At least 800 people were feared dead and over 65,000 displaced in a deadly post-election violence that swept across the north of Nigeria in 2011. The victims were killed in three days of rioting.
The violence had begun with widespread protests by supporters of the Candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Muhammadu Buhari, following the re-election of incumbent President, Goodluck Jonathan of the People's Democratic Party (PDP).
The protests then degenerated into violent riots or sectarian killings in the northern states of Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Niger, Sokoto, Yobe, and Zamfara.
In spite of government’s pledge to get those responsible for riots no one has been brought to book.
The April elections had been heralded as one of the fairest in Nigeria's history, but they were also among the bloodiest.
How can the country avoid a repetition of the bloodletting that trailed the outcome of the 2011 election?
A country of more than 160 million people, blessed with abundant natural oil and gas resources but bedeviled by poverty, corruption and mismanagement, the incidents of 2011 is a reminder that there are underlying grievances that need to be addressed if similar occurrences are to be avoided in coming elections.
Nigeria's ruling elite have continuously failed its people; struggles for power have been fought by all means, and the formally democratic system has not delivered benefits to the ordinary citizen.
This is where Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) a German Non-Governmental Organisation comes into the picture.
As FES Resident Representative, Mr. Thomas Mattig notes “We are in the middle of two elections, the one in 2011 and the one in 2015, and in order to prevent what happened in 2011-of violence, youth unrest-we think it is the time to start to do something.”
Reports had shown that the perpetrators of the 2011 post election violence were mainly youths.
And with an ever increasing youth population, Mr. Lai Olurode, National commissioner with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), opined that the youths can be very vulnerable to manipulation and therefore it is important to focus on them as according to him, they are those that are mostly used by the politicians to perpetrate all manner of violence.
And as he puts it: “They are vulnerable to be used by the key players. They are not really the key players. In terms of their size, in terms of their energy, they are not a group that you can just dispense with or write off. It is good to focus on them.”
Mr. Olurode who also doubles as Chairman Board of the Electoral Institute in INEC, Abuja points out that in order to avoid a repeat of the violence, there is need for government to intensify “our voter education activities.
“INEC had never envisaged that if it conducted a good election, the backlash would be bloody. We never thought that in the course of conducting a good election they would react violently to the outcome of a good election. I think that is a mistake and as 2015 approaches, we are going to see what we can do to change this negative behaviour. So that with sufficient voters education people will now have an idea how should a winner emerge so that they don’t just think that if someone has won in his polling unit then he should win in my polling unit. It is not like that!
But Executive Director Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO), Mr. Ibuchukwu Ezike thinks otherwise.
He noted that the inability of the country’s leadership to provide the basic necessities of life is the root cause of the violence.
“There have been cases of both political and non political crisis which are borne out of the type of leadership we have had over the years. So if we don’t address the inequality, the corruption issues, we might not be able to address the problem.”
He further said “it is not just because of elections because if somebody is hungry and has not fed, if somebody has no place to lay his head, if somebody is of school age and is not going school, if somebody has finished the university and has no means of livelihood, no matter what you do; these issues have to be addressed.
“The immediate cause was the result arising from the 2011 election but there are remote causes which are very monumental. These are the issues that should be addressed.”
Working in partnership with Federal and States Ministries of Education, INEC has introduced voters’ education clubs in secondary school across the country to inculcate into the students the concept of voting at a tender age.
“INEC has already commenced a process of engaging youths in secondary schools. The youths need more information. We are partnering with the Nigerian Association of School Principals, we are also partnering with NUC so that we would be able to give the right orientation to youths,” Mr. Olurode explained.
Mr. Ezike didn’t agree less when he said that “mass education, political education both for the politicians and the non-politicians on the need for a good and credible election, to respect the laws guiding elections.”
But the FES Resident Representative sees a snag in the process of getting Nigerians imbibe the culture of respect for electoral laws as according to him the present insecurity in the northern part of the country has made it difficult to reach out to youths in the region.
“There is a lot to do but the problem of insecurity doesn’t allow you to go there. But a lot of donors are now shifting from there, bringing the money back to the south. It is a big problem. But as long as the State cannot guarantee security, you are not inclined to send your staff there because it is dangerous,” Mr. Mattig said.
However, the CLO Executive Director opined that to avoid the experience of 2011, there is need for government to begin to prosecute those who were found to have committed electoral crimes as it would serve as a deterrent to others.
According to him, “It is in ensuring that those who refuse to abide by these laws are brought to book by being prosecuted after the elections. We see that in Kenya, as soon as the elections were completed people were prosecuted. We have never seen that kind of thing in Nigeria it would serve as a deterrent to those who would want to use the system for their own selfish interest.”
But political analysts believe that in order to achieve results, there is need for Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) and the Independent National Electoral Commission to increase their present level of voter education and awareness among northern youth so that 2015 would be free of the trauma of post election 2011.
FrontiersNews
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