At the recent sensitization workshop on non-violence during elections, President Jonathan called on INEC to make sure that all eligible voters are allowed to exercise their civic rights by casting their votes for the candidates of their choice. He noted that anything contrary to this would be a recipe for violence.
Excerpt from the President's remarks below:
“This programme is very apt and we need it so that at the end of the elections, we don’t need to kill people or burn our houses. I believe that we will get there if we all decided to do what is right in this country. I am quite pleased because the emphasis here is electoral violence, not electoral malpractices.
“For electoral malpractices, the courts can help to some extent, but there is nothing the courts can do about electoral violence. If a property is burnt, it is burnt. If you identify the person, he can be charged for arson, but in most cases, mob action is always difficult to control not to talk about people that were killed.
“If you look at the history of our elections, we were told there were significant violence in the elections of the First Republic and that violence led to the collapse of the First Republic. In the Second Republic key actors in the political parties were relating well at the beginning. After the elections, governors from different parties were relating, but as the second round of elections were coming, the behaviour changed and people started abusing and insulting themselves. I was not surprised that the Second Republic did not last when the politicians started abusing themselves, and institutions.
“If you looked at the 2011 elections, we approached it better. I am quite pleased that a number of civil society groups are here. It was generally agreed that the 2011 elections was quite better than any other election in the country and for that, we thank Prof, Jega and his team. Even then, after that election, there were violence in some parts of the country.
“In Kano, property were destroyed. In Bauchi State, 10 Youth Corps members that were involved in the election were slaughtered. Then we asked, what led to this level of violence? The violence came when the results were being announced and not on the day of the election.
“The results from those states had been announced and towards the end, it was clear that a particular candidate was going to win, violence erupted in Kano and Bauchi and we asked, why should there be violence? The only thing one can deduct is that, you can’t say that there were malpractices to favour the candidate that won because in Kano, we got 26 per cent of the votes. In Bauchi, I got 15 per cent of the votes.
“Even in states that were opposition, where we got more than 50 per cent, there were no violence. So, you see that what lead to violence sometimes is not because of electoral malpractices. There are some other causes of violence. First is the factor of the politicians. I believe that one of the key things is the provocative statements we make and when we are making these statements, we forget that the younger ones are listening.
Your followers who call themselves your fans are listening to you. We threaten our opponents.
“A governor came to me and said that a governor in another party told him that immediately they take over government, he will go to jail. If you are now threatening somebody that he will go to jail if you take over government, that person would want to fight as if he is defending himself from going to jail. I am not talking about the Presidential candidates, but our followers. My conviction is that for those of us who are politicians, we must avoid provocative statements, we must avoid threatening ourselves.
“The other factor is that of the religious leaders who preach the hate message, instigating their followers to be confrontational and sometimes, label some candidates as the enemies of their fate. If our religious leaders do that kind of preaching, what do you expect?
“We always follow what our religious leaders say and if our religious leaders keep preaching such hate message what do you expect? in that instance, your followers are not going into the election based on internationally known election principles, they will think they are going for war.
“There is also the pronouncement of our traditional rulers who make provocative statements as if they want to divide the country. This has never helped because as leaders, you have your subjects and followers. When you make these provocative statements, you are indirectly instigating them to become extremely violent”, he said.
“What is the way forward? How do we make sure that, as a nation, we minimize violence if we cannot completely ignore it? I agree that we must not gather the world to discuss electoral violence again. But if we must not do that, we must do certain things to stop it. We have a few weeks to elections and so, there is really nothing much we can do except to strengthen the institution and advise ourselves on how we should conduct ourselves.
“For the government, which I am heading, we must also strengthen the security even though we have challenges because of the situation in parts of the North. INEC also has a key role to play. There are certain things happening now that if not properly handled could lead to violence. First, a number of Nigerians are complaining that they don’t have the PVC. If some people don’t have voters’ card, the assumption is that from the beginning, INEC is going to rig the election and there is the tendency for those people to go violent. I have mentioned it to the INEC chairman to make sure that every eligible Nigerian votes. If they are not able to make sure that every Nigerian votes, that is a recipe for violence.”
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