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SATURDAY ESSAY BY MOBOLAJI E. ALUKO, PH.D. Why the April 2007 Elections Might Not Hold - and if it Holds, What Must Be Done for it Not to Be a Fiasco
Burtonsville, MD, USA
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Introduction
I begin this essay with the following instructive excerpts from The Sun newspaper, credited to Prince Afegbua, acting national chairman of the NDP (National Democratic Party):
QUOTE
The law provides for
500-600 voters per polling unit. INEC claimed it registered as much as
20-25,000 persons per registration centre. How does it intend to
distribute the figure into the respective polling units when it has no
facility to determine that? On election day, people will be roaming the
streets, from one mango tree to another in search of where to vote.
And in a matter of hours, results will be announced in Iwu's bedroom,
indicating a free and fair election with 101% attendance. You know
electoral miracles are in large supply in Nigeria and since Professor Iwu
is a miracle worker, it will be a good judgement to please his courtiers
and their uncelebrated masters, at the expense of the people for whom the
elections are meant."
UNQUOTE
Please see the URL: http://www.nigerianmuse.com/articles/?u=NDP_Says_No_to_April_Elections.htm for full write-up titled "No to Election" where, in a reprise of what the NDP did in April 2003 against Abel Guobadia's own INEC, the party again in March 2007:
QUOTE
In a suit brought
before the Federal High Court in the Abuja, NDP is seeking a perpetual
injunction restraining the electoral body or its agents from conducting
the general elections scheduled from April 14, 2007 until the provisions
of section 2(2) of the defendant's guidelines for registration of voters
is complied with by the INEC.
UNQUOTE
Compatriots, the above observations are the MAJOR problems that INEC is battling with right now, which is why, just a few weeks before April 14, no voters register has been released despite all the loud depositions of Maurice Iwu's INEC to the contrary. Indeed, a few names were pasted all over the country over a five-day period for VERIFICATION a few weeks ago - apparently just to go through the motion of nominally obeying the law. However, by now - and by law both on March 1 (showing all those registered in the previous year; Section 11(1)(b) of Electoral Act 2006) and within 60 days of the General Elections (Section 27 of the Electoral Act 2006) - the voter register should have been published for every one to see, and even CDs/DVDs/flash disks/paper versions of the National Register of Voters given to each political party. These two dates are NOT to be confused with the one of March 31, 2007, spelt out by Section 47, which states that 14 days before Guber/SASS Elections Day " INEC shall publish (a) day/hours fixed for poll (b) people entitled to vote; and (c) location of polling stations."
See: http://www.nigerianmuse.com/essays/?u=MWE_Inec_Deadlines_Violation_Internet_Magogo.htm Midweek Essay: Inec has begun its deadlines violation and Internet "Mago-Mago." by Mobolaji E. Aluko [March 8, 2007]
Without people knowing what polling station is theirs, how do we ensure that people are properly accredited when they go to vote, WITHOUT going "from mango tree to mango tree" ? [Incidentally, I was registered under a mango tree - but the tree was out of season! :-)]
It is remarkable that the same problems that are being pointed out now were observed prior to the worst elections so far ever conducted in Nigeria - the 2003 elections under Abel Guobadia's INEC - leading to a similar but unsuccessful suit by the same NDP to stop the elections. In fact, the mere information of the number of voters eligible were not made available until April 5, 2003, for elections that were to be held on April 12 (National and State Assembly polls) and April 19 (presidential and governorship polls). As rightly pointed out by Afegbua, eventually
QUOTE
In 2003 general elections, there was no Voters Register in place, hence electoral petition relating to over-voting or under-voting could not be substantiated at the tribunal, the reason why Gen. Buhari lost his case at the Supreme Court. If the trend is allowed to continue without arresting it, a time will come when elections will no longer be conducted, but mere selection and anointment of candidates to represent themselves order that the people.
UNQUOTE
Yet, at that time, Dr. Abel Guobadia was speaking about the success and inevitability of the then impending 2003 elections with almost the same kind of braggadocio as Prof. Maurice Iwu is doing right now.
State, Zonal and Regional Analyses of INEC Data for Voters' Applications, Registration and Disqualifications [Mobolaji Aluko, April 6, 2003]
These Nigerian INEC chairmen must be secretly "minted" somewhere special.
But there is a compounding of the problem in these 2007 elections. With the electronic registration that Iwu and his gang had insisted upon, the intial plan of 1 registration machine per 4 polling units had to be abandoned when there were not enough machines, and even many of those that they had broke down. So INEC was just plain happy to register any and all that came, without respect to what polling station that they would eventually vote in. If the registration had been manual, then at least a polling station with a registration book having the last line as 500 would terminate registration at that point and direct the excess elsewhere.
Having more than 500 people register at any one polling unit was violation of Electoral Law No. 001.
Now that they have all been registered, where will they ACTUALLY vote? That is what inquiring minds want to know. Will they be able to vote in ANY polling station? Will the electronic validation machines have - on a DVD or flash disk - ALL the names of people in that ward, LOCAL GOVERNMENT, State, or in the whole nation? Or will there be a national database in the clouds somewhere that will have to be electronically accessed? If remote electronic access is required, what about if NEPA/PHCN strikes?
These are so many more questions than there are answers.
Without these questions answered, these upcoming elections will be a fiasco, no thanks to INEC chairman Maurice Iwu, who, due to his stubbornness, insisted in the first instance on electronic voter registration WITHOUT considering these other factors. He would have, on top of that, foisted electronic VOTING on us all if, thank God, people, and particularly the National Assembly, had not INSISTED otherwise.
Rather than consider these logistics more closely, Iwu has spent most of his time on disqualification of Atiku Abubakar (with collateral damage of many other people), on word-smithing [observation vs. monitoring; verification versus screening; disqualification versus exclusion, etc.]; and on talking endlessly about "Nigerian mind-set", money in politics, election violence, and gender bias. He has constituted himself into political opponency, seeking to constrict the electoral space rather than expand it.
What to do?
We are headed for a fiasco in April 2007 elections - just three weeks away now - unless:
1. local government databases are accurately compiled as the basis of registration.
2. we insist that without further delay, INEC release the database that it has RIGHT now. After all, it has given a state-by-state breakdown of registered voters already: how did it get those numbers ?
3. a hurried/immediate amendment to the Electoral law is done to permit those more than 500 people that registered in each polling station to vote in any polling station within their local government.
4. no curfews on Election Day. Voters should be free to vote where they can within their local governments.
5. we have the Modified Open Ballot System (MOBS) of the June 12 variety, which enables people to first line up from 7 am to 10 am, and then vote from 10 am to 12 noon. This can be repeated from 1 pm to 4 pm, and voting from 4 pm to 6 pm . In fact, this is the ONLY system that will ameliorate the fiasco of 10,000 registered voters in a polling unit rather than 500 as required. This way, one can direct surplus voters to other polling units, and ensure that all vote within a specified period.
6. voting is extended to two days each. That is April 14/15 and April 21/22 to take care of the voters' crush that might happen in any given polling station.
7. INEC comply strictly with the provisions that all results will be ANNOUNCED on site and DISPLAYED on boards. INEC should go the extra mile of RECORDING each announcement and PHOTOGRAPHING each display board. The political parties' polling agents will be wise to do the same, for such evidence will come in handy later on in the event of hanky-panky by Iwu's INEC so that Buhari's disability to prove his case in 2003 is not repeated..
I rest my case for now.
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