IN their response to allegations that the electoral body endorsed double standard over Kogi State Governor Yahaya Bello’s Temporary Voter Card (TVC), the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) last Thursday insisted, through the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Lokoja, James Apam, that the affair or the alleged offence had not been swept under the carpet. The governor would still be prosecuted for the offence of double registration once he no longer enjoyed immunity, he said. Mr Bello had on May 23, 2017 at an illegal voter registration centre located in Government House, Lokoja, registered as a voter a second time contrary to the law, after first registering as a voter in Wuse Zone 4, Abuja on January 30, 2011. The three INEC officials who facilitated the second registration have since been punished for their part in the illegality.
When last December INEC suggested that it would wait for the governor to finish his term before charging him in court for the electoral crime, no one expected the electoral body would so quickly succumb to pressure to issue him a temporary voter card. INEC, however, suggested that the governor’s request to transfer his card to his ward in Okene, Kogi State, had finally been approved and legal advice could find no reason to bar him from being issued a TVC. It was the lot of Prof Apam, the REC in Lokoja, to make that incredulous argument that satisfies a suspect in a crime to the detriment of justice.
Before INEC took action against its three staffers, two of whom were dismissed, it satisfied itself, complete with photographs of the alleged crime in Government House and the admission of Mr Bello’s spokesman regarding the May 23 second registration, that an electoral offence had been committed. There was not only electronic evidence of the crime, the staffers admitted to aiding and abetting the crime, since they showed up in the photograph with the governor registering. INEC had an impregnable case, and it was unlikely the governor would have been acquitted despite his specious and insulting defence of having been impersonated by a ghost at the illegal Government House registration centre.
INEC’s action of issuing the governor, a suspect in a crime, the TVC was indefensible. Had he been tried, he would almost certainly have been found guilty of dishonesty. The evidence was too damning. And had he been found guilty, regardless of whether he was jailed or fined, he would have been an ex-convict by the time of the next elections. The constitution, in Section 182 (1) (e), forbids someone convicted and sentenced for an offence involving dishonesty from standing for election. Yet, Prof Apam not only defended the issuance of the TVC to Mr Bello, he baffled Nigerians by adding that the TVC would enable the governor to vote and be voted for. Clearly, INEC has lost its mind and cast grave doubt on its independence. It had no reason whatsoever to rush to issue the Kogi governor a card when he was still a suspect in an electoral crime.
No one believes INEC acted independently. It bowed to pressure, not legal advice. The obscene and indefensible action of the electoral body is the sad culmination of the appalling electoral travesties inflicted on Kogi State, much of it inspired by forces outside the state, and a part of it connived at by the electoral body itself. INEC had in 2015 put Mr Bello on the ballot despite not being qualified to vote or be voted for, as the events leading to the double registration showed. More defiantly of the electoral law which INEC ought to naturally defend with courage and fairness, it put Mr Bello on the ballot without a running mate. To an electoral body easy to manipulate or pressure, it was not surprising that it issued the TVC to Mr Bello and argued that such a superfluous action did not negate or vitiate its resolve to charge the governor in court at the appropriate time.
Given the spinelessness of INEC and the connivance of political and judicial forces outside the state, that appropriate time will of course not come. Mr Bello has turned himself into the foremost cheerleader of President Muhammadu Buhari, and is constantly and shamelessly in Abuja for one irrelevant event or the other, including welcoming the president’s son back from medical treatment abroad. Like his mentors and highly placed supporters, he is not a democrat and does not give a damn about democratic principles or the rule of law. As unconscionable as they come, he will ride roughshod over and compromise institutions and anything the people hold in great esteem. He will aim to stand for the next governorship poll, and he will want to subvert everything of value to enable him win. Now that everybody knows the mettle INEC is made of, especially recognising that the electoral body cannot call its soul its own, the electorate must find ways of triumphing over the electoral body’s shenanigans and the manipulations of cruel and ruthless officials, no matter how highly placed, who have sworn to subvert Nigeria’s democracy.
