2007 Elections: INEC and Sundry Matters

By Abdullahi Usman

Aug 29, 2006            usmanabd@yahoo.com                                               

Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything.    - Joseph Stalin

More than anywhere else on the face of the earth, the above otherwise curious but, all the same, factual statement aptly captures the exact situation with our fabled electoral process here in Nigeria, in which the results of contested elections usually turn out to be anything other than the true reflection of the wishes of the electorate that brave the odds - and there are multitude of them - to cast their votes in those elections. More often than not, the wide disparity between the expected outcome of those elections - based on all the well known barometers for gauging voter preferences ahead of elections - and the results themselves tend to give the impression that the final outcome may very well have been predetermined well ahead of the actual exercise. This immediately brings to mind one of those cheeky text message jokes that made the rounds sometime last year regarding a hypothetical fire incident at the INEC headquarters, in which some important electoral documents were supposed to have been lost. Responding to a journalist’s enquiry on the extent of damages at a press conference, the INEC boss was said to have inadvertently let out a Freudian slip by stating that some of the vital documents lost to the fire include the results of the forthcoming 2007 general elections!

This apparent lack of trust arising from the absence of any sensible correlation between the observed pattern of voting and the officially declared election results may well explain the growing trend of voter apathy during elections. This is especially prevalent among the educated class who often view the entire exercise as a complete waste of their precious time since their votes would most likely not matter at the end of the day. All this is, of course, aside from other aspects of the voting process itself that tend to scare voters away, such as the use of notorious thugs brandishing all manners of charms and dangerous weapons as polling agents by the contestants, all in the name of defending their votes. Such action has often resulted in bodily harm being visited on those who go out to discharge their civic responsibility of electing their preferred candidate.

This write-up, which is a clear departure from my self-imposed ban on writing articles for a period of time, was prompted by a Voter Survey I stumbled upon in a popular Nigerian internet discussion group, in which respondents were asked this simple question: “Why do you think most Nigerians do not vote?”. The organisers, who stated that their survey was being conducted for research purposes, then went on to offer would-be respondents ten possible options to choose from as follows:  (1) Do not care. (2) Voting does not make a difference. (3) Not informed. (4) Too busy. (5) Not interested. (6) Voting is not important. (7) Politicians do not address real issues. (8) Are not registered. (9) Laziness. (10) Do not trust electoral/ democratic process.

While one cannot lay claim to having access to all the responses or indeed the final result of this on-going important endeavour, most of the responses I have seen, including that from yours sincerely, tended to indicate option 10 as the most probable cause of the growing voter apathy in the country. It will certainly be very interesting to see the final outcome of this survey, but the general feeling one gets is that whereas all the other possible factors listed above may also play their own part, albeit to a much lesser extent, the predominant factor discouraging most people from going out to vote remains their widespread mistrust for the nation’s entire democratic process in general and its electoral system in particular, both of which, to my mind, are inherently interconnected. Incidentally, the recurring decimal connecting these two closely related issues is the role the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) plays - or indeed fails to play - in all of this.

A quick recap of some of the bizarre incidents of the last general elections conducted in 2003 will tend to support the conclusion by Joseph Stalin in the opening quote, thereby giving fillip to the arguments put forward by those respondents who feel that the growing mistrust of the electoral and democratic process constitutes the major reason for their lack of interest in casting their votes. These include, amongst others:

1. The then PDP Chairman, Chief Audu Ogbe’s so-called “historic” 96 per cent voter turnout in Rivers State, in which the incumbent governor scored 97.3% of the 2.11 million valid votes, leaving 13 other candidates to share the remaining 57,103 votes!. This feat was made all the more remarkable by the fact that it was recorded on a day election monitors confirmed to have been ushered in by a heavy downpour that lasted till 3 pm, thus leaving prospective voters with a maximum of 3 to 4 hours of voting time before the polls officially came to a close.

2. The unprecedented 100 per cent voter turnout recorded in an area of Brass local government in Bayelsa State, all of whom ‘coincidentally’ voted for the same candidate. This ‘perfect ten’ situation would suggest that throughout the entire seven months period between the September 2002 voters registration exercise and the April 2003 elections, not one of the entire registered voters died, relocated from that area, traveled out of station as the elections drew closer, or indeed simply refused to come out and exercise his franchise on Election Day as many people often do.

3. The staggering unexplained difference of 618,071 votes between the number of votes recorded by the PDP in President Obasanjo’s home state of Ogun in the presidential and gubernatorial elections, both of which incidentally took place on the same day and at the same time, with each voter collecting the two ballot papers simultaneously.

4. The rather intriguing case of the figures released by the INEC in Bauchi State, where the PDP governor scored almost exactly the same percentage of votes as that recorded by the ANPP presidential candidate (remember the two elections also held simultaneously there as well).

5. The ‘interesting’ result of the Lagos Gubernatorial elections as posted on the official INEC website, which initially showed the late Funso Williams as the winner but later changed to indicate the current governor as the eventual winner.

6. The confusing case of an incumbent principal officer in the National Assembly, who had earlier conceded defeat and even went on to congratulate his rival on a BBC Hausa Service programme, only for the same electoral body that declared him the loser the previous evening to reverse itself (perhaps after some serious introspection) and declare him the winner the following morning!

7. The curious situation in an area of Katsina, in which a foreign elections observer reported that he personally witnessed the physical destruction of the entire election materials at a collation centre, which rendered the counting of votes impossible, only for him to discover that results and eventual winner had been declared for that same collation centre afterwards.

8. The more bizarre outcome of the Anambra (s)elections, where a whole new set of 'winners' totally different from any of those that appeared on the ballot paper on election day emerged, courtesy of the inimitable Chris Uba magic.

9. The mind-boggling feat achieved by the PDP in Osun State, in which a murder accused contested for and ‘won’ elections to represent his constituency in the Senate while he was still in detention at the Agodi Prison in far away Ibadan!

One could go and on, but the fact remains that all these - and more - point to the inherent significant defects in our electoral process, and unless something is urgently done to  redress them, more Nigerians will continue to vote with their feet rather than their thumbs by consciously opting to stay away from the polling centres on each Election Day. To be candid, INEC itself should actually conduct or commission someone to carry out the above survey with a view to finding lasting means of reversing the ugly trend of declining voter turnout during elections, and I still hope that this is indeed the case. However, from the observable trend of the Commission’s conduct over time, one might as well liken any such expectation on the part of the electoral body to the case of the proverbial triumph of hope over experience.

This is because rather than preoccupying itself with the hugely important task of addressing some of its observed shortcomings with a view to achieving more credible elections, beginning with those of 2007, INEC often prefers to go into the defensive mode the moment such issues are raised, especially when such queries emanate from the opposition. One easily recalls the recent unsavory situation in which the INEC Chairman chose to cast all sorts of aspersions on the person of the nation’s number two citizen, rather than address the valid issues raised regarding his Commission’s state of preparedness for the upcoming 2007 elections. Such unfortunate vitriolic response and numerous other similar reactions from the head of a supposedly impartial electoral umpire would, rightly or wrongly, tend to point in the direction of his allegiance and that of the entire body he heads, thereby questioning both his ability and willingness to conduct a credible election for the nation.  

This, of course, leads us to yet even more strange developments in the run up to next year’s general elections. It is common knowledge that after every four-year election cycle, new set of citizens would have reached the all-important voting age threshold and thus need to be accorded the opportunity to exercise their rights to vote in an election.  It is rather curious that with just nine months to the impending exchange of baton between the outgoing administration and the incoming one, we neither have any idea of the dates slated for the usual voters registration ritual ahead of elections, nor do we have a clue as to the respective candidates we will be voting in for the various elective offices.  All this points to the fact that INEC is either setting a booby trap for itself, or is indeed being primed by higher powers for what would, at best, qualify for what is generally referred to as derived incompetence and, at worst, amount to a contrived failure with a view to achieving a predetermined objective.

While we are still waiting on INEC to help solve the first puzzle by announcing the dates for the voters registration exercise, the ubiquitous Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), an otherwise useful instrument in this administration’s declared war against corruption, is busy compounding the second one by telling a bemused nation who, in its considered opinion, is qualified to vie for which office and who is not, based on the enlarged mandate given to it to make that important choice on our behalf. Someone needs to let these EFCC Saints and their promoters realise - and quickly so - that regardless of however else they may want to interpret it, democracy, in the words of Robert Byrne, is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike the least!

One would ordinarily have hailed the EFCC’s professed stance on the need to weed out corrupt individuals (some have argued that it has no legal rights to do so) but for its lopsided pattern of targeting perceived opponents of the administration, while leaving those in its good books untouched. It is rather confounding that while the body is busy hounding some governors whose position against the ill-fated tenure extension is well known, other governors with far more corrupt tendencies are being encouraged to seek higher offices, perhaps to replicate their established ‘credentials’ on a larger national scale. Similarly, at a time when this same body is threatening to seize shares held by certain individuals in some corporate bodies, it is turning a deliberate blind eye in the case of the shares held by others, possibly because they are held in a so-called “Blind Trust” and are thus invisible to the naked eye.

In conclusion, the EFCC has every right to continue with its current perceived selective approach in its declared fight against corruption, if indeed that is the mandate that has been set for it. However, the anti-corruption body has absolutely no right to determine for the electorate who their preferred choices should be, in spite of whatever good intentions it may have in doing so. After all, in the words of John Patrick, “democracy…. is a system of self-determination. It’s the right to make the wrong choice”. The same rights, some would argue, we exercised in giving our collective mandate to the current administration in 1999 and 2003!

Abdullahi Usman