Alreadythe next election cycle is almost here with us. As usual the frenzy is catching up. We first saw politicians fighting for platforms. We also sensed agents of the ruling party at the centre throwing in enough spanners into the wheels of various opposition political parties. They got many of the prominent ones incapacitated. The malfeasance has gone down a little bit but it hasn’t ceased and if truth be told it won’t stop until the poll, especially the presidential election, is done with.

We have also witnessed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the electoral umpire, exhibiting traits that have raised concerns over its independence and neutrality. Unresolved controversy still surrounds the past activities of the national chairman of the electoral body, Prof Joash Amupitan. It is feared some of the electoral commissioners were either card-carrying members or sympathizers of the ruling party at the centre. It is very instructive to know that the incumbent national chairman of the ruling party in the country, the All Progressives Congress (APC) was at one time a principal officer of INEC. The question on many lips has been: when did he conclude his job with the commission, joined the party to qualify to become the national chairman of the party. These are some of the things a section of the critical citizens are asking. 

Is the meteoric climb about brilliance and competence or call up for “greater service,” credence having been gained from past outings. It must be recalled that the immediate past national chairman of this same electoral body was appointed an Ambassador not long ago by the government of the ruling party under President Bola Tinubu. The question isn’t about the individual’s right to occupy public office in the country, but Nigerians feel and insist it is more about the propriety of the process, right actions that enhance credibility and respect to channels for national development.

These individuals can be of use elsewhere but taking from the electoral umpire positions few months after they left those offices and throwing them into very sensitive offices naturally would throw variables that would touch on confidence. When citizens lose trust over key institutions, the outcomes are never pleasant. When the people can’t count on the security agencies and personnel to do a good job, they don’t only lose interest, they cease from cooperating.  This would mean more harm for the system and country.

The same consequences follow contradictions in the electoral system and processes. When we carry on a careless manner in the handling of the electoral body, recruitment and posting of their staff, like we saw the  director of the electoral body redeployed on technology (ICT) in the last minutes preceding the presidential election in 2023, confidence and credibility in the body and of course its processes are eroded and what naturally would follow would be voters apathy. If we were a very serious country desiring sustainable progress, the fact that only 28 percent of more 100 million registered voters cast ballots to elect for us a president should be something to worry all of us. The difficulty to achieve a buy-in by successive governments at the centre is partially attributable to this poor and sometimes crude handling of matters concerning our electoral body.

We have become used to mouthing platitudes among frequent promises and pledges to learn from our often terrible electoral organizations and to do the right things the next time but the next opportunity comes we discover our political players rather than work to bring their pledges to reality development more sophisticated tactics to further undercut the electoral rules and regulations. 

In the months preceding the coming general elections, scheduled for January and February next year evidence available can only point to the fact the order is alive and strong. There are traces it is undergoing mutation, meaning what we will see would go far beyond whatever we have seen as electoral misbehaviour many citizens say it would be a coronation of some sorts but those with deep knowledge insist it would be far more than a coronation. Manipulation would be brazen. Many citizens would be hurt in the process. The fear is palpable, that the seeds to real dictatorship, a phenomenon we have feared for decades, would be finally sowed with the polls next year.

The grounds for the fears seem credible. We have seen raw power triumph over the will of the people severally between 2023 and now with the most prominent example coming from Rivers State where the federal government as a solution to perceived insecurity suspended the Executive and the Legislature all at the same time. The same challenge faced the President Goodluck Jonathan he proclaimed “state of emergency” without sacking the governor. President Tinubu did and his minister from Rivers State appeared very satisfied with it. 

Now the incumbent governor of the state, we have been told, entered into an agreement brokered by the president where his right to re-contest was with the pen signed off. In this democracy we have seen it and no whimper is coming from anywhere. In the same state someone is the proprietor of all the political parties, and he is busy fielding candidates in all of them and telling whoever cares to listen, “this state has become part of my estate and there’s nothing anyone can do.”

Before our eyes the assault on sound democratic principles is happening and to everyone’s dismay working out seamlessly and no one is talking. All we do is stay in our safe corners talking, pontificating on utopian positions and cursing no one in particular. We are blind to what the development portends for the development of our country, the democracy, development of endurable political culture and particularly the foreboding it holds for the 2027 elections with direct reference to the presidential election.

There is the hurried amendments to the electoral law and the compressed time the electoral body has churned out. The ruling party began electronic registration of members many months ahead of the announcement by the election body and the requirement to have the list deposited with the commission. If credibility was an issue, the political class, government and the electoral body had enough time between the end of elections in 2023 to 2025 to have raised pertinent matters surrounding the electoral process, examine them and do whatever was necessary but as we are used to doing everything was left for the dying hours because people benefit from chaos.

 The new law tried to prevent people from being able to switch political party allegiance. On the surface it looked like a good law but we know the devil doesn’t do evil bearing his real image. He comes in the garb of an angel of good and mercy. The same forces of retrogression prescribed consensus insisting all candidates must agree before this can come through and direct primaries to elect party candidates for the general elections. The authors of subversion knowing our make up were well aware there won’t be standard to the process so people could be “caged” or reined in.  

We have seen what the parties made of consensus and direct primaries last week. We saw the new pattern  educated citizens of this country introduced about how to count people in queues. It was a spectacle to behold. It provided comic relief to citizens in these hard times even though it shouldn’t be. Unfortunately, it became a case of “laughing away destiny.” This is a dangerous trend. 

Elections are predictable. This one of 2027 is no exception. The signs aren’t good. This is the truth. The “enforcer command” assembled by the ruling party is firmly established. The commanders are no democrats. They are tyrants relegated to the periphery before but now they are the men on the stage backed up by state apparatchik. They have had successful  rehearsal, few more trials will come through with the elections in Ekiti and Osun states before the grand outing in the early months of 2027.

 The lesson they know which strengthens their resolve is that the people have been beaten into the corner of conspiratorial passivity. Anyone can desecrate the land and even kill more than half of the population, nobody would raise a voice of repulsion. It will be silence. We would laugh at the folly from our safe places and allow aberration to stay on and even to become the culture. I pity the opposition, they would run to question while the ruling party would move towards prepared answers. The presidential election won’t be free, fair and credible. You will call us at this end true prophets. It is just a matter of time.