*’How to get 2019 polls right’

By BEN AGANDE

In this interview, Mr Eze Nwaugwu, the Chairman, Partners For Electoral Reforms, speaks on the  2015 elections and what needs to be done to ensure that there is improvement in the 2019 elections.

Excerpts:

You were fully involved in the run up to the 2015 elections. The elections have come and gone. What would you say are things that made the difference?

Every process and institution needs improvement. What went right with the 2015 elections was the introduction of technology and the removal of manual process in the handling of elections especially in the area of verification. That has its own challenge. The big challenge is that we live in a country that criminalizes technology. People fight technology here because it takes away discretion and anywhere you have discretion, corruption is  rife. When you have a society that is prone to corruption as much as ours  is, the electoral  process is not immune from corruption.

Eze Nwaugwu

What we didn’t do well was to put the necessary safeguard for the technology that we introduced. Talk about the smart card readers, talk about the Permanent Voter  Card. What those were meant to do was to verify the voters and authenticate the cards themselves. If you do that, you will realize that some of those funny figures that are posted during elections that have no bearing to the elections would be eliminated. Most of our voters  registers are padded, just like they are   padding budget now. Our voters registers have always been padded. If you have been a keen follower of elections, you will discover that during voters registration  politically exposed persons    in communities and INEC officials collude to inflate the voters  register. Sometimes the lie is that it has something to do with the amenities that come to your area. So it is that padding that is the challenge. So the smart card reader was introduced to see how we can beat that down a bit.

If you ask me, those who fought the smart card reader did so  from the point of ignorance because they didn’t actually understand what it was meant for. Now the challenge we are having is that of  adoption to the issue of capturing of finger prints and the fight is still on.

We must get an authentic voters  register. That was what we didn’t do right. We did what INEC called   cleaning of the voters register but it didn’t amount to anything in the local communities because you still   have very few people coming out to vote.

The thing we didn’t also do well was that we didn’t do enough outreach. If you follow some of the rulings of the Supreme Court, you will find out that the justices are not supreme beings, and they don’t know everything. The training in the electoral process, the training in the technology that was introduced was not made available to them. Most of them don’t even understand what we are talking about. We need to do more outreaches, we need to strengthen voter education which  should target every section of the society and not just the ordinary people, the elite themselves are the ones who need  voter education.  The understanding most of the time is that everybody understands election but that is not true. Even very educated sections like the media that you would expect to understand these issues still find it difficult using the correct terms that have to do with elections; that means that we need to intensify training. That was what we didn’t do, our outreaches were not strong enough, our voter education was not very strong enough; we didn’t target the different sectors that are working to undermine the process.

How do you think this can be resolved before the 2019 elections?

The window for constitutional amendment is there. We can get the National  Assembly to put it in black and white because that is what people are looking for, this new technology that we are talking about. But beyond all of these,   we must get into electronic voting. If we continue to criminalized technology and we are not following what people in other climes are doing, we can never get it right . Nigerians voted sometime ago and they didn’t have to travel back to their country to vote. They voted in Sokoto and Kano. Ghanaians who live in Nigeria don’t travel back to vote, they vote from Nigeria. So we are not even talking about the US and Canada and the rest of them.

As a country, we must remove that impediment to electronic voting. Once you are able to get into electronic voting, we must remove that legislation that says you cannot use electronic voting. That is part of what we will do to remedy the situation. Once we take that off, then elections would become a common thing, we are using ATM everywhere, we are using e-passport, so why we cannot do electronic voting?

Bearing in mind the kind of process that brought about members of our legislature, do you see the possibility of them decriminalizing   technology?

Well I think they supported the introduction of the smart card reader. There was initial opposition and that was why I talked about outreach, more extensive outreach. The members of the National Assembly were first opposed to the whole idea of the smart card reader. But the leadership of the INEC took the pains to take them through that process. So, you may not completely give up on them in terms of their ability to embrace this because there are also very progressive elements among them.   An outreach that is targeted at policy makers to bring about these reforms is very important.

But the tragedy is that a greater percentage of our politicians are opposed to reforms.   But public education is important in bringing about reforms.

What is your reaction to the pronouncement of the Supreme Court  on the card reader? Do you think that is an additional setback?

I don’t think so. In fairness to the Supreme Court, though I have my issues with them, I don’t think they came out against the smart card reader. They said it is supplementary and I think Femi Falana made that point not long ago that the Supreme  Court did not actually nullify the use of  the card reader. But you know, when you give a weapon to those who ordinarily have wanted to kill technology, like I said, in the electoral process, the vagueness of the Supreme Court rulings helps to strengthen them.

What we need to do now is to make sure that, in the electoral reform and constitutional reform window that is opening in the National  Assembly, we insist, as  conscious citizens, that we needed that mainstream into our electoral process clearly so that there is no ambiguity as to where that is coming from. Even the smart card reader was appropriated for by the National  Assembly which makes the introduction of that machine legal; because it is not electronic, it is a machine.

The tenure of some of the Commissioners in INEC has expired, yet government seems to be foot-dragging in appointing new ones. What does this portend?

I think the tragedy of our situation is that a government that benefitted essentially from reforms, the minimal reforms that has taken place, is foot-dragging in driving electoral reforms. Why do I say so? 20 states, as we speak today, do not have Resident Electoral  Commissioners, the INEC Commissioners at the head quarters are expected to be 13, you have seven of them, six have not been appointed. So, in reality, INEC as an institution is not running full steam. And it is difficult to understand why the President is foot-dragging but I think we will use the advocacy to get them to appoint the INEC Commissioners. They think they have fulfilled the constitutional provision that says seven commissioners would form a quorum but the Constitution says one third, not of seven but one third of  13. So you are still in breach of that constitutional provision because if you have seven people, they are not the full complement of that Board. Why the President is reluctant to appoint the full complement of Commissioners is what we can’t understand but we will continue the advocacy to ensure that what is right is done.

Are you saying that the President is in breach of the Constitution by not appointing a full complement of the members of the INEC Board?

No, I think there is a smartness they have, that says if you have appointed seven, you have not breached the Constitution; one third of seven is five. It may not be a breach in that sense but it is clear that you need to energize the institution to run full steam.

This foot-dragging, what does it portend for the next elections?

We have argued that the  strategic plan for 2019 elections should have ordinarily been in the public domain by 2014 but, we are a country that likes to run things on a fire brigade approach.     I don’t expect them to be excited so much about reforms, I am not expecting that excitement about electoral reforms from a government that benefited from reforms. But my sense is that we must, as citizens, groups and organisations, continue to pressure that the right things be done in our electoral process.

Despite some little obstacles in the conduct of elections, people generally have the impressions that they are doing very well; do you see this momentum being sustained?

A: No, I think that in terms of process, INEC has had a graph that goes up and summersaults. 2015 was good only to the extent that technology was introduced and it helped the electoral process considerably. But the internal reforms, the internal governance issues within the institution itself are still there.  The electoral officers are gods in their own areas and they seem untouchable. As we speak now, no INEC staff,   in spite of glaring breaches and malfeasance from them, is being tried by any court.

The focus of the reforms must also address internal governance issues within INEC itself.   In fact what has happened is that many people just leave the organisation the way it is. Prof Jega actually side stepped internal issues by out-sourcing elections to university vice chancellors and ad hoc staff but without also ensuring that that linkage between the institution itself and the out-sourced places were cemented correctly. You bring a vice chancellor who absolutely is alien to election issues so he still depends on the INEC staff.  Going forward, we must address the glaring compromises, the glaring issues that are clear that came out from the institution itself.

Do you see an outsider such  as the INEC Chairman having the will power to carry out the reforms that you are talking about?

I see a lot of scare; talking with them, they tell you civil servants are terrible and that if you go there, you might not have the time to do your work but somebody is going to do that work, somebody must address the issue of civil servants and the role that they play.

As we speak now,   the implications of not appointing the RECs is that you have allowed civil servants to run those states where you are supposed to have the RECs. So right now it is the most senior INEC official that is running those states. The danger is what you saw in the budget issue. The President was praising civil servants; if you remember that they are the ones who run, after all what do ministers do. I am sure it is clear to him now that civil servants are not what he thought they are. So we must put political leadership that can govern with the mindset of the leader, the mindset of the government  and somebody who can we held accountable. I think seriously that if we have to get elections right, we must sanitize INEC.

What do you think would be different from 2015 in the 2019 elections?

A: Increased citizen interest would be the difference. The things you got away with in 2015, you cannot get away with them in 2019. What that means is that what you are seeing in the budget now, citizen attention is very high. In 2019, citizens would be interested in what you do with the voters register; they would be interested in what you do with training, they would be interested in what you do with voter education, they would be interested in what you do with voting day activities. So that citizen interest, managing it would be the difference between 2015 and 2019.

But this would not happen except we go the way of electronic voting, in the way of independent candidacy, in the way of setting up electoral offences commissions, in the way of making sure that the constituencies are delineated clearly.

People would say, are you going to set up another institution? You know when you set up a  commission, people get scared. But the tragedy of our situation is that if nobody is sanctioned, if nobody is punished for electoral offences, if murder, assault and battering on election day are taken as election day incidents, then we are not going to get anywhere. So, we must pay a special attention to the issue of electoral offences, ensuring that people are punished and sanctioned for electoral offences.

We need to reinvigorate the INEC legal department; the whole idea of out-sourcing prosecution and trial of election issues to lawyers who you don’t understand their background and what they are thinking; the huge amount of money that is paid to those lawyers, you can use it to reinvigorate your legal department. But, finally, in my view, we need to have a  stakeholders summit on electoral issues.