Nigeria’s 2007 Elections: What Went Right?

By

Professor Maurice M.Iwu

 

 

 

*Lecture Delivered by Professor Maurice M.Iwu, Honourable Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission at the Department of Political Science, Univeristy of Ibadan Annual Distinguished Lecture, Ibadan, April 15, 2008,

 

 

It is a glaring testimony to the abiding commitment of the University of Ibadan to the promotion of knowledge and the quest for better understanding of the dynamics of existence within the Nigerian society that this lecture is holding today in this campus.

 

I am honoured and delighted to be invited to speak at this august lecture. Let me at once pay my respect to the Vice Chancellor of the University as well as to the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, the Head of the Department of Political Science and the rest of the leadership and members of this respected community not only for hosting this lecture, but more importantly for sustaining the spirit and the culture of intellectual inquiry for which the University of Ibadan is renown.

 

I did not hesitate in accepting the invitation to speak at this forum for various reasons. For one, I know for sure that here, in this citadel, even for all the robustness of contention for ideas, we can discuss with candour  and civility and that empirical evidence more than visceral outbursts determine the conclusions we reach on issues.

 

In this community, I very much want to believe, men and women still listen to, and reason with each other; they ask questions about things they do not understand and they are sober and sincere enough to accept that the social and political matrix out of which public policies of a society emerge do not always yield outcomes that approximate the idealistic construct of our fancies.

 

I know this to be a community that places premium on rigorous inquiry on why things are the way they are and also on how things can be better than the way they are presently. I am here to discuss, to examine the reality of our collective existence and aspiration, subscribing as I do to the notion that if we know the truth it shall set us free. Posturing hardly takes an individual far and for a nation it serves no enduring purpose.

 

Yesterday, April 14th marked exactly one year that the 2007 General Elections commenced. The polls were concluded fourteen days after, on April 28, 2007. Situated properly within the context of Nigeria’s political development and experience, the 2007 General Elections were at once uncommon and remarkable. We shall return in detail to the uncharted course and peculiar circumstances through which the conduct of the elections passed.

 

Given the historic importance of the 2007 elections as well as the complex challenges that doted the path of the entire process; from the preparatory stages to the end [if indeed they have ended] it can be understood if debates and discussions on issues and policies pertaining to the civic exercise are prolonged.

 

Alas, much of what has been thrown on the 2007 elections in terms of public assessment and comments have been more heat than light as the expression goes. To borrow the very apt words of the respected African American scholar, Cornel West[1], albeit in a different context, “instead of critical dialogue and respectful

 

exchange, we have witnessed several bouts of vulgar name-calling and self righteous finger-pointing. [But] battles conducted on the editorial pages….do not take us far in understanding the issues...”

 

This lecture, with its topic couched in creatively positive hues seems, from all indications, to be a characteristic clear-minded initiative by the Department of Political Science of this great University to rescue discussions on the very critical issue of our last general election from what appears to be a determined stranglehold of emotiveness, a situation over which many of us have become helpless. But where do we go from there?

 

In 1958, as part of the preparation to grant Nigeria independence, the British created the first electoral commission: 'Elections Commission of Nigeria' under the chairmanship of Mr. R. E. Wraith, OBE, a senior lecturer in Public Administration at the University College of Ibadan, and gave it the responsibility of organising elections for political offices in the impending independent Nigeria.  It is noteworthy, that after 50 years, we are returning to Ibadan to review how well we have done in election management and to discuss methods of improving both the administration and management of democratic elections in Nigeria.

 

In putting together this lecture, the University of Ibadan and its Political Science department have rendered an invaluable service to the nation. An interactive platform such as this serves to foster better appreciation by the citizenry of the reasons and thrusts of public polices and actions. Hopefully, at the end of discussions here today, not a few people would have gained new and better insight into the policies and framework of the last General Election, all of which have been twisted out of perspective by those who elect for their own purposes to see more of what went wrong with the elections instead of what went right.

 

What were the issues in the conduct of the 2007 General Elections? What were the challenges of the process? How did the established old order impact on emerging tendencies and dispositions in the general bearing of the elections? And how receptive was the environment to the infusion of new ideas in the system, even when it was obvious that the extant order held no redeeming prospect for the interest of the society? An attempt to answer the foregoing questions will help to provide valuable insight into the complex dimensions to the 2007 elections.

 

Providing answers to these questions are daunting but necessary endeavour, otherwise how can we seriously examine the quality of our electoral democracy? Emotions, personal prejudice and the news of the day are in reality poor indicators that could lead either to undue pessimism or false optimism. To effectively discuss the topic, Nigeria’s 2007 elections: What went right?, it will not only be helpful, but also crucial that we first examine and understand three basic facts; (i) What went wrong with Nigeria’s elections in the past; (2) Why the successful conduct of the 2007 elections was not negotiable and (3) What the definition of success is for the 2007 elections.

 

Although the contention for power between political interest groups and parties commenced in earnest on the broad stage of what eventually crystallized as the Nigeria state in the 1940s with the beginning of nationalist struggle, it did not take too long before identifiable features in the jostling for power by the political class became manifest.

 

Progressively through the years and across regimes, it can indeed be said of elections in Nigeria that they have not always been easy and smooth. As it were, the quality of elections in the land has always been affected by the character of politics in the environment. And this has not always been civil.

 

The expectation that the rough edges of electoral contests will gradually be smoothened out as democracy stabilized and more enlightened citizenry emerged has not exactly been borne out. Indeed, it can be said of the political class and their ways that the more things seemed to change, the more they have remained the same. Or perhaps, worse.

 

To be fair to the early nationalists and the political class of their era, there was more depth and service-orientated approach to politics. Vision, principle, ideology and meticulously developed manifestos formed the basic foundation on which the pursuit of power was hinged then. Most of the early political parties clearly had identifiable leaders who were the fulcrum on which the activities of their groups rotated. Even at that however, none of the political parties in Nigeria’s early years belonged as it were to any one man or to few individuals whose contempt for fiscal discipline and order was as manifest as what obtains in recent times[2].

 

The old political parties developed their rules and guidelines based on their philosophies and no member of any of the parties were above the law or beyond reproach within his group. Not any more.

 

Elections in Nigeria have consistently been made tedious over the years more by the unruly disposition and activities of the political class than any other identifiable factor. A high level of indiscipline and disorder has pervaded the nation’s politics for so long, almost crystallizing in a culture of incohesion.

 

Without doubt, one of the most grievous features of contemporary politics and the conduct of politicians in the Nigerian environment has been the absence of order. Within the political parties, among competing entities and instructively even in individual tendencies, priorities and articulation of goals, order seems presently to be in abeyance. This indeed is dangerous, for as the International Affairs scholar, Harvey Starr [3]posited, “even in anarchy there is still order”. The lack of order and restraint within Nigeria’s political class has, naturally, adversely affected the development of the political system

 

It is a fact for instance, that the demise of the various earlier republics; the First Republic, the Second Republic and the partly formed Third Republic stemmed incontrovertibly from lack of restraint as well as unholy initiatives within the political class as a result of struggle for power. Till this very day as with those other times, the mentality within the political class seemed to be; if you cannot win power, smash the system.

 

But elections are made to be conducted in systems where order prevails. This is the marked difference between competition for power in a civilized setting and that within Thomas Hobbes’s state of nature where the only recognized interest is self interest and the struggle for survival is basically mortal.

 

Any quest for power that does not make room for restraint and respect for constituted authority is bound, sooner or later, to do damage either to the self or to the system. As it turns out unfortunately in Nigeria’s case, the system rather than individuals has been bearing the brunt of unbridled pursuit of power.

 

In such an environment of individual and group excesses in which the mechanism for state control is weak or compromised, expectation of an ideal electoral contest is often unrealistic.

 

The pressure on the system was compounded by the emergence of a class of super rich citizens under the prolonged reign of military dictatorship. This category of the new rich obviously has no regard for such apparently belittling doctrine as equality of all citizens. Nor do they have patience for such measured processes as democracy carries along.

 

And so with a combination of stupendous wealth, limitless access to authority and influence which literally placed them above the law, Nigeria’s later day politicians are at once a threat to such fundamental ingredient of democracy as electoral contests. It is not difficult really to see the root of electoral problems in contemporary Nigeria.

 

The prospect of a big man politician failing to clinch the office of his heart’s desire is simply inconceivable to him and so almost always there is a resort to extra-ordinary measures to ensure victory at all cost. Such desperate measures include undermining the process of voter registration. This was done through various means, among them sponsoring ghost registrants, propping up the under-aged to register, sponsoring unemployed youths to take up ad hoc election duties with the electoral Commission - from which vantage angle the recruited polls officer was expected to give the interest of his principal a helping hand.

 

Even beyond our boarders, elaborate arrangements were made to gain the confidence of foreign missions and international agencies way ahead of the 2007 elections and unsuspecting foreigners were recruited as agents to be used at a later date to discredit the election (even before a single ballot was cast), the electoral management body and the nation.

 

Then there is the violence dimension. With every wealthy and influential politician having a battery of well armed security guards around him round the clock, the capacity to intimidate political opponents and unleash violence is ever present. At the same time the likelihood of anyone restraining such a citizen from conducts that are outside the orbit of the law is highly reduced. This is the setting in which elections are organized in the Nigerian environment.

 

The Independent National Electoral Commission was not oblivious of these problems and the difficulties they portended for the conduct of a smooth election. Having identified four broad categories of problem areas that needed to be addressed to enhance the environment in which elections are held in Nigeria, the Commission not only called for concerted efforts in tackling the problem areas, but embarked on various programmes designed to improve on the situation.

 

In embarking on these programmes, the Commission was propelled by concern rather than any legal obligation to initiate the enhancement programmes. Thus did the Commission initiate programme that focused on (1) the nagging problem of electoral violence (2) the adverse influence of money in Nigeria’s politics (3) Gender inequity and (4) Unhelpful mindset on elections.

 

Among others, there were anti-electoral violence campaigns and workshops, programmes to strengthen the administrative capacity of political parties; seminars and workshops for the security agencies on handling electoral duties; conferences and interactive sessions with the civil society organizations as well as a spirited effort to promote a new campaign finance regime that will conform to the ceiling set by the Electoral Act for political campaigns.

 

In all these, the larger society and the media showed very little interest. These issues have also not received the attention they deserve within the academic community. The Electoral Commission was left as it were not only to prepare for the elections, but also to address the daunting problems of the political environment which had been exploited in the past by unconscionable politicians to undermine elections and the will of the electorate. Any serious focus on the reform of Nigeria’s electoral process with a view to strengthening democracy will have to pay very profound attention on these issues.

 

In preparing for the 2007 elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission had its eyes set on history. It was determined to address as much of the loose ends that marred past elections as was possible. For such a society as ours that thinks and acts on short term basis, it may be difficult at the moment for many to appreciate the foundation for a better electoral process laid with the 2007 elections.

 

If the nation stays the course however, and if the destructive culture of discarding already laid foundation for a new one does not again prevail, subsequent management of the electoral process will draw tremendous stability and bearing from the seminal work done with the 2007 elections.

 

The setting of an upper ceiling for political campaign expenses for instance, may appear idealistic and unenforceable at the moment.

 

The mere coming into being of a law on political party finance is however, monumental in itself. The law provides a framework for stricter control and order in the use of money in Nigeria’s politics which will, down the line assume its desired impact.

 

A new and modern regime of registration of voters also came into being with the 2007 elections. For those who are more interested in what went wrong, the initial hiccups and teething problems recorded by the new voter registration format is the story.

 

For the positivists and patriots whose interest is in what went right, the introduction of the electronic voters register with its promise of eliminating such vices as multiple registration and  registration of ghosts and the under aged holds out a bright new prospect for registration of voters and elections in Nigeria. With the new regime of voter registration the age-long practice of the entire nation coming to a virtual end for two weeks or more simply for prospective voters to get registered is no longer necessary.

 

The commencement of continuous voter registration which is made possible by the dynamic nature of the electronic voters register now means that every Nigerian who turns eighteen years of age simply goes to the nearest INEC office and gets registered. This is the way it is done in civilized parts of the world today. This is the way it now is in Nigeria. This is one of the things that went right with Nigeria’s electoral process on the way to the 2007 elections.

 

The computerization of the Nigerian electoral system did not end only with the introduction of electronic voter register; it included the establishment of a robust communication system in all the 778 local government areas of the country and linking them to the 36 state capitals and FCT.  The improved communication platform made it possible for results collated by the Resident Electoral Commissioners and their field staff to be sent to Abuja in real time.  For the presidential elections, for example, field results were also independently transmitted directly to INEC’s headquarters in Abuja through the Commission’s secure and dedicated electronic network.   This made it possible for the Commission to declare authentic election results on time.

 

Another thing that went right in 2007 is the use of customized ballot papers for each electoral constituency, which was introduced for the first time in Nigeria’s electoral history in order to minimize ballot-box stuffing. So also is the historic establishment of The Electoral Institute (TEI). With two satellite campuses and partnership arrangements with three Nigerian universities, TEI will undertake training of electoral personnel, research and documentation and further institutionalize the innovations and reforms introduced for the 2007 elections.  The Institute will seek to make electoral system reform an adaptive management programme, which will constantly seek to optimize electoral democracy in Nigeria.

 

There was also the improvement in our storage and distribution of electoral materials by the building of 6 zonal stores in various parts of Nigeria and the establishment of 2 secured warehouses in Abuja and Lagos.

 

Back to the elections of 2003, the Commission contended with a most chaotic situation in which political parties substituted, resubstituted and unsubstituted their candidates for the elections up till the night preceding the elections. A bigger manifestation of disorder and indiscipline in the rank of the political parties could not have been seen. The confusion eventually resulted in the aberrant situation in which some candidates of a particular political party who were the last substitution in the list of the party for the election and who eventually won the elections were rejected at the 2003 election tribunals as not been the correct candidates.

 

Such a chaotic and whimsical substation regime stopped being in existence with the commencement of preparation for the 2007 elections. The Commission’s proposal for a new reasonable time frame for substituting of candidates by the political parties gained legal backing in the 2006 Electoral Act. As it turned out, once the political parties were restrained from eleventh hour substitution of candidates as was the case in earlier elections, they opened up new sources of problems by substituting in some cases aspirants who actually won their primaries. This, as the nation has come to live with, later became the basis for far reaching decisions and reversal of election outcomes by the election petition tribunals. These internal decisions and conducts of the political parties over which the Electoral Commission had no control were to become a burden for the entire nation. Hopefully the parties are learning new lessons. The Commission on its own part is taking measures to promote and enforce internal party democracy in the registered political parties to underscore the point that democratic contrivance is ultimately counterproductive.

 

As if the existing problems of the political environment did not present enough challenges in the preparation for the 2007 elections, the ruling party, the Peoples Democratic party (PDP) foisted a most unusual and unprecedented crisis on the nation, an irreconcilable disputation that resulted in the incumbent vice president parting ways with both the government and the ruling party. He promptly transformed into an opposition kingpin. The burden of managing an election with such fractious and bitter rival interests and entities became the lot of the Electoral Commission[4].

 

The unrelenting assault on the Electoral Commission by some of the opposition candidates and their parties in the 2007 election, though most uncharitable and illogical, can perhaps only find explanation in the calculations by the parties of how best to gain upper hand in the spirited struggle for supremacy within the political elite. Again, the Commission remained steadfast against such well funded and orchestrated attacks. 

 

Tackling an Electoral Commission with such viciousness as has been visited on the Commission over the 2007 elections reflects the failure of politicians to appreciate the place of public institutions in the modern state. Undermining a pivotal public institution as a means of advancing parochial aspiration betrays a defeatist mentality. 

 

So much bone has been made of the exclusion of some candidates from the 2007 elections as if the Electoral Commission whimsically embarked on the exclusion of some candidates from the elections it was conducting. Nothing can be further from the truth than this fanciful design to present the Commission in a bad light. The truth remains that the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria outlines certain conditions which if any aspirant to a political office falls under he is disqualified from contesting for the office.

 

Ordinarily, INEC did not need any external assistance to interpret or ensure compliance to this provision of the Constitution. The duty of seeing that all aspirants complied with the requirement for qualification to contest in the elections was implicit in the constitutional responsibility of the Commission.

 

It is pertinent to point out here that while the Commission was still engaged in the process of verifying the credentials of aspirants as they submitted them to the Commission, the Attorney General of the Federation officially reminded the Commission in more than one communication of the Constitutional stipulation of categories of individuals who were not eligible to contest in the elections.

 

For good measures, the reminder from the office of the nation’s Chief law officer had attached to it a comprehensive list of all those who for one reason or the other fell out of the bracket of constitutional eligibility to stand in the elections.

 

Then there was also the Economic and Financial Crimes commission. Though not assigned by the Constitution to disqualify anyone from contesting for public office, the agency had enormous

powers to investigate into the activities and transactions of individuals and corporate entities in the country.

 

From its strategically prime point in the scheme of the nation’s security, the EFCC, especially when it moved with the backing of the law to charge individuals of financial crimes and obtain indictment which was confirmed by the highest law enforcement office in the land could not be ignored by the Commission.

 

This is the background and the true account of the exclusion issue, a matter in which the Commission did not even in one instance operate outside the ambit of the prevailing law.

 

But on April 16, 2007, two days after the governorship election had been held across the country, the Supreme Court in its ruling in the case in which Alhaji Atiku Abubakar challenged his being declared ineligible to run for the office of president took away the powers of INEC to determine the eligibility of any candidate contesting in elections in the country.

 

Interestingly, the Court of Appeal had ruled in an earlier case that it was within the competence of INEC to vet the credential of aspirants in elections and determine their eligibility or otherwise. Of course, when the Supreme Court rules there is no appeal and so here we are.

 

It is inconceivable that the Electoral Commission could have excluded any candidate from any elections after the April 16 2007 ruling by the Supreme Court. The Commission has not done any such thing. For elections that were held before the Supreme Court ruling however, especially against the backdrop of earlier validation by the Appeal Court of the powers of the Commission to carry out the functions determining who did not meet the criteria to contest in the elections, all that the Commission can plead is that it does not have such supernatural powers as will enable it to turn back the hands of the clock.

 

The core successes of the 2007 elections are substantial. Compared to previous elections for instance, the level of violence in the 2007 elections was very minimal. That is a remarkable development that cannot be wished away, to borrow a phrase out of our recent political past.

 

Unfortunate though it may be, it took only one or two local government elections that were conducted by states after the 2007 elections for many to appreciate the success of the 2007 elections in terms of posting minimal violence.

 

Again, it took the unmitigated disaster that a national election in a sister African country turned into soon after the 2007 elections for many in Nigeria to appreciate the level of efficiency in the management of polls and prompt release of results as was achieved in the 2007 general Elections. And yet those who are preoccupied with what went wrong with the 2007 elections scoffed at the efficiency and even the very existence of the technology for rapid transmission of polls results which was deployed in the 2007 elections. Must it take some tragedy somewhere for us to appreciate God’s grace and what the Nigerian nation accomplished with the 2007 elections?

 

For so long Nigeria, vibrant and heterogeneous by composition failed miserably to move the system of democratic governance within its domain beyond one single term of four years by any elected government. Every election that was to lead to the consolidation of democracy by moving beyond the one term glass ceiling always managed to snowball into a crisis that consumed the process. Was that incidental or was it a deliberate plot by the wily, vicious and self-centered political elite to keep the nation where they want it?

 

It has been suggested that “political uncertainty is the essence of democracy” and that there is a distinction between institutional uncertainty, namely uncertainty about the rules of the game – which is bad for democracy - and substantive uncertainty about the outcome of the game – which is good for democracy[5].  It is believed that sponsoring of institutional uncertainty promotes vulnerability of the democratic system to anti-democratic forces. On the other hand, substantive uncertainty keeps the politicians on their toes and makes them responsive to their citizenry. Some of the major political players in 2006 sort to impose an environment of institutional uncertainty in Nigeria solely for the purpose of undermining the system.

 

On the issue of substantive uncertainty, some scholars have raised concerns over the electoral and political dominance of one political party in Nigeria and have argued that if unchecked that such dominance could threaten or weaken the nation’s fledging democracy.  In 2007, there was more alternation of government (rotation of power) among the states than was the case in 2003 – this is good for democracy. Opposition parties should not only be encouraged and given full opportunity to contest political power but they must also periodically win it.

 

As preparations for the 2007 elections entered its most crucial stages, it was not difficult to see the worrisome signals at various junctures that the old jinx and its Genies were around the corner once again. At the Independent National Electoral Commission however, the determination to break the forty year jinx was resolute.

 

It is true that at some critical junctures along the process of preparing the elections, it was not quite certain if the contending sides to the upcoming polls were still committed to the scheduled polls. But to successfully conduct the 2007 elections and lift the veil of perpetual political uncertainty had become non negotiable for the Commission. The odds were high, the hurdles were many, but there was no doubt that the elections had to hold come what may or the reign of the transition jinx would be extended.

 

Dear compatriots, the cup of our electoral democracy may be viewed today as either half full or half empty, depending on each individual’s disposition or state of mind. One thing is for sure, however, and about that I am proud; that the cup of democratic governance is firmly in our hands still and the water in it is more than half full.

 

Even if there is no other accomplishment in the elections of 2007; even if everything about the elections deserves denigrating on the editorial pages of newspapers; even if some foreign determiners of questionable unilaterally set standards insist on tutoring us on what they believe we had not done right; even if the sacrifices of the patriots who gave their all including their lives for the elections are denied; even if the printing of 65 million ballot papers in four days is no big deal, since the said ballot papers did not carry serial numbers; even if the reversal of  six  odd governorship election results out of thirty six in the nation (based in the main on technical grounds and internal party problems) translates into failure for the entire General Elections; even if all these were to be so, the historic mark that the 2007 elections finally lifted Nigeria over a forty-seven year jinx of not managing to transit from one elected government to another will always stand. This is what went right for the 2007 elections. We saved Nigeria.

 

 

 

 

 

April 15, 2008

Ibadan, Nigeria.

 

 


 


[1] West Cornel (1994); Race Matters. Vintage Books, New York.

[2] Iwu Maurice(2006); Democracy and Constitutional Governance in Nigeria: Paradox of the excluded Middle.5th distinguished faculty of Social sciences Public Lecture, University of Benin

[3] Starr, Harvey (1999); Anarchy, Order and Integrtion.How to Manage Interdependence. The university of Michigan Press, Anna Arbor

[4] The Official Report on the 2007 General Elections, INEC, Abuja. Page 10

[5] Habit Adam and Schulttz-Herzenberg Collette (2005) Accountability and Democracy: Are the ruling elite responsive to the citizenry? In: Richard Calland and Paul Graham (Eds): Democracy in the Time of Mbeki. IDASA. Cape Town.