... Anxiety Mounts Over 2023 General Elections

In a note made available to this newspaper on Friday, Ezugwu used the recent litigation against the currency swap as an example of the extent to which politicians can go to upset the political process when their ox is gored.

He said, “The APC has made Nigerians to believe that the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, is their enemy, whereas the obvious collaboration between some unpatriotic individuals in the commercial banks actually led to the hoarding of the redesigned naira notes as media reports indicated that banks stashed the new notes in their vaults rather than distribute allotted funds from the CBN through their Automated Teller Machines (ATMs).

“Clearly, the APC, through its Governors in three states — Kaduna, Kogi and Zamfara — has again demonstrated that it is not ready for a free, fair and credible election in 2023, despite being a beneficiary of such credible process in 2015.

“Even when the party is aware that the monetary policy is outside the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, the party went ahead to use the apex court to coerce the Federal Government and its monetary agency into submission with a view to thwarting the cashless policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria. This could be a recipe for a crisis which could unnecessarily heat up the polity.”

HEATING UP THE POLITY

The litigation against the currency initiative is not ending soon. Last Thursday, February 9, 2023, two APC states, Ondo and Kano, joined their Kaduna, Kogi and Zamfara counterparts, which together compelled the Supreme Court to temporarily suspend the February 10, 2023 deadline for swapping of old Naira notes with new ones.

The suits, which had introduced some complexity into the already fiery situation, forced the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, who had initially contested the jurisdiction of the apex court to entertain the suit, to beat a hasty retreat on Friday. During a meeting of the National Council of State on Friday, where the council back the cashless policy and directed the CBN to recirculate old notes or print more new notes, Malami disclosed that the Federal Government would abide by the court ruling until the court’s next sitting on February 15 when the Ministry of Justice would file its claims.

WHY ANXIETY PERSISTS

The electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has on many occasions raised the alarm over threats to the conduct of the 2023 presidential poll. Initially, the Commission cried out that multiple attacks on its offices might undermine its capacity to conduct the election. Starting in February 2019 through 2021 and 2022, INEC’s offices in many locations across the country, particularly in the South, were attacked and materials destroyed or set ablaze. It got so bad that the Commission’s boss, Mahmood Yakubu, lamented that the attacks were not isolated but coordinated to undermine the Commission.

Then as early as January 2023, about one month to the upcoming poll, an INEC official, Abdullahi Abdu Zuru, alerted the public to the dangers posed by insecurity to the polls. Zuru,whoistheChairmanoftheCommission’s Board of Electoral Institute, said, “If the insecurity is not monitored and dealt with decisively, it could ultimately culminate in the cancellation and/or postponement of elections in sufficient constituencies to hinder declaration of elections results and precipitate constitutional crisis.

“This must not be allowed to happen. It shall not be allowed to happen. Therefore, security personnel in particular and all election officials in general must be security conscious and alert to unusual activities in their environment and must be fully equipped to deal with any challenge at all times.”

Then on February 10, 2023, INEC once again alerted the public to the fact that it might encounter logistics challenges, should the fuel scarcity persist till the last days of the poll.

Speaking with THEWILL in an interview, National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Committee of INEC, Festus Okoye, agreed that the “Commission is concerned about the attacks in our facilities, having recorded over 53 attacks in 15 states since the conclusion of the 2019 general election and has taken proactive steps to ensure and guarantee electoral continuity.”

He however warned that “the delivery of a good election is a shared responsibility. The framers of the Nigerian Constitution and our laws assigned different roles and functions to different agencies and organs of government to make for smooth elections.”

The President of the Nigerian Political Association, Ibrahim Salihu, however thinks that lack of trust between the government and the governed is at the root of the anxiety over the upcoming elections in the country.

Salihu, whose association organised a twoday roundtable on 2023 general election, with the theme, ‘Attaining Electoral integrity 2023 General Elections: Pointers to Policy’, last Thursday through Friday in Abuja, explained, “There are trust issues between the citizens and the government. Something must be done to address the issue of citizens seeing the government as the enemy and vice-versa. The citizens must have to trust the government and the government must have to trust the citizens.”

Issues of insecurity, rising poverty, high unemployment and mutual ethnic mistrust, he contended, were at the root of lack of trust. He called for committed efforts by stakeholders to tackle the challenge.

THE WAY FORWARD

Okoye is frontal about the legal and constitutional measures required to address the problem. He said: “We have gone far with preparations for the conduct of elections. INEC will not give room for doubt or anxiety. Sections 132 and 178 of the Constitution have circumscribed the period for the conduct of elections in Nigeria. Sections 134 and 179 of the same Constitution have also delineated the periods for the conduct of a second election if no winner emerges on the first ballot. These periods are constitutionally and legally circumscribed and the Commission will not tamper with these periods.”

Ezugwu said that the people needed to be reassured about their security and anti-graft agencies act to address the current tension in the country. He said, “the security agencies must double their efforts in mitigating the ongoing economic sabotage by desperate politicians through the commercial banks. We urge them to do more to ensure that illicit and proceeds of crime are not deployed by vote buyers in the forthcoming general elections.”

“The security agencies must double their efforts in mitigating the ongoing economic sabotage by desperate politicians through the commercial banks. We urge them to do more to ensure that illicit and proceeds of crime are not deployed by vote buyers in the forthcoming general elections