The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, in this interview with NIYI ODEBODE, JOHN ALECHENU and ADE ADESOMOJU, speaks on the commission’s preparations for 2015 elections and other related issues
How prepared
is the Independent National Electoral Commission for the election in
Adamawa State in view of recent attacks in the state?
INEC
is prepared to conduct Adamawa election even as we are mindful of the
security challenges. I’m pleased to say that the reports I have been
receiving from our resident electoral officers show that things are on
course. Two days ago, the report I received was that in many of those
areas, people who had been displaced were going back. In about five
local governments, stakeholders that were meeting with the INEC agreed
that we could not distribute the permanent voter cards as we had planned
to do. In those five local governments, it was concluded that voters
would use their temporary voter cards for the election.
Apart
from that, we are encouraged that things are normalising and we will be
able to conduct a credible election in Adamawa. We are not resting on
our oars; we keep monitoring the security situation and we keep
receiving and putting into consideration security analysis and reports
in the state.
Are there special arrangements for the North-East?
I
have said consistently that as an election management body, we are
preparing for the 2015 general elections with a view that elections will
take place everywhere in this country and we are hopeful and prayerful.
I believe many Nigerians are hopeful and prayerful that things will
stabilise and security challenges will not prevent the conduct of
election in any of these states.
As I
said earlier, the spate of attacks in certain cities in the North-East
in the last few weeks gives us additional concern. From the information
we got, many of the displaced people are back, trying to settle down. We
are hoping that in the North-East, by February, there will be
sufficient return of normalcy such that there will be no substantial
risk in the conduct of elections. We are working very closely with
security agencies to plan on how to provide security and how to ensure
that nobody is put at risk. Certainly, we will not do anything to put
our staff, personnel, materials or even the voters at risk. We are
always mindful of security challenges and how disruptive these could be
in an election. But we should also be mindful of the fact that elections
have taken place in places with more serious security challenges than
we are having in the North-East. We shouldn’t give up hope. It’s too
early for anybody to say elections will not take place in the
North-East.
On many
occasions, insurgents strike unhindered where soldiers are absent.
During elections it can be difficult to deploy security men in all the
nooks and crannies of a state. Under this circumstance will INEC still
conduct election?
Again,
we should understand the nature of insurgency. It is to cause fear. It
is to cause terror and it is to create the impression that everything is
unsafe. But our security agencies are doing their best. Elections have
been conducted in Iraq; elections have been conducted in Iran; there are
more serious terrorist activities in those places. I am saying that it
is possible to conduct elections in these places and we are preparing to
explore that possibility.
What
arrangements are you putting in place to safeguard the lives of your ad
hoc staff, particularly the members of the National Youth Service
Corps?
Since the 2011
elections and the unfortunate post-election violence, we have been
working closely with security agencies to pay particular attention to
providing adequate security for the young men and women of the NYSC and
for all members of staff who are involved in electoral duties. Some of
these arrangements are what translated into what happened in Ekiti, what
happened in Osun and even in Anambra. We are putting many measures in
place because we cannot play with the lives of our staff. We have an
inter-agency consultative committee on election security and this
committee has been meeting regularly and we have been reviewing,
analysing, planning and strategising on how to address security
challenges.
Why do elections appear more expensive in Nigeria than elsewhere?
This
is a matter of perception. Elections are not more expensive in Nigeria
than in other African countries. If you look at the key index of
measuring the cost of election which is called the cost of election per
voter, divide the total electoral budget with the total number of
registered voters, like you do for Gross Domestic Product per capita and
you will arrive at how much it costs per voter in the election budget.
If you use that, Nigeria is actually on the average in African
countries, not to talk of globally. It is not expensive. The only
problem is that Nigeria has size; the funds required to conduct
elections in Nigeria is huge. It can’t be compared with that of Ghana,
Kenya or Ivory Coast. But if you divide the cost of election in Kenya by
number of voters, and in Ghana by number of voters and compare it with
Nigeria, their costs are higher than that of Nigeria. The problem here
is that people have a perception when they see the huge figure. But in
every country, election is an expensive affair because you want to
conduct credible elections using international standards and benchmark.
Let
me give you an example of how prudent we are and how unfortunately we
are not meeting international benchmarks in the conduct of elections. On
average, if you look at African countries, or globally, the number of
ad hoc staff or temporary workers in a polling unit is seven. In fact,
some countries put up to 10 so that for every activity in the polling
unit there is somebody supervising it. We have gone all over the world
observing elections — somebody is at the gate managing the queue,
somebody is inside giving ballot papers, somebody is putting ink on
voters’ fingers, somebody is just standing to ensure that the voter does
not put the ballot paper in a wrong ballot box. On average, they put
seven persons in each polling unit. How many did we use in 2011? We used
three. We want to now come close to the average and we want to use six
in 2015, but because of budgetary constraint, we are trying to use four.
We are improving, we used three in 2011 and now we plan to use four.
But we are still far from the average of seven.
How much is it in Nigeria?
In
2011, it was just about $11 per voter. Hence, what we prepared for 2015
in our budget is just about $10.04. That is the cost we are using. Look
at Kenya, the cost of their last election was almost $17 per voter; in
Ghana the cost of their last election was more than $12 per voter. But
because Nigeria is huge and conducting election in Ghana is probably
just a few states put together in Nigeria. When people see the huge
amount of money, they say it’s expensive, but it is not expensive given
what needs to be done.
In
2011 when you acquired some equipment with certain life span, you
complained about storage facilities. Has the challenge been tackled
ahead of the 2015 elections?
We
have done our best to manage what we have, to conduct a successful
exercise and to minimise the cost so that if we have to procure
equipment again, it will have to be for Continuous Voter Registration,
not massive registration. As I speak with you, we have already done CVR
in 22 states and the FCT. What remains is the balance of 12 states which
we hope to do in late October and early November. We wanted to do it
earlier but because we have to conduct the Adamawa election.
Why is the INEC unable to enforce the provisions of the Electoral Act on campaign finance and campaign activities?
The
law provides that you monitor the expenditure of a candidate and the
expenditure of a political party with regard to a particular election.
We have to be careful, because if an organisation is conducting what
seems to be a campaign, when actually parties have not actually
identified who their candidates are, is that something INEC should
monitor? The law didn’t say we should monitor it. There is no candidate
as of now. But sometimes, we are blamed unjustifiably without people
really understanding what the law says we should do. By the time
candidates are nominated and every political party brings its
candidates, then we will monitor how much a candidate spends and how
much the party spends. And we should be able at that time to come out
publicly and announce that this candidate has spent this much, this
party has spent this much for campaign. But again, the law, in some
provisions, is really ambiguous. There is fundamental need for a review
of many of those provisions. For instance, look at the money it says
candidates should spend – it says governors should not spend more than
N100m. Everybody knows that governors really spend much more than that.
Even a local government chairman spends much more than what the law says
a governor should spend. But there is no capacity for monitoring — at
least now.
Are you saying the law is silent on the campaign finances of aspirants?
Yes, the law does not even recognise aspirants. The law only talks about candidates and political parties.
What about campaign activities? There are many who campaign earlier than the time stipulated by the Electoral Act?
That
is the issue. Again, the law has some relative ambiguity about what is
the definition of a campaign? What constitutes a campaign. If you follow
the provisions of the law and you try to extrapolate, a campaign is
when a candidate emerges and the candidate says, ‘I am standing for this
office, vote me for this office,’ or when somebody on behalf of that
candidate says, ‘vote him for this office.’ But look at what is
happening — there is relative ambiguity. Somebody will say on behalf of
somebody, that the person is the saviour for 2015. It’s very ambiguous
and some people are cleverly circumventing the provisions of the law and
they have not committed any offence. What we need to do is to sanitise
that. The commission and political parties have agreed there is the need
for INEC to come out with clear guidelines. As I speak with you, we
have finalised the draft guidelines. By the last week of September, we
are going to hold our regular quarterly meeting with the chairmen and
secretaries of political parties. It is on the agenda; we are going to
discuss the draft guidelines so that we finalise it in good time before
parties do their primaries and candidates emerge. Then, we can sanitise
the campaign process.
Again, the law
is ambiguous with regards to campaign. Some provisions say if you
campaign when you are not supposed to, which is outside 90 days before
election, it is an offence. But in some cases, it does not define what
the penalty for that offence is. The ambiguity needs to be clarified but
unfortunately INEC cannot do that because it is a matter of an existing
law. It means the law has to be reviewed. What I am saying is that
people need to understand that we work under constraints and challenges.
We can only do what the law enables us to do clearly and unambiguously.
One
aspect of the report on the 2011 elections was that there was voter
apathy. There seems to be buck-passing between the INEC and political
parties on whose role it is. What is INEC doing about voter apathy?
Nobody
will contest the fact that in Nigeria, we have a large number of
illiterate voters. There are also people who are apathetic and
indifferent to the political process. Therefore, voter education is very
important and crucial in deepening democracy. The law mandates INEC to
do voter education. In every budget, we have funds allocated to voter
education but unfortunately a lot more needs to be done in voter
education than we have funds to do. The good news is that as we prepare
for the 2015 elections, we have increased the budget for voter education
and we have revised our communication. We even have a new communication
policy which defines how INEC should engage with voters, with different
stakeholders and other constituencies and how we can engage and relate
with civil society organisations and make our voter education campaign
effective. In fact, as I speak with you, we have started implementing
that strategy. We have now established in every state of the federation
what we call Inter-Agency Committee on Voter Education, bringing
different categories of government agencies and stakeholders to do
effective voter education. Development partners also now recognise the
need to fund voter education and make it more effective and they are
contributing a lot of resources through the joint donor basket fund to
do those aspects of voter education that INEC cannot do because of
limited funds.
But the fact of the
matter is that voter education is a collective responsibility.
Unfortunately, political parties sit back and expect INEC to do all the
voter education. Political parties are the ones who field candidates and
who want their candidates to be elected. They want people, first of
all, to come out to vote and when they vote, you want them to vote for
their candidate. Parties also want them to know how to vote; otherwise
they will waste their ballots. Therefore, political parties have an
important responsibility to ensure that whoever comes to vote is
enlightened and in fact, people are enlightened enough to come out to
vote and then to vote correctly. But parties are sitting back, saying
‘INEC, you haven’t done enough voter education.’ Even in voter
registration, it may interest you to know that some parties are asking
INEC for money with which to do voter education for people to come out
for registration. These are important responsibilities they have and
they have to pay attention to them. For example, every party must have a
budget devoted to voter education and sensitisation because these are
linked to their campaigns, for people to vote for their candidates. Do
they do that? But they will vote money for bribing electoral officials.
Do they do that (bribing electoral officials)?
They
used to do that, but I am hoping that they no longer do that because
they can see it doesn’t work and we have the capacity now in INEC to
quickly identify, apprehend and punish whoever allows himself or herself
to be induced. It used to be a common thing that the first item on the
budgetary agenda of a political party in Nigeria was money to be
distributed; but the priority for parties in their budgeting should be
voter education and sensitisation. It is very important.
How
will you contain the alleged excesses of security operatives in the
2015 elections in view of allegations that they intimidated opposition
party loyalists in Osun and Ekiti; that ministers also used their
offices to do the same and that security operatives prevented INEC from
announcing the results in Osun until there was a protest by voters?
There
are several issues lumped together in that questions. I will attempt to
see if I can separate them. First and foremost, there are systemic
security challenges and INEC is not a security organisation. We are an
election management body and we want election to be peaceful. We want
voters to feel secure to come out and vote. We want our workers to feel
protected and the materials too, in order to do their job without fear
of intimidation or assault. In Nigerian election, we must recognise that
security is important and security agencies have a role.
People
have been talking about massive mobilisation of security in Ekiti and
Osun and they have even alleged that voters were disenfranchised. The
evidence does not support that allegation. In Ekiti, at the time we did
the election, the voter turnout in Ekiti was about 53 per cent. That was
the highest voter turnout for any governorship election up to that
time. In fact, the highest until then was barely 30 per cent. How can
you say voters have been disenfranchised? If anything, what the evidence
suggested was that the presence of security made voters comfortable to
come out and exercise their duties. By the time we conducted the
governorship election in Osun, the percentage of turnout was higher than
that of Ekiti; it was about 57 per cent. It even came close to
presidential election turnout. Hence, the evidence suggests presence of
security provides assurance for voters that they may not be assaulted by
partisan thugs and that they can discharge their civic
responsibilities. I think we need people to recognise this.
Then
people talk about militarisation. Yes, the military is present. But the
role of the military has been carefully defined. The military does not
go to polling units; the military does not do in-town patrols. What they
do is called outer peripheral cordon — entrances to the cities and
checkpoints. And when there is crisis or civil disturbance which the
mobile police cannot quell, the military is invited to do that. In both
Ekiti and Osun, that is what they did. In fact, when you talk about
militarisation, I laugh. I am a political scientist I know it was not
militarisation. The police deployed at least 15,000 or more in Ekiti and
Osun. But it is important because we need an average of three policemen
or a combination with other security operatives per polling unit. Thus,
the numbers are huge. But the military deployed barely 1,000 personnel
in both Ekiti and Osun. All these talks about militarisation are just
perception.
Sometimes, some
politicians who don’t want the security presence because they can stop
them from doing what they have planned to do in election will talk about
militarisation. A lot of what people talk about security in elections,
frankly, is politics. It is politics and it is over-exaggerated.
Will INEC allow the use of masked security men in the 2015 elections?
That
is another issue. I don’t want to generate unnecessary controversy. But
we have engaged the security agencies and we have conveyed our feeling
that on election day, every security personnel needs to be identifiable.
That it is why we expect that if it is a policeman or a soldier or
whoever, he will have a number and a name tag because everything about
election is about transparency and credibility. Otherwise, some
miscreants can also start covering their faces and doing things under
cover.
The newly created
polling units have generated a lot of controversies. Some have said you
should have just created additional polling points in the existing
polling units instead of creating new polling units.
We
have been reforming INEC since 2011 and we have been saying the 2015
elections will be remarkably much better than that of 2011. We need to
keep on improving the reforms that can add to the integrity, the
efficiency and the effectiveness with which we conduct elections. We
used voting points as temporary measures to decongest polling units but
they are not a substitute to having substantive polling units. We have
been using a temporary measure for almost four years and we think it is
time now to create polling units and to ensure that every voter now
knows which polling unit he or she belongs to. We have been
unjustifiably criticised for doing that. We believe strongly that those
who criticised our position probably didn’t have the necessary
information. We are putting out all the information, engaging
stakeholders and making people recognise that what we are trying to do
is patriotic. It is in the interest of this country and it is supposed
to help the voters and ease their difficulties on voting day.
What is the relevance of the new national identity card to elections? Will it be used in 2015?
The
national identity card that is being produced and distributed now has
no relevance to the election in 2015. But it is important for us to
understand that the reason why INEC is given the responsibility to
produce voter cards is because in Nigeria, we don’t have national
identity cards. In most countries, in fact, in all countries that have
national identity cards, you do not require another voter card to vote.
The national identity card is used because it identifies that one has a
unique number and is used for the purposes of election. Our hope in INEC
actually, is that by 2019 general elections, once the national ID card
system has become well established, there may be no need to spend money
to produce Permanent Voter Cards. All we will do in INEC is to go to the
national identity card database, that anybody who is 18 years and above
can be taken and then they can now just indicate that they want to be
registered as voters. Once they do that, we will put them on the
register and then on the election day, they can use their national
identity cards for voting. The national identity card, just like the
INEC card, is biometric. You can use the card readers with the national
identity cards.
What
measures is INEC putting in place to address the concerns of people over
the Continuous Voter Registration exercise and distribution of the
Permanent Voter Cards?
Frankly,
if you look at the statistics, you will discover that people are making
a mountain out of a molehill — you know our politicians. A lot of that
hullaballoo on registration is caused by people doing multiple
registrations. People who are already registered, who are already in our
database are being mobilised again by politicians to register. You see
long queues and once you are in the queue, we have to attend to you. We
waste money, we waste time, because eventually we will remove your name
and you will be on our list of electoral offenders for doing multiple
registration. If you look at the statistics of distribution of the
cards, by the time we did the distribution in the second phase of 12
states, the average distribution was about 67 per cent of the registered
voters that came out within that period of three days to collect their
cards. We have taken the remaining cards back to the local government
offices and people have between now and December or even January to go
to the local government offices to pick their card. People are just
criticising us for nothing.
Don’t
you think the perception that INEC, subjectively, allocated more
polling units to the North arose because the commission did not do
enough consultation?
You
can never do enough consultation. We cannot be accused of not doing
consultation but people are saying we have not done enough consultation.
You can never exhaust the scope of consultation and engagement. We have
done our best, unfortunately, our best was not good enough. Hence,
there were still misunderstandings.
Unfortunately,
some mischief makers, I’m sorry I have to say it, may have latched onto
the ignorance of many people and mobilised all sorts of sentiments
especially regional sentiments on this matter. But we know that we have
done this to the best of our ability and our conscience is clear. We
haven’t done it with any agenda and we believe whoever sees the
information we are passing will recognise that there is no hidden agenda
in this and that the primary objective is to make it easier for a voter
to vote.
In INEC currently, we have a
register of whoever has registered; we have removed duplicates. It’s
clean; it’s called post-AFIS register. There is no way a polling unit
can have anybody outside of people that have already registered. All we
did was to take each state and say, ‘What is the total number of total
registered voters?’ If we are to divide the polling units into a maximum
of 500 voters each, how many polling units should this state get and
what is the existing number of polling units? What is the difference
between the existing number and the requirement if it is divided into
500 voters? And then we said in addition to doing this, we also
recognise that in every state or major urban centres, there are new
settlements, where there are no polling units. We give 15 per cent of
the total number of polling units we are distributing so that every
state will have at least 121 additional polling units. That is what
we’ve done and it’s very clear.
We have provided the information and let anybody look at that and see whether what we are being accused of is true.
