It is gratifying that the rightful winner has been declared, but the perpetrators of the electoral fraud must be punished.

Since the return to democracy in Nigeria in 1999, elections and the electoral processes have been beset by a number of fundamental and systemically socio-political problems. Nigeria is a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious society and, logically, these factors have in various ways affected democracy in the country.

Success and failure during elections ought to depend on how political parties and their candidates are able to sell their manifestoes and party ideals, in addition to the capacity and charisma of candidates to sell themselves to the various voting demographics.

Unfortunately, from pre-election to post-election cases, the judiciary has decided many of the winners, whether at the party primary level or in general elections. Indeed, the country is reputed for being the most litigious country in terms of election matters and this is a blight on democracy in the most populous black nation.

But the fundamental issues of flawed electoral processes are not natural disasters, they are essentially man-made. The lack of internal democracy in political parties and other structural and systemic issues contribute to the aberrations that have kept dogging democracy in Nigeria.

The April 15 supplementary gubernatorial election in Adamawa State will go down in history as one of the clearest examples of the human angle of electoral irregularities in Nigeria. After the March 18 governorship and house of assembly elections, the former was declared inconclusive by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) which then announced April 15 for the supplementary election.

There were reports of a peaceful election in the state on that day, yet, collation of results was postponed in about 10 local governments to 11am the next day. However, before the appointed time, the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Hudu Yunusa Ari, sauntered into the collation centre with the state commissioner of police, Mohammed Barde, and a staff of the Department of State Services (DSS), and announced from a piece of paper from his pocket that the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Aisha Dahiru Binani, was winner of the gubernatorial election.

Curiously though, Binani hurriedly delivered her acceptance speech in what some lawyers have described as a ‘self-indicting confirmation’ of her involvement in illegality. Many people have used diverse adjectives to describe what transpired in Adamawa State on April 16. Some called it a civilian coup, some described it as the new low in Nigeria’s democracy, others said it was the climax of electoral impunity, etc.

All the descriptions embodied the outrage the people felt. But all the principal players need to answer some questions, not just from the Adamawa State people or Nigerians; they all must face prosecution after diligent investigations.

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