Governor Wike may have a point after all!

About a month ago the Police made some
revelations about the December 10, 2016 rerun
election in Rivers State. The revelations which
were contained in the report of a panel set up
the Inspector General of Police (IGP) among
other things indicted 6 police personnel, 23
electoral officers and 2 administrative officers
of the Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC) for unwholesome conduct
during the election. In a previous article, we
commended the police for at last investigating
a failed election as well as indicting some of its
own personnel.
However, the article did not fail to question the
fact that the indicted police personnel were
only those assigned to the governor. It also
wondered why only 6 out of thousands of
police operatives deployed were found wanting
in a country where accusing fingers have
always pointed at the police and other security
agencies as wrong doers in our elections.
Although we applauded the swiftness of the
police report, we were and still are of the
opinion that the police being essentially an
administrative body should have waited for
their indicted colleagues to be found guilty by a
court of competent jurisdiction before
dismissing them.
Nyesom Wike
Another aspect of the report is that which did
not find anything wrong with several dozens of
politicians except the few dismissed policemen
and some INEC staff now being prosecuted.
This is baffling because history tells us that
our politicians are the greatest culprits of
electoral malpractices in Nigeria. This was pin-
pointedly established long ago by the famous
Babalakin judicial commission of enquiry into
the defunct Federal Electoral Commission
(FEDECO) of 1986. It is therefore curious that
the recent police report highlighted the
indictment of only one politician, Governor
Nyesom Wike of Rivers State. A discerning
analyst may have imagined that even the
authors of that police report could not have
believed that aspect of their report. The poser
is: if the average Nigerian politician pursues an
election not as a game but as war how can a
well conducted enquiry find only one party to
be at fault in a contest where everyone
employs the strategy of the end justifies the
means for achieving a winner takes all goal?
Luckily a second investigation this time by the
principal election manager, INEC is out and it
gave credence to our fear that the Police
cannot conduct a credible investigation into
electoral malpractice in Nigeria. As INEC puts
it, what went wrong with the police themselves
were “mind boggling” The panel which was
chaired by Professor Okechukwu Ibeanu, a
National Electoral Commissioner, found that
most senior police officers behaved in
disturbing manners and tried to lure INEC
officials away from their posts. The report
added that there were “cases of hostage
taking, hijacking of materials and physical
attacks on INEC officials by security
operatives.” The report also singled out a
particular police officer for condemnation. Why
did the police not know about the said officer
during their own investigation?
It therefore makes a lot of sense that before
the hurried response to the INEC report, the
police should undertake a second investigation
that will not stand truth on its head. This is
premised on the fact that this is not the first
time election personnel have had cause to
draw attention to the need for the police
authorities to take a radical view of what their
ambassadors do at election venues in Nigeria.
Sociology Professor, Lai Olurode while serving
as an electoral commissioner had edited a book
a few years back which among other things
alleged that security agents often issued
security tags to top government officials like
State Commissioners, Special Advisers, etc. to
disguise as security agents or observers in
order to move freely during the elections
thereby contravening the restriction orders.
This convoluted posture of the security
framework which is an open invitation to
violence makes it easy to appreciate why INEC
was for long reluctant to hold the Rivers’ rerun
elections. It also explains why the National
Youth Service Corps (NYSC) opted out of the
rerun election in Etche Local Government Area
to fill the Etche State Constituency II and
Etche/Omuma Federal Constituency seats fixed
for yesterday.
From point of view of the subsisting
disapproval by this column of huge security
presence in an election, we can now rationalize
why there are always thousands of security
operatives that are never able to stop the
hijacking of ballot boxes and other electoral
malpractices in Nigeria. As the INEC reported
revealed, “there were too many security
agencies involved in the process outside the
framework of the Interagency Consultative
Committee on Elections Security. It was not
clear whether many of them were acting as
part of their various organisations or as groups
and individuals serving political interests.” If
so, how were they deployed? Was there an
accreditation exercise or was any person in
uniform welcome? Should Nigeria refuse to
depart from analogue elections in these days of
technology, then these are issues which should
guide the task of securing our future elections.
Perhaps it can also help the police to review
their huge presence in every public function. As
one critic asked 3 days back, does Ondo State
need 5000 policemen at the inauguration of
their new Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu?
The point to be made is that no true patriot
will condone police partisanship because if the
Nigeria Police which is the main force a civil
populace supports one political party against
the other, free and fair election will be
unattainable. Governor Wike once said
that”when the security is apolitical, you have
free and fair election. But when the security
descends into the arena, the entire process is
compromised.” There is hardly any difference
between this and the INEC report which alleged
that many security operatives showed profound
political partisanship and that ironically,
security operatives, who were expected to
protect the process, turned on it. This column
has never hidden its dislike for the exuberance
of Governors Nyesom Wike and Ayo Fayose of
Rivers and Ekiti States respectively, because
quite often, they tended to overheat the polity
but with the latest INEC report, perhaps they
have a point after all.