THE NIGERIAs ELECTIONS 2015: FOR THE ATTENTION OF PRESIDENT JONATHAN/PDP, GEN.BUHARI/APC, POLICE/IGP, DSS/JEGAs INEC/NGOs AND ELECTORATE AND ALL OTHER DEMOCRATIC STAKEHOLDERS IN NIGERIA (7) (FOR THE PREVENTION AND ERADICATION OF ELECTORAL VIOLENCE IN 2015 GENERAL ELECTIONS) BY ABBATI BAKO The Nigeria’s April 2007 and 2011 elections has come and gone . In May 2007, the then Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) claimed that “INEC’s role in the elections made the entire exercise a huge success” . On the contrary, the majority of national and international election observers, the civil society, regional and international governmental organizations in their reports on Nigeria’s 2007 elections concluded that “INEC failed to deliver free, fair and credible elections”. This failure on the part of INEC was what triggered the electorate into taking the law into their own hands, with a view to solving the problem themselves. Historical Basis of the Problem Since the colonial masters such as Britain, Netherlands, France, Spain and Portugal granted Independence to most African nations in the late 1950s and early 1960s, democratic political election became a matter of life and death in most African countries. The Kenya, Nigeria are the shining examples in Africa. Paul Collier of University of Oxford observed that----------------------------------------------- “Our times have seen a great political sea change; the spread of democracy to the bottom billion. But is it democracy? The bottom billion certainly got elections they were heavily promoted by American and European pressure and as the most visible feature of democracy; they were treated as its defining characteristic.Yet a proper democracy does not merely have competitive elections; it also has rules for the conduct of those elections; cheating gets punished. A proper democracy also has checks and balances that limit the power of a government once elected; it cannot crush the defeated. The great political sea change may superficially have worked like the spread of democracy, but it was actually the spread of elections, if there are no limits on the power of the winner, the election becomes a matter of life and death. If this life-and-death struggle is not itself subject to rules of conduct, the contestants are driven to extremes.The result is not democracy: I think of it as democrazy” . Most African nations experienced bitterness and civil wars as well as military coups and counter coups, genocide, ethnic cleansing/conflicts largely due to competitive political elections. Nigeria experienced civil war during the years 1967- 1970, between the south-eastern part versus northern and western regions of the country. The country also experienced five successful coups between 1966 and 1998 and its leaders have displayed a very poor ability to resolve social tension and ethnic clashes. And since then, electoral violence became a political seasonal habit in Nigerian politics. To be continued ( In Sha Allah) Abbati Bako,psc,UK
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 21:36:34 +0000
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