CONCERNS OVER OSUN GOVERNORSHIP POLL- PUNCH EDITORIAL BOARD

•Osun State Governor, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola, on the top of a vehicle during a campaign tour of Ikirun community... on Tuesday.
| credits: State Government House

ALL eyes are on Osun State as voters go to the polls on Saturday to elect a new governor. But much more than that, the handling of the election will serve as a final test-run of the capacity of the Federal Government and, by extension, the Independent National Electoral Commission, to see Nigeria through the 2015 general election.

Indeed, the stakes are high. The run-up to the election has been filled with apprehension. Apart from allegations and counter-allegations of rigging, the pockets of violence on the campaign trails of the major candidates -Rauf Aregbesola, the incumbent All Progressives Congress governor, and Iyiola Omisore of the Peoples Democratic Party -have caused tension statewide. Our democratic journey since independence was truncated by a fraud-prone electoral system that led to the “Operation Weti e” uprising in 1965 in the defunct Western Region when the government at the centre conspired with the umpire to rig out the ruling party. The situation degenerated to a full-scale upheaval that engulfed the whole country, providing the military with an excuse to intervene in governance on January 15, 1966.

The Federal Government should learn from what happened then and from the collapse of the Second Republic. President Goodluck Jonathan owes it a duty to provide an environment that is conducive to a fair, free and credible election. The election is not a do-or-die affair. The strong-arm tactics of the government and its security agencies, in the run-up to the Ekiti governorship poll in June, in which the APC chiefs, including the governors of Edo and Rivers states, were stopped from attending a rally organised by their party to support their candidate, are not part of democracy.

Already, there are serious concerns about the misuse and abuse of power in this election. The new Inspector-General of Police, Suleiman Abba, must handle this first major assignment with civility and fairness. The practice of restricting movement of travellers not connected to the election in and out of the state is archaic. Locking down a state for elections is akin to a state of siege. By now, the police should have devised a system of guaranteeing that travellers use the major highways in a state holding an election.

The shooting incident and show of force allegedly by the Department of State Security operatives last week in Osogbo, the state capital, and other towns in Osun have prompted accusations that the Federal Government has found other ways of militarising the election. Abuja must do things the lawful way and transparently too. While it must provide security, acting in any manner to suggest that it favours one party over the others creates problems in the event that the conduct and the result of the election do not meet the expectations of the people. Soldiers should not be the main security agents in the conduct of elections. We insist that the military should have no place in a civil election.

Using the military to intimidate the opposition as was done in Ekiti should not repeat itself in Osun. The police high command deployed 30,000 officers to man the Ekiti poll. That number is more than enough to police a state for an election holding on a weekend.

An election is about people choosing those who will represent them in office. It should be transparent and be seen to be so. Osun State is holding its governorship election separately today because of the flawed 2007 general election. It took more than three years for the incumbent governor to be installed by the tribunal and courts. Therefore, the Federal Government must not allow the state to descend into such a chaos again.

On its part, INEC has no excuse to fail this litmus test. After raising hopes with the conduct of the Ekiti election, it must not relapse into the reprehensible past. It must overcome its recent logistics failures in the Edo and Anambra governorship elections. The setting is perfect: a governorship election in one state out of 36 and the Federal Capital Territory, with just 30 Local Government Areas and 1,407,222 registered voters out of a population of 3,423,535 (2006 Census). Getting it right in one state should not constitute an albatross around INEC’s neck unless it lends itself to the destabilising forces that have held the country down by their vile appetite for electoral heist.

To guarantee credibility, there should be no shortage or late arrival of voting materials, while results must be declared transparently and in real time at every unit in accordance with the Electoral Act 2010. The 29 domestic and international election observer groups accredited by INEC should be allowed to monitor the election without hindrance.

The massive presence of security agents should not discourage the people from voting and ensuring their votes count. With active citizen participation, the purpose of democratic poll can become a reality in the state. People should look closely at the credentials of those who are seeking to govern them. We have seen too often the results of wrong choices for elective offices. An informed choice should be made on Saturday, to spare everyone the usual post-election lamentation.

At the same time, we urge the public to watch out for attempts to undermine the ballot. For this type of high stakes contest, politicians must have mastered all types of plots to rig the results. But concerned citizens should not allow the destiny of their people to be stolen by power hungry politicians.