After several weeks of fighting and mutual annihilation in the Offa/Oyun axis of Kwara State, not a few people feared that the local government re-run election fixed for Saturday, August 31, 2013 in Offa Local Government Area would be marked, if not marred, by violence.

But, the people proved everyone wrong. They did not only turn out massively to cast their votes, they also comported themselves very well as the polls held without rancour. In fact, both the organisers, the Kwara State Independent Electoral commission (KWSIEC) and the contending political parties, as well as independent observers, adjudged the election free and fair.

But, that is as far as the concord went. Controversy and discordant tunes crept in as soon as the results were announced by KWSIEC. First, the opposition parties faulted the decision to announce the final results in Ilorin, the state capital, instead of Offa, where the results were collated. The All Progressive Congress (APC) has since rejected the result, and asked KWSIEC to release “the official results,” as collated at the various polling centres. It insists the final result declared by KWSIEC chairman, Dr. Uthman Ajidagba, in Ilorin, was doctored to give victory to the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

The bigger drama, however, broke out a few days later when the PDP councillorship candidate for Shawo South West ward, Mr. Jimoh Olawole, who had been declared winner of the election in the ward, rejected the victory, saying he actually lost to the APC candidate and his conscience and religion would not allow him to appropriate a mandate given to another man by the electorate.

Ordinarily, it is commendable that in a country where electoral rascality and outright stealing of mandate have become part and parcel of politicking, one man chose to be different and stand on the path of moral rectitude. It gives fresh hope that Nigeria will finally break away from the grip of the present culture of electoral malfeasance, whereby politicians deploy everything at their disposal to subvert the electoral wishes of the people through all manner of electoral malpractices. It is rather novel, and heartwarming too, that we still have a politician who would reject an electoral victory allocated to him, on the ground that he did not actually win.

But, before we commend Olawole, there are still a handful of questions crying for answers on this rather curious rejection of victory. It is only after these questions have been satisfactorily answered that we can better put what transpired in Offa in perspective and then roll out the drums to celebrate Olawole as yet another Nigerian role model.

The first question is: If Olawole says he did not win, how did he find this out? If the final results were released in Ilorin, the state capital, is it possible for Olawole, who probably did not go beyond the polling booth where he cast his own vote, to categorically tell what happened at other polling booths in the ward? How was he so sure that it was actually the APC candidate who won the election, as he claimed?

If Olawole felt uncomfortable with the victory allocated to him, as the loyal party member of the PDP which he claimed to be, how come he chose a press conference of the APC to make the announcement? Why could he not go to the PDP secretariat and tell his party leaders? Or opt for a non-partisan platform to announce his rejection?

These issues raise questions on possible APC behind-the-scene manipulations, which may have culminated in Olawole’s public rejection of the announcement of his victory. This possibility of APC manipulation, which has been latched on to by the PDP, may however, may be PDP propaganda to discredit Olawole

How true is the claim by the PDP in the state that Olawole was not its candidate for the election, but was actually a polling agent of the APC candidate to the same election? Is it true that Olawole, who was PDP’s candidate in the original election that was invalidated by the court, had actually decamped to APC before the re-run election? If that is true, is it also true that the PDP sought to replace him before the election with a certain Kamarudeen Olalekan Olagunju? Did the state electoral commission write back to the PDP approving the replacement? And, was this done within the time frame permitted by the electoral laws? How come nobody heard of this new PDP candidate until Olawole rejected the victory allocated to him by the PDP and KWSIEC? Last but not the least, how much of the goings-on now is part of the alleged grand plot of the APC to upturn the result of the August 31 election, which the PDP claims APC was not technically qualified to participate in – having not met the mandatory 90 days before which a newly registered party cannot field candidates for election?

Of course, the development has again brought to the fore the debate on the credibility of elections conducted by the state electoral commissions in Nigeria. Experience has shown that in virtually all the states where state electoral commissions, which are the bodies constitutionally empowered to so do, have conducted local government elections, the ruling party in each state has always made a clean sweep of the seats available. Oftentimes, the results are simply written from either the party secretariat or the governor’s office and simply rubber-stamped by the state electoral commission. Oftentimes too, these results have no correlation with the wishes of the electorate expressed at the polling booths. This leaves much to be desired. The embarrassing situation in Offa clearly lends credence to the practice of wholesale hijack of the people’s mandate, which has remained the bane of democracy in Nigeria.

So, while we pick holes in the claims of Olawole, it would amount to throwing the baby away with the bath water if we simply dismiss those claims as a manifestation of the desperation of the APC to score a cheap political point. This is why we are calling for an independent audit of the results declared by the Kwara State Independent Electoral Commission. It is not just enough to reduce this national embarrassment to a mere exchange of accusations by PDP and APC. This is a matter that should be of concern to the Presidency, INEC, the justice ministry and every stakeholder in the Nigerian project.  How well, or otherwise, we handle the Offa situation will be a pointer to what Nigerians should expect in 2015.