Realnews 2nd Anniversary Lecture
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| By Professor Maurice M. Iwu |
MAY I begin with a congratulatory note to the Publisher and Editor of Realnews Magazine, Maureen Chigbo and her staff on the Second Anniversary of the establishment of the on-line magazine. Two years of the existence of any project is usually marked by much apprehension because of the uncertainty of the generation of sufficient revenue to pay the bills and make sufficient profit to attend to the project promoter’s own needs. I understand, that it is even more so in the media business which has very high attrition rate. Hopefully, Realnews will soon reach a comfortable cruising height and the business will sail smoothly and make handsome profit. When Maureen contacted me to give this lecture I refused initially because I believe that I had adequately expressed my viewpoint on the system of electoral democracy in Nigeria through several lectures, public speeches and interviews during my tenure at INEC and that there is hardly anything new to add. I am also very reluctant to make public comments about the election management body in Nigeria since my views could easily be misunderstood. Moreover, I can reach the INEC Chairman if there is any issue that I feel strongly that could disrupt the 2015 elections, otherwise my preferred position to date is to maintain a distance from the Commission unless my advice is specifically sort. Most people in Nigeria now know that I am neither a politician nor a Professor of Political Science but rather a humble scholar in the rather non-flamboyant discipline called Pharmacognosy. I am more accustomed to dealing with facts and logical projections that arise from verifiable evidence than the speculative realm of social discourse or the more flexible and ever changing perception which dominates much of politics.
Although I admit that I owe Nigerians a detailed account of the events that took place during the elections that I superintended but it will be premature, however, to do so now when some of the principal players at the that time are still involved in politics and governance issues.
Every round of general elections in Nigeria usually comes with some nervousness and restrained expectations. Almost always, there are warnings too, from those who take on the duty of alerting the nation that the very election in focus may mark the end of the nation if care is not taken. Almost always too, the nation succeeds in taking just enough care to go through the elections and remain in intact. So shall it be with 2015.
In this presentation, it is not my intention to provide new insights for deepening democracy in Nigeria but I will revisit a few of the points I have made on the major issues that shaped the conduct of 2007 and articulate possible implications for 2015. The 2007 elections in Nigeria marked a watershed in the country’s political development. The country succeeded for the very first time to transit from one elected government that completed two terms in office to another. For 47 years — since it became a sovereign state — Nigeria did not manage to transit from one democratically elected government to another. At every juncture in its labored march to a stable democracy where an election was to be held for a new government to succeed an old one that was completing its tenure, the chord of democratic governance was always truncated. As milestones go, 2007 will rank with 1914 (amalgamation of Northern and Southern Nigeria), 1960 (independence) 1970 (end of civil war) as a very memorable year in Nigerian history and perhaps the birth of the modern Nigeria nation manifested by the rule of law. Earlier this year Nigerian mounted an elaborated and colorful celebration of the existence of Nigeria as one nation but nobody appreciated the fact that if the 2007 transition did not happen there would have been no reason to celebrate.
In order to create a conducive environment for the 2015 elections, some critical issues have been identified which must be given ample attention. Among these are (a) Curbing Violence before, during and after Elections (b) Reducing the Pervasive Influence of Money in Politics and Elections (c) Correcting the mindset of Nigerians on Elections, (d) Promoting Internal Democracy in Political Parties, and (e) Enhancing Women Participation in Elections. If we make progress in addressing these crucial issues in our politics – and we have no choice but to address them effectively – then we must have taken a definitive step in upturning major aspects of the handicaps of our electoral process. It is important that Nigerians appreciate the link between these retarding factors and the impairment of their electoral process.
These five factors are intertwined and often engender numerous other problems which make the conduct of elections in the African setting a complex undertaking. Take the issue of money in politics for instance. In the 2007 elections in Nigeria, money was so excessively deployed that what ordinarily should be a national election, no matter how strategically important Nigeria was, became internationalized, with foreign institutions, agencies and individuals hired at very exorbitant price, simply to aid the ascendance of the candidates and interest that hired them. 2015 will not be different. Even before we cast a single ballot in the 2015 elections, external forces have already taken positions at various angles to subtly and not so subtly promote the candidates of their preference and to battle the Nigerian state on any policy that did not seem to favour them or their clients.
The year 2015 seemed like an unreachable and unrealistic date when in 2008 I had proposed that after the limited use of electronic platform for the conduct of 2007 and 2011 elections that by 2015 we should be able to have a full electronic voting system in Nigeria and reduce to a large extent most of the problems plaguing electoral democracy.
In 2006 we introduced the use of an Electronic Voting System (EVS) for the 2007 elections and subsequent elections in Nigeria. The EVS consists of four major components, namely: 1). The Electronic Voters Register, 2). Authentication of Voters, 3). Electronic Voting Machine with duplicate paper audit system, and 4). Instant Transmission of Results. It was started with the introduction of the national voter registration exercise on that very platform. It was a very friendly system of registration of eligible voters. It was a system that did not permit multiple registrations of voters. Those who didn’t understand the basic tenets of the system attacked the Commission and its leadership at the time and refused to come to terms with the positive aspects of the system.
It was a system that favoured no one, but brooks no crookedness. It was the hallmark of our policy as we prepared for the conduct of free, fair and credible elections in 2007.There seemed to have been a mind-set in some people, which was intolerant of the word electronic as in the Electronic Voting System. There is nothing high tech in the system which we built for the elections. What we established was a system that sought to reduce human influence and error in elections to the minimum while ensuring that Nigerians get accurate result for the ballots they cast. The Commission had canvassed the use of the Electronic Voting System as an answer to the experiences of the past in which Nigerians always felt short-changed by the outcome of elections. For seventy two years or thereabout, the system of counting ballots, bereft of fidelity, had failed us woefully.
Nothing in the Electronic Voters Register or in Authentication of Voters or in Instant Transmission of election result can be objectionable to an honest citizen. The electronic platforms as designed were battery-operated. They were therefore, not susceptible to the vagaries of our unreliable power supply. The EVS was developed by Nigerian computer experts and we made it an exclusively national project because of the strategic importance of the exercise and the danger inherent in exposing the biometric information of over 60 million Nigerians to foreign interests.
The National Assembly opposed the use of the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) — a component of the Electronic Voting System (EVS) — and it was prohibited in the 2006 Electoral Act. The full scale use of EVM for voting was abandoned. With an eye on the future though, the Commission procured and tested three prototypes machines and established their relative quality, so that in future Nigerians can be introduced to the voting machine. The report of that evaluation is still in INEC and may become useful when the nation considers it appropriate to deploy EVS.
At the National Forum on Nigeria’s 2007 General Elections, held at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja on February 15, 2007, I stated that: “… with the successful introduction of the electronic voters register Nigerians en masse will never have to queue up again in long lines merely to register to vote in elections. The era of registration of voters being a national event over which several productive hours are lost is now gone. This indeed, is progress.
“Henceforth, any citizen who turns 18 years of age will simply go into a registration office within his or her local government area and get registered. The exercise goes on round the year. In other words, registration of voters will no longer be a matter for two weeks or four weeks in every election year”. If the nation had stayed the course however, and if the destructive culture of discarding already laid foundation for a new one did not prevail in 2010, subsequent management of the electoral process would have drawn tremendous stability and bearing from the seminal work done with the 2007 elections. It is important that Continuous Voters Registration be indeed ‘continuous’ not periodic.
When I announced the results of the Presidential election in 2007, I made use of the electronic transmission of results template which enabled the Chairman from INEC’s Operations Command Center at Abuja Airport to have the tabulated results from all the 120,000 polling units, about 8,800 electoral wards and 774 local governments within seconds of the collation and approval by the election officials and party agents. That technological feat was grossly misunderstood, although I had given countless lectures to explain that we were going to deploy the EVS for the 2007 polls. Perhaps INEC was too far ahead of its stakeholders.
For 2015 election to be successful, it is imperative that the menace of violence in the electoral process should be addressed effectively for democracy to firmly develop in the country. Indeed, violence in its various forms and manifestations negate the spirit and principles of democracy. There is hardly any room for the two — democracy and violence — to thrive simultaneously. One finds expression in the freedom of individuals to make decisions and choices freely and without hindrance. The other rudely seeks in its various disruptive forms to undermine that primary right of citizens to decide for themselves what is best for them and who they consider best suited to represent their interest in governance.
For so long, the electoral process in Nigeria has been held hostage and distorted by sundry acts of violence, often promoted by a small clique that obviously benefits from the unwholesome situation. The 2007 election remains one of the most peaceful elections to date. The policy of zero tolerance for electoral violence should be resolutely adhered to in elections of 2015.
There can be no greater untruth than the belief by some individuals and groups that political contest cannot go without violence. Indeed, political contest should be more of a game than a war. As with all contests in all realms of human endeavours, elections must have winners and losers. This is unavoidable. To turn electoral contests and the campaigns that precede them into blood sports and mortal engagements, as has become the case in the Nigerian political system, is neither healthy nor acceptable.
Party politics has increasing been made the exclusive preserve of a select few, which raises the question on the primary role of citizens in the context of elections and democratic governance. Are they primarily onlookers in a game, which the outcome affects various facets of their lives and occasional judges among the contestants or are they to be active participants and partisans with the final say on who should represent or govern them? Electoral democracy should in a fundamental sense be about self-government and not just about governments that claim to act in the public’s interest.
The political parties holding their congresses and conventions from which their candidates will emerge. Will there be internal democracy in the parties? Will the behemoths in the various political parties who see themselves as being above the law allow the choice of the majority to prevail? Will the leadership in the political parties resist the temptation to anoint and offer wide card to chosen aspirants while shutting out popular aspirants? We cannot seek to promote democracy by imposing the whims of a few over the will of the majority. The absence of internal democracy within the political parties constitutes a threat to the sustenance of true democracy in Nigeria. The leadership of the political parties should reflect on the potential impact of the imposition of otherwise unpopular candidates to represent their parties at the forthcoming elections.
The electoral environment of 2015 however, like most elections in Nigeria, has its own peculiarities. In addition to serious operational issues, 2015 has to accommodate the menace of externally organized and funded aggression against the Nigerian State. Including the Jihadist war waged in North East States of Nigeria. This calls for unity and patriotism from all Nigerians and the political players. One of the good features of liberal democracy as the scholar Antonio Codevilla postulated is that “it depends on the character of the people” and “the people’s character depends so substantially on how they freely choose to mold it”. That is to say, the character of Nigeria’s democracy depends essentially on what Nigerians want it to be. The pretension by some that the character of the present democracy in Nigeria is different from the character of the society or that a select few super humans and self-styled messiahs have the capacity to twist the character of the Nigerian democracy is at best an attempt to avoid the reality and proffer appropriate solutions.
To borrow the very apt words of the respected African American scholar, Comel West, albeit in a different context, “instead of critical dialogue and respectful exchange, we have witnessed several bouts of vulgar name-calling and self-righteous finger-pointing. [But} battles conducted on the editorial pages…. do not take us far in understanding the issues …”
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and gentlemen, the prospects for future elections in Nigeria are remarkably bright. Let us keep the faith and have confidence in ourselves. It bears stating at once though, that it is up to Nigerians what to make of the future of their electoral process. 2015 represents a good opportunity to consolidate the gains made since 1999. Above all let us trust in God and do the right things. We will surely get there. May God Bless Nigeria.
Thank you.
A paper presented by Professor Maurice Iwu, former chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and Guest Lecturer at the Lecture organised to mark the second anniversary lecture of Realnews magazine, at the Sheraton Hotel, Lagos, Nigeria on November 19, 2014.
— Nov. 10, 2014 @ 01:00 GMT
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