Save for pockets of elections, Nigeria as a country will not be going to the polls until 2019. That does look like a long time away but the difference between people who make plans and those who don’t is this; people who make plans soon discover that no date in the future is too far away not to have an initial plan for, for those who don’t make plans, even the next morning is too far away because they live by mostly staggering from one day to another! Nigeria must plan and work hard towards the 2019 elections. It is the elections that will either usher us into genuine one person, one vote reality or further retain us into the reality of hurriedly written election results without elections taking place.

I have been following the Akwa Ibom state electoral tribunal and despite claims of a perfecting electoral process, what went down in Akwa Ibom defines electoral impunity. It is one thing to enter for election in one place, rig the elections and emerge winner of the election obviously in the same place. For example, one could enter for elections to be the Senator of Lagos East and somehow end up rigging successfully to emerge winner. Something much more astounding allegedly happened in Akwa Ibom. Senator Godswill Akpabio, the former governor and political power-house of Akwa Ibom politics was nominated to run as Senator by his party, the People’s Democratic Party in Akwa Ibom East (Uyo) Senatorial district only to emerge as winner of the election as a Senator-elect of Akwa Ibom West (Ikot Ekpene.) The boldness in this one is as the rising of the sun. Despite the numbers involved in his emergence, Godswill Akpabio somehow got four hundred and twenty-two thousand and nine votes to emerge the winner of the election in Ikot Ekpene having entered for election in Uyo. To make matters worse, his election as senator was the first to be announced in the country. The logistics involved in conducting elections for about half a million voters and the time it took those with far less votes to announce clearly shows that something fishy happened.

When the Returning Officer announced on live TV (AIT) that Godswill Akpabio had won the election to be returned as Senator-Elect of Akwa Ibom North East (Uyo Senatorial District) the then governor called the attention of the Returning Officer to say it was Akwa Ibom North West but the Returning Officer was reading from the official INEC document. Curiously, this video is no longer available on AIT’s Youtube page. May be someone mistakenly deleted it.

Another drama ensued at the floor of the Senate when Godswill Akpabio was announced as the Senator of Akwa Ibom North East. The Senator corrected the announcer to say he was representing Akwa Ibom North West. The matter is left for the courts to decide but we cannot afford to find ourselves here in 2019.

Electoral offenders must be severely punished and banned from participating in elections for as long as their punishment is in effect. We cannot afford to spend all that money on organizing elections, then dedicate another round of spending towards proving that elections took place or did not take place. The beneficiaries of electoral malpractices are then left to return to contest subsequent elections even after the courts prove that they were guilty of electoral malpractices. Something needs to give in the coming years.

One hopes that the president confirms the Acting Chairman of INEC Amina Bala Zakari as the substantive Chairman. That some people are already scared of what she brings to the table speaks volume of their intentions. Having chaired the Political Parties Monitoring Committee and the Planning Monitoring and Strategy Committee of the INEC and would, if appointed, be the first INEC Chairperson to rise through the ranks to lead the electoral umpire since 1999 and of course, the first woman in such a position, she certainly has a claim to retain the position. Those who say she is the president’s daughter are yet to show us the wife of the president that gave birth to her. If a PDP government trusted her to be INEC Commissioner, why should the same PDP be afraid to have another government simply make her the primus inter pares of INEC Commissioners? It is sad that not one of the complaints against her speaks about her inability to get the job done or her professionalism, it has been about raising dust where there ought to be none. Having worked to be part of the INEC’s resounding success of 2015, she is certainly in good stead to complete the work started by Professor Attahiru Jega.

The 2019 elections will be crucial to Nigeria’s democratic and economic development. We must start the preparations towards that journey today. We must start working out ways to see that Nigerians all over the world are able to exercise their voting rights. We must raise the bar against electoral impunity and make rigging an anomaly. If we set our minds to do it and work towards it, electoral impunity would have disappeared by 2019. It is possible!

© Japheth J. Omojuwa