Social Democratic Party (SDP) is currently very angry, and has openly expressed its deep anger at the propensity of money bags to rig elections in Nigeria. Ahead of the 2023 general elections, therefore, SDP says it has become imperative to advocate the death penalty for election riggers.
Perhaps, this demand can help in giving greater credibility to election results in Nigeria. But, during the military dictatorship of 1966–79 and 1983–98, the authorities executed political opponents, most notoriously when the late Head of State, General Sani Abacha, ordered the execution of the Ogoni Nine by hanging in 1995.
That repressive act to the peaceful protest for environmental justice and economic equity in the Niger Delta, gave birth to militancy in the vastly polluted oil and gas region that still wallows in abject poverty.
Wikipedia however reports that since the transition to democracy in 1999, death sentences are often given but rarely carried out. After 2006, no executions took place until June 2013, when four prisoners on death row were hanged, though about a thousand other condemned prisoners were awaiting execution at the time. The next executions occurred in 2016, when three men were hanged for murder and armed robbery.
According to it, on December 17, 2014, after being found guilty of conspiracy to commit mutiny, 54 Nigerian soldiers were sentenced to death by firing squad. The trial was held secretly by a military tribunal.
The use of the death penalty in Nigeria has generated debate. In October 2014, former Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta State pardoned three inmates who were on death row following the recommendations by the State Advisory Council on Prerogative of Mercy. In 2017, Abuja rejected the call by Amnesty International to halt the planned execution of some inmates in Lagos State.
In May 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic, a court in Lagos used a video conferencing application to issue a death sentence.
Death penalty is authorised by Section 33 of the 1999 Constitution as amended. Capital crimes include murder, terrorism-related offences, rape, robbery, kidnapping, sodomy, homosexuality, blasphemy, adultery, incest, assisting the suicide of a person legally unable to consent, perjury in a capital case causing wrongful execution, treason, some military offences like mutiny and practice of indigenous beliefs in states applying Shariah law.
Exception: Where a defendant is found guilty of a capital offence and convicted, where the defendant is a pregnant woman, she shall not be sentenced to death but sentenced to life imprisonment.[4] A defendant who is found guilty of a capital offence and so convicted, but was at the time of the commission of the offence less than eighteen years old cannot be sentenced to death but sentenced to life imprisonment.
SDP’s agitation, a party of social democrats is, however, coming as the party kicked against zoning of the Delta state Governorship ticket to the Central Senatorial District, saying in a state like Delta with its political maturity and as home to eggheads, competence must trump zoning.
SDP State Chairman, Oke Idawene, who also Chairs, Forum of SDP State Chairmen, made the demand public while commending the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for its decision to deploy the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) in the September 11 state Assembly bye-election in Isoko South 1, saying the technology helped to reduce incidences of multiple voting.
Idawene said the device was able to guarantee the credibility of voter accreditation by preventing incidents of multiple voting or the use of stolen Permanent Voter Cards PVCs to vote while the use of the incident form was eliminated.
On rigging, he said the problem is not with INEC but other stakeholders. “The problem we have right now is not INEC. It is the people. Somebody tried to snatch a ballot box in Isoko South and he was gunned down. I don’t like bloodshed, but that is the way to go. Ahead of 2023, the punishment for such electoral malfeasance should be death by hanging. Anybody rigging elections is an enemy of the people and must be so treated.
“With the BVAS, the votes were not adulterated. There was no rigging in that election. For the first time in Nigeria, I went for an election where until the morning of the elections, the collation officers were not known and the voting pattern was clear. To this end, I think we should give INEC all the support for electronic voting, electronic collation and transmission of results. It is only then we can get genuine leadership and see Nigeria tilting towards progressive tendencies. I want to call on the National Assembly to support this BVAS and other technologies used by INEC”, he said.
On Zoning the 2023 presidency to the South and the Delta Governorship ticket to Delta Central, the SDP Chairman said; “SDP is not for zoning. We are for competence. It is time we stopped regional tendencies. Nigeria is one. No matter how you try, you cannot break us. Let us elect a leader who is a true Nigerian in body, soul and spirit so that at the end of the day we can say we are going forward.
“SDP is anti-zoning. For the Southern leaders, if you want the presidency, I call on you to lobby. Power is not given for free. It is a collective responsibility. Leave your comfort zones and go to the North and explain why you should be given the opportunity to produce the next president. Apart from that, every Nigerian is qualified to run for president.
“In Delta, the Central is claiming that it is their turn to produce the next governor. No. I am a Delta. I have the right to contest. If Delta Central wants to contest election and win, let them come out and convince us in the South and North why we should give you room to produce the next governor come 2023. Apart from that, do not claim it. It is not your right. You lobby for it. Power is not given for free”, he added.
For britannica.com, social democracy, is a political ideology that originally advocated a peaceful evolutionary transition of society from capitalism to socialism using established political processes. In the second half of the 20th century, there emerged a more moderate version of the doctrine, which generally espoused state regulation, rather than state ownership, of the means of production and extensive social welfare programmes.
Based on 19th-century socialism and the tenets of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, social democracy shares common ideological roots with communism but eschews its militancy and totalitarianism. ‘’Social democracy was originally known as revisionism because it represented a change in basic Marxist doctrine, primarily in the former’s repudiation of the use of revolution to establish a socialist society’’, says Britannica.
Bebel imbued social democracy with the belief that socialism must be installed through lawful means rather than by force. After the election of two Social Democrats to the Reichstag in 1871, the party grew in political strength until in 1912 it became the largest single party in voting strength, with 110 out of 397 seats in the Reichstag. The success of the Social Democratic Party in Germany encouraged the spread of social democracy to other countries in Europe.
‘’The growth of German social democracy owed much to the influence of the German political theorist Eduard Bernstein. In his Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie (1899; “The Preconditions of Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy”; Eng. trans. Evolutionary Socialism), Bernstein challenged the Marxist orthodoxy that capitalism was doomed, pointing out that capitalism was overcoming many of its weaknesses, such as unemployment, overproduction, and the inequitable distribution of wealth.
‘’Ownership of industry was becoming more widely diffused, rather than more concentrated in the hands of a few. Whereas Marx had declared that the subjugation of the working class would inevitably culminate in the socialist revolution, Bernstein argued that success for socialism depended not on the continued and intensifying misery of the working class but rather on eliminating that misery.
‘’He further noted that social conditions were improving and that with universal suffrage the working class could establish socialism by electing socialist representatives. The violence of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and its aftermath precipitated the final schism between the social democratic parties and the communist parties’’, Britannica said.
