By  Emeka Umeagbalasi

Recently, we directed attention of the new Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Prof.  Attahiru Jega, who resumed duty on July 5, 2010, to issues bordering on the national register of voters and the need for its urgent review.

Election midwifery or management in Nigeria has over the years remained a major cause for concern. A cursory look at the election process in Nigeria shows that the military-supervised elections in the country since the end of colonial era appeared to be more credible than those conducted by civilian authorities, including recent ones by INEC.

For instance, the general elections of 1959, conducted by the colonial masters were more credible than the 1964 general elections, conducted by the indigenous-civilian authorities, which led to the break down of law and order in the then Western Nigeria, the after-math effects culminated in the civil-war of 1967-1970.

Prior to that war, about 30,000 Easterners were slaughtered in Kano in 1966 and the civil-war itself was estimated to have claimed over two million lives. Also, the military-conducted elections of 1979 were more credible than the elections of 1983, conducted by civilians, which resulted in the loss of lives and burning of properties in Ondo State. The crisis also led to military takeover in December 1983. Again, the military-supervised polls of 1991 (governorship and legislative) and 1993 (presidential) had been adjudged the most credible of all the elections conducted so far in Nigeria. And the military-conducted polls of 1999 were more free and fair than the civilian-conducted polls of 2003 and 2007, with the 2007 polls adjudged the most roguish.

In the course of my investigations, I discovered rigging, supervised by INEC as the main hindrance to the institutionalization of the culture of credible elections in Nigeria in recent times. By law, INEC has powers to organise elections into about 1,625 elective offices in Nigeria while States’ Independent Electoral Commissions are empowered to organise elections into over 11,000 local governments’ elective offices. There are about 13,700 elective offices in Nigeria recognised by the 1999 constitution. Further to this discovery is that out of 1,625 elections conducted into 1,625 elective offices in 2007 by the Commission, about 1,525 petitions arose. The petitions were filed before various election petitions tribunals (electoral courts) in Nigeria.

The petitions were as a result of armada of fraud that greeted the conduct of the 2007 general elections in Nigeria. As at June 30, 2010, over 300 petitions were reportedly lying undecided at various Divisions of the Nigeria’s Court of Appeal, less than a year to the next general elections in 2011, in tenures that would end in May 2011. The worse of it all is that most of these petitions have now been shifted to the end of September 2010, either for hearing or for consideration of pre-hearing motions and cross-motions. The shift is due to Judges’ annual break which commenced this month (July). Justice delayed is justice denied.

Fraudulent national register of voters
The culture of roguish electoral process has continued to hold Nigeria and Nigerians to ransom. It is widely believed that 80% of those presently occupying Nigeria’s 13,700 elective offices did not win their elections in 2007. It is our further discovery that over the years, Nigeria’s electoral umpire and other partners-in-crime have maintained a fraudulent National Register of Voters, filled with dead and non-existing names.

It is estimated that 70% of Nigerian eligible voters do not have their names in the said Register, yet the figure contained in the Register is deafening when mentioned. This roguish National Register of Voters has over the years sustained the armada of rigging in Nigeria’s electoral industry. The rigging associated with local government elections in Nigeria in recent times is heart-breaking. It is the mother of all election riggings in Nigeria. Except Lagos State local government election rigging which was scientific, others were full blown rigging.

Talking about the discredited National register of voters, in Anambra State, for instance, out of 1,84million “registered voters” contained in the state’s version of the National Register of Voters, about 600,000 were real names or verifiable names and 301,000 of them voted in the February 6, 2010 gubernatorial poll. Even when persons are registered as voters, their Voters’ Cards are rarely issued to them by INEC. In Lagos State alone, according to reports emanating from the Commission, there are about 2.1million registered voters, who have not been issued with their Voters’ Cards, out of the State’s total registered voters of 4,204,000.

INEC is tasked, constitutionally, to carry out continuous registration of eligible voters as well as to update the National Register of Voters so as to add and subtract with respect to fake names, names of those who have died and those that attained the voting age.  But the Commission apparently observes these in breach with reckless abandon. Not even the organisation of voters/civic education for the purpose of popular participation in electoral process is carried out by the Commission.  In the case of Anambra State, for instance, out of 1,844million names contained in State’s version of the National Register of Voters, about 65% of them are found to be fake and dead names. About 35% (600,000) of the names of the State’s estimated 2million eligible voters are contained in the National Register of Voters.

And out of the said 35% authentic names, about 18 % (301,000) voted during the February 6, 2010 gubernatorial election in the State. The remaining 17% could not vote either as a result of administrative lapses on the part of INEC or that they chose to stay away.

The Anambra’s version of the National Register of Voters also contained even till date, tens of thousands of fictitious names and symbols such as trees, windows, doors, blank spaces, all with human names and INEC- given code numbers.  Tens of thousands of dead and foreign names abound therein. All in all, 1.24million names are fictitious and about 600,000 names are real. About 1.4million eligible voters in Anambra State still have their names outside the National Register of Voters. Similar situations may be obtained in the remaining 35 States of the Federation and the FCT.

Therefore, in the case of Nigeria as a whole, the story is not different. About 70% of Nigeria’s eligible voters still have their names outside the National Register of Voters. In other words, out of the 61million so-called “registered voters”, the real names or numbers may not exceed 20million. The following statement, made in 2007 by the USA-based National Democratic Institute, NDI, is a strong basis for this position of mine: “The announcement by INEC Chairman, Prof. Maurice Iwu that the Commission had registered 61million voters at the close of the voters registration exercise took many Nigerians by surprise. Observers questioned whether the leap in registration figures announced by the Commission at various stages of the process could be adequately accounted for by a mere increase in the number of Direct Data Capture Machines and greater expertise on the part of the DDC operators.

As at November 24, 2006, the Commission had announced the total registration of 3.5 million, by December 10,  it was 10million. December 14, as the day when many had expected the registration to close in accordance with the provisions of the Electoral Act (section 10(5), but the registration continued under the guise of “voter revalidation”.

By mid January(2007), the Commission said it had registered 32million and announced 54million voters as having been registered on 2nd day of February 2007  after the close of the exercise”. INEC later informed Nigerians at its 2nd National Forum before the 2007 polls that a total of 61million Nigerians had been registered to vote. Till date, this criminal Register is still in use and has not been credibly updated.

The foregoing statement by the highly respected National Democratic Institute is self-explanatory. It shows how the bogus National Register of Voters was concocted. Through this criminal National Register of Voters, gangster politicians have ascended to, and occupied about 80% of Nigeria’s 13,700 elective offices.

And partly through this, over $300billion, belonging to Nigerians had been siphoned by “Nigerian generals and gangster politicians in the past 30 years up to 2006” (World Bank Report, quoted in May 3, 2010 Edition of Time Magazine, at Page 42). Over 80% of corrupt cases emanated from public offices/officials (in Nigeria), according to World Bank, owing to roguish electoral process, bred by criminal National Register of Voters.

Therefore, it is one thing to promise free and fair or credible elections, it is another thing to conduct same proper. Mere promises are not good enough. Action, they say, speaks louder than voice. The first and major task facing the new INEC Board led by Prof. Attahiru Jega is to clean up the roguish and tainted National Register of Voters. And to do this, all the fake names, dead names and inanimate objects or symbols flooding the Register must be identified and deleted.

On the point of law, Section 10(1) of the Electoral Act of 2006, tasks the Commission to “compile, maintain and update on continuous basis a National Register of Voters which shall include voters and names of all persons entitled to vote in any Federal, State, Local Government or Area Council elections.” Section 11(1) of the same Act, states that “Without prejudice to Section 10(5), there shall be continuous registration of all persons qualified to be registered voters.” And Section 10(5) of the Act says that “The registration of voters, updating and revision of the Register of Voters under this Section shall stop not later than 120 days before any election covered by this Act”.

The plain meaning of the sections foregoing is that INEC should continuously register those eligible to vote; continuously compile, maintain and update a National Register of Voters. And having complied with the provisions afore-mentioned (on assumption), the Commission would stop such exercises 120 days to any election fixed by the Commission. But these tasks are hardly carried out, yet the Commission rushes to Section 10(5) of the Act, with criminal intent to comply with same at the painful expense of Section 10(1) and 11(1) of same Act.

In the case of Anambra State, for instance, INEC refused to carry out the said functions until at eleventh hour (August to mid September 2009), after which it ran and took cover under Section 10(5). In the suit  FHC/AWK/CS/225/09, Incorporated Board of Trustees of International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law v. INEC & Anor, the Commission relied on that section (section 10(5) to escape from being held accountable for its failures to carry out the constitutionally imposed duties.

My credible contacts from most of the pre-2009 polling booths in Nigeria numbering 187,000, have informed me that neither registration of voters, nor compiling/updating exercise is ongoing. It is also necessary for INEC to let Nigerians know the actual number of polling booths in Nigeria, to be used in the 2011 general elections. This clarification is necessitated by a statement credited to Prof. Jega’s predecessor and bosom pal, Prof. Iwu (in 2009) to the effect that 187,000 polling booths were used in the 2007 general elections and that additional 93,500 would be created to bring the total number of same to 280,500. Nigerians would like to know whether such numbers had been created or not.

In order not to fall into the trap of Section10 (5) of the Electoral Act of 2006, which we understand, was not part of the sections being amended, INEC must kick_start the exercises so enumerated as a matter of extreme immediacy. If elections are to be held in January/February 2011, it means the Commission has only three to four months to register teeming Nigerian eligible voters and prepare credible National Register of Voters and if they are to be held in April 2011, then less than six months would be left for the Commission to carry out the said tasks. Such exercise(s) must also include authentication process to enable voters’ card bearers who could not find their names in the Register to have their names inserted. I say these bearing in mind the provision of the said Section 10(5) of the Act.

Anambra case should be an eye opener to INEC. Because the prevailing circumstances provided that the votes of those who voted should be counted, we saw high sense of enthusiasm on the part of eligible voters to vote but for mass disenfranchisement, no thanks to INEC and its collaborators. Yet people who voted had their votes counted, thereby making Anambra gubernatorial election one of the few credibly conducted polls in Nigeria where votes of those who voted counted. The Anambra gubernatorial election went the way it went because the incumbent and other stakeholders shunned rigging and insisted on one-man-one-vote and INEC was forced to follow that path of honour.

If the election riggers had had their way in the foregoing case, the “winner” of that election would have been awarded whopping one million-plus votes, from the existing roguish Voters’ Register for the State. This simply shows that if a genuine election is conducted in Nigeria on the basis of one-man-one-vote, as was done in Anambra State, with the current National Register of Voters, the winner of the presidential election may not score more than 5million to 10million votes, as opposed to the late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s 24million votes in 2007.

The recent announcement by the newly re-constituted Board of Anambra State Independent Electoral Commission, ANSIEC,  to the effect that the State’s Local Government Poll will be held on December 4, 2010 is a welcome development. It is hoped that before then, the National Register of Voters from which Anambra registered voters could vote during the said poll, would have been credibly ready.

The last local government poll in the state took place in 1998 and the tenure of 21 local government executives expired in 2002 and since then, the state’s local government system has been under care-taker or local government administrative leaderships. Unlike armada of fraud that characterized almost all the polls conducted in the Nigeria’s local government system, Anambra’s own is expected to mark a fundamental difference, if only Prof. Jega’s team could give us a very credible National Register of Voters. Anambra State is in dire need of consolidated free and democratic society, a departure from the inglorious epoch of godfatherism.

There is no better time to challenge those of us who opposed Prof. Jega’s nomination and appointment, on the grounds that even though he has requisite paper qualifications, and resounding years of experience in the academic field like his predecessor, but the will-power or qualification and his alleged closeness to his predecessor, etc may erode management artistry required to break away from seemingly traditionalized roguish electoral process in Nigeria.

Finally, the possibility or impossibility of credible elections in 2011 substantially depends on the status of the National Register of Voters, to be repackaged by the new INEC Board. If by the end of July 2010, there is no clear sign of the Commission’s preparedness to give Nigerians credible National Register of Voters, by way of credible registration of teeming eligible voters and updating of the Register, my organisation and I may consider going to court so as to force the Commission’s obedience to the law of the land, and not even Section 10(5) of the Electoral Act of 2006, will save same from corporate accountability pertaining to 2011 electoral midwifery. We must join hands in putting an end to electoral and political gangsterism in Nigeria.