Off-season polls: Seeking legislative intervention for distorted electoral calendar

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Yakubu, Ariwoola, Akpabio

Exploring what led to off-season elections, GIFT HABIB writes on the need to amend the Electoral Act to ensure that the judiciary dispenses with all political cases before the inauguration of elected officials

Before the November 11 governorship elections in Imo, Kogi, and Bayelsa states, the debate on the rationality of off-season elections has never been as loud as it currently is among stakeholders since the first one was held in 2006. While many think such off-calendar elections are inevitable, others believe they incur more expenses and eat deep into the nation’s resources.

Nigeria has eight off-season governorship elections which include Anambra, Bayelsa, Kogi, Edo, Ondo, Ekiti, Osun, and Imo states. These states are assigned different timetables to elect their governors.

Currently, all off-cycle elections in Nigeria, especially when tied to contests managed by the Independent National Electoral Commission, are governorship polls. Section 180 (2) of the Nigerian Constitution specifies that a governor vacates the office four years from the date they first take the oath of office.

In most cases, especially when an already serving governor wins at a tribunal or court, the term continues since the governors would have been sworn in during the originally determined date.

However, if the court’s decision leads to a new governor taking office, especially if this person belongs to a party different from the incumbent governor, this leads to a new swearing-in date to ensure that the term does not exceed or fall short of the four-year term specified in the constitution.

The other examples of off-cycle elections are largely local government elections, which fall under the purview of the State Independent Electoral Commission and are not necessarily tied to the federal elections that the Independent National Electoral Commission supervises.

Off-season elections are polls held outside the timetable of general elections and this could happen for varying reasons. They are held when there is a need to fill a vacant position due to death, resignation, impeachment, or other reasons.

Since 1999 when Nigeria returned to democracy, general elections have been held every four years, but several reasons have distorted this arrangement, leading to some states having governorship polls outside this arrangement. In the case of Nigeria, court rulings have primarily been responsible for this distortion.

Off-season elections began in Nigeria in 2006, seven years after the beginning of the Fourth Republic, when Peter Obi, then of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, was sworn in as the governor after contesting the result of the 2003 general polls that favoured Chris Ngige, then of the Peoples Democratic Party in Anambra State.

Obi had to begin a fresh term of four years, automatically pushing Anambra State out of the regular four-year cycle. For this reason, Anambra’s next governorship election, going by the four-year cycle, would be in 2025, whereas Nigeria is due to hold general elections in 2027.

In Imo State, for example, after the 2019 polls produced former Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Emeka Ihedioha, as governor, a Supreme Court ruling on January 14, 2020, ordered INEC to withdraw the certificate of return issued to him and give a fresh one to Hope Uzodimma, who it declared as the winner. The ruling implies that Uzodimma’s tenure started counting in 2020, and he will only end his first four-year tenure when another swearing-in happens in 2024.

On April 14, 2007, Kogi State conducted its governorship election; in the end, Ibrahim Idris was declared the winner. Idris was running for the second term while Abubakar Audu of the All Nigeria Peoples Party was an opponent. After Idris was declared winner, Audu told the tribunal that his name had been wrongfully excluded from the list of candidates that were supposed to contest at the polls. He pursued the case till the Appeal Court.

Although the election was nullified, calling for the conduct of a fresh election, Ibrahim Idris won the election. On March 29, 2008, he was re-elected as the Governor of Kogi State. Subsequently, the state held its off-cycle elections in 2012, 2016, and 2020.

Bayelsa State began to conduct off-cycle elections in 2007, when Timipre Sylva, who was at that time, the governorship candidate of the PDP, was declared the winner of the election. What led to disruption in the state’s electoral cycle was the court case instituted by Ebitimi Amgbare, the Action Congress of Nigeria candidate, who challenged the election outcome at the tribunal.

Amgbare lost at the tribunal and approached the Court of Appeal to challenge the initial ruling. He won at the appellate court as the court ordered INEC to conduct a fresh election in the state in 2008. The conduct of the new election disrupted the calendar, even though Sylva won the freshly conducted election and returned to office.

Ondo State’s tale is not different from other states where one of the contestants approached the court after the 2007 governorship election. Olusegun Agagu, the incumbent governor and candidate of the PDP, sought re-election and won. The re-election was however challenged in court by Olusegun Mimiko, the candidate of the Labour Party at that time.

In 2009, the tribunal and the Court of Appeal acknowledged the election and ruled that Mimiko was the actual winner of the polls. He was sworn in as the governor in February 2009. Afterwards, the state conducted elections in October 2012, November 2016, and October 2020. The next election will be held in 2024.

Recently, off-cycle elections were conducted in Bayelsa, Imo, and Kogi states on November 11, 2023.

This round of elections made it the second time governorship elections have been held in the country this year after the March polls that produced new governors in 19 states of the federation.

INEC approved the final list of candidates for the three elections in June 2023 as it marked the first instance of the commission conducting three off-cycle governorship elections simultaneously across different geopolitical zones.

The commission noted that the list was approved in line with the Electoral Act 2022 which required the publication of the list not later than 150 days to the election.

These off-cycle governorship elections were of significant importance, as they came after the February general elections that saw the emergence of President Bola Tinubu.

In all three states, incumbency was a major factor, with Hope Uzodimma of Imo State winning by a wide margin of 540,308 votes, his closest challenger, Samuel Anyanwu of the PDP got 71,503 votes. Uzodimma had claimed that the outcome of the election was a vindication that he truly won in 2019, and had won again leading in all the state’s 27 local government areas.

In Bayelsa State, the incumbent Governor Douye Diri was declared the winner with 175,196 votes to defeat his closest rival, Sylva of the APC, who polled 110,108 votes (not so wide a margin in this case).

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