Positives From Anambra Election

At last, the much-awaited Anambra State 2021 gubernatorial election has been organised, won, and lost. A former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Professor Charles Soludo, of the ruling All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) was proclaimed the winner to pilot the affairs of the state for the next four years. The poll has been described as a litmus test for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the security agencies.
Before the conduct of the election, violent disturbances by the separatist Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) had placed the poll under a vast haze of ambiguity. In the end, traditional rulers, politicians, stakeholders, and well-meaning indigenes of the state intervened and reason triumphed, allowing the exercise to go ahead as scheduled.
Soludo attained at least the needed 25 per cent of the ballots cast in all the 21 local government areas and won 19 LGAs outrightly. He polled 112,229 votes and defeated 17 other contestants, including Valentine Ozigbo of the Peoples Democratic Party (53,807 votes), and Andy Uba of the All Progressives Congress (43,285 votes). With his victory, APGA has again retained Anambra as its stronghold out of the 36 states in Nigeria. Come next March, the former CBN governor will succeed Willie Obiano.
The puzzle about the poll dissipated at the last minute as IPOB’s declared sit-at-home over the trial of Nnamdi Kanu was called off. INEC showed its latest technology by presenting the Biometric Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) device. The BVAS is an advancement on the card reader that makes collation, automatic transmission of results, and thumbprinting easier. While it reduces ballot box snatching and rigging, it diminishes manual collation.
Of specific significance was the repudiation of financial inducement of N5,000 by  Eunice Onuegbusi from Ukwulu in Dunukofia Local Government Area of the state, which earned her a cash reward of N1 million. In a viral video, Onuegbusi was seen rejecting N5,000 from a party agent in her polling unit during the election. We applaud her for turning down the offer to sell her vote to mercantile politicians who understand politics strictly from the vantage point of commerce. Onuegbusi’s patriotic action is droolworthy.
However, poor coordination, vote-buying, INEC’s administrative challenges, over-militarisation, pre-election litigation and counter-lawsuits, violence, and low voter turnout characterised the ballot, demonstrating that Nigeria nevertheless has a long way to go for elections in the country to secure the least global democratic norms.
The BVAS device, brought in to expedite the accreditation and voting process, led to delays in a few areas by its failure to operate accurately. Besides being tedious in substantiating the fingerprints of voters, it outrightly failed to perform occasionally, compelling Soludo, Ozigbo, and the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, among others, to encounter hesitations before they could vote.
Furthermore, a coalescence of logistics and administrative interruptions made voting start hours behind schedule, hence, discomfiting voters. INEC first introduced the smart card reader in the 2015 general election for accreditation, but it invariably failed while they did little or nothing to enhance it. By now, the electoral adjudicator should have carried out considerable enhancements in conducting elections with technology.
Although there are over 2.4 million registered voters in Anambra State, only 253,388, representing 9.73 per cent, were certified to vote. It is severely low. It speaks to the overwhelming voter apathy in Nigeria, which has produced a travesty of several polls in the country. Both the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD) and Yiaga Africa had predicted low voters’ attendance in last Saturday’s election.
A similar projection was made after a survey by SBM Intelligence, a geo-political research organisation. The study disclosed that over 60 per cent of registered voters had chosen not to engage in the election. Reasons offered by some respondents include insecurity and absence of faith in the elective procedure. Findings, however, indicate that Anambra State has a record of low voter turnout for its governorship elections.
Since 1999, governorship elections in the state have never witnessed up to 50 per cent of voter turnout except in the 2007 election, which was characterised by allegations of massive rigging. Of the 1.84 million registered voters in the state in 2010, only 302,000 turned out to vote on election day. This translated to about 16 per cent of voters.
In 2013, only 465,891 of the total 1,770,127 registered voters went out to vote on election day, translating into about 25 per cent. And in the 2017 election, fewer than a quarter of the comprehensive figure of registered voters participated in the poll. The electoral umpire had revealed of the 2,064,134 residents certified as qualified voters for the election, only 457,511, about 22.16 per cent, literally came out on election day to be accredited. This is an expression of a loss of confidence in the electoral process of the country.
However, since the National Assembly has authorised electronic transmission of results in elections, there is hope provided INEC makes significant improvements to BVAS or any other apparatus it may determine to use. The electoral umpire should employ the 2022 governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun States to upgrade their equipment before the next general election in 2023.
On the whole, the just-concluded Anambra governorship election was a game-changer and an improvement in past elections, despite the challenges seen in the build-up and during the exercise. The big consolation was that the worst that was expected did not happen. Anambra did not become a killing field. The political parties and the politicians did not engage in bloodshed. Very few incidents of intimidation, violence and ballot snatching were recorded. Kudos to INEC, security agencies and the people of Anambra!