Yakubu on Ghana’s elections

The Chairman of the Unbiased Nationwide Electoral Fee of Nigeria, Professor Mahmoud Yakubu, just lately praised the resilience of politicians in Ghana, resembling Nigeria’s (part-time) president and former President John Mahama, who remained along with his occasion regardless of shedding the 2017 presidential election, till he was re-elected. He was elected president of Ghana two weeks in the past.

Yakubu famous: “You not often see in Ghana that individuals transfer from one occasion to a different with each common election…it gives stability. It additionally gives their supporters with stability. So, there are individuals who have supported political events for years. So, whether or not the occasion is in energy or “In opposition, they keep on with the political occasion.”

The professor might not be conscious of former Cross River State Governor Donald Duke’s view that Nigeria didn’t have political events within the classical sense, however some type of particular objective devices utilized by politicians to realize political workplace.

Maybe the power of Ghana’s electoral course of lies within the provision for unbiased candidates in its structure, which additionally doesn’t require candidates to belong to or current political events to run within the elections. An unbiased candidate gained a parliamentary seat in Ghana’s 2020 common elections.

One other doable purpose for the steadiness of political events in Ghana is that unbiased candidates, who’re clearly not affiliated with the ruling occasion or the principle opposition occasion, can develop into key officers in Ghana’s legislature.

These two allocations often is the purpose why Ghanaian politicians don’t cross the political carpet. Within the Eighth Parliament of the Fourth Republic of Ghana, Asima Iddrisu, an unbiased candidate, turned a minority chief, fairly than a member of the principle opposition, the Nationwide Democratic Congress.

In Britain, Betty Boothroyd and Michael Martin, members of the Labor Occasion, served as Speaker of Parliament whereas the Prime Minister was a member of the Conservative Occasion. John Bercow of the Conservative Occasion was Speaker of Parliament beneath each Labor and Conservative prime ministers.

The chair of the British Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, which ensures audit, accountability and oversight of public spending and the federal government’s monetary administration, is often appointed from the opposition occasion.

Even when Professor Yakubu’s appointment as Chairman of the Unbiased Nationwide Electoral Fee will forestall him from advising the Nigerian Nationwide Meeting to amend the Structure to permit unbiased candidates to contest for public workplace, his pedigree as a professor of historical past and worldwide relations ought to persuade him to show them within the subject. The feasibility of such an act.

His specialty in guerrilla warfare would have certified him properly sufficient to outlive on this treacherous land of tampering with the constitutional equipment that protects the privileges of members of Nigeria’s political institution.

Nigeria’s political elite have cleverly included Sections 65(2B), 106(B), 131(C) and 177(C) into the Structure such that “an individual shall be eligible to be elected… as (federal legislator, state legislator, president for the state).” Nigeria and the State Governor solely) if he’s a member of a political occasion and is sponsored by that political occasion.

Political events in Nigeria have become a quilt of secret societies and political cartels that distribute political positions as privileges to anointed followers, who will play ball as they’re dictated. This technique of anointing is aptly expressed within the Yoruba phrase “Baba so’pe,” or because the Grand Chief declared.

Along with praising “the method and end result to this point,” and pledging “to proceed to assist our colleagues on the Electoral Fee of Ghana,” Professor Yakubu attributed the success of the election to Ghana’s adoption of the Nigerian system of asserting election outcomes on the constituency degree. degree.

Till now, the outcomes of elections throughout Ghana, whether or not presidential or legislative, have been despatched to the Ghana Electoral Fee headquarters in Accra, the place they’d be introduced centrally to Ghanaians.

What’s the particular worth of asserting election outcomes on the constituency degree? Maybe compiling the outcomes and asserting them on the constituency degree could forestall miscreants from altering the election outcomes earlier than they arrive on the headquarters of the Electoral Fee of Ghana in Accra.

However this isn’t one thing to be inspired; There may be little significance as to the place the election outcomes are introduced, particularly in a rustic like Ghana, which has a inhabitants of solely 35 million residents, in a small land space of ​​239,567 sq. kilometres.

Some imagine that Professor Yakubu’s a lot hype over nothing relating to Ghana’s profitable elections was merely a ploy to divert consideration from the institutional weaknesses of the Unbiased Nationwide Electoral Fee, which typically held contested elections.

Professor Yakubu should discover a solution to erase INEC’s duty for the dearth of belief by searching for to conduct elections, particularly presidential and gubernatorial ones, in a extra credible method and to the satisfaction of voters and candidates.

It’s shameful that candidates want courtroom rulings to legitimize elections they fought for and gained by expensive and generally violent political campaigns. Sadly, the necessity for the judiciary to confirm the validity of election outcomes comes with its personal challenges.

Other than virtually compromising the workings of democratic processes – from occasion membership to occasion primaries, elections, vote counting, declarations and swearing-in of election winners – it casts a highlight on judicial functionaries.

It’s unlucky that many judges, compromised by the temptations imposed on them by political elites who wish to be in elective positions by all means, have misplaced the dignity and self-respect related to their positions.

It’s a matter of nice remorse that the judiciary, the temple of justice, is so morally challenged that it instructions no shred of respect inside its hallowed chambers or among the many residents who should bear the brunt of a system that adjudicates with out trial. justice.

Just a few days in the past, Nigeria’s new Chief Justice, Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekon, felt so challenged that she needed to virtually pledge that her Supreme Court docket, and the Nationwide Judicial Council which she chairs, would actively search methods to cleanse the judicial system.

That is commendable, and exhibits that the judiciary they want to lead will likely be a listening and delicate judiciary, regardless that it’s of their lordship’s enlightened curiosity to run a clear secure. If the judiciary regains its respect, the consequence would be the means to implement and make sure the rule of regulation on which democracy in Nigeria will likely be primarily based.

Nigerians of the older era keep in mind with nice nostalgia judicial icons resembling Justices Kayode Esho, Chukwudefe Oputa, Louis Mbanefo, Akinola Aguda, Darnley Alexander, Mustapha Akanbi, Augustine Nnamani, Olakunle Orujo, Ido Conrad Taylor and Rosalyn Omotosho, all of whom made marks Indelible in attaining justice in Nigeria.

Naturally, Nigerians additionally keep in mind these justices who awarded the twelve by a two-thirds majority to a popular presidential candidate and people who introduced a gubernatorial candidate from fourth place to first, turning into a veritable governor of two phrases!

If Prof. Yakubu’s INEC handles its a part of the electoral course of flawlessly, election contenders won’t have to resort to the courts for “pointless begging” for justice. A lot will depend on the Unbiased Nationwide Electoral Fee, which has been entrusted with important monetary and ethical sources.

Most significantly, the ethical weight positioned on the Chairman of the Unbiased Nationwide Electoral Fee could also be heavier than the Chief Justice of the Federal Court docket in terms of elections. If the Unbiased Nationwide Electoral Fee does its job properly, the members of the Home of Lords can have no place within the electoral area.

• X:@lekansote1, lekansote.com