BENUE 2015: NOVEMBER LG POLLS AS A REFERENDUM

On November 24, 2012, the Benue state government held local government elections. For over two years, the local councils had been under care-taker committees. The exercise was professedly objectivized on deepening the content of democracy at the grassroots level, but the actual reason was to serve the Benue people more of the same PDP staple diet: imposition, rigging, voter-contempt and impunity.

And since Benue has 23 local government councils, 23 council chairmanships, and about 300 councillors, were up for grabs. Expectedly, the Benue State Independent Electoral Commission (BSIEC), which conducted the polls, gave the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), a clean sweep of the polls. PDP is still cheering. As it were, the state now has an extended care-taker system rather than a representative regime at the council level.

On paper, the results show an electoral massacre and a political annihilation of opposition parties in the state, especially the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), which is clearly PDP’s nemesis. But in fact, it is a scam of monumental proportions.

Preparatory to the council polls, the ACN had readied itself to repeat its April 2011 electoral feats, by receiving defectors into its fold. And these were not just defectors from the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and the Labour Party (LP) etc; the defectors were especially from the PDP.

The defections, which started in the run-up to the polls, took place in many councils state-wide, but climaxed at Anyiin – Logo (Suswam’s hometown) on November 20, 2012, where Ugbah welcomed hundreds of PDP decampees into the ACN. The significance of this cannot be more poignant, even ominous.

Nigerians recall how the Benue ACN unarguably made mincemeat of Suswam, the PDP and its atrophied 12-year structure in the 2011 elections, but was short-changed. They also recall ruefully how the machinery of justice stumbled, then crumpled and finally crumbled at the feet of the infamous PDP machine when the matter went to court. It was a classic case of all machines being equal, but some machines being more equal than others.

This political anti-climax effectively robbed the ACN governorship candidate, Prof. Steve Torkuma Ugbah, of his mandate; and tragically denied Benue people the democratic privilege of enjoying the fruits of one-man, one vote.

In other words, although in 2011, the Benue electorate resoundingly rejected the PDP and its best offer, Gabriel Suswam, and voted in the ACN and Ugbah enthusiastically, the judiciary, overwhelmed by the Nigerian factor, aborted the historic democratic rebirth.

That this shocking political heist was perpetrated in a supposedly democratic dispensation is shameful enough. That the beneficiary of this grand political larceny was a party that prides itself as a democratic party is an incredible scandal that continues to reverberate.

But that the chief functionaries of our democracy kept mouthing such inanities as “Transformation,” “fair play” and “the rule of law” while these electoral-cum-judicial robberies were going on left many decent Nigerians stunned and stupefied. And if the truth be told, and it is hereby told: Nigerians are still in shock!

But if the American professor caught the PDP and the Suswam entourage napping in 2011, with his disarming simplicity, regal bearing, cultured disposition, world-class political campaigns and a perceptive dissection of the Benue problem, the council polls in 2012 offered the PDP a chance to prove that indeed, it is awake and on ground. No, the Benue state chapter of the largest party in Africa could not take the risk of facing the ACN, which it disparages as “a Yoruba party,” in an open contest of “one-man, one-vote!”

And if the Senate Minority Leader, Dr. George Akume, had disabled the PDP rigging machine in 2011, with his magnetic crowd pulls, the echoes of his salutary Government House stewardship, his effervescent personality as well as his social conscience and enduring political structures, the PDP Family in Benue had the opportunity almost two years later to expose him as a political light-weight via transparent council polls.

However, rather than risk popular rejection a second time, and in polls conducted by its appointees, the Suswam government chose to beat the PDP record in political infamy by conducting elections that even PDP supporters are describing, in their sober moments, as “incredible” and “fantastic.”

But there are lessons to draw from this charade. If the BSIEC chairman, Prof. Ahire, can promise the sublime and deliver the ridiculous, he is merely affirming loudly that the quality of education in Nigeria has fallen to abysmally low levels. Please, UBEC and NUC, take note.

If Suswam and his entourage have such a morbid fear of the Akume-Ugbah-Voters bonding, as to warrant writing the results of the council polls in Makurdi, it means contrary to their half-hearted propaganda on Radio Benue, nothing has changed between April 2011 and now, and the ACN is still the party to beat in Benue state.

If the PDP continues to shout itself hoarse that the ACN is dead in Benue, but dare not confront the latter in a democratic contest, it is classic Goebbelian tactics: it simply means the PDP understands the arithmetic of Benue politics, which can be mathematically captured thus: Akume + Ugbah + Electorate = Majority Votes.

Essentially, therefore, the November council polls in Benue were a referendum on PDP rule, and the message it got was clear: PDP is still a minority party, and its continued tenancy in Government House, Makurdi (GHM), is at once an assault and an affront: one, on all that is democratic; and the other, on all that is moral.

This does not only make the duo of Akume and Ugbah very dangerous personages to the desperate and inveterate enemies of the one-man, one-vote tenet; it places the entire Benue people, sadly, at the receiving end of deliberate misrule and maladministration from those they have consecutively rejected and continue to reject at every electoral turn.

Against the backdrop of 2015, the results of the council polls present a challenge to both the PDP and the ACN. For the ruling PDP, notorious for its contempt for popular votes, its challenge is to start honing its rigging skills. And for the ACN, hamstrung, as it is by political naivety, the challenge before it, therefore, is to harness its “victory,” sustain its winning streak and devise effective measures against the underhand tactics of the minority party. As a mark of good stewardship and respect for the people, the ACN must not only be adept at soliciting votes; it must prove itself capable of defending those votes once they are given. In other words, Benue voters cannot go on voting in vain. After all, Vox populi, Vox Dei (The voice o the people is the Voice of God).

Written By Simon Imobo-Tswam

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