By John Bulus
The dire need to have credible elections in Nigeria especially in April, 2011 may not be a wish limited to the ordinary Nigerian.

Godfrey Samson Miri

Those who will superintend over the election also crave for the same change. And one of them is the Gombe State Resident Electoral Commissioner, Mr. Godfrey Samson Miri  who has seen many elections come and go.

He spoke so passionately in this exclusive chat with Vanguard about the need for free and fair elections amongst other issues. Excerpts:

Nigerians are worried by reports of alleged move to jettison the DDC machines in favour of manual Register for the 2011 general elections.

When you said jettison the DDC machines, I don’t understand you because the machines were used for registration. We have finished registration. Now we are in the process of running Automated fingerprint Identification System, AFIS, to eliminate multiple registrations. So the job of the DDC machines we have finished, what is left is continuous registration after elections.

But for anybody to say INEC has jettisoned the machines, I don’t think is right. If you go down to my ICT (department) you‘ll find them busy working trying to correct errors we had during registration. You know we delayed for five days.

People wrote petitions and objections and that is what we are in the process of doing now, correcting all the complaints we got in the field, misspellings of names, wrong particulars about people. This is what we are doing right now.

What could have caused the multiple registrations because some people are accusing politicians of aiding that vice?

I believe the problem in this country is the love for power. People go for elections not to serve but to rule and if you see how power is handled in this country, it makes it a do or die thing when it comes to election. Because it’s like winner takes all. We are a developing country. Most of the contracts, it is the government that has the money in Nigeria.

The Private sector is not yet fully developed. Access to capital is almost non-existent and so, everything depends on government and that’s why politicians will do anything humanly possible to get elected and so, when there is that desperation, people can do anything.

I think that’s the problem. I sincerely believe by the time the industrial sector takes off well, the private sector takes off as well, there will be little incentives for people to go to government, wanting power because if you look at the advanced countries, how many people really want to go for power? When you find politicians, they are going to serve their people; to make a name.

A good number of Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) have been found wanting by the Courts. There is a growing concern among Nigerians that leaving the RECs who have compromised the electoral process to conduct the next elections is not be healthy for our elections.

I think Nigerians are being unfair to RECs. The Resident Electoral Officer is in charge of a State and if you know what happened in 2007. … Let me give you an example: I was deployed to Ogun State seven days to an election.

I did not know even my staff. On the day of elections, the system of recruiting adhoc staff was very faulty in the sense that at the end of the day, most of them were civil servants and it was like they were working for their bosses. A REC, on the day of election, you go round.

Of course, if you see anything wrong, you insist that the results there are cancelled. But it is humanly impossible for any Resident Electoral Commissioner to go round more than two to three local governments on the election day and even the two to three local governments you go round, it is not up to half of the registration Areas that you will cover.

So, to accuse the Resident Electoral Commissioners of rigging elections, I think is wrong. It’s a whole process and a system. There are so many people. When people say RECs, RECs, RECs are the ones. RECs are not the collection officers in the field. They are not the Returning Officers in the field.

They are not the polling Clerks. RECs simply announce the results that have been collated from all the Local Government for Governorship and they announce it. So, to put the blame on RECs squarely, I think it’s being unfair to RECs.

Your first major assignment in Gombe State upon your arrival here was superintending the Gombe North and South Senatorial Bye- elections in August last year. Many people including some political parties were unhappy that the ruling PDP swept the polls. Consequently, they alleged a pact between you and the government. How do you react to this?

I challenge any political party to come out and show me where there were cases of fraud in the election. For the first time in the Northern Senatorial zone, I would say we had a near-perfect election apart from about 5 to 6 polling units that we had problems which we cancelled. And out of, I think, a total of 5000.

In Gombe State before then, you had people winning elections with about 90% of the total votes, but for the first time, the person who won, won with less than 50% of the total registered votes and it was even the foreign observers that gave a pass mark for that election.

So for people to say that INEC colluded with the government, I think, they are not being sincere to themselves because many people came out to say on TV, Radio in Gombe that for the first time, an election was conducted in Gombe.

You were REC in some States before Gombe. In the course of this job, has anybody made such an overture to you?

Never. Nobody has. Because, anywhere I go, I make it clear to anybody I work with that we must follow the laws and that is it. I don’t believe in rigging electrons because I’m one of those who fully believe that this country needs to move forward and that our main problem has been election and this is why Nigeria is where it is today.

I believe if we get it right, now, it will change things and every elected official at the end of the day will do what is right. I believe that this country should be well ahead of where it is right now and we have kids. We want to get a future for our children. We cannot get a better future for our kids if we encourage illegality.

So this is something that involeves the whole country: the politician, the political party, INEC, Security, and the various governments in power in various States; that we should think of the future. It puzzles me when our politicians go abroad and see what is happening abroad.

They love to fly out to foreign land because it is comfortable there and instead of them to come back and repeat that in Nigeria, no, they don’t. I believe this country as a whole should team up and say to ourselves, enough is enough. Let us do it right and this 2011 is the year.

I believe Nigerians should get it right because if they don’t, you see what is happening in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Yemen: we should no think it will not get here. So, the earlier, the better.