Tony Okocha’s Confession And Why Election Rigging Thrives

A trending video is showing the All Progressives Congress (APC) caretaker chairman in Rivers State, Tony Okocha, making a confession of election rigging. Speaking to the press, the pro-Wike politician recalled with emphasis how local government election results were written in his office while he was working as Governor Wike’s chief of staff.

This video has expectedly drawn a lot of interest as many social media commentators express shock at the level of shamelessness and daredevilry. But this is not the first time we are seeing such an open confession of electoral crime. In 2004, Chief Chris Uba, the estranged godfather of then Anambra governor, Chris Ngige, summoned the press to tell the world how they rigged the 2003 gubernatorial polls that brought in the governor. Uba was frustrated at how his entire antics had failed to end the governor’s stay in office after the latter had allegedly broken the agreement he entered into with him. Later on, President Obasanjo, in an angry reply letter to Audu Ogbe, then chairman of his party, PDP, narrated how Uba and Ngige had come to his house in an attempt to settle their differences, and at a point, Uba challenged Ngige, “You know you did not win the election?” Ngige answered in the affirmative, to which Uba responded, “and you did not know how we did it.” According to Obasanjo, at that point, he ordered the two men out of his house. We shall return to this story later.

The reason Okocha and Uba would publicly announce their crime of rigging is simply that they knew nothing will happen. I have several times written on how our culture of impunity has become the greatest hindrance to our progress as a nation. Last year, in a two-part article on the 2023 elections, I once again argued that there is no better assured way to stop rigging than to punish riggers by simply giving effect to our electoral laws that make rigging a crime.

It is the absence of such legal sanctions that is feeding the wantonness of riggers and even emboldening them to the extent that they find courage to advertise their criminal accomplishments. No one admits to doing anything if such admission will bring them an unpleasant outcome. Only a fool does so.

But then do we need such open confessions to know that our elections are rigged and who the riggers are? Not at all! The fact of rigging is boldly written all over our elections since 1964 to 2023. We do not require the services of soothsayers to decipher the rot. Our problem is not lack of awareness of evil but of the will to confront the evil we are aware of.

For local government elections in particular, who does not know that they have become nothing but a charade, a dance of madness where state governors simply hand scripts of winners and losers to their state Independent Electoral Commission (SIEC) to read out? We do not need confessions from a Tony Okocha to know this. From Kebbi to Lagos, Borno to Cross River, the story is the same. I will be surprised to learn of one instance of free and fair LG polls. As a journalist, I monitored LG elections in Lagos and Anambra states and the experience was spine-chilling.

Now back to the story Obasanjo told about his encounter with Ngige and Uba. That episode epitomises how much unwilling we as a nation are to confront this perennial demon of electoral malpractice ruining our democracy. How can two persons confess to election rigging before the president of a nation and all he could do, according to him, was to send them away? Did he for that moment forget his role as the head of the arm of government that should EXECUTE the law?

As intelligently pointed out by a certain lawyer at that time, the moment the president heard that confession from the two electoral criminals and kept it to himself (only to let us know months after in a personal letter to Ogbe), he has become guilty of accessory after the fact. In law, being an accessory after the fact implies that you have contributed in shielding a criminal from facing the law.

More importantly, no matter how sanctimonious Obasanjo may want to sound by telling us how he sent the two men out of his house, fact is that for the two conspirators to boldly confess a felony before the president of their country and the chief implementer of the law, there is more than meets the eyes definitely. And the only explanation I find reasonable is that they are aware that the president is as guilty of the crime as themselves. The 2003 elections, from the state assembly seats to the presidency, were mindlessly rigged, and Obasanjo cannot claim to be ignorant of riggings perpetrated in his favour. In fact, both the presidential and governorship elections were held and rigged on the same day and on the same collation tables. (Today, presidential and governorship polls are held on different days).I learnt from an insider how the results of Ayamelum LGA of Anambra state were written in the house of a prominent politician with agents of PDP inputting fictitious figures to subvert the mandate the voters massively gave to Ojukwu and Peter Obi in the presidential and governorship polls respectively. No doubt, these agents were working for both Uba and Obasanjo..But then assuming (but without conceding) that Obasanjo was not involved in the riggings, it was his duty, once it was confessed before him, to bring those that did so to book.

It is based on all this that the ongoing attempt at the Senate to establish a national body to organise LG elections is, in my view, not the solution. Even if the attempt will succeed (which I doubt), it will not solve the problem. Some people have similarly suggested that INEC be empowered to conduct LG polls. But I ask, has INEC been transparent enough with the elections it has been conducting to be trusted with the additional responsibility of LG elections?

I believe what this proposed arrangement will achieve is to remove the power of rigging from the state governors and transfer same to some elements in the federal government. Those who want to be LG chair or councillor will then no longer chase after the governors but after Abuja. If this happens, then the idea of LG autonomy for which these reforms are proposed would have been defeated, as we would be getting into a worse form of centralisation where some persons in Abuja will be controlling the local governments. The most reliable way of preserving the integrity of our elections remains Institution of a system that will be punishing electoral malpractice without fear or favour.

Henry Chigozie Duru, PhD, teaches journalism and mass communication at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria.