Augustin Ikelegbe, a Professor of Comparative Politics and Public Policy, lectures at the University of Benin. Speaking to ALEMMA-OZIORUVA ALIU in Benin City, he describes the postponement of the February polls as lacking in credibility.

What is your position on the rescheduled general elections? 

IT is worrisome and indicative of certain tensions in the political environment; it is also indicative of certain intrigues and political maneuverings within a segment of the political class. It shows the character of the political process in Nigeria, the level of democratisation, and how deep our democracy has actually become. 

    It seems to me that there are still fears about political interference in the management of the electoral process; there are still fears about even the capacity of the state not only of the electoral management agencies. The whole thing raises fears in my mind, particularly because the date for the election has been fixed for a long time and then there were rumours in the press that there were going to be postponements.

    One faction of the political class was actually insisting on postponement and another faction resisting it.

    I was particularly worried, because, if the shift was authorised at that level of the National Council of State, Nigerians would have accepted it more, but the fact that it didn’t come out from there reduces the legitimacy and the confidence in the process.  And the fact that pressure for the shifting came from security agencies, also raises fear because we know what the politicisation of security agencies have done to Nigeria. We know the implication for national stability and even for stability of democracy, we know that in the first Republic, the infiltration of the military by the political class was a major factor in not just the military intervention in politics but the instability that Nigeria experienced up to the 1970s.

    I will say that I wasn’t comfortable when the military said it wasn’t ready to guarantee safety and security in the period of elections. After over 50 years of independence, I think we should have had a military that expresses and demonstrates more confidence and capacity to manage little things like election. They said they needed time to handle the Boko Haram issue, an, like many Nigerians have said, if between 2009 and 2015, the military has not been able to deal debilitating blows on the Boko Haram, is it in the six weeks from February 14 to March 28 that it will now be able to push them out from the Northeast? 

    We have problems about confidence in the Nigerian military now and then using Boko Haram as an excuse to shift the election doesn’t look quite objective to me.

   Yes it is true that the PVC cards is a problem and some people are saying that some things have not been printed, but INEC was insisting that it was ready. If INEC is ready, this is not the first time Jega is conducting elections; he conducted the 2011 elections. Yes, there were initial hiccups, but the election came out to be the freest and fairest in Nigeria since 1999. 

   There was post election violence in 2011, but that again could have been the fault of security agencies, because there should have been intelligence reports that would have nipped the violence in the bud, if we had effective security and intelligence systems. 

   The implication for Nigerians is that we seemed to have a political class that is desperate, which generate fears for the future of our democracy and the stability of our nation; it may seem to me that the political class tend to put their selfish interests above national interest, which is not fair, not right and shouldn’t be. It is when there is stability in the nation that you can hold positions, you can hold public offices so it should be the nation first.~

   Remember, Nigerians don’t have confidence in the state anymore. They don’t believe in the state; so, you can speak from now till tomorrow, they won’t believe you. It started from the Babangida administration when the government started lying deliberately to Nigerians. Whereas, there was trust initially, I remember as a young man when the budgets were being read, we used to go as students to the Common room and listened to the budget.

    I wonder how many Nigerians listen to the budget presentation today because they have lost confidence in the state and claims the state makes. So, it is not what the government is telling people, they should know that Nigerians now have the capacity to see through what the government is presenting to the public, the sooner our leaders recognise this, the better for them. It is better to come out straight and honest, and I don’t think the political class is doing that.

The president claimed he was not consulted by Prof. Jega before the shift…

   When the president says he was not aware, we should remember that he has so many persons, agents and agencies working on his behalf. Some of them could be acting on their own, they could be reading the president and then interpreting what he wants and attempting to do it. So, there are some things that presidents, not just the Nigerian president, may not be aware of that their officers are doing.

   But it is clear that key officers in government were pushing for the shift; it is clear that the ruling political party, which placed him in power, was a key actor in pushing for the shift, and the National Security Adviser, Security chiefs are all officers of government. So, if all these people were pushing for the shift, it doesn’t make sense for the key leader of that government to say he was not aware. So, we can say that government pushed for the shift and got the shift.

What should the police and other security agencies do within these six weeks to be fully ready?

    Firstly, let us address the situation in Nigeria. Since the Fourth Republic, provision of civil security has gone beyond the police, right from 1999. With all these militia challenges, the military have been a key actor in internal security management, and when you talk about election, the military has also become a key actor. 

   Yes, the military ordinarily can come in when there are serious challenges to internal security, but it ought to be engaged in fighting terrorism and check threats to Nigeria’s sovereignty. So, the military is a key actor and that is why it is a big issue when they come out to say they are not ready. 

   The Police and other sister security agencies work together; if you looked at Ekiti, Osun, you would have seen the level of security deployment. I will say that the police IG would have been in Council of States meeting, the DG of DSS would also have been there.

   But the nature of politics in Africa, the desperation to get power is such that security is a major issue in election. In fact, it is always like security emergencies during elections. In most countries of Africa, there are excessive deployment of security for elections, which explains why even the military are involved.

   The only reason I was a little bit positive about the shift was that the tension was so much it was like things were getting to a breaking point. The shifting seems to have reduced the tension, but it shouldn’t have been six weeks — two weeks would have been enough to make further preparation and enhance capacity.

  I think that all security agencies have been undergoing training, and there is this inter-agency security cooperation for election put together by INEC. It worked in 2001 and we hoped it will still work; so, the capacity to protect the election is available. 

    What they need to do, which Civil Society is helping them is to identify flash points, red light areas of security threats and make more massive deployments in those areas. I think the issue should really be about security intelligence and deployment.   

Are there liabilities from this postponement?  

For the political class, the cost of the election has just been increased, because you know the kind of things our political class do — mobilisation is based on materials. All the political leaders do depend on that, which means that the mobilisation that they had done, just got extended because they will have to go back and remobilise and consolidate on the mobilisation. So, the cost of the election for the political class has risen.

   A lot of things have been put in place by ordinary Nigerians, plans to travel, plans to wait, even organisations have all been affected and these have socio-economic and psychological costs, which are enormous. 

    There is also high socio-psychological cost, as Nigerians now know nothing is sacrosanct: You fix a date for over a year and few days to, you are shifting it. Nigerians are worried about the credibility of the reasons for the shift so I think the shift as at a huge cost to Nigerians.

How have these affected Nigeria’s image in the comity of nations?

    The international community, including the major powers, is not receptive to shifting the dates for these elections; it seems that other countries associate the shift to certain subterranean interests that may not augur well for our democratic survival and stability. They have this incipient fear for the actual reasons for the shift. The ruling party and government were advocating shift and the opposition was resisting it.

What is the way forward?

The way forward is to reconstruct, deconstruct Nigeria, the Nigerian State has been so much hijacked by the political class and made to work for the political class, not for Nigerians. Too much access to political power has become too significant for the livelihood and welfare of the political class, rather than that of the ordinary citizens. As long as the state remains so that only those who have political power can use it for themselves and not for the interest of the people, politics would continue to remain as it is. 

    Politics since 1999 has become the major business; our political office holders are the highest paid in the world. State power has meant so much for those who control it. As long as it remains like that, there will continue to be war to acquire it. Politics is supposed to be for service, not for accumulation of resources.