2003 General Elections: A Bungled Historical Opportunity

By

Mohammed Haruna

kudugana@yahoo.com 

1.  A FLAWED ELECTION

Last Saturday’s May 3, 2003 elections into the State Houses of Assembly has brought this year’s general elections to an end. By almost all accounts the elections, the first to be conducted by a civilian administration in nearly twenty years, have been the most fraudulent in the country’s history. Several institutions and individuals must share the responsibility for the huge failure of the elections, but the primary responsibility for this must go first, to President Olusegun Obasanjo and second, to the so-called Independent National Electoral Commission under the Chairmanship of Dr. Abel Guobadia.

 

The elections were monitored by thousands of local and international observers. The overwhelming number of them, have in their interim reports, condemned the elections as seriously flawed, to say the least. Most of these observers have reported on and commended the willingness of Nigerians to participate actively in choosing their leaders. Equally, however, the observers also expressed consternation at the way those in power and authority deliberately and systematically frustrated the expression of the popular will by Nigerians.

 

2.  THE MONITORS’ REPORTS

On April 29 and 30, representatives of 45 of the local organisations that monitored the elections, met in Abuja to review the elections of April 12 in to the National Assembly and those of April 19 for the presidency and governorships. The organisations met under the aegis of the Electoral Reform Network (ERN), and subsequently issued a statement which was signed by representatives of the ERN, the Transition Monitoring Group (TMG) which had 10,000 monitors, the Justice Development and Peace Commission (JDPC) of the Catholic Church, with 30,000 monitors, the Labour Election Monitoring Team (LEMT) of the Nigeria Labour Organisation with over 4,000 monitors and the Federation of Muslim Women’s Associations of Nigeria (FOMWAN) and the Muslim League for Accountability (MULAC) with over 1,600 monitors.

Their statement, which has been published in a number of newspapers, has described the elections of April 12 and 19 as too seriously flawed to be the reflection of the wishes of the Nigeria voters. Among other things, the statement said, “We have evidence that in many polling stations across the country, voters voted, results were declared at some polling stations, while in others there was a conscious decision by electoral personnel not to declare the results. Whether declared or not, these results were manipulated by electoral officers and party officials at collation centres. Contrary to INEC guidelines, observers were in some states and centres refused access to these collation centres.”

In addition to this, the local observers also reported, among other things, (1) widespread collusion between governors and INEC officials’ to manipulate results,(2) the use of members of the armed forces to intimidate the electorate and party agents, (3) widespread under-age and multiple voting and (4) the use of thugs in the South-South and South-East.

Of all the reports by the local monitors, the most damning in its detail was the interim report of the JDPC. In a statement on the report by Archbishop John Onaiyekan, (CON), the Archbishop of Abuja and the President of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria, he described the elections as “generally free and fair,” and also said INEC deserved commendation for this. With due respect to the highly respected Archbishop, nowhere in the JDPC’s report were the elections of April 12 and 19 described as free and fair. On the contrary, the report was damning in its details about all sorts of frauds that were perpetrated during those elections with the connivance of INEC officials and security officers. For example, the JDPC report talked about “massive rigging of elections, at the collation centres” into which, it said observes were refused entry. This problem, it said, was most acute in Imo, Anambra, Rivers, Delta and Enugu states.

The report also reported induced low voter turn out in Rivers, Anambra, Bayelsa, Edo, and Delta and the boycott of the elections in Enugu and Ebonyi. It also reported monetary inducements at polling centres it visited across the country, especially in Kogi, Katsina, and Tarba. The damning list of irregularities went on and on.

On the whole the report had only three positive things to say about the elections, which were, first, that the logistics of the April 19 elections were a big improvement over those of April 12, second, that Nigerians were prepared to go through all sorts of inconveniences in order to discharge their civil responsibility, something they demonstrated by their massive turn-out inspite of the elements and looming violence” and third, the generally peaceful conduct of the elections. The most noteworthy thing about all this, is that these irregularities reported by the JDPC occurred mostly in states either controlled by or won over by the ruling PDP.

These observations by the local monitors seem to have been confirmed by the foreign observer groups. These groups, it should be pointed out, came at the invitation of INEC. They included those from the European Union, the Commonwealth, the African Union, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, both from the United States, the ECOWAS and from South Africa.

All of them, except for ECOWAS, which is understandable since Nigeria funds its budget, have, in varying degrees, expressed reservations about the fairness of and the freedom surrounding the elections. The ECOWAS monitors, have, in a brief statement, described the elections as “credible, free, fair and transparent, reflecting the legitimate feelings of the Nigerian people”. They were of the opinion that “any hiccups that might have occurred during and after the conduct of the election process were grossly insufficient to adversely affect the outcome of the elections”.

ECOWAS seems to be alone in its views on the elections of April 12 and 19. Here it is instructive that the ECOWAS group of monitors was among the smallest of the foreign monitors and they observed elections in only seven states, namely Bauchi, Borno, Cross River, Kaduna, Kano, Ogun and the Federal Capital Territory. It is equally instructive that the other foreign monitors have reported that some of the most flagrant abuses of the electoral process occurred in all these states and the FCT.

Except for ECOWAS, the other foreign monitors, as we have said, have been critical of the elections of April 12 and 19, albeit in varying degrees. The most critical of the lot, have been the EU monitors. With 118 monitors spread among 31 states and the FCT, the EU, among other things, said it observed many instances of “ballot stuffing, changing results and other serious irregularities … in Cross River, Delta, Enugu, Imo and Rivers.” The elections in these states, the EU said, “lack(ed) credibility.” The EU said it also observed irregularities in Anambra, Benue, Edo, Katsina and Nassarawa states, irregularities which “undermined the integrity of the electoral process” in those states.

Last, but by no means the least, the EU said the presidential and governorship elections of April 19 were marred by “serious irregularities throughout the country and fraud in at least 11 states.”

Given the highly critical posture of the EU on the elections, it is hardly surprising that both the INEC and those authority have chosen to single it out for attack. Both INEC and those authority have alleged that the EU’s report was aimed at destabilizing Nigeria. It is not clear why the EU, whose leading members, notably Britain, Germany and France, are the country’s biggest trading partners, should seek to destabilize Nigeria. However, INEC’s evidence for its accusation was that the EU report was premature. Yet INEC did not consider the national broadcast by President Obasanjo which declared the National Assembly elections of April 12 as free and fair even before all the results were in, as premature.

The fact is that there was nothing in the EU report that were not in the report of most of our local monitors. The truth is that no objective observer of the April 12 and 19 elections will fail to notice the glaring irregularities that completely undermined their credibility. And if any further evidence of these irregularities was needed it showed itself in the massive boycott all over the country of the State Houses of Assembly elections on May 3, 2003. Most voters interviewed by the correspondents of the media broadcasting stations which monitored the elections, including those owned by the Federal Government, said they boycotted the May 3 elections, because their choices in the previous two elections were deliberately and systematically subverted by those in power. Since their votes did not matter, they said, there was no point wasting their time and risking their lives and limbs to come out to vote.

In the light of all this it is difficult, if not impossible, to conclude that, as on the two previous occasions in 1966 and 1983 when civilian administrations conducted the country’s general elections, President Obasanjo’s administration has failed to conduct a free and fair election. It is also difficult, if not impossible, not to conclude that if the elections seem relatively peaceful, it is only because, with the massive use of the security and armed forces by those in power to intimidate the population, there was no balance of terror between the power-that-be and the opposition elements.

 

3.  RESPONSIBILITY

i The President: 

       As we said at the beginning of this report, although all the major actors in the political scene including political parties, the tower bench and the mass media must share in the responsibility for the failure of a civilian government once again to conduct a free and fair election, the primary responsibility must go first to President Obasanjo and second, to INEC.

In a joint communique issued by the Arewa Consultative Forum and the Ohaneze Ndiigbo on October 23, 2002, a communique, which has proved rather prophetic, we stated that President Obasanjo’s “preference for executive selection in place of election has been the root cause of virtually all our political crisis under his administration. The fear of well-meaning Nigerians, therefore, is that President Obasanjo, who is now so obsessed with his re-election for a second term will try the same undemocratic tactics in the 2003 elections and impose himself on the country to continue as president. The result will be disastrous.”

Earlier, we had pointed out how the president has squandered a historic opportunity to heal the wounds of many years of military rule due to his personality and style of governance. We had pointed out how he had encouraged divisions in the country along ethnic, religious and sectional lines in order to remain in power. We had also pointed out how he had failed to achieve the harmonious relationship with the National Assembly, which was necessary for the peace, stability and progress of the country, inspite of the fact that a ruling party had, for the first time in the nation’s history, enjoyed a large majority in the House.

Instead, his open and corrupt interference with the election of the leadership of the National Assembly and even of the leadership of his own party led to one political crisis after another virtually throughout his first term. The president showed his hand almost as soon as he came to power, but one of the most definitive things he did to prove that for him the end justified the means was his role in December 2001 in an attempt by a clique that included some leading members of the National Assembly, to rig the Electoral Law 2001, in such a manner that will keep out any new parties from entering the political contest for the presidency. But for the vigilance of the more patriotic elements in the legislature in exposing the conspiracy to smuggle Section 80(1) into the law, as throwing out the obnoxious Section as an illegal and unconstitutional insertion, the nation would have been saddled with a severely limited choice of parties and candidates in this year’s general elections.

The law was, however, not the only instrument that the ruling party tried to use to rig the elections in its own favour. More significant here was the deliberate effort of the presidency to starve INEC of the funds it needed to carry out its functions properly and efficiently. As the Chairman of INEC, Dr, Guobadia, himself, told an interactive session in Lagos with media chiefs on January 18, 2003, INEC’s problems can be traced to (1) the presidency which often gave INEC too little money, too late for it to discharge its functions properly, and (2) the bickerings between the presidency and the National Assembly which led to serious delays in passing the electoral law for the 2003 elections.

In several press interviews, Dr. Guobadia has rejected suggestions that the delays in and the inadequacy of funding INEC were deliberate, but this seems clearly to be the case. First, when Guobadia replaced Chief Ephraim Akpata following the latter’s death early in 2000, one of his first acts was to announce that he will computerize the compilation of the country’s voters register, for the first time in the country’s history. For more than one year after he approached the presidency for the release of funds to carry out the exercise, he was studiously ignored. Indeed, we have it on good authority, that when he finally personally took his case to the president himself and said he would like to commence the exercise in November 2001 so that a computerized voters’ register would be ready in time for the February 2002 local government elections scheduled against the end of the three year tenure of the local governments that had started in May 1999, the president told Guobadia and the National Commissioners that accompanied him, that there would be no such elections. This was at a time when, because of a convergence of interest between most members of the National Assembly and the presidency, the two seemed to have agreed to reverse the sequence of the 2003 general elections, starting with the presidential elections.

It will be recalled that the governors kicked against the extension of the tenure of the local governments and took the National Assembly to court. They eventually won their case in March 2002 when the Supreme Court ruled that the National Assembly over-stepped its constitutional bounds by trying to legislate for local governments other than those of the Federal Capital Territory. By then, however, it was past the deadline for the local government elections.

At any rate by then, INEC had not been able to prepare the voters’ register necessary for the conduct of a free and fair election due to what was clearly a deliberate presidential delay in releasing funds to INEC. In the end INEC got the funds to prepare the register only in May 2002. It was finally able to commence the exercise only in September.

Not surprising the exercise was a near fiasco, with ill-prepared INEC officials turning up late at the registration centres late or, in many cases, not at all. INEC claimed to have released 70 million registration forms, as against an estimated target of 59,500,000 but everywhere there were complaints of shortages of the forms and other materials.

Part of the delay in starting the voter registration exercise was traceable to President Obasanjo’s political decision to link it with the National Identity Card Project which had dragged on since 1979. The ID card project had become politicized when Afenifere, the pan-Yoruba cultural group lead by Chief Abraham Adesanya, demanded its implementation as a condition for Yoruba participation in the 2003 general elections. Adesanya had told a Pan-Congress of the Yoruba in Ibadan that only the implementation of the project will give the lie to the population of the North which he said Northerners had always inflated by counting their goats and cows.

By deciding to link the voters registration exercise with the ID Card project, President Obasanjo, as a Yoruba, showed he shared Afenefere’s sentiments. Henceforth, he said, the possession of the I.D. Card would be necessary for the exercise of one’s voting right. Not surprisingly this decision was rejected by the North which pointed out that the linkage was, in any case, illegal. In the end, Obasanjo de-linked the two exercise largely because a South African Company, Images Technology that was awarded the multi-billion contract for the computersisation of the voters’ cards, could not deliver the digital cameras for taking pictures of voters, in time.

ii  Independent National Electoral Commission

From the foregoing, it should be obvious that the fiasco surrounding the just concluded general elections was partly due to factors outside the control of INEC, mainly the factors of funding and the electoral law. Beyond these, however, INEC has itself to blame for the outcome of the general elections. INEC contributed to the election fiasco in several ways. This included the 123,000,000 Naira financial scandal over the involvement of a hastily put together legal consortium, KD10, to handle the drafting of the contract between INEC and Images Technology. The commission’s legal department had advised against it as a waste but it was over-ruled. The lid was eventually blown off the scandal when KD10 protested to the Chairman about a finder’s fee of 23,000,000 Naira demanded by the lawyer-son of the National Electoral Commissioner in charge of the department, Mrs. Mary Obegolu. The scandal was to cost Mrs. Obegolu her job, but it also further dented the already poor image and credibility of INEC.

This scandal apart, many acts of omissions and commissions by INEC became matters for litigations right up to election day. These included its rejection of the application of many associations for registration as political parties and the cases its decision to charge candidates for the elections rather exorbitant filing fees. It is instructive that INEC lost most of these cases. 

The combination of the external constraint and internal problems of INEC has led inevitably to elections that many regard as the most fraudulent in Nigeria’s history. The big question now is what next?.

 

4.  WHAT NEXT?