Spontaneous acts of violence have become part of the political system in Nigeria, especially during and after elections. Last weekend’s poll was no different as hoodlums dared the authorities by disrupting the elections despite the peace accord signed by the presidential candidates and party leaders. THEWILL wonders whether they are intelligent interpreters of their master’s every wish or they acted alone. Michael Jimoh reports
By now, General Abdusalami Abubakar would have been wondering what suddenly went wrong with the just concluded general elections across the country over the weekend. The retired army general and last military head of state of Nigeria who has since morphed into a peacemaker by virtue of his position as the head of the Peace Committee would have seen firsthand, like many of his compatriots, the spate of violence perpetrated by hoodlums when polls held last weekend, mostly in the southern part of the country.
For the second or third time, Gen Abubakar has presided over peace meetings of political gladiators. Fearful of the tension-soaked campaigns and possible degeneration into a state of anarchy during and after the 2015 presidential polls between Goodluck Jonathan of Peoples Democratic Party and Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress, the peace committee brought the contenders to the table whereupon they and their party leaders swore to eschew violence and to also not incite their supporters to acts of violence whatever the outcome of the results.
Then incumbent President Jonathan provided a much needed relief for INEC, the Peace Committee and Nigerians as he conceded defeat to his opponent even before conclusion of the election that year. Abubakar expressed the same sigh of relief four years later after the presidential election between Buhari and his opponent Atiku Abubakar of the PDP.
It was in the hope of a peaceful denouement to the last election that the Infantry commander summoned the presidential candidates to the table last September. With more than a dozen flag bearers and party leaders in attendance, it was all decorum from the participants. Bola Ahmed Tinubu of APC appended his signature to the document. So did Atiku Abubakar of PDP, as well as Peter Obi of Labour Party and Omiyole Sowore of African Action Congress.
To reaffirm their commitment to the peace accord, Abubakar once again summoned them to another meeting late last January at the International Conference Centre, Abuja. Three or so former African presidents were in attendance this time with the convener insisting on the “need for all parties to be committed to the second peace accord.”
According to the former head of state, some of the candidates flouted the first peace accord last September which necessitated the second one.
“There was lack of compliance by the major political parties,” Abubakar let on at the meeting, adding that “forty-four percent of the violations were carried out by spokespersons of the political parties and twenty-six percent by party members. Nineteen percent of the violations were carried out by the presidential candidates themselves, 11 percent by hard-core supporters and four percent by party chairmen.”
Even before the election proper in late February, Abubakar reminded the attendees that “in January 2023, a lot of violence has occurred with at least 15 abductions (including that of a police officer) and at least 30 killings (including those of 11 security personnel)” while there were at least “six attacks at political campaign rallies.”
Against that background, it was necessary to caution the politicians and their followers once more. In the light of the recent electoral violence, it does seem the politicians and their followers threw caution to the wind.
Which is why Abubakar would have been aghast at the needless acts of violence during last week’s polls. Did the contenders and party leaders sign the peace document just for the sake of it? In other words, was Abubakar, and the rest of the committee members including the venerated Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese Matthew Hassan Kukah, deceived?
It does seem so now, considering the widespread violence during the election itself.
One of the very first was the unpremeditated beheading of Samuel Arunsi Eze by a political thug Daniel Mgba in Abia state. The killing took place in Ndi Agwu Community of Abam in Arochukwu council. One of the assailants was himself killed in the process.
Violence in other states and cities were soon recorded and reported in the papers and social media. Polling stations and INEC officials were invariably the target of such attacks by political thugs. In Lagos state alone, polling stations in Amuwo Odofin, Badagry, Fadeyi, Iba, Ijaiye, Ijanikin, Iyana Shashi, Ikate, Ikorodu, LASU Iba, Lekki, Mafoluku, Ogombo, Ojota, Sangotedo, Surulere.were among those affected.
Thugs in Surulere working on behalf of the ruling party APC reportedly “warned voters who were not willing to vote for the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu to vacate the polling units while policemen looked away.”
If the police looked away while the thugs operated in Surulere, their action was even more damning at Ogombo Primary School. According to one account, “thugs chased away voters and locked the gates while police officers stood still, smiling at them,” a situation that was not “different at Ojota Senior Secondary School.”
The thugs did not stop there, they snatched the phone of popular rap artiste Falz, scattered the ballot boxes in the polling station and then dumped them into the gutter while the law enforcement agents watched. “It took the intervention of the military personnel,” a report stated “who were also overstretched, to restore peace and orderliness in some of the affected polling units.”
Lagos state police chief, Idowu Owohunwa confirmed the attacks by thugs on polling stations during the elections in the state. Surveying the exercise from high above on a police chopper, Owohunwa later told reporters he and his team visited places like Maryland, Mafoloku in Oshodi and Surulere “where armed thugs disrupted voting exercises and snatched and burnt ballot boxes.” Continuing, the police boss said “we visited about five polling units in Epe, and there was this family way of approaching the process. I interacted with them, and they insisted that Epe was calm. They are a peaceful family, so regardless of the political divide, they remain one family and work to ensure peace.”
“What we are dealing with here has to do with human conduct,” Owohunwa went on. “It could be unpredictable or driven by passion, emotion, or criminal intent. We recorded specific instances of thuggery and violence. These things will always happen, and when they do, we will implement a response plan to be able to respond to most of those incidents. We have made arrests and recoveries.”
As if replaying the murder scene in Abia state where Arunsi Eze was killed, thugs shot and killed a man identified as Akayama, an Economics graduate of Abubakar Audu University, Ayingba Kogi state. He was killed at a polling station in Iji-Anyigba Kogi state. Thugs also chased voters and made away with INEC materials from polling units at Abejukolo, Agbeji, Ajiolo, Dekina and Ejule communities.
The same sorry tale of intimidation and destruction of voting materials have also been reported in places like Benin, Warri, Gworza in Borno state, Shiroro in Niger state and Safana council area in Katsina state. There have been attacks in no fewer than five or six states across the country during the presidential and NASS polls.
To be sure, electoral violence isn’t such a novel thing in Nigeria. Nigerians of a certain generation remember the days of Operation Wetie in the Western region in the fifties and sixties where houses belonging to members of the opposition were torched and burnt, and some of them killed. It continued in the Second Republic when political disturbances erupted in Ondo state after the governorship elections in 1983.
Of course, politicians themselves have encouraged political violence either before, during or after elections. Nigerians still remember very well the infamous remark credited to former President Olusegun Obasanjo that the election in one year was a “do or die affair.”
It is just very possible that the current crop of politicians and their foot-soldiers have borrowed a leaf from OBJ’s boast then.
The murder of Arunsi Eze in the South east may have been precipitated for selfish reasons, other factors have also fuelled electoral violence in the geopolitical region. Chief among them is the mandatory sit-at-home order by IPOB before elections. Before the Anambra state governorship election in 2018, for instance, the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) threatened to scuttle the polls, giving a stay-at-home order to residents of the state and potential voters. It got everyone aflutter – especially political stakeholders in the state in particular and the entire country in general.
Thankfully, the proposed boycott by IPOB never got to be. The election came and went peacefully, producing incumbent governor Wilie Obiano for a second term in a state with the motto: Light of the Nation. Contrary to the position of the regional separatist group, the light in Anambra was not dimmed in any way.
Recalling what happened at the time and in connection with the general elections last week and mid-March, Chief Alex Ogbonnia, spokesperson of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Igbo socio-cultural group stated late last month that “IPOB will not and they cannot stop this election from holding. There have been instances in the past like the second tenure of Governor (Willie) Obiano, the IPOB said there won’t be any election and a lot of us at the Igbo level, we intervened and the election was held.”
The will of the people of Anambra state, Ogbonnia went on, “would overwhelm every distraction from participating in the poll in the South-East.”
But recent indications have shown that despite the will of the people to go forth and vote during the last polls, there may have been distractions all the same, at least in the Enugu north senatorial zone. What happened?
As reported in the newspapers last week, gunmen surprised and attacked the campaign convoy of the Peoples Democratic Party at Eke-Otu in Amechi Awkunanaw Enugu state. The driver in one of the campaign buses was killed instantly while a senatorial candidate for the party survived the ambush.
At about the same time in the same senatorial zone, Labour Party candidate Oyibo Chukwu was shot and killed in a separate attack along with five members of his party. The killers added a macabre twist to their blood orgy: they set their bodies ablaze with the vehicles they were travelling in.
Bizarre by every account, such acts of casual electoral violence is not new in the region, thus showing indications that the election might not hold. Though not directly linked to the attacks, IPOB has also not claimed responsibility for the double mid-afternoon tragedies in the state.
Even so, IPOB itself has been linked in the past with such coordinated murders and destruction of government-owned facilities in parts of the South east. What is their objective? To destabilize the region so that elections will not hold. If that was the aim of the attackers last week, they succeeded partly. In the wake of the killings, INEC postponed the election held nation-wide yesterday to March 11.
Before the killings last week, the South east had been a hotbed of the regional separatist group attacking INEC officials and its facilities to create an unmanageable situation so that elections will not hold. In one viral video after one such attack in Enugu, hooded gunmen ambushed a man driving a red Toyota car, threatened him and then deflated the tyres with gunshots. One of the masked men later said: “We don’t want any political activity in the area.”
The Nigeria Army had known that for long, insisting at one time that IPOB and its more militant arm, Eastern Security Network, were responsible for killings and destruction of property in the benighted region. As far back as November 2021, the Army spokesman then, Brig-Gen Onyema Nwachukwu let it be known that the two groups were, indeed, responsible for “killings, destruction and total insecurity in the South east.”
According to the Public Relations Officer of the NA then, Nwachukwu disclosed that IPOB and ESN did take part in the needless destruction and then turned around to blame the Army. He cited an incident where “members of IPOB and ESN operatives recently destroyed properties of people at Izombe Community of Oguta Local Government Area of Imo State,” and even went on to name one of the perpetrators, a certain “Chukwunonso Iherue, a convict who was among those who escaped from the Owerri Correctional Centre on April 5.”
The jailbird, Nwachukwu said, “escaped arrest with the help of some persons, but was later neutralised when he shot at troops. Unfortunately, suspected IPOB members ran amok, setting ablaze houses and other property belonging to those perceived to be against them. A reinforcement team was deployed to Izombe and the security situation was immediately stabilised, while peace has since returned to the community.
“It was, however, observed on arrival at the community that the criminal gang also burnt their own troops’ van in addition to other public and private property.”
For last week’s attack on the politicians and their campaign convoys in Enugu state, no suspects have been nabbed so far.
Though IPOB and ESN have been mostly responsible for such outrages in the past, insiders now insist they were not involved. One such source craving anonymity told THEWILL it was the handiwork of a former big-foot politician and former chief executive of the state. The man in question, the source said, had been banned from one of the major parties as a member.
He is also said to come from the same senatorial district as the wounded PDP and deceased LP candidates in the Upper House of the Federal Legislature.
Already, INEC has postponed elections in the affected senatorial zones to March 11. But what is of more concern however to observers – local and international – is whether electoral violence in Nigeria will end anytime soon.
About the Author
Michael Jimoh is a Nigerian journalist with many years experience in print media. He is currently a Special Correspondent with THEWILL.
