Making Our Votes to Count: Action, the Antidote to Cynicism
The gravest threat to free and fair elections in Nigeria in 2027 is cynicism. It is not the corrupt INEC. It is not the compromised judiciary. It is not the partisan security agencies. The gravest threat to free and fair elections in 2027 is crippling and widespread cynicism that leads to inaction, or ineffective actions. My fear for the 2027 general elections is that we have given up on the possibility of free and fair elections in 2027. We will come back to discuss what free and fair election means and requires. But in the meantime, it is important to note that the conduct of the Anambra Governorship Election has further deepened cynicism and reduce trust in the prospect of electoral integrity in 2027 and beyond. `
Many people in this hall believe that the 2027 presidential election would be rigged because the Tinubu administration has not manifested any commitment to electoral reform. These cynics point to the fact that since coming to power, President Tinubu has not made any major speech promising electoral reform. He has not taken any presidential action in support of electoral reform. Unlike President Jonathan and Buhari who either submitted a bill to amend the electoral law or set up an electoral reform committee to review the electoral regime, President Tinubu has done nothing about electoral reform. He has actually worsened the environment of electoral integrity by making partisan appointments into the electoral management body. These clear and incontestable pieces of evidence undermine faith in free and fair elections in 2027. To add to these gloomy prognoses, cynics of electoral integrity make this telling statement: “Tinubu is not Jonathan who conducted a free and fair elections that ended his tenure. Tinubu is not a gentleman oo. Tinubu is Jagaban”.
Let me start by saying that these prognoses may be true. Obviously Tinubu is not Jonathan. Obviously, the political landscape has shifted toward a more massive state capture. For the first time in a long while, everyone who has something to do with the management of elections is connected to President Tinubu either by ethnicity or political alliance. President Tinubu has shredded the tacit understanding that the incumbent chooses the electoral umpire outside his ethnic and geopolitical bloc. We may not make heavy weather out of this. But when we marry it together with the fact that the head of the security and the judiciary are all from Tinubu ethnic group and that Nigeria’s politics has remained wedded to ethnicity more than anywhere else in Africa, as Crawford Young noted decades ago, we may come to understand the deep cynicism spreading across Nigeria about the prospects of free and fair elections in 2027.
Before going further in this discourse, it is important to make some points clear. Nigeria has a problem with credible elections. This problem is as historical as it is widespread. It is also an African problem as we see it in all African post-colonial states. Credible elections have been the exception rather than the rule in Nigeria’s political history. Our elections are always rigged in one form or another. Of course, we have had a few elections which were generally adjudged as free and fair. Two that readily come to mind are the 1993 Presidential election and the 2015 presidential election. When Nigerians described these elections as free and fair, it does not mean that there were no significant manipulations or frauds in those elections. Sometimes elections that have been credited as free and fair in Nigeria have been grossly manipulated. Oftentimes, they are concluded as free and fair because the results aligned with popular interest or that the incumbent lost. It is in this sense that most people consider the 2015 election as free and fair. That election resulted in the defeat of the incumbent ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) by the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC). Hence, people hailed it as free and fair. But if you follow the report of election observers you will realize that the election was grossly rigged, especially in northern Nigeria where the electronic card reader failed, and bogus results were declared.
The point of the above is not to revisit the debate about the 2015 presidential defeat but to point out that elections are usually rigged in Nigeria. The story is also the same across Africa. The flawed nature of elections in most African countries have something to do with their history and the illegitimacy of their political institutions. The contest of political power in societies defined by brutal control of political power and built on the foundation of a political economy of extreme exploitation would necessarily be extremely flawed. The interplay of ethnocentric politics and lack of accountability means that politics would not be mediated by values of civility and respect for self-determination. So, in a default mode, elections in Nigeria, as in other African countries, would be flawed and fraudulent as Justice Nsofor of the Nigerian Supreme Court once opined in the electoral case between Yaradua and Buhari.
This historical path-dependency in electoral manipulation is further worsened by the economic and social benefits of winning elections and the enormous costs of losing it. Elections are determinants of economic and social success. This is because of the political economy of public offices in Nigeria. There is so much to gain by winning elections and getting to public office. This therefore increases the stakes in elections and turns them from ladder to public service to deathly struggles. The political economy of public office makes election all-important and increases the disposition to consider election as warfare. Since all is fair in warfare, all is fair in elections. Ironically, this is one of the reasons for the criminalization of elections in Nigeria. As Oxford political scientist and Nigerian expert, Paul Collier, rightly argues in his Wars, Guns,and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places (2010), when elections become criminalized it means that by a natural selection only criminals would be involved in elections.
Our challenge is to break this path-dependency. As social scientists note it is always difficult to break a path-dependency. It is not impossible. But some natural law seems to predicate objects to continue in a particular direction of motion unless a strong force acts on it to change direction. So, Nigeria is on a bad trajectory in electoral integrity. But it can change direction. What needs to be done to change Nigeria’s direction in electoral matters, away from manipulation and fraud and towards accountability and integrity? I will hope to show how this can happen. But first, why should we bother about correcting courses? Does free and fair elections matter that much?
Why Free and Fair Elections Matter:
Why should we care that much about making our votes count? Should a nation bother much about free and fair elections? This question assumes extra significance in the present context of growing incidence of military rule in our subregion. In recent times we have heard very respectable voices question the utility of democracy. Why should we care so much about democracy when it has not put food on the table, they say. The most recent and most notable of these dissenters is former President Obasanjo who, perhaps frustrated by the poverty and instability generated by the so-called democratic politics in Africa has wondered whether democracy is suitable for African societies. In his view, the failure of democracy to produce quality economic and social goods in Africa may be more to democracy’s incompatibility than to the incompetence of African leaders. Well, the jury is still out on that point. But what is not debatable is that for young people in the African continent, democracy is fast losing its attraction. Opinion polls show that more and more African youths are becoming more distrustful of democracy and accepting of military rule. Many of them who never experienced the brutal days of military dictatorship in the continent are even romantic about military rule. We can see this virus in how youths in West Africa seem to embrace the military regimes in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. In these contexts, why would a Nigerian in 2025 bother about free and fair elections in 2027?
The truth is that despite the failings of democratic governance in Nigeria and many of the African countries, it is important that we continue to care about free and fair elections. The standard theory is that elections matter because they provide incentives for good governance. If we elect our representative in a free and fair elections, they have more incentives to listen to us. They know that their career in politics depends on what the people think about their stewardship. This is the magic of free and fair elections. If elections are free and fair, that is, if elections are competitive such that those in power, whether in the executive or legislature, can be easily voted out, there is greater possibility that those in power will be more responsive to the views and interests of the electorates. At the end of the day, the great political economist, Arthur Schumpeter defined democracy as the mechanism by which those in power respond to the needs of the people. The appeal of elections is that it is the incentive in democracy for those in authority to listen to the concerns of the people.
The argument about whether elections matter is ultimately a debate about the value of democracy. Many have pointed to the capacity of authoritarian governments to generate sustained economic growth as an argument against democracy. The point is, if authoritarian governments can generate and sustain economic growth, why do we need to have electoral democracy? Liberal democrats have responded to this argument by making two possible arguments. First, they argue that an authoritarian government cannot sustain economic growth. Second, they argue that even when authoritarian regimes create and sustain economic growth, their economic success is not wholesome because it undermines freedom.
I think for a society like ours, the most important reason for committing to free and fair elections is that it is the best way to guarantee political stability and reduce tendency to conflicts. This is what scholars like Adam Przeworski call ‘the minimalist theory of democracy’. The minimalist theory justifies democracy, and therefore elections, on the simple reason that it is mainly a conflict management system. He starts his discourse by acknowledging the problem with democracy and elections. He argues that “In many democracies large number of people feel that elections only perpetuate the rule of ‘establishment’, ‘elites’, even ‘caste’, while at the other extreme many are alarmed by the rise of ‘populist’, ‘xenophobic, repressive, and often racist parties.” Considering its warts and all, he argues that elections are “but a framework within which somewhat equal, somewhat effective, and somewhat free people can struggle peacefully to improve the world according to their different visions, values, and interests”. He argues further that “popular criticism of election.. are mistaken, based on an incorrect understanding of elections as a mechanism by which we decide as a collectivity… in societies in which people have different interests and divergent values, looking for rationality is futile, but that elections provide an instruction to governments to minimize the dissatisfaction with how we are governed”.
So, elections matter because it is a conflict-avoidance and conflict-mitigating mechanism.
So, even if we are cynical about the ability of elections to generate economic and social goods or doubt the democratic credentials of elections, we should all demand for free and fair elections because elections are the only way a plural society like ours can have peaceful transitions to power. This is the minimalist conception of election. Without free and fair election, we cannot guarantee political stability with our level of pluralism and diversities.
But elections matter if they are competitive. If elections are not competitive, they lack their regulative power. An uncompetitive election is an election that does not have the regulative power to ensure stable and peaceful transition to power. It is an election that leads to conflict and instability. The election that matters for economic and political change is a competitive election. It is an election that “offers a real choice of governments, when people can remove incumbents and choose their successors, if they choose”. When elections are not competitive, political combatants with their divergent interests and differing ideologies and values would preclude that they cannot win as long as they are not in charge of political power. If there is a credible electoral system in which votes count, these political combatants will play by the rules with the hope that if they build a smart alliance and coalition they will come to power. But if there is no possibility of defeating the incumbent political interests electorally because elections are not free and fair, there would be incentive to resort to self-help, which culminates in the use of violence to win political power. The result would be conflicts and even chaos.
Nigeria should take electoral reform seriously because its political history is full of political crises arising from bad elections. Right after independence in 1960, Nigeria’s democracy did not take long to unravel. At the heart of the collapse of the Nigerian independence constitutional order is dispute over election results. Although many have pointed to how the faulty political institution of the precolonial period preconditioned Nigeria democracy to crisis. But the immediate trigger for the convulsion that resulted in the military coup in 1966 is disputes and violence over elections. The 1966 was partly justified to rescue the country from the wanton violence that has engulfed Western Nigeria because of disputed election results. As foremost contemporary Nigerian historian, Toyin Falola, put it in his book with Matthew M Heaton (A History of Nigeria, Cambridge, 2014, page 173), “In the Western Region, the collapse of the unpopular NNDP regime were greeted with jubilation, and the rioting and unrest that had plagued the region since the October elections came to an almost immediate end”. The fear of northern domination and the lack of trust in the electoral system as a viable means of removing the government led to violence that destroyed the effectiveness and de facto legitimacy of the democratic government. The same situation brought the second and third republics to an abrupt end. In the Second Republic, the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) had perfected its rigging strategies to ensure it remained in power notwithstanding the choice of the electorates. As the people got disillusioned and hopeless, the military found an excuse to strike and end Nigeria’s electoral autocracy.
Nigeria’s four republics were truncated because of widespread electoral malpractices that led to violence and threatened political stability and gave the military an excuse to disrupt democratic rule. The manipulations and violence of the 1964 Federal Election were some of the strong remote causes of the collapse of the First Republic. The Second Republic suffered a similar fate. Reputable political scientist and scholar of Nigerian politics, Richard A. Joseph reviewed political events in the Second Republic and concluded that although there are many dimensions of the brief life of the republic, the most critical and revealing is the conduct of the 1983 election in which “a situation of near chaos developed as the party campaign and subsequent election became marked by acts of increasing violence and lawlessness” (Democracy and prebendal politics in Nigeria: The rise and fall of the Second Republic, Cambridge 1987 pages 153-4). Of course, there were many factors and dynamisms that led to the abrupt termination of these republics, including the inability to elevate political campaigns and practices and foster national ideology and transformational leadership, but the inability to moderate ethnic and individual competition for access to political parties through a credible and effective electoral system lies at the heart of Nigeria’s political tragedy.
Nigeria can also learn lessons from other African countries, especially its West African neighbors of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. These countries are in the firm grip of military dictatorship. There are many factors that explain democratic backsliding in these African countries. High rates of poverty and virulent ethnocentric politics play a key role in destabilizing them. The corrupt leadership that stagnated economic growth and weaponized poverty destroyed social stability. But bad elections play a role in undermining democracy in those countries. In Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, election results were seriously disputed leading to widespread violence and coup plots. It is notable that in Guinea, controversies and violence over rigged elections resulted in military coup. The impacts of bad elections are magnified because of preexisting ethnic divisions and ethnocentric sentiments and hatred which makes clean and credible elections a necessity. The instrumental value of democratic elections, which is that they constitute an effective mechanism for dispute resolution in a plural society, is critical to the survival of democracy and development in the region.
Nigeria ought to take electoral reform seriously because the quality of its elections would add to the possibilities of economic and social development and its ability to escape state failure which is becoming a possibility for countries in the West African region. Credible and reliable elections provide strong incentive for public officials to deliver on campaign promises as it guarantees responsiveness since there is real possibility of electorates removing them from political offices. Competitive elections signal to elected officials that despite the complexities and challenges of modern governance, they must address the concerns of the people if they want to retain their political offices. This incentive structure does not guarantee development. But it creates a mechanism for government responsiveness which is one of the elements of democracy. The greater reason why the Nigerian elites should take seriously the responsibility of reforming the electoral system is to avoid the failure of democracy which may result in the return of the military. We have walked this path before, and many of our neighbors are back on it. We should not fall back into military rule. It is ruinous. And one way we can guarantee that is by ensuring that elections are truly competitive so that out-groups have real hope of becoming in-groups through the ballot box.
The Need for Election Integrity Defense Actions:
If we are instructed by history, then we should not expect the current administration to intentionally conduct free and fair elections in 2027. Actually, we should expect that the Tinubu administration would do everything it can not to conduct free and fair elections. The simple reason for this guided pessimism is that free and fair election usually favors the opposition, especially in a period where the incumbent has not evidently delivered to expectation. This realism is not pessimism. It is to enable us to plan what I call ‘election integrity defense actions’. That is, a set of coherent actions involving different actors in the election management landscape, and targeted at protecting the integrity of elections. The central idea about the election integrity defense system is the acceptance of the simple fact that social outcomes are results of social dialectics. Incredible and rigged elections do not drop from heaven. It is a manufactured outcome. The heart of this election defense system is a recognition that election rigging or manipulation is a strategic behavior that needs to be overcome. It is not an accident of history; it is not an accident. It is a social pathology reinforced by benefits that are understandable.
An important component of an effective electoral integrity protection system is the ability to dimension the pathology of electoral manipulation. We achieve nothing through cynicism or hysteria. There is an unthinking social psychology in Nigeria that exaggerates every problem and thereby debilitates strategic thinking by making every social problem imponderable. What is not properly understood cannot be effectively solved. So, if we exaggerate the extent of fraudulent elections in Nigeria or cannot properly break down how it manifests, we cannot solve the problem. There is need for less hysteria and more understanding in order to develop effective responses to the problem of election rigging or fraud. We should always see elections as a problem that can and should be solved, not as a reality.
What I call for is having a proper perspective about the problem of incredible and bad elections as a prelude to solving the problem. To achieve such a proper perspective, it is important to understand how elections are improving in Nigeria and where it is getting worse. The logistics and technology of election are improving in Nigeria. The processes are getting better. We have less complaints about late arrival of voting materials or suppression of voters. We are also seeing less of the previous malpractices of writing results while voting is still ongoing. Electronic accreditation has reduced the total number of votes because there is less room for the writing of fictitious numbers we are used to in the past. So, there is some improvement. The improvement has opened new vistas of electoral malpractices. In the 2023 presidential elections we saw a new type of manipulation when the leadership of the electoral management body deliberately passed the wrong password to presiding officers so they could not upload results of the presidential election to its electronic portal. This singular act destroyed the credibility of the poll as many results sheets were mutilated. In the Edo Governorship election, the allegation was that INEC declared totally fake results, showing that even when logistics and technology improve, the corruption of the electoral officers could remain a major challenge to free and fair elections.
What does this argument mean for electoral integrity going into the 2027 general elections? It underlines the importance of civic vigilance. We have to be vigilant and smart. Vigilance, they say, is the price we pay for freedom. This is even truer in matters of free and fair elections. There are four zones where we need to be vigilant in tackling the flawed and incredible electoral system as a social problem. These zones are (a) INEC, (b) political party, (c) civil society, and (d) judiciary. These different zones need strategies crafted with insight about how the zone operates.
Engaging INEC:
INEC is an institution. There is an institutional logic. The problem is that INEC is deeply inefficient and lacks the level of institutional integrity to ensure transparency and accountability in a corrupt country like Nigeria. Although INEC has improved in its efficiency relative to the logistical challenges it faces and is now more efficient in the deployment of technology, the integrity of its processes is very low. INEC does not make decisions with the standard integrity expected of a regulator. Its internal rules are underdeveloped. One explanation for INEC’s institutional weakness is the poor quality of engagement by its external stakeholders. It is important to engage INEC in a manner that forces it to develop the right rules and apply them fairly and effectively.
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The quality of engagement between INEC and the political parties is horrible and does not make for effectiveness and fairness. This is more so in the case of opposition parties where there is no serious institutional representation and absence of vigilance and resistance. INEC is left to act authoritarian and make decisions without stakeholder representation and deliberation. As a regulator, INEC ought not to make decisions without formal representation by lawyers of political parties. The political parties, especially opposition parties, ought to challenge most of INEC’s decisions in court. But they do not. The lack of intensity and smartness in the manner the political parties engage INEC is one cause of its lack of institutional integrity and regulatory capability.
Political Parties Oversight:
The political parties ought to be the linchpin of mandate protection. The parties are the first beneficiaries of free and fair elections as they could win elections and form government. The opposition stands to gain more as bad elections usually favor incumbents. Unfortunately, political parties have usually outsourced electoral vigilance to civil society groups. This is evidence of the weakness of opposition political parties and the result of that weakness. The biggest push towards regulatory fairness and impartiality should come from the political parties. They should actively watch what the election regulator does and fight to make sure they follow the law and act fairly and firmly. The political parties themselves have a responsibility to entrench democracy in their internal affairs, especially in the conduct of primary elections. The blame for rigged elections goes mostly to political parties who do not show serious commitment to due process and protection of democratic rights of their people. Nigeria’s decline in the quality of democracy owes much to the poor quality of its political parties. Today Nigeria is rated as an electoral autocracy. Part of the reasons for this democracy declining is that political parties are not intensely promoting democracy and policing the electoral system. With strong opposition party activism and mobilization of the population to become protectors of systems and processes for electoral integrity, it will be difficult to rig elections in Nigeria.
Reinventing Civil Society:
Civil society plays a key role in protecting the integrity of Nigeria’s elections. The role of the civil society has grown as international development assistance to elections in Nigeria has increased. But many will agree that the role played by civil society has not been altogether beneficial. The allegation is based on the tame response of these groups to frauds and manipulations in the electoral process. It is true that these groups engage in election monitoring and observations. But they do not take real actions to counter the manipulations of the electoral system. Many times the leaders of the group provide legitimacy to these illicit procedures. If we must have free and fair elections in 2027 then the civil society groups must recalibrate and become more forceful and strategic protectors of electoral integrity, not unwitting tools in the legitimation of electoral villainy.
The Need for Intelligent and Honest Judiciary:
The judiciary is now the key player in the electoral process. The pathology of elections in Nigeria is that courts now elect candidates instead of electorates. The usurpation of the powers of the electorates by courts and tribunals have raised concern about the judicialisation of elections. But the tragedy is that when the court usurps the power of the people to elect their leaders in pursuit of judicial review, it ends up undermining electoral justice because of the manner it has confirmed electoral malpractices. The rules of electoral procedures in the courts and tribunals are loaded against petitioners. The rules require petitioners to preload all evidence and documents they would need to prove electoral malpractices in a petition that has to be filed within a short time after the declaration of results. In the meantime, the electoral management body refuses to provide petitioners with relevant documents to prove their case. The court or tribunal punishes the petitioner for inability to front load these evidence and documents that are in the custody of the election manager who refuses to make them available to the petitioner.
The judiciary has become the weakest segment of the electoral management landscape. It needs to be fixed before we can have a good guarantee of free and fair elections in 2027. The reality is that the judges may not control themselves. They would need the activism of citizens and politicians to push them to the level of positive jurisprudence that can guarantee electoral justice. We can learn from the history of notable changes in the world that unless citizens are ready to knock persistently and loudly at the door of justice, justice is never served. We have to be smart and persistent to move forward with transformation in the electoral process.
Conclusion:
The real message of this speech is that the gravest threat to free and fair elections in Nigeria in 2027 is cynicism, not the corruption and compromise of INEC, security agencies, and the judiciary. The answer to cynicism is smart and consistent actions. We need to be vigilant, active and innovative in the fight to ensure Nigerian democracy survives the assault of unbridled electoral robbery.
Four zones of action
INEC
Political parties
Civil society
Judiciary