By Promise Adiele
The recent 2025 Anambra gubernatorial election witnessed a resurgence of electoral criminality in varying degrees. The eventual success of criminality in shaping the election’s outcome underscores its role as an active ingredient in the reconstruction of democratic values towards despicable ends. According to the results announced by the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC), Chukwuma Soludo, the APGA candidate, won the election and was re-elected for a second term. However, reports and pictures of vote buying, open inducement of voters with packs of sausages, cans of drink, and shameless manipulation of the electoral process are, undoubtedly, expressions of democratic ignominy reminiscent of the country’s recent electoral experiences. In Anambra, it was the hand of Esau in the sinister entrenchments of electoral criminality, but the voice of Jacob in the announcement of the results. Officers of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) were on hand to arrest persons wearing APGA insignia as the party’s accredited agents with bundles of cash. Sadly, the EFCC, in all its loathsome impotence, has not paraded any of the APGA agents caught red-handed in electoral malfeasance. Yet, many people, aware of all these electoral infractions, have congratulated Soludo, including Mr President. Indeed, it is a long way out for Nigeria.
One colleague of mine, a certified conspiracy theorist at the University of Port-Harcourt, has built a believable argument around the election, even though it sounds reductionist and simplistic. According to him, Chukwuma Soludo could only emerge as governor successfully through this kind of mangled electoral process because he made a deal with Oga on Top to take the state as governor and return the state in 2027 during the presidential election. Normally, such a conspiracy theory would flounder on the heels of a superior argument, but given the progressive mutation of electoral criminality that characterised recent elections in the country, it becomes difficult to argue his position even for a moment. My first question was simple – why would Oga on Top sabotage an APC governorship candidate in Anambra to support the APGA candidate? My friend laughed so hard over the phone. Of course, I was ready to play the devil’s advocate. When he stopped laughing, his submission was direct: “Prof, agreement is agreement. Oga on Top does not trust the APC candidate in the state.” With that submission, he hung up. Surely, Anambra voters were inevitable victims of emotional cancellations during the election.
As Nigeria slumbers towards matriculating to a democratic culture that would guarantee free and fair elections, beneficiaries of political power in different guises also continue to sabotage those efforts. Many state institutions are not left out. It is shocking to a well-meaning mind that after the last Anambra gubernatorial election, no criminal has been paraded, much less arraigned for a crime against democracy. Regrettably, state institutions and sundry law enforcement groups, populated by hungry, deprived, and poorly remunerated officials, become accomplices in the submerging of the electoral process. Thus, the reputation of our country hangs indeterminately, fluctuating as the giant of Africa in one respect and as a Country of Particular Concern in another respect. The world is a global village made possible by sophisticated information technology. Undoubtedly, the publics of many countries of the world have seen multiple videos during the Anambra election where voters lined up to collect money and other material items before voting. Does it constitute a disgrace to our country? I think so. Disgrace must be understood within the context of its continual rehabilitation by Nigeria’s public officers and the political class. The internet never forgets.
While many people have congratulated APGA’s Chukuwa Soludo as the worthy winner of the gubernatorial election in Anambra state, many others insist that he is a beneficiary of a fraudulent electoral process executed under a superstructure of subterranean complexities. Perhaps his pseudo-victory could be a reward for his mindless alignment with Nigeria’s power centres, whose political and economic strategies have gravitated towards anti-populism while embracing pro-bourgeois conspiracy. While some losers in the Anambra election have accepted the result with equanimity, refusing to go to court for obvious reasons, the Labour Party (LP) and African Democratic Congress (ADC) candidates have rejected the result, insisting it was a disgraceful charade unworthy to be called an election. Whether they would head to the courts to seek redress is not yet known, but given the reputation of our judiciary, going to court would be an exercise in futility. It is the story of Nigeria. It defeats every scintilla of reason that some Nigerians hang their patriotic pegs on supporting evil in the land while jeering at leftists who frown at these practices that undermine the integrity of the country. While the latter pray and hope for an ideological renewal of the country, a revival of its decaying economic, sociological and political outposts, the self-styled patriots insist on the perpetuation of the fetid contradictions that have defined the country.
Electoral criminality is gaining traction across Nigeria by riding on the back of the people’s poverty-stricken helplessness, which makes them vulnerable to cheap inducements. I watched with dismay as fully grown men with wades of naira and other flimsy edible items instructed a long queue of people on where they would vote as they collected 500 naira, gala sausage and malt drink. The instructions were in the Igbo language, the dominant language of the local people. Is it possible that those who congratulated Soludo did not see these videos before their congratulatory messages? Or have we resigned to fate, accepted criminality and wanton perfidy as part of our democratic armoury, which we must all resort to for victory? Does it also mean that it is no longer possible to achieve a free, fair and credible election in Nigeria where the people’s voices must count? It appears that the machinery of political hegemony in Nigeria is lubricated by poverty, which makes the people sacrifice their future for “anything” edible, no matter how minuscule. It violates the sensibilities to see mothers, fathers and youths line up to collect 500, a gala sausage and a malt drink to fritter away their future.
The choice of the cheap inducement items during the gubernatorial election in Anambra testifies to the absence of empowerment in the state and the degree of poverty among the people. On that score, Soludo and his APGA party did not deserve another term. Although Mr President declared that Soludo’s re-election is a function of his “visionary leadership,” there is a sense in which we can say that the “visionary leadership” which the president talked about is an illusory conjecture of the imagination. “Visionary leadership” in a state ravaged by acute poverty, insecurity, infrastructural decay and despotism? It is easy for the president to call Soludo a “visionary leader” under such unpropitious conditions because birds of a feather flock together. Such political rhetoric mocks the electorate and caricatures genuine democratic principles. If Nigeria’s democratic continuities towards 2027 draw on the conduct of such elections like the Anambra experience, it follows that the 2027 election is a foregone conclusion. Therefore, we must prepare to avert the impending guaranteed perdition, an extension of the current observable social and economic disarray in our country. Anyone who loves Nigeria would be concerned about the outcome of the Anambra election. Regrettably, Nigerians inexplicably reconcile themselves to immoral outcomes as long as it gratifies them in the immediate, one way or another.
Our political spaces stink. Our electoral processes deserve immediate healing in the form of electoral reforms. Otherwise, the grotesque procession we like to call an election will continue to produce wicked, incompetent people whose only commitment is to accomplish inordinate ends. The media should do more to push for electoral reforms. Sadly, many media houses are compromised, therefore, they speak from both sides of their mouths in the service of demagogic communities. Also, real patriots, those who genuinely love this country and never shy away from identifying regular putrefactions in the corridors of power, should push for judicial reforms. The Nigerian judiciary is damaged but not beyond redemption. The decay in our electoral process and the judiciary affirms the unworkability of democracy in the country. If we must practice real democracy, then we must indeed practice democracy, which the world would applaud. The new INEC chairman has his work cut out, although many people do not expect much from him. Also, university lecturers recruited as ad-hoc electoral officers should desist from becoming willing instruments for lacerating democracy. My academic constituency is part of the problem, yes, we are. Chukwuma Soludo may celebrate all he can now, but truly, the Anambra election has taken its place in the country’s electoral hall of infamy. We will always remember. May this disgrace not happen again. As the Igbo would say – Ozoemene.
Promise Adiele is of the Mountain Top University and can be reached via promee01@yahoo.com; @drpee4
