A Governor As Returning Officer

MAHMUD JEGA BY VIEW FROM THE GALLERY

Early in the day on Sunday, I tuned in to the television set to catch up on results from Edo State’s off-season governorship election. To my amazement as a political reporter for three decades, I saw two PDP governors holding a press conference in Benin. Leading them to perform the functions of the INEC Returning Officer was Professor [sorry, Governor] Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri of Adamawa, said to be the chairman of PDP Campaign Council for Edo State. Flanking him was Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State, for whom the election was a kind of referendum of his person and legacy. Fintiri was announcing the results local government by local government, saying those were the authentic results and the INEC Returning Officer, whom he upstaged, should not declare anything else.

Was that not what the Electoral Act precisely said no one should ever do? Scanning through a dozen websites of online and print media throughout Sunday, I could see that they severely adhered to the admonition not to preempt the returning officer, obviously because there are legal consequences. In years past, before the import of that aspect of the law sank in, online sites rushed during elections to declare results, some of them factual, many of them manufactured. Was it not a wonder that Fintiri, who last year was himself a victim of a preemptory result declaration in Yola for which the Resident Electoral Commissioner is still standing trial, will borrow the Binani Formula and orchestrate such a declaration of his own?

The fact is, leading political parties and their candidates, as well many of the NGO election monitors, which have got national and state level “Situation Rooms,” had a good idea by Saturday evening as to who was winning the election, since the results were all declared at each polling unit and also uploaded on INEC’s IRev viewing site. While INEC’s own collation process is cumbersome, involving the authentication of results and filling of a lot of forms, parties and their candidates could speedily add up figures and see where things were going.

In a Nigerian election, the earliest indication one gets as to who is winning  is to be found in which party is protesting and which one is celebrating. Frowning faces of PDP bigwigs, storming of the INEC collation centre in Benin by PDP supporters on Sunday morning to lodge protests, as well as social media videos of cheers at the Edo APC collation centre, were early indications of where things were going. However, to have two sitting governors openly flouting the law by holding a press conference to declare results was going over the edge. The two were carefully selected to do the return because both of them are constitutionally immune from arrest and prosecution. If anyone else had done that, he will probably be sitting in a Magistrate’s Court dock this morning.

Not that this was the first time in Nigeria’s history that this has happened. During the 1983 general and presidential election of the Second Republic, candidates of the five registered opposition parties [UPN, NPP, GNPP, PRP and Tunji Braithwaite’s NAP] anxiously anticipated a power grab by NPN, which controlled the Federal Government. They had a plausible reason. Even though opposition politicians and their supporters these days are accusing INEC of favouring the ruling APC’s candidates, without visible evidence, FEDECO’s partisanship in the Second Republic was fairly open. In this Fourth Republic, for example, INEC registered APC as a mega opposition party in 2013, a very big  game changer alongside PVCs, card readers and BVAS. In 1982-83, FEDECO flatly refused to register the Progressive Peoples Party [PPP], a coalition of UPN, NPP and factions of PRP and GNPP, enabling NPN to railroad over all of them in the 1983 elections.

Coming back to our story, NPN, which controlled 7 of the 19 states in 1979-83, targeted another eight in 1983. These were old Kaduna, old Borno, old Gongola, old Anambra, old Imo, old Bendel, old Oyo and old Ondo. NPN had plausible strategic reasons to target those states, ranging from electoral history of Kaduna, to splits in both PRP and GNPP, to crises arising from UPN governorship primaries when its national leader supported all the five sitting governors to recontest, leading to defections by some important UPN chieftains.

When governorship election results began emerging in August 1983, Governor Bola Ige of old Oyo appeared on state-owned radio and TV and began announcing the results. He said NPN was trying to rig him out. Governor Sam Mbakwe of old Imo followed suit; he appeared on state-owned TV and radio, declared the results local government by local government and returned himself elected. In one case the tactic worked and in another it didn’t; NPN still grabbed old Oyo from Bola Ige and installed Dr. Victor Omolulu Olunloyo as governor, but in old Imo, FEDECO certified Mbakwe as duly re-elected, despite his blatant breach of the electoral law.

Governors Muhammadu Goni of old Borno, Abubakar Barde of old Gongola and Michael Adekunle Ajasin of old Ondo, who did not take to the airwaves to declare themselves re-elected, were all declared by FEDECO to have lost to NPN candidates, Asheik Jarma, Bamanga Tukur and Akin Omoboriowo respectively. After protracted court cases in Enugu, Ibadan and Akure, the Supreme Court restored Ajasin but Ige and Anambra State governor Jim Nwobodo lost out, the latter to Chief C. C. Onoh of NPN.

The other drama in Benin City at the weekend was of Governor Godwin Obaseki storming the state INEC office and trying to stay put, until police DIG Frank Mbah firmly escorted him out. It reminded me of an incident during the 1983 governorship elections in Niger State. Due to some political quarrels in 1979-83, most of Nupeland, the state’s largest ethnic bloc, had turned against NPN and Governor Muhammad Auwal Ibrahim. NPN was jittery because its senatorial candidate for Nupeland, Malam Turi Muhammadu, who was President of Ndaduma Development Association, lost to NPP candidate Professor Jerry Gana. According to a newspaper story at the time, two days to the governorship election, aides warned Governor Auwal that the NPP governorship candidate, Alhaji Alhassan Badakoshi, had already spent two nights at the FEDECO office. They alleged that a babalawo told Badakoshi that if he spent three consecutive nights in FEDECO office, he will win the governorship election. Governor Auwal, a deeply Islamic Malam who did not believe in babalawos, was nevertheless prodded by his men to act. He spoke to the Police Commissioner, who took 50 Mobile Policemen, stormed FEDECO office, fired a lot of tear gas and bundled out Badakoshi. Due to that or not, the governor was re-elected.

The PDP candidate’s defeat in weekend’s Edo State governorship election will once again revive talk about use of “federal might” in Nigerian elections. INEC, Nigeria Police, eight other security agencies and the military are all federal agencies. There is therefore an assumption that they will work in favour of ruling APC candidates. Add to these, the supposed deep pockets of the Federal Treasury, which is alleged to do a “ways and means” for ruling party candidates. This allegation is however a slippery slope. Last week, when Edo PDP alleged that National Security Adviser Malam Nuhu Ribadu sent huge sums to support Edo APC’s candidate, Ribadu, the former anti-corruption Czar who is very sensitive about his anti-corruption credentials, immediately threatened to go to court and claim billions of naira in damages.  Edo PDP panicked and swiftly recanted, much as Kano State’s Deputy Governor swiftly recanted an allegation against Ribadu earlier this year when he threatened to sue.

Not only NPN in the Second Republic, but PDP in this Republic too, in the heydays, was roundly accused of using “federal might” to eject opposition parties’ candidates from Government Houses. In the 2003 elections, PDP managed to grab Gombe, Kogi and Kwara states from ANPP candidates. It also grabbed five South Western states from AD.

On occasions, federal might backfired. In 1983, the mighty NPN still had its Kwara State governor, Adamu Attah, defeated by UPN’s Cornelius Adebayo. That very obviously was because the state’s redoubtable kingmaker Dr. Olusola Saraki switched his support and even NPN could not overcome that. In 2003, while PDP was railroading its way across ANPP and AD states, its Governor of Kano, Rabiu Kwankwaso, was defeated by the then little-known Malam Ibrahim Shekarau. Pundits have long said that Kano and Lagos are the only states in Nigeria where federal might does not work, that they are far too cosmopolitan and too volatile for their votes to be tampered with. PDP also lost Anambra State to APGA that year. In Edo State, ACN’s candidate Adams Oshiomhole managed to unseat PDP’s Prof Oserheimen Osunbor in 2007, but only after a protracted legal fight.

To some pundits, it was a surprise that APC managed at the weekend to capture Edo despite the dire economic conditions in the country, which ordinarily should drive voters away from the Federal ruling party. It is however well to remember that outgoing Governor Godwin Obaseki himself was actually elected under APC’s banner in 2016, only for him to defect to PDP after quarrelling with his godfather, Oshiomhole. Obaseki did not have a tranquil two terms in office. He quarreled left, right and centre with his godfather, had a very bitter quarrel and unsuccessful impeachment of his Deputy Governor, quarreled with a faction of the State Assembly, with a powerful faction of his own party led by the Deputy National Chairman, had a bitter quarrel with top PDP spoiler Nyesom Wike, and many political associates left the party in disgust. And then, add to that the Labour Party effect, mostly thought to have been peeled off votes from PDP.

With weekend’s flip of Edo State Government House from PDP to APC, the latter’s leaders must be smirking their lips ahead of 2027, since the party now controls the National Assembly, the Federal and 21 state governments while the main opposition PDP is now down to 12 states. There are three state governors who belong to other small parties, which for now is advantageous to APC. APC should however remember that PDP had exactly the same political assets when it went down to defeat in the 2015 elections.