2003 General Elections: A Bungled Historical Opportunity By Mohammed Haruna 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? |