As a reporter, I have covered elections in Nigeria since 1992. I have, over the years, come to understand the psychology of Nigerian politicians: how many of them will prefer to discredit an election simply because it did not favour them. I am also aware of the several tactics politicians use to undermine electoral process for their own selfish ends.
In the March 28 and April 11 elections, two states stood out in perpetration of unbridled electoral fraud. The states are Rivers and Akwa Ibom.
As they say, long before the snake gave birth, everybody knew it will bear ‘a long child’. In Rivers, the sign that all will not go smoothly had been strong and glaring. It had worn the tag of a flash point state by all predictions. The pre-election incidents of violence only increased in tempo, frequency and sophistication during the election. In almost all cases, the victims of the attacks were either members and supporters of the All Progressives Congress (APC) or the party’s secretariat.
Too many times, the APC secretariats in some LGAs were bombed and their campaign rallies attacked, sometimes with the police wringing their hands in questionable helplessness.
If the election in Rivers was a straight fight between the APC and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and APC members were regularly being attacked, it is logical to conclude that the aggressors are the PDP members.
During the presidential and National Assembly elections, the scale of violence visited on the electorate was most disturbing. Several corpses lay on the streets during and after the elections. Blood of voters flowed. Too many gun shots were fired at voters. There was so much commotion. At Boro, Khana police station (in Ogoni area) some persons were seen (on camera) thumb printing ballot papers for the PDP. Two days after the March 28 election, hundreds of hijacked ballot papers were still found around that police station. Was the police station one of the polling booths? The picture and story of this electoral fraud trended on the internet for days.
At Omokwu and many other places in the state, people were just being killed like Christmas chicken. The violence was simply overbearing. The APC said over 54 of its members were killed even before the governorship election in Rivers.
During the governorship and State House of Assembly poll, the level of violence was simply taken a few notches higher. Police vehicles, INEC offices, private homes were burnt, just as several people were also killed with brute and mindless ease. Election materials were hijacked by hired thugs in many places.
Without mincing words, it was like the last battle the PDP was determined to fight in the state.
The undertone of the attacks seemed to have been “let’s first get the victory by hook or crook, and then we sort out the legal battle later”. The desperation was criminal!
Aided with federal might and arsenal, the normal electoral process was overwhelmed by the naked thuggery that was unleashed on the people. Policemen who were not willing to play along were quickly sent out of the state with presidential fiat. AIG Tunde Ogunsakin has his tales to tell.
I have read three reports by the EU observers, the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and other local observers, and they all condemned the electoral rape that took place in Rivers, calling for the cancellation.
At the end of the day, figures, it seemed, were simply awarded in most places and the PDP has long rolled out the drums celebrating it’s self-awarded victory, claiming that the election went so well.
Few days ago, Hon Chibudom Nwuche, (former Deputy Speaker) who until very recently was a chieftain of the PDP in Rivers has also condemned the criminal violence that governed that election in the state saying election did not really take place in the real sense of the word.
The Labour Party gubernatorial candidate, Tonye Princewill has also cried blue murder about the election.
Pray, what does the EU, or the CSOs or Nwuche or Princewill etc., all have against Nyesom Wike and his PDP as to discredit the election? Is that the only state where PDP won? Can they all be biased against Wike and his PDP?
It is a similar abridgement of the voting right of the people in Akwa Ibom where voting materials were not distributed to many PUs, but at the end of the day, fabulous figures were recorded against such PUs where voting did not even take place.
This narrative of violence and underhand ability is quite in sync with the character portrait of the dramatis personae involved in these cases.
Several foreign and local observers have said thugs in Police uniforms hijacked polling materials in many places. It is crime of the highest order to appropriate the electoral right of the people, as it happened in Akwa Ibom as well. And typical with such politicians, they have organized carnivals to celebrate their victory.
But they must be told that they are operating in the mode of the old order. Electoral crimes must no more go unpunished. And the era where people march through human blood to sit on governance thrones, is over. Enough is enough!
