EDITORIAL: Osun election, the rise of civic action, and 2027

Governor Ademola Adeleke of Osun State was re-elected for a second term in the 15 August governorship contest. It was an off-cycle election like no other before it, in the build-up, with its eerie elements of tension, violence and resultant deaths.

Also, while there was a general public scepticism about the integrity of the electoral processes, informed by events in the recent past, a number of stakeholders have pointed out that the administration of the election appeared fairly better on the technological front than INEC’s disastrous outing in the 2023 general elections.

Nevertheless, all the indicated negatives of the polls, conflated in a manner that made the poll prefigure what is likely to occur during the 2027 elections.

The election had initially put some political pressure on President Bola Tinubu due to the action of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in freezing the bank accounts of the Osun State government, due to its declared concerns around the suspicious movement of public funds. Yet, to forestall speculations of federal interference, the President had to order the swift de-freezing of these accounts.

Although the contest involved 15 political parties, it was largely a two-horse race between Governor Ademola, who contested under a new political platform – the Accord Party – following his defection from the PeoplesDemocratic Party (PDP), on whose platform he got into office in 2022, and Bola Oyebamiji of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

In the result declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mr Adeleke polled a total of 511,069 votes, winning in 19 Local Government Areas out of 30 in the state. However, Mr Oyebamiji secured 444,815 votes, and won in 11 council areas. The African Democratic Congress (ADC) candidate, Najeem Salaam, received only 17,180 votes.

The number of accredited voters were 1,010,684, out of which 1,005,800 voted. Valid votes stood at 985,079, while 20,721 votes were voided. With 2,399,233 total registered voters in the state, the polling of less than 50 per cent people, signal voter apathy as continuing to plague elections in the country, even if the ratio in Osun was higher than the national average.

The uncertainties that foreshadowed the poll were so high that 12 local government areas were identified as high-risk by the police, with 17 persons killed in the build-up to and during the elections. This malevolent landscape compelled the Inspector-General of Police, Tunji Disu, to deploy 15,000 police personnel, a new Commissioner of Police and a Deputy Inspector-General to supervise the poll in the state.

A week to the election, the governor had accused the state’s Commissioner of Police, Ibrahim Gotan, of partisanship, with the operation of a parallel police structure, targeted at opponents of the APC, making Mr Adeleke openly call on the president to redeploy him. The IGP wasted no time in enforcing this.

The APC didn’t hide its desire to add Osun State to its present national hegemony of 31 states. Its chieftain, Farouq Aliyu, matter-of-factly, said so shortly after the election, “We did everything humanly possible to win the election.” The storming of Osogbo – the state capital – by 17 APC governors on the eve of the poll, made this desire a lot clearer. It was patently an act of intimidation and show of force.

But the dreaded cataclysm on Election Day never occurred. Instead, the uploading of results on INEC’s digital platform, the IReV, in real time, enhanced the transparency and timely declaration of the results. It was a clear indication that the proper deployment of technology certainly plays a critical role in the conduct of credible polls.

Besides, Mr Adeleke’s “man of the people” image and grassroot appeal, counted quite for much. He is hyperactive socially; ever present in social gatherings and dancing with the people. He was savvy to have cleared the backlog of salaries and ₦47 billion in pension obligations that he inherited from the Rauf Aregbesola and Gboyega Oyetola APC administrations in the state. This endeared him to the civil servants, a crucial voting bloc, who equally sought to avoid a return to Egypt.

However, there are two sides to every coin. Vote-trading, which has become an incubus in our elections, was common. Many people were allegedly suborned with between ₦10,000 and ₦20,000 each for the purchase oftheir votes.

The European Union Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria Election Observation Hub says it recorded a total of 103 of such cases. There were 31 cases of voter obstructions, 85 cases of misconduct by electoral officials, and 38 cases of campaigning at polling units, among the 323 electoral offences and irregularities it
tracked.

With a political culture that doesn’t appear to recognise such acts as an aberration, this and other impunities might spiral out of control in the 2027 general elections. Electioneering towards the next national polls flagged off officially last Wednesday. As a result, the red flags evident in Osun should not be trivialised.

Yet, all said, INEC deserves some commendation for its performance in this recent recorded election. But to imagine that this past recorded improvement would easily become its operational template going forward, might simply be naïve.

An off-cycle poll in one state cannot be equated with a general election across several elective offices and for the president in 36 states of the country. Police personnel will be thinly spread then, and so would INEC’s staff be. 30 Electoral Commissioners were in the 30 local councils of Osun State. Again, the terrains would be remarkable different from each other.

With Adeleke and the Osun people’s demonstration that resilience and vigilance count in our elections, this lesson should not be lost on the electorate as we move into 2027. Nigerians should see elections as a veritable tool with which to hold public office holders to account.

Impressively, the watchdog role display of some electoral observers was no less critical. By 10 p.m., Atedo Peterside, in a post that went viral, admonished INEC, “Many of us have been monitoring your Osun Governorship Election result uploads on your IREV. Why have your uploads stopped at 87.48% for some hours now? If you could show us 3,292 Polling Units Results with little or no alterations, why are you unable to show us the results from the remaining 472 Polling Units? It is now past 10 p.m.”

It was a laudable civic response that checked possible mischief, which Yiaga Africa, an NGO, and others also brought to bear on the election. Critically, it serves as a warning to INEC, ahead of next elections, to improve on its public communications during the collation of results. When a genuine delay arises, it should not waste time in communicating what has gone wrong. A sudden and unexplained abeyance naturally breeds suspicion of manipulation, more so with INEC’s silence still on the “technical glitch” that marred the 2023 presidential election.

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Equally laudable were the civic technology tools that were deployed by a number of organisations to record and analyse the results as they were being posted on the IReV platform, making the possibility of manipulation of results close to impossible, as long as original results were being uploaded from the Polling Units.

This reinforced the popular aphorism that eternal vigilance remains the prize of liberty. And signals that many citizens and groups – such iReportINEC and Dataphyte, etc. – staking for credible elections in the country are now commendably marshalling their innovations and competencies in enduring acts of civic action.

Yet, moving forward, PREMIUM TIMES believes that the 2027 elections stand imperilled if security agencies allow the Osun politicians who openly incited the electorate to “kill Accord Party members,” or campaigned that “don’t vote for any other candidate except the APC candidate,” are allowed to get away with their incendiary outbursts.

The scandalous statement by Nyesom Wike, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, that if the president had desired to win Osun State “at all cost,” “he would have been there, and we would have won it, and there’s nothing the governor can do,” is nothing short of the sort of impunity that stands condemned.

It is a clear alert, and a poster of the vile and wiles of a few that undermine the integrity of elections. We hold dearly the orthodox principle of one person, one vote in an election. This principle must not be allowed to degenerate into a farce if Nigerian democracy is to survive.