The governor said the outcome of the election “was clearly an amazing show of confidence and trust,” which the people had for his administration.

The ruling APC similarly won in Lagos State. It was not only a victory for the party but also for Ahmed Tinubu, a national leader of the APC and godfather of Babajide Sanwo-Olu.

Amosun received the support of Tinubu and Osoba in his emer-gence as governor on the platform of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria. Then as a consensus candidate of the party, he ended the reign of the PDP in the state after his unsuccessful bid with the defunct All Nigeria’s Peoples Party, ANPP. But along the line, he fell out with the duo over appoint-ments into his cabinet ahead of the 2015 elections, which prompted Tinubu and Osoba to work against his re-election bid in 2015.

That apparently set the stage for the bickering over Akinlade, whom the governor preferred as his successor. But Abiodun, a serving member of the House of Representatives for Egbado South Ahmadu Fintiri Jibrilla Umaru Bindow


In the poll, it was a straight contest between Sanwo-Olu of the APC and Jimi Agbaje of the PDP. During electioneering, Agbaje had pointed at revolution going on in Kwara State against Saraki, telling Lagosians that Tinubu had been the only person picking governors for the state since he himself left office in 2007.

Nevertheless, Sanwo-Olu garnered 739,445 votes to defeat Jimi Agbaje who garnered 206,141 votes. Agbaje immediately conceded defeat and congratulated Sanwo-Olu.

But the PDP opposition party in Kano State questioned the integrity of the supplementary election results which gave Governor Ibrahim Ganduje victory in Kano State. Ganduje was on Sunday, March 24 declared the winner of the governorship election after he garnered 1,033,695 votes to beat Abba Yusuf, the PDP candidate, who scored 1,024,713 votes.

The declaration made by Bello Shehu, the state INEC returning officer, showed that Ganduje won with 8,982 vote margin.

In the main election of March 23, Ganduje had scored 987,819 votes and trailed Yusuf, who got 1,014,474 votes at the time. Yusuf had then led with more than 26,000 votes.

However, in the supplementary poll, the governor got additional 45,876 votes to cancel the lead and bring his final tally to 1,033,695, while Yusuf garnered additional 10,239 votes from the run-off election to bring his overall total 1,024,713.

Before of the announcement of the final results, supporters of the two leading parties were hotly engaged in an altercation over the outcome of the re-run poll. The clash centred on the collated results of Nasarawa, a key local government area where 38,181 voters registered in Gama Ward. The APC was declared winner in Gama by polling 10,536 votes to the PDP’s 3,409 ballots.

But the PDP members at the collation centre protested saying that election did not hold in the ward. They also demanded the cancellation of the entire supplementary election on the grounds that it was marred by violence and other forms of “fraudulent practices.”

The governor took the risk of running with a fellow Muslim and won.

Besides, el-Rufai was accused of alienating some of those who helped him into office in 2015, who are now in opposition. The Kaduna State governor is also known for a number of controversies including the sack of 22,000 teachers in 2018 and in 2017, the sack of 4776 district and village heads as well as their staff, now pruned to only 77 districts and 1,429 vil-lages.

That notwithstanding, the governor relied heavily on some projects his government had done in the past four years such as road con-struction, renovation, school renovation and others. “That is why we are asking the people of Kaduna State to give us another mandate. We have worked tirelessly to make the state a bet-ter place. We need the support of the people to continue in this direction,” el-Rufai said at one of his campaigns.

As it was experienced in the February 23 presidential election, Borno State again recorded another surprise. Babagana Zullum, the APC candidate won the governorship election by a wide margin. He polled a staggering 1,175,445 votes to defeat Mohammed Imam, his PDP opponent, who garnered a measly 66,117 votes.

As in the presidential election, the large number of votes recorded in Borno State was surprising for a state that has been ravaged by Boko Haram insurgents and many of the voting population are scattered about.

What perhaps was more surprising about the elections in Borno State, is how the state could be so organised that there was a huge turnout, but voters of a relatively peaceful state like Rivers State could not have a peace election process.

Indeed, for three weeks Nigeria was kept in palpable anxiety as election process was halted in the state following allegations of violence, militarisation, and other crimes.

On Wednesday, April 3 the INEC declared Governor Nyesom Wike as the winner of the Rivers State governorship election. This followed the completion of collation of results of the March 9 election. The exercise was suspended by the electoral body on March 10 following reports of violence in the state.

According to the results announced by the returning officer of Rivers State, Wike of the PDP won after polling 886,264 against Awara Biokpomabo, his closest rival and candidate of the African Action Congress, AAC, who polled 173,859.

Reacting, Wike dedicated his victory to the people of the state, saying that he was over-whelmed by the total support and love they displayed during and after the general elec-tion.

Speaking at the Government House, Port Bala Mohammed Muhammed Abubakar

Ali Madaki, a PDP member of the House of Representatives from Dala in Kano, who led the protest, pointedly told the returning officer to stop the collation of the results. Madaki said in a press interview: “What happened in Kano was not an election; the fraud did not pass the integrity test. In Gama, and most parts of Kano State, there was no election, rather it was thug-gery aided by the state government. What you call an election should be cancelled.”

In its reaction, the APC said the PDP was afraid of losing the election, hence, the call for the cancellation of the rerun.

Indeed, media reports said there was wide-spread disruption and violence during the sup-plementary election in Kano on Saturday March 23, as thugs attacked voters and journalists on election duty. A reporter, who witnessed the violence, said on radio on Sunday that he was shocked at the level of impunity exhibited by the thugs because the Police refused to intervene to stop the thugs. “The Police were compromised in this supplementary election. The election was disrupted by thugs who ordered journalists, including foreign journalists to leave the polling areas. We cannot say which party the thugs were working for, but the Police did not do anything to safe harmless reporters and voters from the harassment,” the radio reporter said.

All seemed peaceful in Kaduna State, where Governor Nasir El-Rufai of the APC won a second term. He got 1,044,710 votes to defeat Isah Ashiru, a former member of the House of Representatives and candidate of the PDP, who garnered 814,168 votes.

Balancing religion equation is an unconsti-tutional rule that Nigerian politicians choose to obey. But not El-Rufai. When asked why he chose Hadiza Balarabe, a fellow Muslim, as his running mate, the governor said Government House “was not a place for worship but where people work,” adding: “Muslim-Muslim ticket is not a religious ticket but a competent and performance ticket.” On the other hand, Ashiru has Sunday Marshal Katung, a Christian, as his running mate.


Harcourt, after the declaration, Wike expressed gratitude to the people for standing by the PDP despite “the illegal actions of the enemies of democracy.” He thanked PDP members for their show of courage, despite intimidation by security operatives who wanted to change the will of Rivers people.

He said: “Those who died did so not because they were criminals, but because they wanted to defend their votes; we dedicate this victory to those who were killed.

“They protected our votes and they defended us. We pray God to grant their families the strength to bear the losses. We shall continue to support the families.”

He promised to run an inclusive government, which would accommodate all shades of interest. Thus, he extended a hand of fellowship to his opponents, saying that nobody won or lost, but Rivers people won.

Uche Secondus, the PDP national chair-man, congratulated Rivers people for standing firm and insisting on the right thing being done.

The APC did not feature in the election. Courts had ruled that the party did not hold any acceptable primary as mandated by the electoral law. Hence, Awara of the AAC rose to prominence after securing the backing of the APC bigwigs.

The APC is also poised face some difficulties to in Zamfara State, even though its candidate won the gubernatorial election. The Court of Appeal, Sokoto Division, on Monday, March 25 set aside the judgment of a Zamfara State high court, which allowed the party to field candidates in the general election held in February and March 2019.

The appellate court’s judgement means that all the candidates of the APC that won the polls in the just concluded general election have been left in the cold as their certificates of return would have to be withdrawn since in the eyes of the law,

they did not participate in the election.The appeal was filed by Kabiru Marafa, the

chairman of the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream), and 129 others through Mike Ozekhome, SAN, their counsel. The respondents were Kabiru Liman-Danalhaji and 139 others represented by Mahmud Magaji SAN as lead counsel.

Delivering the judgment based on unani-mously decision, Justice Tom Yakubu held that the lower court failed in its duty to properly evaluate the evidence before it.

Hence, Yakubu said: “Based on available facts, the respondents did not contradict the INEC evidence on conducting the said primary election.”

The presiding judge said: “Documented evi-dence has upper consideration than oral ones.” Other judges in the case were Tijjani Abubakar and Jamilu Tukur,

Besides, the judges agreed that the judgment should serve as “bitter lesson” for political par-ties as they ought to follow legitimate guidelines and rules.

“Domestic affairs of political party activi-ties must act within the confines of the law in dealing with party members and elections,” the judges said.

The Zamfara State High Court had recognised the primary elections that produced governor-

ship, state and National Assembly candidates held by the APC in the state and declared that the INEC accepts the party’s candidates for the elections.

Dissatisfied with the state high court decision, the appellants approached the appeal court, challenging the decision on the grounds that the state high court lacked jurisdiction to entertain the suit among others.

In the gubernatorial poll held on March 9, the INEC had declared Mukhtar Shehu of the APC as the winner after he polled 534,541 votes to defeat Bello Mutawalle of the PDP, his closet rival who garnered 189,452 votes.

As it were, gubernatorial election was held in four of the five states in the South East. In any case, Abia, Enugu, Ebonyi and Imo states elected the PDP candidates. Anambra State election is off-cycle. The results showed that the APC did not win any state in the South-East, but the PDP won in all the six regions of the country.

In the South-South, the six states in the region are Edo, Bayelsa, Delta, Rivers, Cross River and Akwa Ibom State. But both Edo and Bayelsa State governorship election are off-cycle. The four states where elections were won by the PDP.

Aminu Masari, the APC governorship can-didate in Katsina State, which is the president’s home state, scored an overall highest vote of 1,178,868, to defeat Yakubu Lado of the PDP, who scored 488,705 votes.

That notwithstanding, the battle for suprema-cy in the states where elections were held is not over. In the states like Benue, Ogun, Plateau, Kano, Sokoto among others, the losers have put their opponents on notice that they will head-ing for the elections tribunal to recover their perceived stolen mandate.

Nevertheless, some of the flaws recorded in the conduct of the 2019 general election are major concerns of many Nigerians. For instance, Odoh Michael, a political analyst, pointed at reports of violence and vote buying allegedly perpetuated by some politicians in states such as Kano, Rivers, Kaduna, Lagos among others and retorted: “It is difficult for credible candidates to win election in our violence prone and money based political system. The monetisation of poli-

Rochas Okorocha

Ibikunle Amosun

Emeka Ihedioha

Dipo Abiodun


tics is denying the best an opportunity to lead the rest. If this is not contained, Nigeria will in a few years be governed by fraudsters and drug barons. They’re the only ones who can afford to fund our expensive campaigns and politicking.”

In his submission, Tomi Vincent, a Pan-Atlan-

should be enacted.”He pointed out that political godfatherism is

fast eroding the confidence of the electorate and their trust in the ballot as a means of electing credible people.

In his own submission, Omoshola Deji, a

public analyst, in a piece entitled “Nigeria 2019 Governorship Election: Appraising the Verdict,” said: “The 2019 general election is the worst in Nigeria’s history. It is the most protracted and onerous, despite being the most expensive. The poll scheduled to wind-up in three weeks dragged on for six and still counting.”

He said the process that rendered the gover-norship elections inconclusive in some states and allowed the supplementary elections gave room for manipulations, vote buying and violence, especially as witnessed in Kano State.

In summation, all the analysts expressed fear that Nigeria’s democracy is in danger consider-ing the level of violence recorded in Kano, Rivers Ogun, Lagos states among others during the last general elections. They also suggested that electoral law should be very strict to deal with erring politicians and supporters.

Expressing sadness over the killing of Temi-tope Olatoye, a member of the Federal House of Representatives representing Lagelu/Akinyele Federal Constituency, Oyo State, during guber-natorial election, Ajimobi said the violence that characterised the Saturday, March 9 election was uncalled for. Olatoye, 47, was allegedly killed by miscreants at Lalupon in Lagelu Local Govern-ment Area of Oyo State.

Thus, Ajimobi argued that: “Nobody’s ambi-tion should be worth the blood or life of any citizen. I am, therefore, appalled that some unscrupulous politicians and their followers have turned this contest into a do-or-die affair, which is alien to democratic norms in saner climes.

“We struggled hard for this democracy, and for it to be entrenched we must eschew every act of bitterness, desperation and foul play during elections. In life, you win some contests and you lose some. If we imbibe this philosophy, we will take every victory and defeat with equal measure of equanimity.” Are Nigerian politicians ready to subscribe to Ajimobi’s philosophy? Time, indeed, will tell.

Full list of governors in Nigeria

Below is a full list of governors elected in 2019 and their parties:

1. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi – (PDP) Enugu State2. David Umahi – (PDP) Ebonyi State3. Inuwa Yahaya (APC) Gombe State4. Okezie Ikpeazu (PDP) Abia State5. Abubakar Bello (APC) Niger State6. Seyi Makinde (PDP) Oyo State7. Emmanuel Udom (PDP) Akwa Ibom State8. Ben Ayade (PDP) Cross River State9. MaiMala Buni (APC) Yobe State10. Babajide Sanwo-Olu (APC) Lagos State11. Dapo Abiodun (APC) Ogun State

12. Ifeanyi Okowa (PDP) Delta State13. Babagana Zulum (APC) Borno State14. Mallam Nasir El-Rufai (APC) Kaduna state15. Emeka Ihedioha (PDP) Imo state16. Mohammed Badaru (APC) Jigawa state17. Aminu Masari (APC) Katsina State18. Atiku Abubakar Bagudu (APC) Kebbi State19. Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq (APC) Kwara State20. Abdullahi Sule (APC) Nasarawa State21. Muktar Idris (APC) Zamfara State22. Darius Ishaku (PDP) Taraba State23. Samuel Ortom (PDP) Benue State24. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje (APC) Kano State25. Aminu Tambuwal (PDP) Sokoto State26. Simon Lalong (APC) Plateau State

27. Ahmadu Fintiri (PDP) Adamawa State28. Bala Mohammed (PDP) Bauchi State29. Nyesom Wike (PDP) Rivers State.

States where the governorship elec-tions did not take place include:

30. Ekiti (APC) John Fayemi31. Bayelsa (PDP) Seriake Dickson32. Kogi (APC) Yahaya Bello33. Osun (APC) Gboyega Oyetola34: Ondo (APC) Rotimi Akeredolu35. Edo (APC) Godwin Obaseki36. Anambra (APGA) Willie Obiano

tic University don war ne d that: “As long a s e l e c t or a l offenders re-main unpun-ished, people will not desist f rom perpe-trating crime and fraud dur-ing elections. A strict pen-alty such as jail terms with no option of fine

Samuel Ortom

Aminu Tambuwal

George Akume

Aliyu Wammako


PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari, who came to office in a seismic political shift that swept out of office 16 years of continuous rule by the People’s

Democratic Party, PDP recorded yet another resounding victory to win a second term in of-fice, leading his closest rival by a record-setting four million votes.

His party, the All Progressives Congress, APC gained the highest parliamentary majority in the Fourth Republic in the Senate and the House of Representatives, giving the President an ample room to carry out reforms he wished to carry out, but was outmaneuvered and frustrated by the Eighth National Assembly.

While campaigning for the 2015 general elec-tions, President Buhari’s APC made promises to end Boko Haram terrorism and secure the coun-try for it to be efficiently managed; to restructure the economy, halt its downward slide and create jobs and to fight corruption because, as the president repeatedly says, “if Nigeria doesn’t kill corruption, corruption will kill Nigeria.”

His climactic victory against the then incum-bent Goodluck Jonathan, his strong message on the three issues as listed above, his practical and serious approach helped to awaken a nation mis-led by characters who placed self above nation for sixteen years and more.

The Buhari administration has established for itself an anti-corruption reputation and has been in office nearing four years without a major scandal. The African Union has on account of this, selected the President as the continent’s anti-corruption champion.

The Buhari administration can pat itself on the back for this achievement when it is viewed against the established culture in which corrup-tion is the norm.

To win the war against corruption and institute transparency in the affairs of govern-ment, the Buhari administration introduced a number of fiscal reforms and plugged several leakages.

In the firm belief that the party was not mis-taken about the problems facing the country, Candidate Buhari went into the February, 2019

Buhari: why and how he wonPresident Muhammadu Buhari’s victory is a product of his achieve-ments which cut across socio-economic lives of Nigerians

By Garba Shehu

President Buhari:Four more years


campaign on the same issue platforms. The President and his party looked certain of victory from the sea of crowds that attended his political rallies all over the 36 states of the federation. He was the only candidate to have campaigned at least once in each state and the Federal Capital Territory.

These rallies attracted large crowds, mostly of the poor who are trusting in his impeccable qualities of honesty and integrity, and have bought into the idea that he will quickly push their country onto the top by lifting up the economy, creating jobs, securing the nation and ending the nightmarish corruption which had become the order of the day. Some of the events were marked by incidents of road accident, po-dium or building collapse and stampede leading to tragic losses of life.

At many of those well-attended rallies, the venues fell short of the people gathered. Thousands of supporters outside tried to barge into the inner rings of the venues. Pleas were not heard by surging crowds which resorted sometimes to throwing chairs, sachet water and bottles into the no-man zones in front of the stage.

It was evident from the commencement of the campaign that President Buhari had a a two-pronged election strategy, one to showcase the achievements of his administration in its first term and two, to cash in on his popularity with the lower rungs of the population.

The party itself doubled down on President Buhari by zeroing in on his image as a diligent, coolheaded and incorruptible leader. In that enduring appeal, the APC saw a trump card going into the election.

Nobody can question President Buhari’s achievements. They are there for all to see.

The administration has significantly curtailed corruption to the point of abolishing what is called “grand corruption.” Given Treasury Single Account,TSA, the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information Scheme, IPPS, the Bank Verification Number, BVN number and Whis-tle Blower schemes, it is no longer possible for people in authority to, for instance, request the withdrawal of millions, or sometimes billions of Naira or US Dollars to be shared among party members as was the practice under the past administrations. To boot, the Buhari ad-ministration has signed onto the global Open Government Partnership, OGP.

Reforms are being carried out in the justice sector with a number of domestic legislations and international agreements to facilitate the identification, tracing, freezing, recovery and forfeiture of ill-gotten assets.

The administration’s primary sectors of ag-riculture and solid minerals have experienced growth of 180 and 565 percentage points

respectively. Nigeria has today achieved near self-sufficiency in rice production.

Government has launched a series of fund-ing and capacity development initiatives to support Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises. The work of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC), inaugurated by President Buhari in August 2016 has resulted in moving Nigeria up 24 places on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business rankings, and earning a place on the list of 10 most improved economies. In this regard, the administration has issued a number of Executive Orders on im-proving efficiency in the business environment and promoting local content.

The Buhari administration has also demon-strated a single-minded commitment to upgrad-ing and developing Nigeria’s transport, power and health infrastructure.

Road projects are ongoing across every state of the country, with many of these projects having been abandoned for many years.

The country’s narrow-gauge rail network of 3,500 Kms is currently being upgraded; Abuja’s light rail system has been completed and com-missioned with a link to the Abuja-Kaduna rail line, which has equally been completed and launched. The Ibadan-Lagos standard gauge rail is being test run. Ibadan-Kano has been awarded.

The administration has successfully recon-structed the Abuja Airport runway, completed and commissioned new terminal buildings in Port Harcourt and Abuja with Lagos, Kano, Enu-gu and the others soon to be inaugurated.

Several water supply projects and dam/irriga-tion projects have been completed and many more on the way to being delivered. About 100 ecological projects have been awarded and completed in the six geopolitical zones.

The Buhari administration has more than doubled power generation capacity. It has in-creased generation to 8,100 MW and expanded transmission to more than 7,000 MW capacity, and has successfully deployed thousands of solar power systems to rural and urban house-holds.

This is an administration that has been invest-ing in people. It has introduced a social Invest-ment Programme (SIP), which so far, has four components. These are the N-power employ-ment scheme that is hitting 500,000 this year, the home grown school feeding program that feeds more than nine million school children across the federation, the Government Enter-prise and Empower Program, GEEP giving out interest-free loans to millions of market women, traders, artisans and farmers and the conditional cash transfer, CCT which pays N5,000 monthly to the poorest and most vulnerable households in the country.

In dealing with security, one of the first major steps by the Buhari administration was the revi-talisation of the Multi-national Joint Task force, MNJTF aimed at combating transborder crime and the Boko Haram insurgency. The MNJTF has the support and participation of neighbour-ing countries Niger, Chad, Cameroon and Benin, in addition to Nigeria.

On the day of his inauguration, the President had directed the relocation of the command and control centre of the Boko Haram war to Mai-duguri, the epicentre of the insurgency.

The military has since proclaimed victory over the Boko Haram terrorists, following the capture of their operational and spiritual headquarters, “Camp Zero” in Sambisa Forest.

So far, more than one million displaced persons have returned to their homes and com-munities. About 20,000 hostages have been freed. One hundred and six (106) Chibok Girls, abducted in April 2014 and 105 Dapchi Girls abducted in February 2018 have been released and reunited with their families

In the area of diplomacy and international relations, the Buhari administration has re-established Nigeria’s position and influence in regional and global arena.

As a political leader, Muhammadu Buhari enjoys three formidable assets-- his record as a disciplined former Army General, his reputa-tion as an honest leader who has not allowed corruption to flourish under his watch when he served as a state Military Governor, Minister of Petroleum and Military Head of State and the public perception of his record as one who stands for and by the truth, Mai Gaskiya.

The main opposition to President Buhari, the Peoples Democratic Party failed to realize how much these qualities meant to ordinary Nigerians; they did not reckon with the disil-lusionment of the citizens with their perceived acts of commission and omission for the 16 years they were in power.

They must by now, have realized with the benefit of hindsight, that demonization and denigration of an individual does not bring in poll dividends. In their campaigns, they chose to demonise and denigrate Muhammadu Buhari as President. It did not pay.

Before and after this election, there is no face in the opposition who can match President Bu-hari’s inspiring character and personality. Many, including this reporter believe that it wasn’t the rail, road or achievements in the power sector that won this election for President Buhari. No doubt, these and many others are important. They may have added a bit here and a bit there. But what won it for him, was the focus by the voter on the single most important factor of Mai Gaskiya.


For many of the newly elected senators and members of the House of Repre-sentatives, the orientation programme packaged by the National Assembly

Management was a good beginning for the task ahead of the 9th National Assembly. On Sunday March 31, 2019, the gaily dressed legislators trooped to the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja, venue of the programme, for this important assignment, two clear months to their formal

youngest arm of government in Nigeria, having suffered most during the military rule. “The legislature often appears to be the weakest arm of government. It is therefore necessary to focus efforts on strengthening this important institu-tion. The legislative arm of government must be strong, because when the legislative arm is strong, democracy will be strong,” he said.

Saraki’s parting shots might not be uncon-nected to the new composition of the two chambers of the National Assembly following the February 23 and March 9 elections. Although

Goodbye 8thNational Assembly

The character of the 9th National Assembly will be different as many of its key members fail to return

By Demola Abimboye inauguration on May 29. On hand to receive the new legislators were

top shots of the National Assembly Management and Bukola Saraki, president of the 8th Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Although Saraki lost re-election to the upper legislative chamber, he nonetheless enjoined the successful ones to guard jealously the independence of the legisla-ture and assert separation of powers, to ensue accountability in governance.

He told the lawmakers that the role of the legislature is compounded by its being the


But Kola Ologbondiyan,

national publicity secretary

of PDP, said it amounts to

empty grandstanding and

self-delusion for President

Muhammadu Buhari and

Oshiomhole to posture as

if the presiding offices and

committee chairmanship in

the National Assembly are

the exclusive rights

of the APC

“

“

the All Progressives Congress, APC, that won the 2015 presidential elections, had majority in the two chambers, the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, out maneuvered it in the election of principal officers. In the 8th Senate, APC had 57 senators, PDP 48 while African Democratic Congress, ADC, All People’s Grand Alliance , APGA, Social Democratic Party, SDP, and African Democratic Party, ADP, had one each. The PDP effectively used its members who had decamped to APC to corner leadership posi-tions in the two chambers to the dissatisfaction of the ruling party.

Consequently, the APC went into the 2019 National and State Assembly elections deter-mined not to allow history to repeat itself. Al-though the elections were originally scheduled for February 16, 2019 and March 2, 2019, about five hours before commencement of the first leg, INEC postponed the elections due to logistical problems. This marked the third time elections would be postponed in Nigeria. They were post-poned in 2011 and 2015.

INEC subsequently announced new dates – February 23 for National Assembly and March 9 for State Assembly elections. A total of 109 sena-tors and 360 representatives were to be elected for the National Assembly across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, FCT. About 1,904 candidates contested in the senatorial

Kwara, Saraki’s home state; Benue, Taraba and Plateau.

On February 22, crisis erupted in Kano, when supporters of the APC and PDP clashed in Kofa town, Bebeji district of Kano. Two persons were killed, while 40 vehicles, 12 motorcycles and houses were burnt.

On polling day, February 23, more than a dozen people died in a bomb attack by Boko Haram terrorists in Yobe. In Oyo State, Temi-tope Olatoye, (a.k.a. Sugar), a member of the House of Representatives, was shot in the head by suspected political thugs few minutes after voting in Lalupon, Ibadan. He died the next day at the Intensive Care Unit of the University College Hospital, Ibadan.

Olatoye, who won the 2015 election as a candidate of the All Progressives Congress, lost re-election to the House on the platform of the Action Democratic Party.

Clement Nwankwo, convener of the Situ-ation Room, comprising over 70 civil society groups, said 16 people were killed in election violence across eight states, while the Lagos-based consultancy, SBM Intelligence, reported 35 deaths.

In many states, the card readers malfunc-tioned, thereby disenfranchising many regis-tered voters. In Zamfara State for instance, the PDP said no voting took place and there was

elections while 4,680 vied for seats in the House of Representatives.

Total registered voters, according to INEC, were 84 million but only 72,775,585 collected their permanent voter’s cards (PVC), a pre-requisite for voting on election day.

INEC registered 91 political parties to partici-pate in the elections; 119,973 polling units and 57,023 voting points across the country.

Months before the February 23 NASS elec-tions, tension was high as politicians threatened mayhem should the process lack transparency. To ensure voters’ safety President Muhammadu Buhari announced wide ranging measures including the order that ballot box snatchers should be shot on sight. Few days to the D-day, hundreds of thousands of security agents from the Nigeria Police Force, Nigerian Army, Department of State Security, DSS, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, and Nigeria Civil Defence and Security, NSCDC, were dispatched across the country, especially to flashpoints - Kano, the commercial nerve centre of Northern Nigeria; the Boko Haram terrorist ravaged states of Borno and Yobe; the politically restive states of the South South region especially Akwa Ibom and Rivers.

Others were Lagos and the so-called Wild, Wild West, the South East geo-political zone,

Many members of the National Assembly are not returning for the 9th Assembly


no single result sheet in any polling unit in the entire state. In Rivers State, security men were reportedly involved in ballot box snatching while armed soldiers stormed collation centres in Ikwerre, Emohua and Okrika Local Govern-ment Areas, stole electoral materials while INEC electoral officers were accused of cooking up results.

In Lagos, there were allegations of deliber-ate disenfranchisement of the Igbo who have a considerable voting strength. In one instance, a mob attacked the leader of the Odua People’s Congress, OPC, in Okota over alleged ballot box snatching. Electoral materials were burnt in some polling units in this densely populated area of the state.

In Anambra State, 14 suspects were arrested by the state’s Police Command, for various elec-toral offences including ballot box snatching, disruption of elections, malicious damage.

Despite the skirmishes, APC won 65 seats in the Senate, eights seats more than it won in the 8th Senate. The party won all three senatorial seats in Bauchi, Borno, Ekiti, Gombe, Jigawa, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Kwara, Lagos, Nasarawa, Niger, Ogun, Sokoto, Yobe and Zamfara States. It won two in Kaduna, Osun, Oyo and one each in Abia, Adamawa, Bayelsa, Delta, Edo, Imo, Kogi, Ondo and Taraba States.

The PDP won a total of 40 senatorial seats, a

decrease of eight seats from the 8th Senate. A breakdown showed that it won all three seats in Akwa Ibom, Benue, Cross River, Ebonyi, Enugu and Rivers States; two in Abia, Adamawa, Anam-bra, Bayelsa, Delta, Edo, Ondo and Taraba States and one in FCT, Imo, Kaduna, Kogi, Osun and Plateau States. The Young People’s Party, YPP, won one seat in Anambra State.

In the House of Representatives, APC clinched 222 seats and PDP 111. APGA won seven; People’s Redemption Party, PRP, two; Labour Party, one; Social Democratic Party, SDP, two and ADP, one.

In the State Assembly elections, the APC had majority in at least 22 states, PDP, 13 and APGA, one. In Sokoto State, for instance, APC clinched 16 seats while the PDP which won the gover-norship election has 14 seats (see table). Yusuf Dingyadi, senior special assistant to Governor Aminu Tambuwal told Newswatch Now that this is not a worrisome situation for the state helmsman. “We know how we play our politics in Sokoto,” he said.

Against this background of sweeping victory for the APC - it has 25 seats more than the PDP in the Senate and ahead of PDP by 100 seats in the House of Representatives - not a few Nigeri-ans are worried that the ruling party might turn the National Assembly into a rubber stamp. Al-ready, two national figures of the party – Adams Oshiomhole and Bola Tinubu, national chair-man and national leader of the party respectively, have given fillip to this thought.

Both men are insisting that Ahmed Lawan from Yobe State and Femi Gbajabiamila, Lagos, must be made Senate President and Speaker of the House respectively. Tinubu warned against what the APC suffered in 2015 when some of its lawmakers connived with those of PDP which was the minority, and elected those against the party’s choice as principal officers.

He said: “We were a little careless in 2015. We created the opportunity for serpent to get into our party and we are not going to allow that to happen again. We are going to respect our party and we are going to apply the whip.

“It is either you stay with us or you follow us or you leave. We would not take that this time, no matter who you think you are. That is how it is built. Why do you want to deviate from what has been structured? We look at our reward system equally, zone by zone.”

Oshiomhole, at a gathering of the newly elected APC members of the House of Rep-resentatives, said that because his party has a majority in the two chambers, no legislator of other parties would be elected to any leadership position or picked as a committee chairman. “It is the winner takes all,” he said.

Lanre Isa-Onilu, national publicity secretary

of APC also ruled out voting by the legislators to elect their leaders but that the party could just draw up a list. It’s a winner takes all,” he said, adding “There is no room for power shar-ing. We do not need them (PDP) to run this government.”

But Kola Ologbondiyan, national public-ity secretary of PDP, said it amounts to empty grandstanding and self-delusion for President Muhammadu Buhari and Oshiomhole to pos-ture as if the presiding offices and committee chairmanship in the National Assembly are the exclusive rights of the APC. “For emphasis, Sec-tion 50 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) is clear in providing that there shall be: (a) a presi-dent and Deputy President of the Senate, who shall be elected by the members of that House from among themselves; and (b) a Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, who shall be elected by the members of that House from among themselves,” he said.

He added: “Section 92 (1) makes the same provision for the election of the Speaker and Deputy Speaker of State House Assembly.”

Onukwube Uche Ezechukwu, member, Peace and Reconciliation Committee of PDP Presi-dential Campaign Organisation, is worried by the frenzied and abrasive manner the two APC leaders have been talking down on the legislators as “if they are school children about to resume a brand new term, while Tinubu and Oshiomhole are their headmasters, with canes at the ready and very eager to chastise and whip any erring pupil into line.”

He said both men have kept nobody in doubt that they are now the party and ipso facto, any vituperation of theirs, no matter how out of tune, represents the official stand of the party. “Tinubu had tried to play the same card in 2015 but was bested by the better-prepared legislators of the two chambers when they picked principal officers, different from the two that Tinubu had wanted to impose. There is nothing to suggest that the same, or even worse scenario would not be enacted this year, as there is palpable anger, even within the ranks of the APC membership against the effrontery of the these two men, and hence, the high possibility that the legislators from the APC and the other parties might want to prove that they are nobody’s rubber stamp, and therefore move to show a mind of their own by marooning Oshiomhole and Tinubu with their self-serving agenda,” he argued.

Ezechukwu called on the new legislators to make themselves effective in the eyes of Nigeri-ans by establishing their independence early in their tenure, thereby demonstrating to the two APC leaders that they are not members of the legislative houses or are the legislators anybody’s school children or lackeys.


THE LOSERS In the just concluded National and State Assembly elections, some notable Nigerians lost out in the power contest. The winners and losers are not only those who contested elective positions but also the godfathers - those who helped them achieve victory or defeat.

Bukola SarakiTop on the losers list is Bukola Saraki, president

of the 8th Senate. He lost the Kwara Central senato-rial seat to Ibrahim Oloriegbe of APC.

Saraki’s fall from power had long been planned by APC stalwarts after he defied the party and emerged as Senate President on June 9, 2015 against Ahmed Lawan, the party’s choice. He, however, spent his tenure battling APC leaders and fending off allegations of corruption, money laun-dering and false declaration of assets. He survived many impeachment plots and was exonerated by the Supreme Court on corruption charges.

These persecutions forced Saraki to defect to PDP on August 1, 2018 where he sought the party’s presidential ticket but lost to Atiku Abubakar. He was thereafter named the director general of the PDP Campaign Organisation and subsequently given the ticket to return to the Senate.

But the APC in a carefully orchestrated plot tagged “Enough is Enough” ensured he lost Kwara Central senatorial seat.

Godswill AkpabioA two term former governor of Akwa Ibom

State and Senate Minority Leader of the 8th Senate, Godswill Akpabio had defected from the PDP to the APC on August 8, 2018, to ensure his return to the Red Chamber.

The ruling party celebrated this big catch and paid television networks to stream the event live from a capacity filled Ikot Ekpene stadium. But the APC did not know that it had purchased copper for the price of gold. He lost the elec-tion.

Rabiu MusaKwankwaso

Before the elections, Senator Kwank-waso’s image loomed large in Kano, espe-cially through his Kwankwasiyya Movement whose members with their ubiquitous red caps filled campaign venues to the brim.

But he failed to deliver any senatorial seat for his party as APC carted away the three slots.

Shehu SaniOne of Nigeria’s famous human rights

activists, Shehu Sani engaged Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State in su-premacy battle for most of his four years as a federal legislator. At the height of the duel, Sani decamped to PRP to retain his senate seat.

He lost to Uba Sani of the APC. While the winner scored 355,242 votes, Sani polled 70,613 votes and came a distant third in the race.

Abiola AjimobiAbiola Ajimobi had looked forward to a

retirement plan, after eight years as Oyo State governor, in the Red Chamber, as the Senate Chamber is referred to. But Mr “Constituted Authority,” a tag he earned after an open outburst against students of Ladoke Akintola University, Ogbomoso, who were protesting the shutdown of their institution in January 2017, lost his bid for Oyo South senatorial seat to Kola Balogun of PDP.

But he quickly consoled himself: “If I lose the ticket and the party was able to gain, then it is nothing to feel sad about. If we won two out of the three Senatorial seats and we picked nine out of 14 federal con-stituency seats, then we should congratulate ourselves,” he said.

Olubankole WellingtonOlubankole Wellington, better known

by his stage name Banky W, contested on the platform of Modern Democratic Party, MDP, for the Eti-Osa federal constituency seat in the House of Representatives. The 37-year-old R&B singer campaigned with characteristic razzmatazz but lost to Baba-jide Obanikoro of APC.


Dino MelayeDino Melaye, the stormy petrel of Kogi West

politics, had been on the wrong side of APC for his support for Saraki since 2015. Last year, he defected to PDP alongside the Senate presi-dent.

During his travails, Dino pulled one stunt after another as law enforcement agents hounded and encircled him for alleged culpable homicide. Last February, he defeated Smart Adeyemi of the APC.

Aishatu BinaniThis 47-year-old legislator is the only female

from Northern Nigeria to be elected into the 9th Senate. Binani shocked her male rivals to clinch a ticket on the platform of APC in Adamawa State, the home state of Atiku Abubakar, PDP presiden-tial candidate.

THE WINNERS

Ibrahim OloriegbeIn Kwara central senatorial zone where the

Sarakis have held sway for decades, Ibrahim Oloriegbe is an underdog. But backed by the APC machinery and the “Enough is enough” battle cry of Kwarans, Oloriegbe defeated Saraki in all four local governments in the zone. He polled 123,808 votes to Saraki’s 68,994.

Kola BalogunKola Balogun stands out as the only man

who defeated an incumbent APC governor in the South West for a senatorial seat. The PDP flag bearer defeated Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State.

Yakubu DogaraPundits had ruled out Yakubu Dogara, cur-

rent Speaker of the House of Representatives, from retaining his seat after defecting to the PDP last August.

However, the lawmaker from the Christian minority area in a predominantly Muslim state won Bogoro/Dass/Tafawa Balewa federal constituency which he has been rep-resenting since 2007.

Adams OshiomholeAdams Oshiomhole, national chairman

of APC, shares in the collective victory of the party even though he delivered only one senatorial seat in Edo, his home state.

Bola TinubuThe national leader of the APC is another

important winner. The acclaimed godfather of APC delivered 14 out of 18 senatorial seats and 52 members of the House of Representatives in the South West to his party.


S/N STATE PARTY NO OF SEATS

1. Abia PDP 19, APGA 3, APC 2 24

2. Adamawa PDP 13 APC 11 ADC 1 24

3. Akwa Ibom

4. Anambra

5. Bauchi

6. Bayelsa PDP-17, APC-4 24

7. Benue

8. Borno

9. Cross River PDP 25 25

10. Delta

11. Ebonyi

12. Edo APC 24 24

13. Ekiti APC 24

14. Enugu PDP 24 24

15. Gombe

16. Imo PDP 13, AA 8, APGA 6 27

17. Jigawa APC 30, 30

18. Kaduna 24

19. Kano APC 29; PDP 13 42

20. Katsina APC 34 34

21. Kebbi

22. Kogi

23. Kwara APC 24 24

24. Lagos APC 40 40

25. Nasarawa APC 14 PDP 5 ZLP 1

26. Niger APC 27 27

27. Ogun APC 21, PDP 3 26

28. Ondo APC 23, PDP 2, ZLP 1 26

29. Osun APC 23, PDP 3 26

30. Oyo PDP 26, APC 5, ADP 1 32

31. Plateau

32. Rivers PDP 32 32

33. Sokoto APC 16 PDP 14 30

34. Taraba

35. Yobe

36. Zamfara

STATE HOUSES OF ASSEMBLY ELECTION RESULTS


Time changes political fortunes. From a powerful and dominant kingmaker today to superintending over a crumbling political house of cards, things can all change dramatically, particularly in politically porous Nigeria where politics is less ideologically

based and politicians move seamlessly from one party to another. Some powerful politicians felt the full force of this wind of change at the

last general election, starting off as the super politicians but ending up as a political humpty-dumpty with shattered dreams.

Despite their professed political strength locally and nationally, some of them lost their re-election battle badly to new political figures and upstarts.

Arguably the biggest loser in the 2019 elections is the third most pow-erful political office holder in the country Bukola Saraki, the incumbent Senate president, representing Kwara Central Senatorial District. He started as a founding member of the All Progressives Congress, APC, but ended up as a candidate of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, which he originally dumped to join the APC prior to the 2015 general elections.

He was regarded as a shoo-in for re-election because of his perceived political strength, and also because he is the custodian of the Saraki political

dynasty which has bossed Kwara State politics since the Second Republic, when Bukola’s father, Olusola, was the political king.

However, the Senate president not only lost his re-election battle, his political dynasty is now in tatters. His opponent for the senate seat was Ibrahim Oloriegbe, not an unknown politician. He was majority leader in the Kwara State House of Assembly between 1999 and 2003 and duelled with Saraki for the Senatorial seat in 2011 under the platform of Action Congress of Nigeria but lost. This time, however, he trounced Saraki.

Saraki’s fall from grace was not by happenstance. It was a long time coming. There had been moves to wrest control of Kwara politics from his family since the days of the late Olusola, Bukola’s father, who was Senate Leader in 1979 during the Second Republic.

The late Olusola was godfather to leading politicians, wielding enormous power of patronage, making and unmaking political office holders. He made his son, Bukola, governor of Kwara State in 2003, but after finishing his second term in 2011, Bukola became the kingmaker, supplanting his father who later died in November 2012.

The grouse of Kwarans has been that they had gained very little devel-opmentally during those years when the Sarakis and their surrogates were the lord and master of Kwara politics. What made matters worse for Sena-tor Saraki is that by outfoxing his party, APC, in 2015 to clinch the senate presidency, and to the chagrin of President Muhammadu Buhari and his government, he made powerful enemies of his party’s top hierarchy. He

How the mighty fellWhat was thought impossible happened at 2019 polls as political heavyweights were booted out

By Soji Akinrinade

Bukola Saraki Godswill Akpabio Shehu Sani


watch Now that Buhari is very popular in Kwara State and many Kwarans felt that Saraki masterminded most of the plots against the president in the upper chambers of the National Assembly. He said: “Most enlightened Kwarans were not happy with his (Saraki’s) role in the senate, especially when he converted the hallowed chamber to a bastion of opposition against President Muhammadu Buhari.

“The manner of his emergence as president of the senate did not help matters. It must be remembered that in the 2015 elections, Buhari secured more votes in the Kwara Central senatorial district than Saraki. That’s a clear indication that Buhari’s victory in Kwara had little or nothing to do with Saraki. When he championed opposition against Buhari in the area of delayed budget and other filibustering tactics, including the non-confirmation of Magu (as EFCC boss), it was clear that Saraki was no longer on the same page with Kwara people.”

Nurudeen added: “Despite his acquittal by the Supreme Court, many Kwarans were not convinced that his hands are not soiled with corrupt practices. He took questionable pensions and other awful benefits in a state with huge infrastructure deficit and huge salary arrears for civil servants and pensioners. Unlike his father, Olusola Saraki, who was more at home with the grassroots, Bukola is politically detached and elitist in his gait and comportment, which, at times, verges towards arrogance. He could have been defeated before now but was rescued by the Buhari hurricane of 2015 as well as the state apparatus which was at his beck and call until recently.”

When asked if there would have been any difference had Saraki not been Atiku Abubakar’s presidential campaign director and had more time to focus on his own campaign, Nurudeen said: “he was on ground as he was shuttling between Ilorin and Abuja. More than any other time in his political odyssey, the last election was the first time Saraki led the campaign of his party vigorously.

was literally a sitting duck. It wasn’t a surprise that as the 2019 election drew nearer, opposition

to Bukola Saraki and what he represented in national and Kwara politics morphed into a powerful grassroot movement known as “Otoge”, (it’s enough) which pulled in names like Lai Mohammed, current Minister of Information and Culture, AbdulRazak AbdulRahman, governor-elect and member of the APC, and Oba Abdulraheem, the Talba of Ilorin, who was once vice chancellor of the University of Ilorin.

According to Premium Times, an online news platform, the term Otoge was, by popular narrative, coined and popularised by Ibrahim Labaeka, a much-revered Islamic music artiste, and a member of the Islamic Musi-cians Association of Nigeria, ISMAN. He was said to have had a falling out with the Saraki group and came up with Otoge, which eventually became a powerful political mantra in Kwara State politics in the build-up to the 2119 elections.

The otoge mantra resonated with Kwarans such that it was not only Saraki who was voted out, the revolution swept off all three Senatorial seats, six House of Representatives seats and 24 State House of Assembly seats, and deposited them in the APC column, making the party completely dominant in Kwara State. The king is naked.

Nevertheless, APC did not achieve this feat all by itself. It had an ally Bukola Saraki’s sister Gbemisola, a former senator. To her, it was simply payback time. When Bukola finished his second term as governor of Kwara, his late father had anointed Gbemisola to succeed him. But Bukola de-murred and supported Abdulfatah Ahmed against his sister who decamped from PDP to the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria, ACPN to realise her gubernatorial ambition. Gbemisola lost, Ahmed won and Bukola became king of Kwara politics.

Sikiru Lanre Nurudeen, a lecturer in the department of Political Science and Public Administration at Al-Hikmah University, Ilorin, told News-

One benef ic iar y of Saraki’s generosity Anyila Ibrahim, who spoke to Newswatch Now said it was Gov-ernor Ahmed’s poor performance that im-pacted negatively on Saraki’s electoral vi-ability. He added that “the Code of Conduct Tribunal, CCT, trial affected Saraki so much that he could not at-tend and provide nec-essary attention to his people, not to talk of correcting or caution-ing the governor of the state to do the neces-sary things.”

However, this elec-toral loss and the defeat of Atiku Abubakar in the presidential elec-tion by Buhari means that Saraki would be much diminished in

Ready to vote: Nigerians display their PVCs


an unanticipated result for a politician who had dominated Oyo States politics for the past eight years, and had broken that second term curse and was re-elected governor in 2015.

In his first term he was applauded for some of the good works he did cleaning up Ibadan, probably the filthiest city in the south-west, build-ing infrastructure, particularly road construction and rehabilitation and introducing free shuttle buses for workers and students. The 43-seater buses conveyed civil servants and students to and from their offices and schools daily.

Abiola Ajimobi

Dankwabo

However, his second term was turbulent as he spent much time dousing the fire of discontent in the state. His major problem was in the city at the heart of Oyo State politics – Ibadan. Ibadan politics is unrelenting and unforgiving. Former governors who have felt the wrath of Ibadan politics include Rashidi Ladoja and Alao Akala. But the crux of the issue for Aji-mobi was his battle with the Olubadan of Ibadan, Oba Saliu Adetunji. To the chagrin of one of the pre-eminent traditional rulers in Yorubaland, Governor Ajimobi appointed Obas with beaded crowns while reforming

the new political dispensation and would have his job cut out rebuilding his political empire.

Senator Godswill Akpabio’s re-election loss in Akwa Ibom is almost as bad as Saraki’s. Akpabio, a former governor of Akwa Ibom State, is a widely acknowledged powerful godfather and kingmaker in his state, having been instrumental in the making of his successor Udom Emmanuel, in 2015. He also made the election of many of the national and state house of assembly members possible during the same 2015 elections. Such was his political dexterity that as a first term senator he was elected minority leader of the opposition PDP. But as it is usually the case in Nigerian politics, the godfather and his godson parted ways and became arch political rivals in Akwa Ibom State.

Akpabio decamped from the PDP to APC with a promise to take his state into the political column of the governing national party, which was now thought to be closing its eyes to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC’s, charges against him. Akpabio’s new mission in Akwa Ibom State was like scoring an own goal and not only didn’t he win the state for All Progressives Congress party, he lost the re-election battle in his own Ikot-Ekpene Senatorial District. Although he’s contesting it, his own people deserted him and voted for Chris Ekpenyong of PDP, a former deputy governor of Akwa Ibom State.

A watcher of Akwa Ibom State politics who gave his name as Editi said: “I must say his defeat hurts me till this day. And when I remember whom he lost to, it hurts even more. We replaced an erudite senator with a sleeper.”

Nevertheless, Akwa Ibom State is generally accepted as a PDP state and most political observers in the state thought that Akpabio’s gamble was a big mistake. The campaigns were divisive, brutal, violent and were laden with charges and coun-ter-charges of inciting violence. In the end the people of the state rejected Akpabio and his new political party, APC.

Inox Bradford, a social commentator said Akpabio did eve-rything within his power “to win that election but the people resisted him because of the party he joined. APC is alien to the people of the state. We are also peace-loving people. He became a changed man and almost started beating the drums of war when he joined the APC.

Baring a miracle victory at the electoral tribunal, Akpabio has a lot of work to do to recover lost political ground in the state. Of course, nothing is impossible in Nigeria politics.

For Governor Isiaka Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State, having served two terms and in his own estimation, done fairly well in the delivery of democracy dividends, most observers thought he was a shoo-in for one of the state’s three senatorial seats at the election. But because candidates propose and the elector-ates dispose, Ajimobi, who ran again under the APC banner, lost the Oyo South Senatorial District to Kola Balogun of the PDP. Balogun polled 105,720 votes to Ajimobi’s 95,279. It was


Shehu Sani

Mohammed Abdullahi Abubakar

the Olubadan-in-council. The Oludadan himself became His Imperial Majesty, moving up from His Royal Majesty. Oba Adetunji regarded the reform and appointments as an affront to his authority and didn’t mince words about it. It was therefore impossible for the Olubadan to support the senatorial ambition of Governor Ajimobi.

The governor also antagonised the students when he had a verbal altercation with them during a demonstration. Rather than pacify the restive students, he fired verbal volleys at them rebuking them for not respecting “constituted authority”. Many people thought he had lost the plot and wasn’t in touch with a huge segment of the voting public. He

authorised whenever they can, to rise and break their fetters.” The rest is history and Abubakar made another history by becoming the first governor to lose re-election in Bauchi.

What the 2019 elections have shown is that despite the hue and cry about various election problems and malpractices, the pull of local politics is still strong and often make and unmake even political heavyweights and god-fathers. They have shown once again that politicians who take their elec-torates for granted may pay the price for their political insensitivity.

Reported by Yusuf Mohammed

further alienated the voting public when his urban renewal programme led to part demolition of the music house of Yinka Adefele, a very popular musician. The house was home to his radio station, Fresh FM.

It was a PR disaster for the governor who was now accused of stifling dissent in his state by trying to shut down the radio station. Despite the fact that he spent state money to rebuild the damaged building, the damage had been done and there was no walking it back. He was accused of implementing the law without human face. The pent up anger in reaction to what many believed was “gubernatorial arrogance” culminated in his loss of his senatorial district to a first timer.

Many other politicians right across the country faced dif-ferent home-grown rebellion and political calculations which eventually led to their defeat in governorship and senatorial elections. Governor Ibrahim Dankwabo of Gombe State is by any definition a rising star who has done fairly well for his state. Despite Gombe being a Buhari stronghold, he won re-election in the state for the PDP in 2015. The trick, however, was that he also supported Buhari for the presidency. This time around he wanted to be a senator. He, however, did not get any benefit of the doubt from Buhari voters who supported APC’s Sa’idu Alkali because both the presidential and national assembly elections were held on the same day.

In Kaduna State, Shehu Sani, fiery and irascible political and human rights activist and APC senator representing Kaduna Central Senatorial District, lost his battle for re-election. Run-ning battles with state governor Nasir El-Rufai meant he had to eventually dump APC to join the Peoples Redemption Party, PRP. He had probably overestimated his political strength and a good evidence of this was his inability to win his polling unit. He lost badly to his APC opponent Uba Sani. He came third behind Sani and PDP’s Lawal Adamu. But Shehu Sani will remain in the fray as a political activist.

The Bauchi governorship race was between two political heavyweights, the incumbent, Mohammed Abdullahi Abubakar and former FCT Minister, Bala Mohammed who was PDP’s candidate. With Buhari winning Bauchi State by more than half a million votes, it was widely expected that the incumbent APC governor Abubakar would also win the state. However, Abubakar who won handsomely in 2015, riding the coattails of President Buhari, narrowly lost to Mohammed by 500,625 votes to 515,113 votes. The incumbent governor was accused of mismanaging the goodwill of his people and was regarded as aloof and “too elitist” He was alleged to have spent most of his time in Abuja and paid scant attention to the pressing needs of the state.

Newswatch Now learnt that the battle to deny him a second term cut across political lines and was led by the incumbent Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, who quoting Henry Clay, an author, said: “An oppressed people are


Perhaps, it was not just the prepara-tions. The team at the Independ-ent National Electoral Commis-sion, INEC, headed by Professor

Mahmood Yakubu, put in so much effort to make the 2019 elections a hitch-free exercise. At least so it was said.

But the elections, held on February 23 and March 9, led to many deaths. No less than 58 citizens were reportedly killed during the exercise, according to the Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room.

Even after the unexpected postponement a few hours to the poll to allow INEC smoothen some rough edges, there were reports of the late arrival of election materials, Smart Card Reader malfunctioning, vote buying, and cancellation of elections in many polling units. The implication was that five states’ elections were declared inconclusive. In Rivers, the winner of the governorship election was only

at all the 119,973 polling units in the country was introduced to enable party agents and ob-servers independently collate the results.

But what went wrong? Oseni offers insight. “The political actors are becoming desper-ate day in day out to get power. The do or die mentality has affected our political system. It shouldn’t be,” he said.

A lawyer, Wale Ogunade who is also the President of Voters Awareness Initiative, an election watchdog, agreed with Oseni. “It is not really much about the preparation. It has more to do with the activities of the stakehold-ers, the political actors. They did not abide by the rules at all. It now made the job of INEC very difficult. I hope that INEC has now learned its lessons,” he said.

Author of ‘Nigeria: Worth Dying for’, Ogu Bundu Nwadike, said a sign that all was not well with INEC’s plan for the election was when it suddenly postponed the elections on February 16, at 2 am, the same day the poll was to be held.

A performance below parINEC’s well laid election plans fail to curb politicians’ desperation

By Ishaya Ibrahim known 25 days after the vote was cast. “I think the 2019 elections generally fell be-

low the par of what people expected because, in 2015, there was a better-organised elec-tion,” says Tunde Oseni, Head of Department, Politics and International Relations, Lead City University, Ibadan.

But the INEC had tried to avert some of those lapses by planning early. They had well ahead of time, in March 2017, determined the date for the 2019 general elections, and other future elections - National elections would be held on the third Saturday of February in the year of election, while state elections would take place two weeks later.

INEC also adopted simultaneous ac-creditation and voting which was supposed to checkmate multiple voting. The use of incidence form was abolished. Instead, if a voter biometric can’t be authenticated by the Smart Card Reader, SCR, the manual register would be used.

A poster-sized result sheet to be displayed

INEC chairman Mahmood Yakubu, addresses a world press conference


“With nearly N250 billion as their budget, they had no reason to postpone the elections and having four years to plan. To me, the 2019 general elections was a setback. The 2015 elections were relatively more peaceful,” he said.

But in 2015, there was a postponement, although influenced by the office of the then National Security Adviser, NSA, Sambo Dasuki, who asked for at least six weeks to enable security forces to dislodge Boko Haram fighters from the territories they were holding in the North Eastern part of the country.

For the 2019 election, Yakubu said bad weather, which made them resort to moving logistics by road instead of airlifting them, and coordinated fire sabotage targeted at three of their local government offices in Abia, Plateau and Anambra States, caused the postpone-ment.

A new date of February 23 for the national poll, and March 9, for the state election, were announced.

The electoral process was largely peaceful and transparent in many areas, but bloody in others.

In Rivers, voting was yet to commence when reports dominated the social media that gunmen had taken over the streets, shooting sporadically. Some of the gunmen were said to be kitted in Army uniforms.

Although the 6 Division spokesman in Port Harcourt, Aminu Iliyasu, said those were thugs, but one INEC official in-charge of Okrika local government area, Leo Okon, named a particular Captain Inuwa of leading soldiers to disrupt the election process.

A fact-finding panel of INEC team later indicted some element of the Army of disrupting collation of results in some local government in Rivers State, although they kicked.

For Oseni, the action of security agencies trying to undermine the electoral process was a systemic deficit in those organisations.

“How do we ensure that those in the agen-cies have this patriotic feeling that I’m not there to obey politicians but rather to obey my nation. How do we instil that kind of sense of patriotism, sense of nationalism, sense altruism in the security people? And that will take some time because it starts with how you recruit them, how you control them. It also tells about federalism and the control for security agencies, how do you ensure that they do what is good for the nation and not for an individual,” he said.

While Nigerians were bemoaning the situa-tion in Rivers, in Imo, something novel hap-pened during the announcement of the result of the Imo West Senatorial election which the Electoral Act and the guidelines for the 2019

declared winner under duress. INEC has already wielded the big stick

on Okorocha. Festus Okoye, INEC commis-sioner in-charge of Information and Voter Education said certificates of return is only issued to those who won an election and must be done through the free will of a returning officer.

“What INEC is saying is that you can’t engage in bad electoral behaviour and expect INEC to reward you with a certificate. Our certificate is only for those who won freely,” he said

But Okorocha denied any wrongdoing, accusing INEC of colluding with his political enemies to deny him his mandate.

Okorocha has since gone to court to chal-lenge INEC’s stand, and the commission said it would comply with whatever decision the court made.

A lawyer, Abdulaziz Ibrahim believes that INEC has the powers to withhold Okorocha’s certificate because forcing someone to act under duress is equal to violence.

“The ad hoc staff are advised that when there is violence, they should leave the scene in order to save their neck. But the issue of an election officer being held at gunpoint to announce the result, it is not envisaged. But INEC has the powers to withhold the an-nouncement of the result, and deny him his certificate,” he said.

The 2019 elections have come with its les-sons, says Ogunade, and he believes that the take away is for the commission to push for an electoral law that would accommodate elec-tronic voting, and prescribe punitive measures for mischievous political players.

Oseni elaborates on how technology can aid a successful election.

“The use of technology cannot be overem-phasized in any aspect of an election. From the time you are registering people. When you talk of underage voters, technology should be able to determine that. You don’t need your birth certificates. Use technology to ensure that the people who registered are the same people that vote.

“We should be thinking about e-voting even though it may be too early and premature for now, but we should be thinking of it may be in the next decade of our democratic practice and make sure that mischievous politicians are not allowed to hack or control the use of technology to their own advantage.

“Government should also be more serious on how to deploy technology to gather intelli-gence. You can use drones to monitor elections particularly in Riverine and hinterlands to en-sure that when people are snatching boxes you would know within minutes so that you can go there and arrest the situation,” he said.

elections did not envisage. The Returning Officer, Ibeawuchi Innocent,

a professor of Maritime Technology, said the result he was announcing was not done on his own free will.

“I declared this thing before under duress; I’m still under duress declaring this one,” he said.

Rochas Okorocha, the governor of Imo State was the All Progressives Congress (APC) senatorial candidate for the election and was the person the returning officer said he

Tunde Oseni

Wale Ogunade

Ogu Bundu Nwadike


Nigeria will on May 29, this year, celebrate 20 years of uninterrupted democratic governance with its transition from military to civil-

ian rule in 1999. After two decades under a democratic dispensation, it was expected that the 2019 general elections, which is the sixth in a row would have been free, fair and devoid of election malpractices.

However, the reverse was the case as violence; vote buying, ballot snatching, hijacking and destruction of electoral materials, militarisation of the process, voter apathy, voter intimidation and killings manifested in the recent election of candidates into the Presidential and National Assembly held on February 23. The despicable election malpractices were replicated during the March 9 governorship and State Houses of Assembly polls.

In virtually all parts of the country, the elec-tions were marred by violence. According to report from the Civil Society Situation Room, a

Coalition of Civil Society Organisations for the 2019 general elections, about 260 people died as a result of violence across the country from October 2018; when campaigns kicked off till the conclusion of the elections.

One of the victims of election violence was Temitope Olatoye alias Sugar, who was until his death a member of the House of Representatives for Lagelu/Akinleye constituency of Oyo State. He was assassinated while returning from his village after casting his vote in the governorship election of Saturday, March 9, 2019. According to reports, the deceased was ambushed by some political thugs who assailed him with bullets. Olatoye, who was gunned down in Elesu vil-lage, Lalupon, Lagelu, was immediately rushed to the Accident and Emergency ward of the University College Hospital in Ibadan by his supporters, before being moved to the Intensive Care Unit, where doctors battled to save his life. He was confirmed dead at about 8.00 pm same day.

For the family of Monsuru Hamzat and

residents of Arapaja compound, Kudeti, in the Ibadan South-East Local Government Area of Oyo State, February 23, 2019, would be remem-bered for the violence and attendant bloodbath that threw the community into mourning. On that day during the conduct of the presidential and National Assembly elections, some masked gun-wielding hoodlums stormed the polling booth in Arapaja compound, shooting spo-radically into the air to scare the voters that had converged on a collation centre in the area. It was a few minutes after the 2pm time set by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, for the conclusion of voting that the gunmen opened fire on the armless voters.

A female security operative manning the unit fled to save her life. But a 25-year-old Hamzat was unlucky. Eight bullets reportedly pierced through his body and he died on the way to the hospital.

In Lagos State, areas believed to be the strong-holds of the opposition People’s Democratic Party, PDP, had its own share of violence. Areas like Okota, Isolo, Oshodi, Alaba and Ajegunle each had their own share of the violence. In Okota, political thugs were said to have arrived on motorbikes before the voting started threat-ening anyone who voted against the candidates of the All Progressives Congress, APC. They later destroyed thumb-printed ballot papers. The thugs were also alleged to have set electoral materials on fire. The Okota incident took an ethnic colouration as Igbo residents of the area were disenfranchised as political thugs who were believed to be Yoruba stopped them from casting their votes because of their belief that Ndigbo would vote for Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the PDP instead of Muhammadu Buhari, generally believed to have been endorsed by the Yoruba race.

However, members of the Oodua People’s Congress, OPC, and Afenifere, the Pan Yoruba organisation later appealed for calm while de-nouncing one Demola, alleged to be the leader of the ballot box snatchers. He was killed during the violence.

In Rivers State, a soldier and five other persons were killed while man others sustained injuries in the violence that trailed the Presidential and National Assembly elections. The soldier, a lieutenant, was killed at Abonnema, headquar-ters of Akuku Toru Local Government Area, while Mowan Etete, a chieftain of the APC, and former Chairman of Andoni Local Government Council, was killed alongside his elder brother and cousin in Asarama. As a result of violence, the collation of the governorship/state assembly election results was suspended for about three weeks.

The commission said soldiers and some armed gangs contributed to the charged atmosphere that made it difficult for electoral officers to continue with collation at the state INEC head-

We learnt nothing, forgot nothingElection malpractice reared its ugly head again. From ballot snatching to ballot stuffing and outright violence, it was chaos all the way

By Pita Ochai

Ballot snatching was a recurring decimal


quarters in Port Harcourt, the state capital. Also, an unconfirmed number of persons

believed to be members of the PDP were killed following the eruption of violence before the commencement of accreditation and voting in Asari-Toru, Akuku-Toru and Degema Lo-cal Government Areas of the state. Nnamdi Omoni, Police Public Relations Officer, PPRO, Rivers State Command said that Etete was in his house when unknown gunmen scaled the fence, entered the house and killed him and his brother.

A local election observer was also killed by stray bullet in Enugu State. The stray bullet was fired by a policeman to disperse a group of pro-testers. The Enugu Police Command said that the protesters were pushing for the postpone-ment of the gubernatorial poll to give more time for Ayogu Eze, the governorship flag bearer of APC to campaign. Before the election, Eze was battling to wriggle out of a legal tangle over his nomination. He was only cleared to run by the court few days to the elections. Eze’s sup-porters insisted the election should be delayed so that he would have enough time to canvass for votes.

In kwara State, a violent clash between APC and PDP supporters led to the death of two persons. The clash was between the follow-ers of Lola Ashiru, the senatorial candidate of APC for Kwara South and Rafiu Ibrahim, the PDP senatorial candidate. The crisis occurred

at Ojoku in Oyun Local Government Area in Kwara South. The attack was specifically against supporters of Ashiru as he was leading a cam-paign rally to the palace of the traditional ruler of Ojoku. Ojoku is the hometown of Senator Ibrahim of the PDP, who was seeking re-election. Several witnesses that the attack was caused by the chants and exchange of political slogans, “O to ge” (meaning enough is enough) by APC supporters and “O tun ya” (one more time) by PDP supporters. This made the two opposing camps to launch attacks against each other using dangerous weapons. Senator Ibrahim and eight other suspects were later arrested by the police over the violence.

A similar violent action took place in the oil-rich Bayelsa State when armed men in military uniform killed Reginald Dei, a photographer attached to Government House Yenagoa, and Seidougha Taribi, the PDP Ward Chairman for the Southern Ijaw Local Government Area of Bayelsa State.

The destruction of electoral materials in some states caused setbacks to the timetable. Just hours to the presidential and national as-sembly elections, containers with about 4695 smart card readers meant for the election were destroyed by fire that razed INEC facility at the Anambra state INEC headquarter in Awka. Just about 24 hours to the governorship and House of Assembly polls, unidentified hoodlums burnt down the INEC office in Ibesikpo Local Govern-

ment Area of Akwa Ibom State. Elections had to be suspended in Azendeshi ward in Benue state because of the attack and destruction of election materials by suspected thugs. Some vehicles transporting election materials to the polling units were attacked by hoodlums along Zaki Biam in Ukum LGA. Some escorts including INEC officials and party agents were injured.

Festus Okoye, a National Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commis-sion, INEC, said that the electoral body did all within the law to ensure free and fair elections but its major challenge was with the politi-cians who were bent on winning at all cost. “As INEC was planning and preparing for free and fair elections, politicians were also planning and preparing ahead but not to improve or better the election. Their plan and preparation was to perfect malpractices,” he said.

Clement Nwankwo, Executive Director, Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre, and con-vener, Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room, NCSSR, said that an ideal election is for citizens to democratically exercise their rights to choose their government, and as such no election should cost lives.

Browne Onuoha, a Professor of political Scientist from the University of Lagos, said that democracy in Nigeria is in a terrible state judging from the level of election malpractices in the recent polls. Its practice defies universal

A polling station attacked by hoodlums


standards of acceptable behaviour. To him, while everything is wrong with democracy in Nigeria, the greatest danger to its development is election violence. He noted that elections in Nigeria are regarded as do-or-die affairs with politicians willing to unleash violence to achieve their ambition. That desperation was the cause of the violence during the last general elections.

Nigeria is one of a few countries, where the signing of “peace accords” always precedes a gen-eral election. Why? This is because politicians and their supporters treat elections as a state of war. In 2011, over 800 people died in violent clashes after President Goodluck Jonathan was declared winner of the presidential election. In 2015, the National Human Rights Commission, NHRC, stated 58 deaths across 22 states during the general elections.

Many Nigerians believe that the militarisation of the election was to help abate malpractices. President Buhari had warned before the gen-eral elections that malpractices would not be tolerated. To dissuade Nigerian from towing the path of election violence, the President had ordered security agents to “deal ruthlessly” with ballot box snatchers which generated much controversy. In most parts of the country, there were heavily armed security agents drawn from the Department of State, DSS, the Nigerian Army, the Nigeria Police, the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC, and several others.

Another disturbing feature of the 2019 general elections was vote buying. From recent elections in states like Ekiti, Osun, Edo, Anambra, vote buying assumed a worrisome dimension. INEC devised a mean of curbing it by disallowing the use of mobile phones around the voting areas,

but this seems not to have yielded much fruit. The Coalition of Civil Society Groups, CCSG, in its report as election observer said that vote-buying was prevalent in 16 states of the federa-tion. There were reported cases of vote buying in Adamawa, Sokoto, Lagos, Delta, Enugu, Ekiti, Bauchi, Benue, Nasarawa, Plateau, Kwara, Zam-fara, Kebbi, Oyo, Kano and Osun States within the range of N500 and N5,000. Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi, the Executive Director of Women Advocates Research and Development Centre, WARDC, who observed the elections, stated: “The democratic space is definitely on sale. From our assessment, the general electioneering pro-cess for 2019 is a big retrogression from where we are coming from. It has brought us back not only to 2007.”

While the government made efforts to ensure security during the elections, the 2019 general election recorded the lowest voters’ turnout. About 84 million registered to vote but only 29 million voted in the presidential election, 34.75 percent of the total registered voters. Accord-ing to data from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (I-IDEA) the turnout of voters at the 2019 presidential election is the second lowest in the history of elections held in African countries — the lowest being 32.3 per cent in the 1996 Zimbabwean presidential election.

The turnout during the governorship and House of Assembly elections held on March 9 was lower than that of the presidential and national assembly. It was characterised by poor voter turnout in all the 36 states of the coun-try and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja.

In the five states with the highest number of

registered voters - Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, Rivers, less than half of the registered voters turned out at the polls. In the presidential and National Assembly elections, Lagos state with 6,313,507 registered voters recorded 1,156,590 (18.3 per-cent) total votes. In Kano State with 5,391,581 registered voters, only 1,964,751 voted (36.4 percent), only 1,709,005 (44.3 percent) voted in Kaduna state of the 3,861,031 total registered voters, 3,215,273 registered in Rivers State but only 666,585 (20.7 percent) turned out in Rivers State. The statistics were not much different in the governorship and state house of Assembly elections.

Atiku Abubakar, the flag bearer of PDP, blamed the apathy in the polls on alleged rigging in the February 23 presidential and National Assembly elections.

The Coalition of Democrats for Electoral Reforms, CODER, has decried the apathy that characterised the general elections, saying the national average of voter turnout was 34 per cent. CODER said its data suggested the problem was more prevalent in urban centres, particularly among the elite.

Wunmi Bewaji, the Executive Director/Chair Transition Committee, linked the develop-ment with a number of factors, including the INEC’s failure to develop and enhance its hu-man capital. It also identified lack of access to weak and vulnerable groups, such as the aged, the sick, disabled and illiterates, as well as what he described as the growing phenomenon of ‘judicialisation’ of the country’s democracy. Bewaji said the data was alarming, with millions of uncollected Permanent Voter Cards (PVC) at INEC offices nationwide. He said: “To safeguard our democracy, there is the need to explore vot-

ers’ pre-registration and incentivisation of franchise with the introduction of a Voter Participation Certificate (VPC) with attendant benefits and conse-quences. For example, possession of a valid VPC could be made a criterion for employment/promotion in the civil service, for postgraduate admissions, participation in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), to obtain driv-ers’ licence, international passports, for registration of companies etc.”

The CODER director said “the lo-cation of polling stations, haphazard placement of voting materials, self-accreditation etc. all add up to disen-franchise many, especially the aged, the sick, disabled and illiterates.”

From all indications, consolidating democracy in Nigeria appears to be in crisis as a result of the challenges of electoral malpractices which manifest in form of corruption, insecurity and weak democratic institutions.Security officials intervene in intense stand off at a polling station


The headline, why we don’t vote, contains both seeds of accuracy and inaccuracy. It is not true that we don’t vote. We do. In the recently concluded

elections, we, many of us, voted. But the truth, the unvarnished truth, is that we make a lot of noise about our love for democracy but we don’t vote in large numbers as a physical expression of that love. Love talked about but love not exhibited.

The recently concluded presidential elections

84 million registered voters. By these numbers, this year’s presidential election attracted the least number of voters since 1999. Could it be because the two major contestants, Mr. Muham-madu Buhari (APC) and Mr. Atiku Abubakar (PDP) have identical biometric statistics? They are both Fulani from the North. They are both muslims. They are both tall, and they are both in their 70s. But that is where the similarities end because the contrasts are stark. Buhari is perceived as honest, simple and disciplined but tyrannical, partisan, inflexible and unforgiving. Atiku is seen as cosmopolitan, liberal-minded and de-tribalised but unscrupulous, disloyal, dodgy and a political adulterer. These are some of the qualities pinned on them by their admirers and traducers but in the Nigerian voting scheme those attributes seem to count for little. What matters more is the ability to mobilise the voters to your side by hook or crook. But the biometric similarities between Buhari and Atiku could

Why we don’t voteNigerians prefer to talk but “forget” to vote

By Ray Ekpu produced the lowest voting figures since our return to civil rule in 1999. Look at the figures: In 1999, 30.2 million people voted out of 57.2 million registered voters (52.1%). In 2003 out of 60.8 million registered voters 42 million voted (69.1%). In 2007 35.5 million people cast their votes out of 61.6 million voters (57.6%). In 2011 40.7 million people voted out of 73.5 million reg-istered to vote (55.3%). In 2015 only 29.4 million people voted out of 68.8 million (42.7%) but dur-ing the recently concluded presidential election only a miserable 28.6 million people bothered to vote out of a whopping voting strength of

Getting ready for voters: the youths didn’t show up in large numbers


not satisfactorily explain the reason for apathy. In 1999 the two combatants Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and Chief Olu Falae had similar at-tributes: they are both Yoruba, Christian, tall and experienced public servants though they both have contrasting temperaments and career statistics. Despite the similarities between them 52.1% of the registered voters went out to vote for them. The relatively high turnout must have been affected by the desire of people to bring the unfortunate June 12 episode to a closure since it was obvious that the Yorubas who had lost an MKO Abiola presidency through the election annulment were likely to have one of their own, either Obasanjo or Falae, through the election of 1999.

Could it be that the large army of presidential candidates, 73, in 2019 was a dampener for those who would have wanted to vote? Could they have said to themselves that such a large crowd had re-duced the election to a joke and that they did not want to be part of the circus show? That might not be a very plausible explanation because in 2003 there were 20 presidential candidates and there was a 69.1% voter turnout. That large turnout which beat the 1999 figure of 52.1% may have been accounted for by the fact that people were now convinced that democracy was here at last, no more annulment or truncation or elongated transition programme. Reality had come to town. But even in the 2007 presidential election the voting turnout was high, 57.6% ev-enthough there were 27 presidential candidates. The voters may have said to themselves: the more the merrier.

In the last presidential election, there were easily discernible causes of low turnout. The

risation of the electoral process in all states of the Federation. Ordinarily, the huge presence of security personnel ought to be an assurance to potential voters that they will be protected and they will not be in harm’s way. But ironically the large presence of the security personnel espe-cially the Army, raised some doubts about not only their safety but also the possible freeness and fairness of the election. The wide percep-tion was that the ruling party was likely to use the Army to manipulate the election for the sit-ting President. Eventhough there were reported cases of the military’s unprofessional conduct in some states it is doubtful if these incidents were widespread enough to make any significant dif-ference to the outcome of the election. But the more serious aspect of the militarisation of the election was the statement by President Buhari that the military should “deal ruthlessly” with ballot box snatchers. That statement was the exact definition of extra judicial killing because the Electoral Act 2010 has actually prescribed a penalty of 24 months jail sentence for such in-fringements as ballot box snatching. In response to the statement of the President who is also the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, the Chief of Army Staff, Lt General Tukur Buratai stated that the President’s command will be obeyed to the letter. This was scary, very, very scary and a huge dampener to voter turnout. The Nigerian security forces do not have a solid reputation for civility or for respecting the hu-man rights of Nigerians. Very many examples of their misbehaviour or unruliness are dotted all over the media every week. For people who needed to be persuaded to go out and vote the prospect of their being harmed or harassed by

gun-totting, ready-to-shoot security men was a disincentive to venturing out to vote.

The violence recorded in some parts of the country during the campaigns may have told voters that those incidents represented, possibly, a foretaste of what was to come during the elec-tions. In Ogun State, an APC State, the campaign was disrupted with President Buhari who is the leader of that party in attendance. Because of violence the campaign had to be stopped and the President provided a shield by his security op-eratives. There were several other cases in some other States, some of them involving killing and maiming of people. So those who stayed away from voting felt justified in doing so because self-preservation is the first law of nature.

In the basket of reasons for low voter turn-out we can include the perceived glitches from INEC, reports of non-arrival of voting materi-als, burning of INEC offices and delivery vans, low voter enlightenment, low confidence in the electoral umpire, doubts whether their votes would count or even be counted.

Another reason for the voter apathy may have been the sequence of the elections. In normal settings, the presidential election being the most important should have brought up the rear. That is what happened in most of the elections in the past. That arrangement gives the election manager the opportunity to test its strength and discover its weaknesses in the execution of the lower league elections. In that process the enthusiasm and voting appetite of the populace is whetted in readiness for the big event, the presidential election. But Nigeria’s political elite in their wisdom, or lack of it, had decided that, contrary to convention and commonsense, the

election was shifted by one week just a few hours to the opening of polling. The announcement of the shift was done at the mysteri-ous hour of 2.30 in the morning and if it had been on April 1, many would have thought it was a cruel April Fool joke. Many people who registered to vote in their home states had defi-nitely travelled home only to be told, “no show.” Many of them could not wait for another week in order to vote because that would amount to a disruption of their life, work or business. They simply returned to their place of normal residence. Most of them did not go back home to vote on the rescheduled date. The election lost them.

The second reason for the low turnout was the extreme milita-

Polling station or war front?


big masquerade should appear first. It seemed to many voters that the insistence on the presi-dential election coming first had in its womb the seeds of mischief and manipulation and they would rather not be a pawn on that chessboard of mischief and manipulation.

It is also possible that some voters may have asked themselves whether or not standing in the rain or sun to vote was worth the trouble. The populace have often felt that Nigerian politicians hardly fulfil their promises, even those ones printed in their manifestoes. So the voters, some of them, have learnt to think about the worthlessness of those words vomited by Nigerian politicians. And because of this slippery posture of our politicians the serious media have often resorted to documenting and displaying the promises made by politicians, where, when and on what occasion. This scenario indicates that many potential voters may believe, based on past experience, that their votes will make no difference, that the politicians are not promise keepers but promise killers. In that case, they ask themselves, isn’t it better to stay at home and sleep or watch football or African magic or Zee-world or have sex. They answered, “it is better.” The election lost them.

The voter apathy has thrown up some not easily explicable dimensions to our political life. Among the registered voters there were 42, 938,458 youths whose ages ranged from 18-35. They constitute 51.11% of the registered voters. Since only 28.6 million people voted in the 2019 presidential election I think it is a pertinent

question to ask: where were the youths? Also, in the same vein, we had 39, 598,664 registered female voters. That is 47.14% of the voters. Again, you can also ask: where were the women? The questions about youths and women are particularly pertinent because they constitute a sizeable chunk of the population; they are the ones likely to be more affected by policy issues on unemployment, education, poverty, gender equality, violence, health, human rights and similar issues now and in the future. Why would they not want to contribute even in a minor way to the shaping of that present and that future by the simple act of voting? Do they think, like many other Nigerians, that that future has already been decided behind their backs by the political elite who are mainly “old school?” Even if they think so do they simply want to throw up their hands in despair instead of starting a fight for the renovation of that present and the recovery of that future?

The voter apathy situation is replete with iro-nies. The politicians seemed to show numerical enthusiasm by 73 of them throwing their hats into the ring, to use a threadbare expression. Eventhough many of these so-called presidential candidates did not do much more than get their parties on the ballot, the sheer number and vari-ety of presidential aspirants should have been a source of curiosity, interrogation and interest to serious minded citizens. They should have asked who among the multitude might be persons of exceptional interest to them apart from the two well-known candidates. That should have

translated into the desire to vote for one of them. But the enthusiasm by the politicians to offer themselves for service was only matched by the voters’ readiness to ignore them.

Another irony. The struggle to wrestle military dictators to the ground and take our country back lasted for a total of 28 years, first from 1966 to 1979 and then from 1984 to 1999. During this period many activists, journalists and politi-cians lost their lives or liberty. Others went on exile, established pirate radio stations abroad to beam their messages to those at home. For the first time, the words “guerrilla journalism” crept into our lexicon. Now, after all the wahala we ac-quired our freedom from military dictators and indicated that we were ready for elected civilian administration which we have come to call de-mocracy, then we lost interest by largely refusing to vote. What is the explanation for this loss or lack of interest? Are we suffering from the effect of war weariness, the war to send the soldiers back to their barracks? Or having got democratic structures in place, do we feel that the job has been done, that we can go home and rest and leave the politicians to do their jobs? If that is the reason, then that is a mistake. Democracy’s work is never done. It is a continuing and continuous battle because anti-democratic forces are never far away even within democratic structures. The tree of democracy must constantly receive the water of nourishment for it to survive and thrive. The checks and balances that stakeholders can place on those who manage our democracy is the manure that democracy needs for its growth

Aftermath of an attack on a polling station


and grooming.Over the years we have been very vociferous

about democracy and gone to great lengths to tell the world that we want it and want it badly. Are we just noise makers, the equivalent of empty barrels that make the loudest noise or are we doers, people who talk and walk the talk like voters in some African countries? According to figures released by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) which was published by the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR) in its newslet-ter, Rwanda which leads Africa in many good things, had a 98.2% voter turnout in its 2017 presidential election. The other leading countries are Equatorial Guinea 92.7% in 2016, Angola 90.4% in 2017, Seychelles 90.1% in 2016, Guinea Bissau 89.3% in 2019, Zimbabwe 86.8% in 2018, Sierra Leone 84.2% in 2018, Kenya 79.5% in 2017, Liberia 75.2% in 2017 and Burundi 73.4% in 2015. When you look at those figures from some parts of Africa you wonder why Nigeria, a great noise maker in matters of democracy is lagging behind in terms of actualization.

Since 1999 we have only had six presidential elections so it cannot be said that we are fatigued and election weary. These elections are held only once in four years. We must therefore seek to go beyond what, on the surface, we see as the reasons for our election apathy. Those who make things work in most countries are the elite, the crème de la crème, the aristocrats, the haut monde but it appears that that class, the upper middle class, has either lost its direction or is nonchalant in Nigeria. During the intense demonstration against the proposal to increase the price of petrol by the Goodluck Jonathan Administration some years ago, many of the elite showed extreme indifference to the issue that had paralysed that government and the economy. They were caught sitting leisurely during the demonstration superintending over some bottles of choice cognac and champagne while demon-strators were brutalized by security forces. This was classic nonchalance. I had referred to this type of nonchalance in an article I wrote for The Guardian in 2018. I said: “Bad leaders emerge because the citizens are nonchalant; they are not

interested; they are not voting; they are not regis-tering to vote; they are not going to the campaign venue; they are just nonchalant but they do not know that that nonchalance will come back to bite them when they have a bad leader.”

In most Nigerian communities it is the elite who take decisions for their people. The elite are well-educated, well-travelled, well exposed and well connected to the loop of power. They control the commanding heights of the economy, they are wired to the decision makers in the profes-sions, government and the private sector. So if societies work well it is largely because the elite want it to work well and they work for it. If any society is wobbling, as ours is, a lot of the blame can also be placed on the doorsteps of the elite. If Nigeria has unsuccessful elections we can hold the elite responsible because it is they who hire and arm thugs, who buy voters and election of-ficials, who compromise the election tribunals and the courts whenever and wherever they can. No one says the non-elite are not involved in these nefarious practices. Others who are involved are fringe players who play only fringe roles. The elite are the big league players, who make things, good and bad, to happen using the obliging fringe players, inducing them, cajoling them and promising them the moon with their names on it. So the elite play a pivotal role in the success or failure of our country. What do they want? Money and power not necessarily in that order, but both are important to them. Power provides money and money can also provide power. The two are friendly and they support each other. Consummate users of power under-stand these two items as important factors in the success equation.

When Mr. Olisa Agbakoba, a respected Senior Advocate of Nigeria, mounted the political po-dium and said that he had a data base of at least 10 million youths in the internet who are ready to make a difference in the elections, I laughed. He said they would ensure that a formidable Third Force emerges. By the gift of hindsight Mr. Agbakoba was just blowing hot air eventhough he meant well for the country. Do the youths, the major czars of ranting on the internet know what they want? If they know it, do they know how to achieve it? Do they know that their future begins today, now, and that they should not sur-render the building of that future to the present elite. Why? Because the present elite, have by their acts of commission or omission, laid giant land mines for a future of which they will not be a part. Our elite, especially our educated, professional, political and military elite, are in need of a new sense of national renaissance and greatness.

Olisa Agbakoba, lawyer and political activist


The leadership of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, had on several occasions promised to guar-antee a level playing ground for all

aspirants in order to ensure rancour-free pri-maries that would give the party victory in the 2019 general elections. However, intra-party crisis fueled by indiscipline, especially within the ranks of leaders, played a decisive role in the conduct and outcome of the elections in some states including Oyo, Ondo, Imo, Rivers,

Zamfara and Ogun, where the governor was implicated in an attack on the presidential election campaign rally in the state.

The crisis in Imo State chapter of the party became fierce when Governor Rochas Okoro-cha insisted that Uche Nwosu, his son-in-law, would succeed him in office. Nwosu then won a controversial governorship primary organ-ised by the governor and other stakeholders, but a presidential panel led by Ahmed Gulak conducted a separate primary which produced

Hope Uzodinma as the candidate of the party. Since then, the APC’s house of commotion could not find peace, as the contentions set the outgoing governor against the national leadership of the party, represented by Adams Oshiomhole.

The mild drama in the state chapter of the party continued as the party leaders loyal to Okorocha suspended Uzodinma from the par-ty in January. They accused him of supporting a candidate of another political party in the

A party at odds with itselfRuling All Progressive Congress didn’t need the opposition to complicate its election prospects, its own members did that just fine

By Augustine Adah

APC National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole


Imo West Senatorial District against Okorocha now a senator elect from the zone. However, controversy over who bears the flag of the party was laid to rest during the presidential rally attended by leaders and chieftains of the party in Owerri, the state capital.

On that day, President Muhammadu Buhari after reeling out his administration’s achievements upon which he was relying to seek for a second term in office, urged all APC supporters in Imo State not to allow “intra or inter-party squabbles to remove your senses of responsibility.” He went on to raise Uzod-inma’s hand “as the APC candidate” saying “I wish us the best of luck, you and me.” Later, in what appeared more like an after-thought, Buhari also raised Okorocha’s hands asking the people to vote for him in his senatorial ambi-tion. After the rally when the governor knew that there was little or nothing he could do to change the decision of the party on the choice of candidate, advised Nwosu to join Action Al-liance (AA), a party he alleged to had formed in 2015, and picked the governorship ticket.

When the result of the governorship elec-tion conducted on March 23, was released by INEC, it was obvious that the crisis has dealt a deadly blow to the party as it could not win the governorship position and a single seat in the state assembly.

According to the result of the election released by INEC, Uche Nwosu of AA scored 190,364, while Hope Uzodima of APC got 96,458 as against the winner of the election, Emeka Ihedioha who polled 273,404. Look-ing at the result, APC stood a better chance of winning the election if the two groups had closed ranks and presented a single candidate in the election. Some people believed that the personal desire of Okorocha to single hand-edly impose candidates on the party caused the failure of the party in the state.

One of such persons is the pioneer state chairman of APC in Imo State, Marshal Oka-for. Okafor who left the party a few months after emerging as the chairman, disclosed to Newswatch Now that Okorcha never cared for the interest of the party during the time he served as the chairman and the position con-tinued after he left the party. He alleged that what the governor was interested in was to use the party to further his personal interest. The action according to him continued after he left the party as Hillary Eke who came after him also complained of the governor’s failure to advance the course of the party rather that of personal agenda. “He is not a governor that believes that political party is predicated on galvanizing and bringing people into the party. The same fate I had with him is the same thing the man he foisted on the party, Eke, who was one of his boys as party chairman had with him”.

However, the Chief Press Secretary, CPS, to the governor, Sam Onwuemedo described Okorocha as a political gift to Imo State and the entire Nigeria whose value cannot be rubbished by anybody. According to On-wuemedo, the leading position of APC in Imo State before the last election was the sole effort of the governor but when they thought the party can move forward without him, the result is what they got in the last election. “Okorocha single handedly brought APC to Imo and made it a party to reckon with, but

when they believed he can be chased away and the party would not lose anything, the result is what they got in the last election where a rul-ing party cannot win a single seat in the state house of assembly, were AA won eight seats”. Despite the poor performance, the governor’s spokesperson asserted that APC has hope in the state if the leadership can retrace its step and mend fence with the governor.

The case in Ogun State is similar to that of Imo where Governor Ibikunle Amosun who contested and won a senatorial seat on the platform of the party, failed to support the candidate of the party in the governorship election. Though the APC won the governor-ship election in the state, it is believed that the margin of the votes between APC and runner up in the election would have been higher if the party had done everything possible to put its house in order. The crisis in the party led to parallel congresses conducted to elect the governorship candidate of the party. While the one conducted by Amosun’s caucus of the party elected Adekunle Akinlade as the party’s governorship candidate, the group loyal to former governor of the state, Segun Osoba, elected Dapo Abiodun.

Immediately after Dapo Abiodun’s emer-gence was ratified by the national leadership of the party, the crisis in the party started tot-tering from one level to the other. All efforts to reconcile the gladiators before the election proved futile. Then supporters of Amosun and his preferred choice for the governorship ticket, Akinlade, finally defected to Allied People’s Movement, APM.

The Spokesperson for the defectors, Lamidi Olatunji declared, “After extensive and due consultations with our elders, members and stakeholders in the APC in Ogun State, we have come to the inevitable conclusion to seek the general mandate of our people in the 2019 elections on the platform of the Allied People’s Movement, APM.”

While Amosun’s loyalists were moving into the new party, the governor promised to re-main in APC where he contested and won the Ogun Central Senatorial seat and worked for the victory of President Muhammadu Buhari in the 2019 presidential election.

However, Amosun had on several occasions accused some leaders of the party including the national chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, of being responsible for the lingering crisis in the party.

Shortly, after President Buhari held a meet-ing with governorship and National Assembly candidates of the party in Abuja, Amosun in a press statement by the state Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Dayo Adeneye, titled, “The Lies Oshiomhole Represents,” declared, “He and his collaborators will fail in Ogun State.” The governor vowed that the

However, intra-party crisis fueled by indiscipline, es-

pecially within the ranks of leaders, played a decisive role in the conduct and outcome of the elections in some states

““


design of Oshiomhole and his collaborators to hijack the government of Ogun State and hand it over to a gang of rapacious expansionists in the South West would fail”.

The wrangling in the state chapter of the party became open to the public on Febru-ary 11 during the presidential campaign at Abeokuta when the exercise turned violent in the presence of President Buhari. Many leaders of the party in attendance scampered for safety as hoodlums appeared to have taken over the exercise despite appeals by Amosun for calm. Shouts of ole, ole, rent the air as angry mob pelted Oshiomhle with stones. Amosun who had earlier delivered his speech urging the people to vote for President Buhari in the presidential election came back to the podium to appeal for calm. “I beg you in the name of God… this is what they want to happen… Please don’t disgrace me here.

“Our father is here, please don’t disgrace me. I beg you in the name of God; please don’t dis-grace me before our father. We have laboured this hard. I am appealing to you. Please, leave. I beg you in the name of God, please leave. I beg you. I am begging,” Amosun pleaded in Yoruba.

The Zamfara State chapter of APC may be on the threshold of losing the state depending on the awaited Supreme Court ruling on the controversial primaries of the party con-ducted last year. The Court of Appeal sitting in Sokoto, led by Justice Tom Yakubu, set aside the judgment of a Zamfara High Court on the APC primaries that produced the party’s candidates for governorship, National and State Assembly elections.

And last February, the Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja set aside the judgment of the Federal High Court, Abuja, which barred the APC from fielding candidates, in consonance with the earlier decision of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The Federal High Court gave its ruling on January 25 on the same day that another court upheld the primaries organised by the state chapter of the party. But a three-man panel of the appellate court described the judgment in Abuja as an abuse of court process. The panel held that the trial court lacked the jurisdiction to have entertained the suit.

The party walked its way into the current political doldrums when the two factions of the party refused to work together to produce

a single candidate for the election. The faction loyal to Governor Abdulaziz Yari insisted on having its way in the choice of those to represent the party in the election while those in Senator Kabiru Marafa camp opposed them.

The defeat of the party in Oyo and Ondo states where the party is in power and its failure to present candidates in Rivers State was as a result of irreconcilable differences between the leadership hierarchies of the party. The differences between Senator Mag-nus Abe and the Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Amaechi, which split the party into two factions which barred them from present-ing candidates in the elections was avoidable. The two groups conducted separate congress that led to the emergence of two governorship candidates. The matter was dragged to court where a federal high court in Port Harcourt nullified the parallel congresses conducted by the party and barred Independent National Electoral Commission ,INEC, from recogniz-ing candidates of the party in the 2019 general election. The decision of the lower court was also upheld by appellate courts.

In Oyo State, the party was humiliated to a level that the incumbent governor, Abiola Ajimobi, failed in the Oyo south senato-rial election to a candidate of the opposition PDP.

The crisis in the party degenerated to a level that the Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu, wrote a letter to President Buhari, Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, former governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, to intervene and save the party from misfor-tune in 2019 elections. ‘I Appeal to you to save the soul of APC, Oyo State chapter,’ Shittu pleaded in the letter.

The minister accused Ajimobi of using an undemocratic system to run the party. Unfor-tunately, the intervention of Tinubu failed to save the party from electoral defeat as it lost the governorship ticket to Seyi Makinde of the PDP.

In Ondo State, the party with a sitting governor lost the presidential election to the candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar. While APC in the presidential election scored 241,769, PDP garnered 275,901 votes to defeat the ruling party. Before the general elec-tion, some chieftains of the party in the state were at loggerheads with the governor which split the party into different factions. Some of the chieftains of the party opposed to the governor were the senator representing Ondo North Senatorial District, Ajayi Boroffice; ex-chairman of the party, Mr. Isaac Kekemeke; a former deputy governor, Alhaji Ali Olanusi; and a House of Representatives member, Mr. Bamidele Baderinwa, among others.

Tinubu: APC’s chief reconciler



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2019 Polls