At the heart of sham general elections held since the advent of democracy in Nigeria are various manifestations of malfeasance. Nigerian politicians and their agents are a bunch of desperadoes out to win at all costs, not minding the damages their inordinate ambition leaves in its trail. Beyond scuttling the democratic process, the bellicosity and shenanigans of these do-or-die politicians and their musclemen fuel much fear in the electorate that they would rather stay indoors than go to exercise their civic duty on election day. The heist of elections Nigeria used to have hit a new low in 2007 such that the announced winner of the presidential poll, the gentlemanly Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, acknowledged in his inaugural speech: “that our elections had some shortcomings,” promising that his government will learn from the mistakes and remedy shortcomings that writ large the election.
True to this pledge, President Yar’Adua, on August 28, 2007, constituted a 22-member Electoral Reform Committee headed by retired Justice Muhammed Uwais to, among other things, “examine the entire electoral process with a view to ensuring that we raise the quality and standard of our general elections and thereby deepen our democracy.” This brief historical excursion is necessitated by the currency of one of the recommendations of this watershed panel. It called for the unbundling of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the creation of a different agency to shoulder aspects of the electoral umpire’s functions. Enter the push for an Electoral Offences Commission, which also got promoted by the Senator Ken Nnamani electoral reform committee set up in 2015 by the Buhari government to do a further look into the report of the Uwais panel.
