The failure of the recent verification exercise by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to recall the embattled Senator Dino Melaye, the senator representing Kogi West Senatorial Zone, did not come to many as a surprise. Indeed, everything leading to the exercise was suggestive of the fact that it will in the end be an exercise in futility.
Pursuant to the judgment of the court of appeal, Abuja division, delivered on March 16, 2018, the INEC issued a timetable for the recall of Senator Melaye which eventually took place April 28, after many legal fireworks.
The attempt to recall Melaye failed because the verified signatories to the petition for his recall fell short of requirements.
For the verification exercise to succeed, 50 percent plus one of the signatories to the petition had to be verified.
However, based on the results announced by Professor Ukertor Gabriel Moti, the Declaration Officer for the exercise held in the senatorial district, only 18,742 of the 188,588 of the signatories to the petition for the Senator’s recall were verified by INEC.
The verified signatories represented a mere 5.34 percent of the 360,098 registered voters in the Senatorial district.
The 188,588 that signed the petition represents 54 percent of the registered voters in the senatorial district which comprised seven local government areas including Lokoja, the state capital.
The figure of signatories to the petition for recall and that of actual voters in the 2015 senatorial election in the district left many questions begging for answers.
According to the electoral act, one-half of the number of registered voters in a constituency is required for the recall of a lawmaker. To achieve this will require a miracle and if INEC had succeeded in pulling this through, it would have been novel.
In the 2015 senatorial election in the district, Melaye polled only 41,120 votes while his closest opponent, Smart Adeyemi then of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) but now in APC, had 38,148 votes.
Recall that there had been no love lost between the loquacious Melaye and his governor, Yahaya Bello over political differences. Melaye had at some point called for the resignation of the governor for alleged fraudulent double voter registration.
He also accused Bello of alleged attempts on his life, while the governor described him as unfit to be a lawmaker. This, it is believed, prompted the governor to begin the process to have him sacked from the senate.
There are 360,098 registered voters in Kogi west and the number, 188,588, represents a little more than one-half required for a lawmaker’s recall.
One curious development is that the total votes both candidates and five other top candidates had was 111,534 and this is way less than the 188,588 which supposedly signed the recall petition.
The low turnout for the exercise was most evident in Lokoja, which had the highest number of signatories on the recall petition, 66,266. Out of that number, only 4,810 people showed up for the verification with 3,763 verified.
Reacting to the outcome of the exercise, Mr. Rotimi Oyakanmi, Chief Press Secretary to the Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu, had said that the electoral body could not ascertain fake signatures in the failed recall process of Senator Melaye. Oyekanmi explained that INEC followed due process as spelt out in the law in the conduct of the exercise.
“We are in no position to know which signature is false or is not false. And that exactly is what the verification exercise is intended to look into and then make a determination,” he said.
My worry in all of this is that a colossal sum of public money went down the drain, just to satisfy the whims and caprices of some power drunks. We do not need an economic wizard to know that scarce resources of Kogi State had been wasted by the state government, which could have been channeled to better use.
Prof Mahmoud Yakubu, chairman of the electoral body, in response to allegations by the PDP that the recall gulped N1 billion said the Commission expended over N100 million.
Yakubu said, “The recall process of the senator representing Kogi West Senatorial district, you will remember that the recall is the same thing like conducting fresh election.
“We conducted the recall in 552 polling units in seven Local Government Areas in the state. The cost of the recall was a little over N100 million not N1 billion as claimed. The substantial part of it went into the period of preparation for the recall process,” he said.
Except perhaps, there was more to the exercise than meets the ordinary eye, expending over N100 million of tax payers’ money on an exercise, that is even to the politically naïve, a wild goose chase is unfortunate.
This is similar to the fate Melaye also faces with the police. Mr. Ibrahim Idris, the Inspector General of Police and the National Assembly have been at loggerheads over the arrest of Melaye over offences bordering on alleged murder and unlawful possession of firearms. The IGP from all indication also appears prepared, like Prof. Yakubu, to throw everything he has into the prosecution of the embattled Senator. Much as one is not saying he should not be prosecuted if he is found culpable of breaching the law, however, the seemingly desperate pursuit by the IGP to nail him at all cost appears to be acting out a script similar to that of INEC.
Melaye as a person, to say the least, has never conducted himself in a manner that is worthy of emulation, however, he does not seem different from all those who appear prepared to grind state institutions to stop his antics. Election is around the corner, Melaye will be keeping a date with the electorate. Until then, the IGP and the rest should channel their energies and resources to other endeavours that are more beneficial to the larger society and ignore Melaye.
If Melaye and his governor were on the same page, would he be facing these persecutions? I leave that for all to conjecture.
