ANY HOPE FOR OUR COUNTRY ELECTIONS.....................

Political parties set aside funds for bribery — Jega

September 28, 2014 by Niyi Odebode, John Alechenu and Ade Adesomoju

INEC Chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega

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.