By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu
As Nigeria marked 66 years of independence on 1 October, the Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Edo State, Jarrett Tenebe, turned prayerful. Mr Tenebe is not a priest, pastor, or an Imam. He claims to be a professional politician. Ordinarily, that should mean that he is interested in votes and in voters. But those do not apparently concern him.
Mr Tenebe’s public induction into the Prayer Warriors’ Hall of Fame has context. The governor of Edo State, Monday Okpebholo, has repeatedly and with increasing vigour promised a haul of 2.5 million votes from Edo State for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the 2027 presidential elections. He is that exact.
So, on Independence Day, Jarrett Tenebe turned to prayers to underscore that promise as non-negotiable. He did not pray for powers of persuasion or performance to convince the voters of Edo State. Instead, his prayers were for “those who do not wish Edo APC well” in its pursuit of the governor’s promise. “So, anybody who refuses”, he continued, “who wants to stand in our way, for us not to have those votes that we intend to give to Mr President, AK-47 fire.”
This was surely not your standard campaign stump speech. It was a threat directed at the voters and fits a recent pattern of similar utterances by leading members of the ruling party all over the country.
Two months ago, the APC Senator representing Osun East in the upper chamber of Nigeria’s National Assembly, Francis Fadahunsi, opened the season of violence on the eve of the off-cycle governorship election in the state. The incumbent governor (and eventual winner) in the contest, Ademola Adeleke, ran on the ticket of the Accord Party. Ahead of polling day, Senator Fadahunsi, addressing his party supporters, described the yellow-coloured cap worn by supporters of the Accord Party as “Yellow Fever cap; it is the cap of an animal.” He proceeded to exhort them: “So, we have come to tell you, up till the day of the election, if we see them, kill them.”
The following day, the Nigeria Police Force reportedly invited the Senator to a meeting. Not much was heard thereafter of what transpired, if any.
At the end of the same month of August, the Chairman-elect of the Kuje Area Council in Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory, Danjuma Shekwolo, let it be known for the benefit of residents of the local government that “it’s either you are for the APC, or you leave the area council.” He did not mean that as an endearment. For the record, Nigeria’s constitution prohibits internal banishment.
One week later, youthful heavies chanting the name of a state governor, a Catholic priest, blocked the road and prevented Peter Obi, an opposition candidate for the presidency, from visiting communities in Benue State. The priest-governor was not at Mass.
Similar threats or actual acts of violence involving the ruling party and its supporters or senior surrogates have been reported in other Nigerian states, including Delta, Enugu, Kaduna, Kano, Kogi, and Rivers.
In response to this pattern, law enforcement and the security agencies have been eloquently silent, as has the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Yet, under section 132(b) of the Electoral Act, it is a felony for any person to inflict or threaten to inflict “by himself or by any other person, any minor or serious injury, damage, harm or loss on or against a person to induce or compel that person to vote or refrain from voting, or on account of such person having voted or refrained from voting.” A person convicted of this crime may be punished with imprisonment for up to three years.
That will not happen, however, if the security and law enforcement agencies continue in their complicit silence.
In the absence of action by law enforcement, it has been left to newspapers to call attention to the dangers in the pattern of violent intimidation and threats from the ruling party.
Last month, the Editorial Board of the Punch called attention to “a disturbing and increasingly dangerous belief among some Nigerian politicians that political power confers the right to intimidate, threaten and silence citizens.” The newspaper warned that “such conduct is not politics; it is an assault on democracy, citizenship, and basic decency.”
There is, however, something more troubling than the practised indifference of law enforcement and security agencies.
One week after the Osun State governorship elections in August, at the formal onset of the general election campaign season, the presidential candidates of all parties met in Abuja to sign a “Peace Accord” ahead of the 2027 presidential elections. Under the Accord, they undertook “to shun violence, hate speech, misinformation, personal attacks and other conduct capable of undermining the electoral process.”
The Peace Accord is the initiative of what increasingly looks like an ostentatiously named National Peace Committee (NPC). It is led by former Head of State, Abdulsalami Abubakar and has Ebitu Ukiwe, second-in-command during the early years of the regime of Ibrahim Babangida, as the Vice-Chair. Other members include the Sultan of Sokoto; John Cardinal Onaiyekan, the former Catholic Archbishop of Abuja; business moguls, Aliko Dangote and Femi Otedola; nonagenarian and publisher of Vanguard newspaper, Sam Amuka; and former president of the Nigerian Bar Association, Priscilla Kuye.
This NPC is coordinated by Dr Matthew Hassan Kukah, Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, with its secretariat at the eponymous Kukah Centre.
Following the latest signing of the Peace Accord in Abuja, the NPC has taken the accord to the political parties in the various states. The enthusiasm of the committee may be admirable, but its promise is lacking in both belief and benchmarks. Also, two main presidential candidates – sitting President Bola Tinubu of the APC and former Vice-President Abubakar Atiku – were conspicuously absent at the signing ceremony.
The only thing more deafening than the indifference of security and law enforcement to the rising violence and threats of violence in the current campaign season is the silence of the NPC. Having got the parties to sign up to an accord committing to supposedly peaceful elections, the committee appears to have declared victory and deplaned. Their Peace Accord is devoid of any benchmarks of performance, monitoring, compliance, or fulfilment. At best, it is a collective act of wishful thinking. Moreover, the continuing silence of the NPC encourages a perception that their accord is a tool to protect a violent incumbency project.
That is dangerous. The NPC has had enough practice in unmonitored Peace Accords over the past decade in elections of various kinds, both general and off-cycle. None has held up. Under their watch, Elections have increasingly become murder Olympiads in which competitors – usually led by the incumbent party – declare open season on voters and the voting process under the committee’s dutiful silence. After each election, the committee indulges in ritual self-congratulation until the next vote, when it runs a rinse-and-repeat.
It is increasingly self-evident that these agreements advocated or mediated by the NPC have neither accord in their intent nor peace in view. If the committee wishes to be taken seriously, at least three things must change and urgently too.
First, it must end its complicit silence and lead or construct an active civic coalition to face down acts or threats of violence by all sides. An NPC that continues to observe a self-imposed code of Omerta in the face of acts and threats of violence against voters and their communities is not neutral. It supports violence.
Second, it will be necessary to review the membership of the Committee. People like Femi Otedola and Aliko Dangote, whose exposure to the government of the day is incalculable, have a duty to stand down in favour of more credible figures of impartiality. It is not even in their interests to claim non-partisanship. They are not.
Third, the Committee must establish clear benchmarks for monitoring, compliance, and public reporting on observance as well as breach of the Peace Accord or lack thereof. Without these, the Committee may be best served by an honest admission that its mission has passed its sell-by date. Honest admission in this circumstance would be an act of courage. To persist in the present course would be deceit. A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at chidi.odinkalu@tufts.edu
