By Lillian Okenwa
As the build-up towards 2023 general elections edges near a feverish pitch with politicians and political parties jostling for superiority, Nigerians can only hope for free, fair, and credible elections.
On August 28, 2007, the late President Umaru Yar’Adua] appointed a 22-member Electoral Reform Committee chaired by the former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Hon. Justice Muhammadu Lawal Uwais. The recommendations were widely considered as both apt and a roadmap for the conduct of credible elections that will meet every standard and value. CLEEN Foundation reported that: “Appropriate recommendations… [were] made to change the election mindsets of Nigerians in order to minimize the spate of violence and rigging in elections and build lasting democratic institutions and culture.” Rather than implement it, the government in power at the time passed the buck to the National Assembly, which totally rejected the report and threw it overboard.
In his article — The Uwais report and the high cost of indifference, veteran journalist Dan Agbese wrote that Yar’Adua “gave the committee twelve months to submit its report to him. It took slightly longer until December 2008. Sadly, by the time the committee submitted its report, the reform-minded president was too ill to do much or anything about it. Yar’Adua’s successor, President Goodluck Jonathan, did not feel sufficiently concerned about electoral reforms and so, he ignored the report…
“President Muhammadu Buhari has not yet publicly expressed his views on the electoral system and the conduct of our elections. It is difficult to know if he approves of the system that merely helps us to muddle through each election circle. Maybe, it is not always politically expedient to wake up the sleeping dog, right? And so, the report, you guessed it, is gathering dust on a government shelf. And we are doing our best to convince ourselves that it does not even exist.
“[H]aving sauntered through the report, I am saddened by the fact that it is willfully neglected by a nation anxious to clean up its electoral system and enhance the integrity of its elections. Nigeria is, perhaps, the only country in the world that makes a remarkable virtue of want and waste. We want solutions to identified problems and we go to great lengths in expenses in search of those solutions only for us to waste them with hardly a thought for the human and material resources wasted…
“In dealing with the problems that bedevil our general elections, the committee identified five fundamental problems. These are, ‘the Nigerian state as the arena of electoral contests, weak democratic institutions, negative political culture, weak constitution/legal framework and lack of independence and capacity of the electoral management bodies.’ The main work of the committee was centred on or around these five fundamental problems in the electoral system.
“The first thing that struck me here is the fact that these problems have been with us for so long they even look normal. We have known nothing much better and so we are unwilling to think that comprehensive electoral reforms could cure these ills and set our elections on the path of credibility and integrity.”
Aside from that widely acclaimed electoral reform committee, Justice Uwais who turned 86 on June 12, 2022, has played his part in numerous ways for the advancement of Nigeria. Whether this generation will adopt or learn from his many contributions is another story.
And as Roland Otaru, SAN said in a lecture delivered at a capacity-building workshop in Ilorin, Kwara state, “the reward for having done something well is having done it. There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but only one view… If we are able to obey the rules and regulations relating to the conduct of elections in our country, we shall always reap the reward for having done something well and when we get to the top of the mountain, it is from only one view, the Electorate can see what has been done transparently by the Electoral umpire…”
Below is a video tribute by many notables on Justice Uwais’ 85th birthday and we have elected to republish it in his honour.
