Several thousand people yesterday protested against the suspension of governorship elections in the volatile Rivers state following widespread disruption to the vote, as international monitors criticized violence at polling stations and called for electoral reform. State elections took place on Saturday in 29 of Nigeria’s 36 states two weeks after President Muhammadu Buhari was elected to a second term, in a poll denounced by his main rival as a sham. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) yesterday suspended all electoral processes in the governorship and House of Assembly elections in Rivers until further notice.
The electoral body made the suspension public in a statement in Abuja by its National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education, Festus Okoye. According to Okoye, the action was due to widespread violence and disruptions that characterized the Saturday’s elections in the state. In Rivers state, dozens of men in military fatigues encircled a vote counting center in the state capital Port Harcourt, prompting INEC to halt the vote count on Sunday.
Nigeria’s military denied its soldiers were involved, blaming “political thugs” for impersonating the army to commit electoral crimes. On Monday members of Buhari’s ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) marched with civil society groups in Port Harcourt calling for the state results to be announced. INEC stopped the count after citing violence at polling stations, the kidnapping of staff, and confiscation and destruction of results.
Although in power nationally, the APC is in the opposition in Rivers, and had no candidate in the governorship election, because of irregularities in the primaries. It had urged its supporters to back a candidate from the small African Action Congress (AAC) party. The state is currently controlled by the main opposition PDP, which also condemned the suspension of the vote count as a “barefaced assault… akin to a coup d’état.” “Army, police and INEC are working with APC to subvert the will of Rivers people,” said incumbent PDP governor Nyesom Wike.
The atmosphere was tense, with soldiers manning roadblocks throughout the city, which has long been a flashpoint for political violence. The Situation Room, an umbrella group of over 70 civil society organizations monitoring the vote, has called for an independent inquiry into the entire election nationwide. It said Saturday’s vote, and the presidential and parliamentary polls of Feb 23, failed to meet the threshold for credible polls. Dozens of people have been killed, including in Rivers, where it said since 2011 the “environment for elections feels like a war, disenfranchising citizens who want to participate.”
Buhari won the presidential elections last month by a majority of nearly four million votes. His defeated rival, Atiku Abubakar, of the PDP, is challenging the result in court. Results are still coming in for governorship contests across the country, with the APC hoping to keep control in 22 states and the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja.
Both the European Union and the joint International Republican Institute/National Democratic Institute mission highlighted low voter turn-out in both rounds of the election and violence. “A heavy military presence and vote-buying in some locations, as well as irregularities in the vote counting and collation process served to undermine the integrity of the elections,” the IRI/NDI said in a statement.
The chief observer of the EU mission, Maria Arena, called the violence at the weekend “deeply troubling” and said some of its 73 monitors were blocked from collation centers, apparently by soldiers. In Rivers, there was “no doubt that the electoral process… was severely compromised”, she told a news conference in the capital. The EU’s preliminary assessment into the elections as a whole said “systemic failings and electoral security problems” indicated there was a “real need for serious reform” in Nigeria. “We echo the view of leading civil society organizations that say there is an urgent need to restore faith in the electoral process,” it added.
“The commission has also established a fact-finding committee to assess the situation and report back within 48 hours,’’ Okoye said. INEC appealed to the people of Rivers, particularly voters, for their understanding as it looks into the circumstances of the disruptions and what further action needed to be taken. Rivers with 23 local government areas has 4,442 polling units and 3,215,273 registered voters out of who 2,833,101 persons collected their Permanent Voter’s Cards (PVC).
In a reaction, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) condemned what it described as the “confiscation’’ of the Rivers governorship election results and demanded the immediate release of the outcome to avert serious crisis. The PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, in a statement issued yesterday in Abuja said that the party completely condemned the subversive action by soldiers, who were alleged to have seized and diverted the results to army barracks in Port Harcourt. He called on all lovers of democracy to unite against the “brazen attack” on Nigeria’s democracy, saying such “barefaced assault is only akin to a coup d’état and should not be allowed to stand.”
He said that Nigerians watched in bewilderment as soldiers, in the company of alleged All Progressives Congress (APC) thugs, invaded polling units in Rivers, unleashed violence on voters, disrupted polling processes and hauled away electoral materials. This, according to Ologbondiyan, is just because the APC is not on the ballot following its self-inflicted exclusion from the election. He said that the alleged use of soldiers to ambush the electoral process and confiscate results was an extreme scheme by the APC to enmesh the Rivers governorship election in controversy, seeing that there was no way they could take away victory from the PDP.
“We want Nigerians to note that the APC is frustrated that it is not on the ballot in the Rivers State election and for that it has resorted to violence, killings and heavy militarization of the area in the attempt to disrupt the electoral process, seeing that the PDP had already won.” Ologbondiyan said that the PDP already had valid documents of all the results as delivered from all the polling units where elections held across the state and that the figures were with all the stakeholders. “Therefore, deploying soldiers to confiscate the results will not change the victory already recorded by our party in Rivers State,” he said.
Also, the British High Commission in Nigeria expressed concern over the level of military interference in the Rivers State elections. The commission said INEC officials must be allowed to do their job in safety, without intimidation. Besides, a pro-democracy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), yesterday called on the university authorities to withdrawal the professorial title of the Chairman of INEC, Prof. Yakubu Mahmood, following alleged violence unleashed on voters by armed security forces in parts of the country, especially in Rivers State.
The group alleged that collation centres were invaded by suspected armed thugs and guarded by armed security forces to destroy or cart away election results. HURIWA, in a statement in Abuja by the National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, also urged the outgoing National Assembly to investigate the electoral body to uncover why the management staff conducted allegedly fraudulent elections in which the armed security services were allowed to deliberately attack leaders of the leading opposition PDP in parts of Nigeria including the outright refusal of the armed forces to allow accredited agents of the PDP into collation centres in Rivers State.
“The very universities should revoke these titles of professorships on the INEC chairman and most of those returning officers who supervised the travesty of justice committed by INEC during the two sets of elections that have just happened following the absolute manipulation of the polls. The ethical challenges trailing the actions of these academic professors show that they are not deserving of these high honors since, by their actions, they have demonstrated the total lack of honor that ought to be associated with holders of the prestigious academic title of professor,” HURIWA said.
