Do we still need elections in Nigeria?

Elections are losing their values in Nigeria. They are becoming moribund and anachronistic. The question is why do we still pretend that elections are of any use in this country? Those who organise the exercise know too well that nothing serious is happening. Politicians also know there are no elections in the real sense of the word.

All over the world, election is a serious business and politicians do everything to outwit their opponents. As Americans prepares for their Presidential election in a few days’ time, main candidates are employing all propaganda to psyche down one another. But elections will hold and credible results will be declared to the satisfaction of majority of voters.

But Nigerian elections have ceased to excite the citizens. Results are hardly credible and the impunity of those who perpetrate the heist is irritatingly annoying. These have combined to push many people away from showing up at the polling booths on election day.

Like many other things in Nigeria, elections may have lost their value. Citizens are becoming increasingly weary of going to the polls, simply because they believe their votes would not and do not count.

Those who have adopted this position are being justified by the shambolic elections that are being organised by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Statistics, since 2007. It was better in 1999 when the country returned to civil rule, but subsequent elections have witnessed lower voter turnout than the ones preceding them.

Let me conduct you through the awful trajectory since 1999. It was 52.3percent in 1999; 69percent in 2003; 57.5percent in 2007; 53.7 percent in 2011; 43.7 percent in 2015; 34.8percent in 2019, and 28.63percent in 2023.

The consistent decline was in spite of the touted adoption of technology in the electoral process.

Increasing voter registration has failed to translate into more voters turning out to exercise their franchise.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) was declared winner with fewer than 9 million votes. With 36.61percent of the total votes cast, the President is presiding over a country of over 220 million people!

The situation is not better in sub-national elections as the high level of electoral malfeasance has discouraged many Nigerians from showing interest in the electoral process.

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In the last off-cycle gubernatorial election in Edo, the turnout was pathetic. Voter turnout has been on the downward trend.

For instance, the turnout in the 2016 poll in Edo that brought Godwin Obaseki to power was 32.7percent, as 622,029 votes were cast out of 1,900,223 registered voters. In 2020, 24.9percent, or approximately 25percent, was recorded, in which 550, 242 people voted out of 2,210534 total registered voters. In the last election, only 22percent was recorded.

It does not seem that things will improve in the near future despite the gale of condemnation that trails the activities of election handlers and the rhetoric emanating from political practitioners.

The desperation of politicians is making elections in the country look laughable. Ahead of the Ondo State gubernatorial election, some chieftains of the ruling party are already claiming victory when the exercise has not been conducted.

They have also given the Governor of Anambra State, Chukwuma Soludo a notice that he should not waste his time and resources to seek re-election.

The way things seem at the moment, the ruling party may have perfected plans to win wherever and whenever elections are held going forward. For the party’s apparatchiks, it does not matter whether elections are free, fair or credible, what appears to matter is the end justifying the means.

Many Nigerians are saying that there is no need for the government at all levels to waste time and resources organising shambolic elections, but that they should just anoint their choices and crown them without disturbing the citizens.