INEC: Shame on the opposition
By
SKC Ogbonia, Ph.D.
Houston, Texas
One of the earliest lessons I learned from my father, Ilogebe Ogbonnia, the Ikeoha, is
that a habit of excuses is an existential catalyst for failure. Nowhere
is this adage more evident than the attitude of Nigerian opposition
parties toward the Independent National Election Commission (INEC).
Perhaps it
is no longer news that the INEC has been the common excuse for failures
in the different elections in the Fourth Republic. But with the 2015
general elections around the corner, and even in midst of efforts in the
National Assembly to amend electoral laws, recent events show that the
opposition is already positioning a fore excuse for another failure.
This
problem is rooted on the long-standing scape-goating of the different
chairmen of the Nigerian electoral body and its officials. Even though
such excuse is genuine, it masks an inner foolishness for the opposition
not to have recognized that expecting a commission fully controlled by a
partisan executive arm of the government to produce free and fair
elections is no different from perceiving a stench as an aroma.
The
case of Maurice Iwu, the chairman of Independent National Election
Commission (INEC) in the controversial elections of 2007 is still fresh
in our memory. In the eyes of the opposition, Professor Maurice Iwu was
the problem and the problem was Professor Iwu. President Goodluck Ebele
Jonathan obliged and swiftly replaced Iwu with Attahiru Jega, another
radical professor, then generally hailed as the Election Messiah. Yet,
after 2011 elections, we are back to square one. According to Muhammadu
Buhari of CPC, the main opponent of President Jonathan in the 2011
elections,
What
happened in this year’s elections eclipsed all the other elections in
the depth and scope of forgery and rigging. Initially there were high
hopes that after 2003 and 2007 a semblance of electoral propriety would
be witnessed. The new chairman of INEC, Professor Jega, was touted as
competent and a man of integrity. He has proved neither. (As quoted in Vanguard Newspaper, December 28, 2011)
For the national chairman of the then frontline opposition party, Action Congress of Nigeria, Bisi Akande:
The
intention of the INEC was to have it right, but what you see is total
manipulation particularly by the security agencies and the lower level
of INEC staff because the PDP induced people with plenty of money. They
managed to use money to manipulate the INEC officials at the lower level
of the commission and they used them to intimidate and to falsify the
results of the election. (As quoted inDaily Sun, April 15, 2011)
To
cap it all, after the 2014 Anambra governorship election, widely seen
as the pretest of Nigeria’s general elections of 2015, the opposition
(including PDP in this case) also accused the INEC of colluding with
security agents to rig the elections in favor of the state ruling APGA.
The PDP candidate, Tony Nwonye, had this to say:
Since
the history of elections, I have always known of a conspiracy by
incumbents, but this one by Peter Obi is monumental. I have never seen
an election where the security agent and the INEC collude to subdue
other political parties. (As quoted
in Daily Post, November 17, 2013)
This
sweeping rebuke of INEC by the political elites is a rude awakening.
The inmost gist is that the problem has gone nowhere despite the
replacement of a distinguished professor with another. It apparently
explains why a broad spectrum of observers has continued to ridicule the
degree of the mass ignorance. A maverick senator, Arthur Nzeribe,
jumpstarted the debate by arguing that the serial attempts to focus
solely on the perceived individual abilities of the chairman rather than
the nucleus of the problem was height of hypocrisy (This Day,
January 26, 2009). An unbiased umpire, the Rev. Fr.
Mathew Kukah followed by cautioning that the mere replacement of
Maurice Iwu, the individual, would not always guarantee free and fair
elections in the future—noting that, "the very fact that we say we are
looking for a person of integrity does not mean that anybody that gets
there would not become a crook" (As quoted in Sunday Guardian,
March 29, 2009). And Professor Okon Uya, a former chairman of National
Electoral Commission, would later place the matter exactly how and where
it belongs: There is no gainsaying that a leader with deep sense of
independence and fairness is desirable for the headship of the electoral
commission, but the success of any election is far beyond the ability
of a single individual (Daily Sun, February 28, 2011).
Unless
it is enmeshed in sheer amnesia, these incisive viewpoints were
sufficient to have provoked the opposition to think otherwise. After
all, virtually all heads of Nigeria’s electoral commission in history
have been men with outstanding pedigrees before appointment. That is,
even if the president is to appoint a given chairman that is most
credible, who checkmates him or her to ensure that the real goals and
objectives of the electoral commission are being fulfilled? Other than
the national chairman, who are the other electoral officers at the
national and zonal levels, in the states, local governments, wards, and
in the polling booths? How credible, how efficient, and how independent
are these electoral officers? Who are the contractors and other
personnel vested with the responsibility of providing the logistics for
the elections? How independent and neutral are the security agents and
Judiciary in the process of these
Nigerian elections? A review of the last Electoral Reform Committee
(ERC) suggests that some of these questions might have been hovering in
the minds of its members when they recommended among other things the
following: a) the National Judicial Council should appoint the chairman
b) the commission should include members of independent organizations,
such as the Labor Union or the News-Media. While those considerations
have their merits, the question remains: who are these individuals that
would work hand in hand with the chairman—agents of the ruling party or
the opposition? How will the so-called National Judicial Council be
different from judges or other electoral agents who are always
manipulated by the party in power? How many truly independent members
of the Labor Union or the News-Media are there to recruit? How many
independent NLC or pressmen are available and can abandon their jobs to
man the
over 120,000 polling booths? It is true that INEC eventually recruited
members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) as Ad-hoc staff in
the 2011 elections, but how can such susceptible inexperienced staff
(usually in their mid-twenties) not be easily intimidated and influenced
by powerful party agents and money bags at the polling booths as were
alleged in the pilot exercise of 2011? Another scheme used in the 2011
elections was the deployment of highly placed university professors as
Resident Electoral Commissioners. But does the opposition expect these
university dons to be so different from most failed politicians, who had
also distinguished themselves in previous careers before turning to
politics? How do they expect that the university recruits would not be
wholly subservient to the ruling parties at the states where their
universities are located?
Any
honest answer to any of these endless questions will reveal that while
the INEC and its various personnel might have role to play in the
different electoral malpractices, it smacks of crass ignorance on part
of the opposition to act as if one needs to be told that the outcomes of
most national elections (particularly 2003, 2007, and 2011 polls) were fait accompli—far
determined even before the electoral officials began their job. A
former Chief Justice of Nigeria and the chairman of the 2008 Electoral
Reform Committee (ERC), Mohammed Uwais had alluded to this irony when he
remarked that the hoopla about free and fair elections without creating
the enabling conditions was pure baloney (Nigerian Guardian,
December 1, 2010). Common sense dictates that the emphasis ought to have
been on creating a truly independent electoral commission
before discussing elections. Yet, the opposition did nothing and still
doing nothing serious toward producing a reliable electoral body.
To
improve the system, particularly with the current debate on electoral
reform in the legislature, the opposition parties should without further
delay compel President Goodluck Jonathan to truly support changes to
the electoral commission in two important ways:
First
is to create a commission composed representatives from the ruling
party and the opposition. A structure with members drawn from the ruling
parties and representatives of truly qualified opposition
parties at the different levels of government will
strengthen the needed checks and balances within the commission itself.
It has the potential to facilitate the enabling environment for
effective leadership of the commission, ensure and sustain true
independence throughout the width and breadth of the commission, and
guarantee fairness to the parties involved. To abridge the inherent
partisanship, the proposed structure can be augmented with a select few
drawn from the civil society: the Nigerian Labor Congress, NYSC,
Judiciary; and the security agents. In simple terms, the qualified
political parties themselves should submit members with clear party
affiliations to the new council. The central idea is that the different
phases of the election from top leadership to other areas, including but
not limited to handling and distribution of election materials,
accreditation, supervision, voting, collation, tabulations and
declarations (or cancellations) of results—from the national level to
polling
stations—must be guarded and managed by an election team with full view
and representation of members of qualified parties. This approach can
forestall the likelihood of situations where, in absence of opposition
party agents, the INEC and its leadership connive with the ruling or
favored party to manipulate electoral outcomes. The proposal parallels
the position of the main opposition party in the 2007 election, the All
Nigeria’s Peoples Party (ANPP), where it’s National Publicity Secretary,
Emmanuel Enenkwu, canvassed for members of the different political
parties to be included in the leadership of INEC (Champion Newspaper,
August 24, 2007). The objective fact here is that true independence or
neutrality is far beyond the mere appointment of a national chairman; it
is more attainable in an environment that deters or checkmates the
group or individual from acting otherwise. Also important, the council
members or
the observers of elections in the different poll stations should be
recruited from the immediate communities where their antecedents are
better-known.
Second, given that most individual elections in Nigeria are already being financed through looted funds from government treasury; similar to the McCain-Feingold in the United States of America, without the choice for individual contributions, Nigeria should adopt full public funding for inter-party elections. Thank God that this proposal will not be burdened by the number of parties as once imagined. The opposition is now gradually evolving to the desired two-party structure after finally realizing that multiplicity of parties was a pyrrhic victory in the first place. Even more, in absence of a two-party structure, to frustrate political merchants who would like to capitalize on the loopholes of the government funding, more stringent conditions should be set for registration as well as participation of parties in elections.
Alternatively or simultaneously, the opposition should ensure that that the proposed Cashless Policy is fully implemented and INEC strengthened to enforce extant laws on campaign finance. For instance, despite the fact that the 1999 Constitution and the Electoral Acts of 2002, 2006, and 2010 stipulated specific guidelines for campaign finance and attendant penalties, neither Presidents Goodluck Jonathan, Umaru Yar’Adua, nor President Olusegun Obasanjo before them could account for the tens of billions of naira sunk into their respective political campaigns.
Of
course, there has been some musings here and there on the issue of
excessive use of money and its source, with aggrieved parties
occasionally hollering, but none of the political parties or individuals
has registered any solid official complaint—either because of their own
culpability or the simple truth that INEC is not designed to implement
the relevant campaign lawsab initio. Not even the Nigeria's
promising news media, known for free and sensational journalism, could
charge their searchlights when it comes to campaign
finance. No one was or is authoritatively asking: How did President
Goodluck Jonathan and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar source the
funds to openly “settle” the delegates who voted for them in the epic
2011 PDP presidential primary election? What is the source of money
Jonathan used to prosecute his cross-country campaign while his
opponents were stalled to their regional enclaves? Conversely, how in
the world did an ex-police commissioner, Nuhu Ribadu, suddenly land the
money to offset his campaign bills? Just wait…
To
make matters worse, the very commission entrusted with monitoring
electoral finance is notoriously nonchalant with this important
responsibility. In fact, the current Chairman of INEC, Attahiru Jega,
had to confess that even though the Electoral Act empowers it to monitor
sources and
nature of funding, the “INEC does not even have a desk that handles campaign financing” (As quoted in Vanguard Newspaper, May 8, 2011). While
this utter negligence was enough to have provoked a guided mass action,
the Nigerian opposition seems to have coolly joined the chorus. The
following proclamation by Nuhu Ribadu, the presidential candidate of Action Congress of Nigeria, and a former corruption czar, is an exclamation point: “I
won’t bother myself with the integrity of politicians that will fund my
campaign. I will take corrupt politician’s money for my campaign as far
as the money is not put in my pocket” (As quoted in Vanguard Newspaper, March 20, 2011). The most annoying aspect is that some of Ribadu’s major donors were ex-governors
who were indicted for looting state treasury under the watchful eyes of
the same Ribadu. Besides, the very thought of the opposition competing
to outdo a ruling party with looted funds is not only height of
hypocrisy but also of infamy.
The opposition apologists are
expected to roar back here with another excuse. They will cling on the
reigning Nigerian political value system which readily insinuates that
the opposition leaders have to find any means necessary to gain power
first before demonstrating the perceived sense of prudence. But such
thinking ought to be quashed once and for all: A simple scan of history
in the Fourth Republic profoundly reveals that the success
of the opposition in different elections across the country has never
been because of superior financial power over ruling parties. This
should in no way be misconstrued as saying that money has no role to
play. None of that! In fact, money is as important to politics as water
is to fish, but there are better ways of raising money than queuing at
the domains of rogue politicians. And make no mistake about this: The
Nigerian masses may be down but they are definitely not out. We have not
yet forgotten that corrupt military brigade that funded President
Olusegun Obasanjo’s elections enjoyed immunity while he was in power.
The masses still remember that President Umaru Yar’Adua’s disinclination
to investigate clear cases of corruption by his predecessor and some
ex-governors is attributed to the source of funds used in ushering him
(Yar’Adua) to power. Ditto President Goodluck Jonathan. But given that
opposition leaders also accept looted funds
from government treasury, how and why should the masses then view them
as credible alternatives? The answer is that the whole world is tired of
what is going on. We are very tired and afraid that the power struggles
is to replace existing leaders with others whose visions would not be
different from those of their predecessors.
Perhaps
the opposition could drop one final mundane excuse: President Jonathan
would not yield to pragmatic changes to INEC. Although recent events may
prove otherwise, but should the president dare toe that path, the
opposition should courageously boycott the 2015 elections, and the
masses will and should follow. This approach is so potent because, apart
from the fact that Jonathan would not like to end as an Abacha
monocrat; continuing to engage in elections with predetermined results
is a
mindless waste of national resources. Further, unless you have not been
following, Goodluck Jonathan is very accommodating—probably the kindest
president ever. He is kind to the good—and probably kinder to the bad.
But while the latter have already capitalized to accomplish their sole
objective of milking the country dry, and without qualms; the former
(particularly the opposition) is caught moping—continuing to fail to
take advantage of the unique kindness to provide a viable alternative to
the masses.
Very daringly, his humble look notwithstanding, President Goodluck
Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan is no man’s fool. This man who went to school
without shoes knows very well that even as he truly means well for the
ordinary people, and should; the leadership crisis is tipping the
critical threshold for revolution, and the
political logic of resisting change no longer favors him. Jonathan can
remember vividly that blind leadership made it possible for mere
clandestine organizations to dethrone the military power. The man can
also recall that stern opposition with unity of purpose rubbished
Obasanjo’s third term ambition as well as his legacy. More poignantly,
the president is quite aware that any effort in Nigeria similar to Arab
Spring will not only doom him for life but will also gain worldwide
support. Thusly, the brother is wise enough to grasp that a change
through civil opposition is by far a safer alternative. The problem is
the failure of the opposition to read the mood of both the president and
the people they are hoping to lead. This problem is squarely a lack of a
dynamic opposition party—one that is visionary, focused, capable of
differentiating itself from the ruling party, capable of providing the
desired checks and balances toward effective national
leadership; and ready, willing, and able to replace the party in power.
SKC Ogbonnia
================
SKC Ogbonnia, Ph.D.Executive Chairman
First Texas Energy Corporation
14133 Memorial Drive
Houston, TX 77079
14133 Memorial Drive
Houston, TX 77079
...leading with integrity in the Oil & Gas sector
Have A Say On This Poser To INEC Preparatory To 2015
![Have A Say On This Poser To INEC Preparatory To 2015]()
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Monday, March 10, 2014
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