Nigeria Forum: electoral commission could be an obstacle to peace in 2015 – By Magnus Taylor
When I meet Professor Mohammad J.Kuna in Lagos in early December he is confident that everything is in place for the Nigerian Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to run a free, fair and effective election in February next year.
Prof Kuna, who is Special Assistant to the head of INEC (Prof Attahiru Jega), is one of the few people I met in Nigeria who thinks the organisation has got everything under control, but he fights his corner well. Idayat Hassan, Director of the Centre for Democracy and Development (an Abuja-based think tank founded by opposition luminary Kayode Fayemi) says: “INEC could contribute to violence in this election if it doesn’t get the logistics right.”
Kuna and Hassan are broadly in agreement over the dangers of a poorly run election. The Professor stresses that there are three main areas that INEC can control in this regard; that voting materials are delivered to polling stations on time; that staff are properly trained in how to use them; and that they are non-partisan in their approach.
But several well-informed people I spoke with in Abuja are sceptical over INEC’s current performance and capacity to up its game. Indeed, Prof Kuna admits to me that not all of the funds required to run the election have been released by the Federal Government. The rest is promised “by mid-December.”
It should be noted that Kuna has repeatedly asserted that he has “no concern about funds”. However, this may be because INEC’s expectations of what they would be able to spend to run these elections were moderated early on in the process. Kuna states that “from very early on” in this electoral cycle INEC knew that it wasn’t going to be granted its desired budget.
An International Crisis Group (ICG) report released in mid-November – “Nigeria’s Dangerous 2015 Elections: limiting the violence” – observes that:
“This year [2014] the commission had estimated it would need N93 billion ($560 million) to prepare for next year’s elections, but it was appropriated only N45 billion ($272 million). The reduced funding and the inconsistent manner in which it is disbursed have hampered some of the commission’s preparations.”
INEC has based its strategy for the 2015 elections on its experience of 2011 and some advancements (at least on paper) have clearly been made: Prof Kuna states that “preparations are far better than in 2011.” For example, each voter is to be registered with a Permanent Voters Card (PVC) in a process that is termed Continuous Voter Registration (CVR). Voters will only be permitted to cast their ballot by presentation of a PVC and by extension will only be able to vote once.
Kuna also points to the fact that since 2011 there have been 52 elections or by-elections (which INEC has administered) there have been no instances of “snatching of voting materials” (ballot boxes, papers etc.) Whether this is a consequence of improved behaviour from politicians, or better security, is unclear.
This election however, involves considerably greater challenges than either the 2011 polls, or by-elections, which can be more effectively policed by a massive deployment of the security services. The most significant of these challenges is the impact of the Boko Haram insurgency in the north east of the country.
Currently, there are an estimated 1.5 million Internally Displaced People (IDPs) who have fled the fighting. A small percentage of these people are now living in IDP camps (some have crossed over the border into Niger and Cameroon), but most are living with extended family in towns and cities currently outside of the insurgents’ area of operation.
Nigerian electoral law however, requires people to vote in the location where they registered. Without swift legal manoeuvres, which Professor Kuna doubts can now be made in time, Nigeria’s IDPs will not be able to vote in 2015.
Additionally, there are fears that electoral infrastructure, such as polling booths, tallying centres, and long lines of people queuing to cast their ballot, will provide easy targets for the insurgents who, in the past few weeks have grown increasingly bold; pushing further into Borno and Yobe states, as well as bombing the Central Mosque in Kano.
At a Chatham House event in London less than a week after our meeting in Lagos, Prof Kuna reveals that it is the responsibility of INEC to make the decision over whether, given the security situation, elections can take place. However, the information on which they will be basing this decision is provided by the Nigerian military.
What also makes this election more difficult and dangerous than 2011 is how close it could be. In 2011, whilst rigging did take place, particularly in PDP strongholds such as the Delta states, it would not have affected the overall presidential result. However, with a resurgent opposition promising to expel the PDP from power, it is likely that an APC defeat (still the most likely result) would cause significant violence in the north.
However, Olly Owen, a political scientist from Oxford University states, “public tempers rely greatly on trust [and] people need to have faith in the process”. It seems that public reaction to the electoral process may be as important to as the politicians they are voting for.
Magnus Taylor is Editor of African Arguments.
Your headline gives the impression that INEC might be the obstacle to a peaceful 2015 elections. Â You should avoid sensationalism in your headlines. Â The real risks are rooted in the political class which has a long history of engagement in electoral fraud, a common trigger of violence in Nigeria’s electoral history. The 2015 election is about an incumbent seeking re-election. We know from history that incumbents seeking re-elections massively rigged second round elections in 1964, 1983 and 2003. The main danger in 2015 would be a repetition of that tendency. Already, the police which plays a major role in elections is showing blatant partisanship vis-Ã -vis the opposition APC leaders which is bad omen for the elections. Moving forward, what is important is for INEC to do its work well but also to ensure that the abuse of the powers of incumbency does to lead to a falsification of electoral outcomes. Meanwhile, all election stakeholders should work hard to ensure citizens are able to protect their electoral mandate.
A Consideration for Electoral Professionals in the Advancement of the Civic Civil Electoral Process
I suggest in a manner strong to all engaged elections professionals that the social political public civic civil electoral leitmotiv for the calibration of any National/Regional/Local Election be grounded in considering with strict strident urgent attention the following statement uttered by Woodrow Wilson when he was campaigning to become President of the United States in 1912.
“Are you going to vote for a government which will regulate your master, or are you going to be your own masters and regulate the government and through the government these men who have tried to regulate you?”
The ‘Congregation of the People of Tradition for Proselytism and Jihad’—better known by its Hausa name ‘Boko Haram’ meaning ‘Western education is sinful’—is an Islamic jihadist and takfiri militant and terrorist organization governed by the gangsterism ethos without any credence to the serene intellectualism of the Islam Religion advanced by the Prophet Muhammad. Founded by Mohammed Yusuf in 2002, the Boko Haram organisation seeks to establish a “pure” Islamic state ruled by sharia law, putting a stop to what it deems ‘westernization sustained by crass colonialism’.
This Boko Haram cult of gangsterism evidenced in the violent abduction of young women from their schools must/ought be considered and regarded by all who value social order; as this abduction of innocent women reflects/refracts in the strongest lack of governance dialectic. These school girl abductions reinforce the gross lack of civil civic social order in Nigeria. President Goodluck Jonathan and his administration of governance must be held to strict account. These innocent young women were seeking only to improve their intellectual social standing grounded in learning in acquiring both academic and practical knowledge so as to enhance their personal lives along with enhancing and strengthening their society and culture in terms of prescriptive social civic civil cohesion.
The government of Nigeria has a fundamental obligation to eradicate this element of gangsterism shrouded within the veil of Islam using every and all national resources. Anything less must be considered as tacit compliance in accepting this pernicious cult of gangsterism who regard themselves as ‘law’.
When an election “is seriously compromised” using both qualitative and quantitative metrics does pose normative queries which are not necessarily easy to reconcile. The salient issue might well be: What can the International Community of Civic Civil Electoral Expert Advisors do in addressing this combustive technical [quantitative] and public policy [qualitative] concern in persuading a National Electoral Commission to step up and take full civic electoral responsibility in investigating [profound] allegations of electoral fraud?
The failure of young democracies [Ukraine, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Thailand, South Africa, DRC, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt] has enormous inter-continent civic electoral consequences notwithstanding that the ‘democracy idea’ grounded within a civic electoral matrix eventually and ultimately will be the end state of every nation on earth. This civic electoral ‘democracy idea’ remains a most powerful seductive concept [Fukuyama]. In the long run, democracy is on balance the best political system—-not because it allows citizens essential fundamental freedoms but because democracy as a normative concept enhances transparency and rule of law which in the long run will foster and encourage prescriptive ordinal citizen prosperity—the fundamental ontological essence of ‘civitas’—- essential in pluralistic dynamic flowering and flourishing of values connoting and promoting respect, peace, and good order. Civic Institution Elements grossly lacking in many fragile social democratic societies today.
Qualitative Electoral Good citizens who are alert, engaged and educated in the advancement of pluralistic common values should participate in a national conversation and reflect collectively upon the content and character of their shared national identity. In a prescriptive pluralistic society open to engaged polite debate, the motives of good citizens should arise freely; virtue cannot be the product of state civil coercion or servile civic indoctrination.
A liberal nationalist conception of civic virtue seems to imply some project of institutional design. The state’s institutions and practices need to be structured so as to cultivate and elevate civic virtue among its citizens. The most obvious realm is that of education. We cannot assume that citizens will fulfill their [civic electoral] responsibilities. Good national citizens are more likely to be the products of just institutions and of active pro-engaged public polity participation.
Civic Education involves reconciling an interest in the social reproduction of citizens with three important values.
1. the question of whether civic education might obstruct individual autonomy, by privileging civic conformity over critical self-direction
2. civic education must account for how parents’ interests in raising their children according to their beliefs and way of life can be accommodated, [if at all]
3. any transmission of civic virtue should be consistent with the toleration of difference and cultural respect: civic education, most particular the content of school civic curriculum, must not involve the oppressive assimilation of cultural minorities.
When organized along liberal pluralistic rubric, civic electoral education should/ought be guided by two ideas/concepts corresponding to ends and means. Respecting the ends, the liberal pluralistic nationalist should/ought to promote among future citizens a patriotic desire to contribute to a national tradition. This rules out one method of civic education favoured by many western type societies—a civic minimalism limited to basic political knowledge. Deliberative pluralistic democracy requires a more exacting standard of civic civil citizenship. Civic education should/ought involve an element/form of ‘national’ civic civil education, which equips future citizens with cultural civic civil literacy and which prepares them to participate in critical self-interpretation of the national civic civil culture.
The essential challenge for this civic civil educative program process is to ensure that any civic civil education is most sensitive to a normative value of cultural respect, which I believe has not historically been the case in many western civic civil education programs. Moral civic civil dialogue should/ought to be fostered and encouraged among all national participants. The young citizens over the course of their schooling and education should/ought have the opportunity to have multiple encounters with peers from divergent social backgrounds, and in the process forge/create/develop effective and affective ties of common fellowship with their future fellow citizens. Following this education rubric the potential exists in: will these future citizens be best equipped to participate in the kind of national-cultural dialogue conversation that defines a pluralistic national civil identity?
In theory, governance – once a constitution is in place – starts with elections. Let the people decide. But in Africa that great line from Barbara Kingsolver’s novel, The Poisonwood Bible, sums it up: “To the Congolese it seems odd that if one man gets fifty votes and the second forty-nine, the first one wins altogether and the second one plumb loses. That means almost half the people will be unhappy… and in a village that’s left halfway unhappy you haven’t heard the end of it. There is sure to be trouble somewhere down the line.â€
This is especially the case in countries that are divided by ethnicity. Ethnic identity is deeper and stronger than national identity in many countries. In most, ethnic support in elections means the winner must reward that support by spending money in the region. Elections become a simple numbers game, a competition between ethnic-based parties. The winner takes all, leaving great swathes of an electoral region unrepresented and often ignored by governments as the current situation in Ukraine suggests in a manner real and quantitatively calibrated which is grounded upon the lack of a strong ordinal civic civil social culture which is most profound qualitative in form and function.
The Civic Electoral Process defies a simple quantitative measurement series of rubric measurement criteria. The Civic Civil Electoral Process is an amalgam exercising qualitative metrics within a quantitative norm of civic civil social cohesion essential if the civic civil electoral process is to be valued, validated in the normative element and most critical respected by the electorate even those who elected not to participate in the civic civil electoral process.