STOP ELECTION STEALING IN DELTA STATE – By Chris O. O. Biose

By Chris O. O. Biose, chrisoobiose@gmail.com

The local government election scheduled to hold in Delta State on July 13, 2024, presents a golden opportunity for Deltans to exercise their democratic rights and enthrone electoral integrity at the grassroots level in the state.

For free and fair elections, there are at least five critical groups that must play their roles creditably. 

These are the Government in power, the ruling political party, the electoral body, security agencies and the electorate, with the government in power having the greatest capacity to subvert the electoral process.

Anyone who is in doubt of this fact needs to read the graphic blow by blow account of ‘How Governors Rig Elections’ by former Governor of Cross River State, Mr. Donald Duke (available online).

Election observers and all sincere Nigerians are tempted to believe that Delta State is one of the states where election malfeasance has been institutionalised. 

High officials of state that are expected to observe the electoral law, disregard it with impunity. If in doubt about this fact, please refer to the judgement of Honourable Justice Monica Dongban-Mensah, at the Court of Appeal, sitting in Benin City on November 9, 2010, cited as Chief Great Ovedje Ogboru & Anor v Dr. Emmanuel Ewetan Uduaghan & Ors CA/B/EPT/38/10.

About three and half years after the action challenging the purported election of Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan was initiated, a full panel of the Court of Appeal sitting in Benin City finally pronounced its verdict. 

The Court of Appeal established that no governorship elections were held on April 14, 2007, but corrupt INEC officials, in collaboration with like-minded political party operatives in the state, illegally generated results to put Dr. Uduaghan in the Delta State Government House. 

The result declared by the then Resident Electoral Commissioner in Delta State, Alhaji Ismaila Abdulkareem, on Form EC 8, when there was no election on April 14, 2007, was not a result of “electoral due process” and was therefore false.

Nothing seems to have significantly changed in Delta State since that verdict. Criminal infractions of the electoral process that should attract severe punishment in sane climes are presented as heroism by habitual law breakers in high places.

Political parties have unequal finance, official power or access to instruments of private violence which are the main tools for subverting the will of the electorate.

Of the five most significant actors in the electoral process, security agencies, particularly the Nigeria Police Force NPF and Department of State Services DSS, have the greatest capacity to checkmate electoral malfeasors. 

Prevention of rigged election is better than its uncertain cure at election petition tribunals. Electoral infractions can be significantly curtailed by vigilant and proactive Security Services.

The mangled mindset of an electoral thief that is criminally fixated on rigging elections to acquire political power is fundamentally and ideologically incapable of connecting and unlocking the infinite creative genius and innate potentials of Nigerian youths. 

It is incapable of unleashing technological innovations and skills of the populace which are requisite for development of the country.

An election rigger by definition lacks character or noble self image; he is most probably a dissembler and dubious personality, presenting false front before the unsuspecting public. This set of people is largely responsible for the Nigerian developmental tragedy.

Someone who steals your votes in broad day light is most likely to steal public funds without qualms.  Any citizen who goes to the house of an election robber to celebrate a successful robbery inexorably shares in the karmic debt of the criminal. Both electoral thieves and their patronizes are public enemies Number One.

Nigeria is a place where many citizens adore such big rogues who happen to occupy glamorous public positions. Unfortunately, the ambition of some youths is “to be like” the real big robbers in the society. Under this condition, there is no hope for transformation of the country into a peaceful and prosperous nation-state.  

As Mohandas Karamchad Gandhi (The Mahatma or Great Soul) of India once said: “Impure means results in an impure end.” He said that “the means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree; there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between the seed and the tree.” According to Gandhi, “to say that we can get good by sewing evil is the same thing as saying “that we can get rose by planting a noxious weed.” 

Corrupt judicial officials may absolve electoral malfeasors from criminal liability and punishment. But that cannot free them from social sanctions such as stigma which cannot be erased by their ill-gotten wealth. 

Elders, women and youths need to call out electoral thieves in their wards and local government areas. It is a perversion of African culture to celebrate thieves. Yorubas call them ole. Hausa calls them barawo. Igbo calls them oshi. In most Nigerian cultures, thieves are booed when they appear in public. Electoral thieves deserve worse.

It will be a moral and political revolution if the present political class in Delta state currently under the leadership of Governor Sheriff Oborevwori, can turn a new and glorious page in the political history of Nigeria by recording the first free, fair and credible local government election in the state on July 13, 2024, as promised  

An unprecedented achievement of this nature will go down in the electoral history of Delta State, possibly Nigeria as a whole, 

Such a fundamental shift in ideological focus will entail electoral due process and the dawn of electoral integrity at the grassroots since return from military to civil rule in 1999.  

It will reverberate across the country and possibly set the tone for a new and better Nigeria.