Chinyere Okoye
11 August 2008
Lagos — Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Maurice Iwu, has warned that democracy in Nigeria and most of the African continent is still young and fragile and must therefore be handled with care.
Speaking at the International Conference Center in Accra, Ghana as a guest speaker at the Third Daily Graphic Governance Dialogue, the INEC Chairman commended Ghana for having made "remarkable strides in democratic governance".
He said Nigeria is doing quite well too, but the fact that democracy is still fragile in the region should never be lost sight of.
Iwu called the attention of African countries to what he called the "pervasive mindset of the western world" which he said only judges the credibility of elections "largely on the basis of the outcome, in which an election can only be adjudged to be 'free and fair' only when an opposition party wins, even when there is clearly one dominant political party as the case in Nigeria and South Africa."
According to the INEC chairman whose presentation was titled "Reflections and Lessons from the 2007 Nigerian Elections", one of the questions managing external influences in local elections in Africa poses presently was highlighted in Nigeria's 2007 elections. The issue, he said, is what the role of election observers in Africa should be.
"How much power and influence should they be allowed to ascribe to themselves in determining what is in the best interest of a society that is not theirs?
"If the concept of foreign election observers is noble why is it that some of the most established and prominent democracies in the world do not encourage them for their elections?", the INEC chairman wondered.
He insisted that "the whole concept and practice of foreign election observation needs to be properly re-examined and situated if emerging democracies are to avoid a veritable landmine during elections".
According to Iwu, "reflections on the 2007 General Elections in Nigeria are, to a substantial extent, reflections on the state and nature of politics and elections in most part of Africa". He said that one of the major developments in the President Olusegun Obasanjo era in Nigeria was the reduction of the effect of ethnicity and regionalism in Nigerian politics.
In the campaigns and preparations for the 2007 elections, he noted, however, there was an unfortunate re-emergence of some of such ugly tendencies. He called on African countries to watch it and step away from such parochial tendencies that not only stunt the development of politics, but also undermine the growth of nations.
The INEC chairman was later hosted at the Nigerian High Commission in Accra, where he addressed Nigerians in Accra. Speaking in the presence of the High Commissioner to Ghana, Senator Musiliu Obanikoro' who was the governorship candidate of the PDP in Lagos in the 2007 elections, Iwu said that if there was one state that the former President Olusegun Obasanjo and his Peoples Democracy Party would have liked to win in the 2007 elections it was Lagos state.
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