2023 elections: Sad outcome of precedence
An election official writes on an electoral document at a polling station for a gubernatorial and House of Assembly candidates during local elections, in Lagos, on March 18, 2023. – Nigerians vote in local elections three weeks after the ruling party won a presidential poll contested by the two main opposition parties. Africa’s most populous country will be voting for governors in 28 of the 36 states of the federation — the other states having already conducted by-elections — as well as for representatives in state assemblies. (Photo by PIUS UTOMI EKPEI / AFP)
SIR: The 2023 elections in Nigeria may have elicited a lot of controversy as regards the way and manner it was conducted. To many people, the election is not more than a sham and INEC should cover its face with shame.
Those in this group are major opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party and the relatively new Labour Party. Yet, the same highly vilified elections are being applauded in some quarters as the very best election to be conducted in Nigeria since independence.
Those in this group include members of All Progressives Congress who have been all over the place jubilating and getting ready for the swearing in ceremony slated for May. In the meantime, the aggrieved parties have headed to the courts with the sole aim of retrieving what they describe as their stolen mandate while the entire nation awaits what may likely be the outcome of the legal tussle.
However, perhaps one lesson everyone must take away from the ongoing controversy concerning the current elections in Nigeria is the danger inherent in setting a bad precedent. Some years back when the PDP was in power, all manners of rascality were perpetrated during elections and none was free and fair. As a matter of fact, one of the PDP’s chieftains was bold to declare that election was a do or die affairs.
President Umar Yar’Adua, (God rest his soul), made an official confession and national declaration that the election that brought him to power was never free and fair.
At that same time, members of the PDP were so arrogant that they even boasted that their reign in Nigeria would last for 50 years. It is therefore the evil seed that the PDP sowed which has now germinated into a big tree with one of the branches dipping its fingers into their eyes. He who sows the wind is sure to reap the whirlwind.
The PDP as a party instead of setting a good example for the nation to follow only launched a very bad precedent. Now the members of the APC have decided to pay them back in their own coins.
Some people can argue that members of the APC need not to have continued in the bad example shown by the PDP but strive to correct the mistakes of the past.
While that is true, it can only happen if members of the two parties are not birds of a feather, which flock together. Otherwise, it would always be what it has been.
Jide Oyewusi is coordinator, Ethics Watch International, Lagos.
