2015 POLLS: Electoral offenders will go to jail – INEC chief Igini bursts out in interview

Mike Igini is the Resident Electoral Commissioner REC) in Edo State. In this interview, Igini reviews

the just concluded general elections and suggests the need to set up a tribunal where electoral offenders will be prosecuted. He commends President Goodluck Jonathan for accepting defeat at the polls and expresses optimism that elections in the country will get better in the nearest future. The REC spoke in Benin-City penultimate week. Excerpts:

 Assessing the general elections

Evaluating the elections from our own perspective may be different from the perspective of the electorate. From our own end, we look at the election management processes at the pre-election, election and post-election phases. In doing this assessment, we are pre-occupied with some parameters, such as the goals we set to conduct an acceptable election, the plans we devise to meet these goals using resources at our disposal, the structures and inputs, including guiding laws, human, time and material resources, we put in to enable the plans, the controls we use to govern what we organize and the leadership at every level that we employ to bring the whole of these into reality.

First the main goal for elections is to bring about leaders who will help enable the developmental aspirations of a people, the goal of election management as a process is to conduct an acceptable election,  that is an election which is accepted as credible by stakeholders. In defining what makes an election credible, we examine, whether there was equality of political participation and free competition, and whether the mandate derived from the election is regarded as legitimately given.

Having met the overarching goal of conducting acceptable elections in 2011 and 2015 to a large extent, we can say that the Commission has succeeded in helping the consolidation of democracy in Nigeria. Democratic process, as a mechanism for ensuring the selection of proper representation of a jurisdiction, is the minimalist conception of democracy. Whereas democracy, as the totality of the processes, including the selection of leadership representation, and the derivable benefits in which such selected leadership and the institutions they represent helps to meet the developmental aspiration of the people, is the maximalist conception. Our role enables the minimalist conception, whereas all of us as a nation must then join hands to enable the maximalist level of democracy in Nigeria.

That minimalist democratic goal is our primary remit. As to the maximalist remit of democracy which is the enabling of a democratic representation that helps to deliver the aspirational development of society, the remit is with the elected officials and everyone else in nation building from 2011 up to 2015 and thereafter.

Are you saying that INEC has done well ?

Looking at these parameters, I can say that the Commission has covered significant ground and has done well even though we are not yet at the zenith we aspire to be,  we can still improve many aspects of our activities. In the pre-electoral phase of planning and organizing, we have learned from the pitfalls we experienced and the learning informed some of the innovations that attended subsequent elections. In the election phase, we have also witnessed areas of strengths and weaknesses, and the principal lesson which came out of the postponement of the earlier scheduled election date is that when materials are distributed on time, it reduces election-day struggles.

We also learnt that relying on road transport unions to make individual transactions through group leadership can result in unexpected outcomes for local logistics as we experienced here in Edo when the NURTW almost messed us up. We reviewed and changed our approach in the April 11 elections and we attained a resounding success, with personnel arriving at polling units as early as 6:30 in some places, while others got to polling units at 7am before the 8am official time of opening the poll. We are currently dealing with retrieval of materials, issuing CTC for post election dispute resolution and full evaluation of all processes to follow for documentation.

What were the other challenges you faced as the REC?

First, there was the issue of technical problems with the card reader on the first polling day, that is, 28th of March 2015, but that was a national issue. Then there was also the widespread arbitrary refusal of the road transport workers to respect agreements they reached with our field officers, but both issues were addressed by the second election of 11th April. There were also places where elections were postponed or cancelled due to irregularities, these were addressed and elections finally conducted in the affected areas, some of these arose from anomalous conducts on the part of some persons, the extent of culpability is currently the subject of several administrative processes.

How many INEC staff, regular and ad hoc, were caught in electoral offences and were they handed over to the police?

Specifically, there are the allegations of two NYSC members who were said to have sold ballot papers, as well as two electoral officers  removed from their duty posts and currently a subject of further inquiry. But for the lingering strike of judicial workers, those two corps members would have been arraigned in court. Be rest assured that these cases would be taken to court  and appropriate remedies meted out to them.

What will be the fate of their employment, especially the regular staff if found guilty ?

If the matter borders on gross misconduct or electoral fraud, the legal and administrative implications are not  the subject of opinion by myself or anyone else, they will be the factual subject of extant rules and laws and they will certainly run their course.

What about the Imo election and the arrest of several people?

Regarding the supplementary election in Imo and my involvement, that l call  a second missionary political journey, having been there in 2011 with my  other colleagues for the same reason. The key issues are that in 23 LGAs with  a substantial  number of registered voters,  elections were cancelled for various reasons all rooted in the desperation by politicians to manipulate the process, either through compromised staff and, worse still, some ad hoc staff, like collation officers at ward levels, disappeared with result sheets in both elections of the 28th of March and 11th of April.

All these informed the decision of the Commission for the supplementary election. The real battleground was Oru East LGA, described by the people we interacted with as an electoral flashpoint area, renowned for election irregularities and the alleged posting of humongous invidious figures by political merchants. With 62 polling units and 24,990 voters in possession of  PVCs, which was the highest for any area affected by the supplementary election, it was considered a real  battleground of electoral contest, particularly for those who, for the first time, would be facing real one-person-one-vote election in the area, unlike before when it was reputed that some people, somewhere, would sit down to conduct mass thumb-printing of ballot papers and  then go ahead to allocate arbitrary figures.

Hence, our insistence on due process, which changed the narrative and probably the ability of voters to determine the outcome, hence the more dignified and credible final figure which was far less than previous moon-slide or landslide figures.  The voters had their day and were apparently pleased to be unfettered. That is how it should be in order to sustain voters’ confidence in the electoral process. All those arrested in Umuma and who are now in the police net, who attempted to undermine the process, would have their day in court to explain their conduct, otherwise, there would be no end to this unrestrained electoral impunity in our polity. Such incidents further illustrates why we urgently need an Electoral Offences Commission with specialized electoral crime investigating officers adept in forensic electoral investigations and judicial officers specialized in the electoral legislative framework who can effectively prosecute electoral offences .

Are you disappointed that despite the calls by some of you for the Electoral Offences Commission, we still do not have one?

Common sense suggests and studies in criminology have confirmed that every act that is rewarded would be repeated. The absence of punishment for all previous cases of election rigging is the foundation and indeed incentive for the tragedy of our situation today. Many people secured elected offices without the votes of the people but through the kind of things we aborted in Umuma in Oru East. We still have variants of these violations in so many places, unchecked with the connivance of those entrusted to supervise the process.  To bring sanity and probity to the electoral process, surely, we need to establish Electoral Offences Commission, with special jurisdiction inaugurated in an election year to deal with cases of    voter registration, party primaries, rigging or attempt to rig election, or making false electoral return, etc.

You consistently supported and sold to the public the significance of the use of the card readers for the elections. What is your assessment of its effectiveness and prospect for future elections?

Yes, we stood for it head and heart and still stand by the idea of the use of the card reader, because of the tremendous value it brings to the electoral process. In evaluating the card reader, we must always keep in mind that it only plays a singular role in elections, authentication of voters to avoid ghost voters. Therefore, what it does is to restrict the voting outcome to the number of authenticated voters who actually show up to vote at elections and not about the total number of registered voters. It does not convince the voter to vote one way or another, so its utility is restricted to enhancing the fidelity of the voter register.

But some people have questioned the credibility of some results from the elections despite the use of the card reader?

In raising such doubts the statement must be appropriately qualified, recall that the card reader was bypassed in many instances deliberately by those opposed to it and also because of technical problems particularly in the March 28 election. Where they were used, no one has questioned the veracity of the polling unit results. In the April 11 election, the Commission issued a public statement that the card readers must be used and also followed it up administratively with two different memoranda to all states, to ensure the thorough use of card readers by electoral officers for both the governorship and state Houses of Assembly elections.

At any rate, the card reader is the only short–cut we currently have to a national identity system that can be used for elections.

Many stakeholders, especially politicians in Edo, election observers have noted that election results in the state in both federal and state elections were remarkably different from other states of the South-South and even South-East but similar to South-West. What did you do differently?

Well, first looking at the process, we did our best to follow the guidelines from the electoral legislative framework-viz the constitution, The Electoral Act, INEC guideline, etc; if you are guided by the legislative framework, the margin for error is minimal. In terms of outcome, the outcome is completely dependent on the wishes of the voters; from the outcome of the elections, the Edo people voted the pattern they wanted in both  federal and  local elections. Why they chose to do so is not for us to probe, that is for the political groups and analysts. However, with the benefit of one’s multi-disciplinary background in history, sociology and law, one can say that Edo state, being at the boundary between these political jurisdictions of the East and West, the potential for political ambivalence is high. But then, if we trace back to the First Republic, you will find that the politics of the Mid-West has always been susceptible to the balancing of a multiplicity of influences.

But at one point during the  elections in Edo, there were reports of problems in Orhionwon LGA which led to a re-run election of the senatorial and House of Representative elections.  What actually led to the cancelation of the election on the 28th?

To go to the point, while elections were going on in that jurisdiction, there were several disturbing field reports from the electorate and key leaders from the parties  about non-delivery of ballot papers  at  polling units at about 2pm, when accreditation was supposed to have been completed and voting ought to be well underway. We tried fruitlessly to reach our supervising field officers, and we had several reports from senior members of both major parties, the PDP and the APC, complaining about these same things. Matters got to a very disturbing point, when it became clear that some of the NYSC ad-hoc staff may be in danger if we did not act timeously. I reported the situation to the National Chairman who advised that the police declare some of the field officers that could not be reached wanted, until full information was available, and, when sufficient irregularities were established, the national headquarters ordered a cancellation. This is what led to the re-run election which has since been conducted. The affected officers gave formal explanations of what led to the situation and the matter has since been dealt with as is appropriate within the administrative control measures of the Commission.

Do you think there was improvement in the conduct of politicians in the 2015 elections, compared to those of 2011?

In some cases and places, there was improvement, in others there was regression.

The improvement is in the areas of election day logistics, the process in terms of the card reader usage, behavioural pattern and disposition in that some politicians restrained themselves from disorderly conduct while others were on the loose. We observed some regression having regard to widespread violence in some places, as we have just alluded to, and some very shocking unethical collaboration between some field officers with politicians to subvert the process, something that we thought we had put behind us. Again, as l said before, it is best to wait until full evaluations have been conducted by the Commission with facts rather than opinions. One thing I would always want us to realize is that every pitfall and error or weakness should be seen as an opportunity for improvement because the ill of elections can only be cured by more elections. On matters of behavior and conduct of personnel, we cannot improve our systems if there are no consequences for extremely unacceptable conduct of people put in position of trust who betray same for material gains at the expense of the system.

What was the improvement you noticed during the polls?

The most important improvement is that the use of biometrics has forced down election results figures  within and to the confines of the voter register unlike the embarrassing moon-slide and landslides invidious figures of pre-2011 elections. We have gone to the level of even printing ballot papers according to the number of our official PVC collected and not based on the total number of registered voters and that has curbed excess ballot in the system that could be used illegally to subvert electoral outcome. Additionally, the Commission customized the ballot papers making it difficult to use ballot papers from one unit in another unit.

I suspect we will hear more about that in some election petitions where some desperate people may have been forced to use ballot papers from a different constituency, any case like that will be dead-on-arrival for the culprits. You can see that despite the efforts of many stakeholders who will like to turn the hands of the clock, the results had to be within the credible number of voters with PVCs who showed up. It is a good development on the long journey to credible elections. The next step is to ensure accurate census and national identity systems so that deviations from the electoral roll and consequently election results are brought down to very minimal errors.

President Jonathan did what had never been done before in Nigerian history by accepting the outcome of election despite glaring short-comings and thus saved Nigeria the rigour of post-election litigation. How do you describe this action ?

True, the president did what has never been done in the history of presidential electoral contest in Nigeria. By his action he has erected a democratic hall of fame and earned himself a very respectable place in the national democratic escutcheon that emblazons that hall in which he is the first occupant,   we look forward in future for more occupants who will earn enduring places in that citadel by their actions in nation building.

What does this statemanly act of President Jonathan mean to other African countries?

It is a very commendable benchmark that the President has set, because our continent, Africa, has been so enmeshed in the “big-chief syndrome” that, his action has helped to break the mold. We have also witnessed such emerging leadership enlightenment in Ghana and Senegal, where a party other than the ruling party won in a general election and a seamless transition followed. I use the term “big-chief syndrome” because it is not part of the African culture to remove a king or leader.

Our cultural phenomenology on that issue is usually a very unpleasant one; when a chief or leader is removed, he must either be expelled or killed. So there is a certain degree of cultural expectation for resistance to such change, except it is voluntary, but like the other anachronisms that are being reformed in our traditional settings, not winning an election is not the same as the removal of a monarch, because a democratic leader is only the symbolic representation of an aggregate of policy ideas as purveyed in the political arena by a political party, hence losing at a democratic election is not the rejection of the individual but a decision by voters to opt for alternative policy ideas from that offered by the losing party, of course in our context there are other confounding factors.

However, by accepting the verdict of voters, even before the full results were declared, the president has displayed an uncommon understanding of the pristine value of democratic praxis, in which an election verdict is regarded as the choice of voters principally because of the instrumental impact  or potential impact of policies on their lives and not merely a competition of personalities and congenial abilities. By setting this standard, he has made it easier for Nigerians to identify, in future, those who will lead the country out of the path of enlightenment by refusing to concede to the verdict of voters. His action is even more important because in our country it has no parallel at that level; only former Governor Kayode Fayemi has shown such level of enlightenment in his reaction to the Ekiti State election.

Well looking beyond the process now, the outcome of the elections will result in governance changes with a new party controlling the legislature and executive at several levels. What should Nigerians expect from such changes?

The outcome of the elections is different in many respects, and, as electoral managers, we do note the significant parameters and their developmental implications. We must keep in mind though, that the main goal of election is development. One of the significant developmental milestones is the maturity and lack of rancor which the incumbent president displayed in dissipating possible post-election dispute as I have already stated. Everyone has acknowledged that it is the game-changer for this elections at this level, the best global comparison with that action is the George Bush-Al Gore election, where Al Gore accepted the outcome to maintain the  integrity of the American democratic institutions, even though he felt he could have justifiable grounds to contest the Florida results.

Such statesmanship raises the bar for others who will follow and increases the leadership expectations of the citizens that people who occupy such offices must also be able to set aside their own personal needs for national development. The second significant development is the resilience of the president-elect in staying on the course of democratic contest, by contesting despite several set-backs. He has shown that you may lose, but you can also win despite the odds. In this sense, they have both laid a foundation for breaking the mold of our national pyche that transition can only come through the barrel of the gun, this is important for democratic consolidation in Nigeria.

On the expectation of Nigerians, first    psychologically, we must admit that it has been a very competitive and adversarial election, so the first expectation must be for efforts to be exerted to bring the nation closer through deliberate actions that will not deepen the differences but help to heal the rifts, so that the next election can be seen as a cementation of brotherhood instead of a re-enforcement of differences, because as I have constantly stated the aim of election is for the development of everyone. Then instrumentally, I can only repeat an important goal that I have often talked about. We can find the aggregate of the expectations of Nigerians in Chapter 2 of our constitution, the only difference that may come from any leader is how much attention is paid to that section, and the approach that is employed to make that attention manifest in the lives of people.

The expectations of Nigerians are simple and complex, it is simple because looking at section 2 it simply asks, what can you do to enable economic progress for everyone? What can you do to improve their welfare; housing, education, health and so on? Then it becomes complex when you get to the “how to do it. The complexity derives from the fact that, to do it well, you have to do it for about 170 million people.  And how to do it, raises the question of how much time you need, as well as the resources you need to do it. If you were going to do it for just 1 to 5 million people, with our resources, maybe it will be easy, but given our population, our experience has shown that you can’t do it well and quick enough, if you try to meet all these expectations from Abuja alone, this is why there has been a consistent advocacy for improving what is being done from the local governments.

The answer is therefore improved participation, the only change that will therefore meet the expectations of Nigerians is the change that increases participation down to the grass-roots by empowering governance from Local governments, if you examine the works of Rondinelli on decentralization, as well as the different theories and practices of developmental participation by Arnstein and other theorists, you will find that whatever expectations anyone has, will only affect the largest number of Nigerians in a short time, if it is devolved to operate from Local governments, therefore the expectation that should be pre-eminent should be to take development closer to the people by making development decisions more often from the local government or down to the local government level, with emphasis on a bottom-up as against top-down approach.

What is your opinion on the death of the Kano REC?

I have no specific opinion except that it is a very regrettable and sad incident that we lost one of our colleagues while in the service of the nation. One nice guy, well spoken, very unassuming and respectful. Sad indeed and very unfortunate.

Written By Simon Ebegbulem, Benin-City