On Abuja Accord we stand?... by Josef Omorotionmwan

PEOPLE of goodwill have been disturbed about the level of violence around our elections. Early this year, the fears here were succinctly captured in the words of Chief Emeka Anyaoku, the former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth: “Nigeria has a history of election and post-election violence and the signs are already there that the same would be repeated if nothing is done about it”.

This fear formed the basis of the collaborative initiative of the Offices of the National Security Adviser, the Special Adviser to the President on Inter-Party Affairs and the Inter Party Advisory Council in collaboration with some international development partners; which finally culminated in the signing of the Abuja Accord by the presidential candidates of the political parties contesting the 2015 presidential election.

The main thrust of the Abuja Accord was the promise from the candidates to take proactive steps to prevent electoral violence before, during and after the 2015 elections. The candidates re-affirmed their commitment to the integrity of the Nigeria nation and the sanctity of the Nigerian Constitution.

By signing the accord, the candidates accepted responsibility for their conduct and behaviour as well as those of their supporters and party members. They pledged to run issue-based campaigns at all levels and to refrain from smear-tactics based on religious sentiments, ethnic or tribal profiling and other practices of mudslinging and anything that could incite or spite their opponents.

In order to give the accord added value, the National Chairmen of the participating political parties were also made to countersign it.

Another important attribute of the accord is that it required all the institutions of government – INEC and the security agencies – “not only to act but also to be seen to have acted with impartiality”.

It is instructive that at the signing of the accord, President Goodluck Jonathan expressed the valid point that Nigerian politics had become all-comers affairs, irrespective of their characters. He stressed the need for proper screening of candidates to weed out people of questionable character.

He further recommended the enthronement of a system of inclusiveness where parties would be included in government, based on their performance at the elections, so as to reduce the incidence of “winner-takes-all”, which was largely responsible for the cut-throat competitions that hitherto characterized our elections.

Does anyone still need to be reminded that, ab-initio, the Abuja Accord was doomed to fail? It took off on some initial defects. The organizers should have known that, even with the best intention, they left no mechanism for any follow-up actions. The accord should have included a provision for monitoring the people’s adherence to it. What has followed is that in the absence of any monitoring, the accord has been respected more in the breach than in the observance.

Beyond all the razzmatazz of political opponents embracing themselves for one-minute television window-dressing at the accord signing, the political terrain has continued to witness terrible campaigns of calumny, mudslinging and all the dirty tactics that have always characterized our campaigns. President Goodluck Jonathan was pelted with stones and his convoy was attacked severally in many parts of the North.

In the spirit of the accord, we expected leaders of the opposition, who certainly did not send their supporters on the dirty mission, to speak out very forcefully against the malfeasance.

Gun shots, bombs, kidnappings, assassinations and wanton destructions; have marked campaigns across the country like never before. And no one is speaking out. The recruitment of young boys and girls as today’s thugs and possibly tomorrow’s terrorists has continued incrementally across the land.

We cannot feign total ignorance of the outbreak of new elite, nay political mercenaries, who have enlisted themselves into the services of political parties as opportunistic sycophants just for the purpose of violating opponents. In their hatchet job, they care less about any accord.

In the spirit of a living accord, if any there be, President Jonathan and his wife could not have remained stoically silent when the opposition APC was constructively prevented, on several occasions, with all the arsenals of war, from entering Okrika, the hometown of the First Lady, to campaign. In all this, we see no traces of neutrality or impartiality on the part of the security agencies.

The facts on ground clearly indicate that INEC itself could be a major stumbling block to the success of the accord. For instance, if the elections were held on the 14th of February as originally scheduled, there is preponderant evidence that more than 30 million voters would have been disenfranchised by INEC’s tardiness on the PVCs. As we speak, INEC says it is still expecting the delivery of one million PVCs into the country. We have not been told of the magic they intend to use to get those cards to their owners before March 28!

Suddenly, the issue of card readers has become the new bride. For all we know, those who are opposed to the use of card readers, just as a matter of party policy, certainly have clandestine motives.

On the other hand, INEC will have a lot of convincing to do, if it is deploying 200,000 card readers for the first time throughout the country and expecting all to work out perfectly. This could be pushing our luck too far.

While hoping for the best, one must also provide for the worst. Going by the lessons of history, the Kenya example is available to us. The card readers were rushed into the country on the eve of the election and straight to the polling stations. When the machines failed, they quickly resorted to manual.

One major complaint with the card readers is that their batteries run down fast, which requires that the operators must be equipped with sufficient spare batteries. Besides, INEC must have a clear Plan ‘B’ handy. We have never been bereft of good ideas but how to make the ideas work is our problem, leading to the summation of an apparently sarcastic American writer, “Nigeria wanted to be like America but it ended up being like Mexico”.