Professor Chinua Achebe, the famous author of Things Fall Apart will
probably not be happy in his grave today. In twice rejecting the award of
national honours in 2004 and 2011, the Nigerian literary icon said he was
protesting against the handling of governance issues in the country,
especially in his native Anambra state. Before he died last March in
Boston, United States, however, he was happy that things were looking up
once again. He had singled out President Goodluck Jonathan’s electoral
reform for commendation, saying that the conduct of the 2011 general
election was a clear indication that sanity was gradually returning to the
nation’s electoral process. For this, he gave credit to the Independent
National Electoral Commission (INEC) led by Professor, Attahiru Jega. In
the book, There was a Country, he had written “…the last general election
in Nigeria was not perfect, but overall it was an improvement over past
travesties that were passed off as election in Nigeria”.
The appointment of Professor Attahiru Jega as Chairman of the Independent
National Electoral Commission (INEC), in June 2010, had understandably
raised expectations that the much-desired credibility would return to the
nation’s electoral system. Coming after the general elections of 2007
which even the winner, President Umaru Yar’adua acknowledged were flawed,
the Nigeria polity was yearning for fresh ideas. Nigerians had good
reasons therefore, to place their hope on the former President of the
Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), who famously engaged the
military governments of the 1990s in running battles. With impressive
academic and civil society credentials, Jega seemed to appeal to all
sections of the polity. He was the best man to deliver on the promises of
electoral reform which President Jonathan had promised, or so we all
thought.
Jega may not have disappointed, especially with the 2011 general elections
which were his first test case. The election was generally free and fair
and even the worst critics of the Jonathan administration acknowledged
that it was an important step in the electoral reform process. However,
subsequent elections have raised questions about the man, his capability
and his conduct as the nation’s chief electoral umpire. His reputation
and integrity are increasingly becoming doubtful and more importantly,
projections are already being made that the all-important 2015 national
elections may end up a sham.
If the conduct of the recent governorship elections in Ondo and Edo states
were criticized for their observable lapses, they pale into insignificance
when compared to the charade that is playing out in Anambra state. After
months of preparations, the November 16 governorship polls in Professor
Chinua Achebe’s home state have indeed become a metaphor for INEC’s
growing official ineptitude. Not only were the elections which Jega
boasted would be the best ever in the country declared inconclusive, the
INEC last Monday ordered supplementary election in 208 polling units in
the state with a combined registered voter strength of 113,113. After
collating results from the 21 Local Governments Areas, the returning
officer, Professor James Epoke could not announce the overall winner
because of widespread irregularities in some parts of the state.
Though the Anambra drama is still unfolding, Jega has come under severe
fire from many Nigerians on the shoddy handling of the polls with many
already casting doubts on his competence and level of preparedness for
next year’s governorship poll in Ekiti as well as the 2015 general
elections inch close. Jega had admitted that his staff engaged in
unprofessional conduct and sabotaged the gubernatorial election,
especially in Idemilii Local Government Area where electoral materials
were willfully withheld or delivered late, while in some cases INEC
officials and materials were totally absent at some polling units. The
supplementary election therefore becomes necessary because the total
number of votes cancelled is much more than the difference between the
candidate with the highest number of votes and the runner up. The other
areas involved in the supplementary election include parts of Onitsha
South, Ihiala, Ayamelum, Oyi, Orumba North, Aguata, Idemili South and Awka
North.
In spite of the ample time for preparations, Jega’s INEC did not make
adequate logistics provision for security officers while in many
instances, his staff were openly hostile to observers who complained of
brazen acts of electoral fraud. The complaints were so serious that groups
like the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) and the Policy
and Legal Advocacy Centre, have called on him to resign immediately, and
for the Anambra governorship election to be cancelled entirely. The CNPP
said the INEC chairman betrayed the Anambra electorate and Nigerians in
general by conducting a sham election with serious implications for 2015.
Similarly, the Executive Director, Civil Societies Legislative and
Advocacy Centre, Auwual Musa-Rafsanjani described the Anambra election as
a bad advertisement for INEC’s preparation for the 2015 general elections.
The Nigeria Civil Society Election Situation Room, in its final report on
the election, described INEC as incompetent, stressing that its handling
of the Anambra contest provided worries for the much bigger 2015
elections. The position is shared by the Transition Monitoring Group, a
coalition of over 400 civic organisations that have been involved in
election monitoring in Nigeria since 1998.
Jega should have known better than to defend such acts of his staff –like
late arrival or non-arrival of staff and voting materials, late
distribution of materials, inadequate training of electoral staff and late
commencement of accreditation — that led to the bungling of the polls, in
a state that has little or no transportation challenges. As a member of
the Justice Uwais Committee on Electoral Reform, Jega had variously made a
case against persons that commit electoral offences, yet he was not bold
enough to identify the staff he alleged were involved in such offences in
Anambra. It is a paradox that the several failings of Jega’s INEC bother
on issues that were clearly identified in previous elections and
documented by monitors and observers, yet they have repeated themselves in
the governorship polls in Edo, Ondo and now Anambra.
Was Jega that palpably inept or was he negligent of his responsibility in
the election that even he had declared was a litmus test for him? The
irony of the Anambra polls is that all the political parties except the
presumed winner, the All Progressives Grand Alliance, are complaining
bitterly about the conduct. The most vocal of them, the All Progressives
Congress demanded a total cancellation of the election, citing massive
disenfranchisement of voters throughout the state. Not only has the whole
drama become a reflection of INEC’s failure to respond to challenges in a
timely and effective way, the larger implication of Anambra’s bungled
elections is that there is a growing perception that the gains recorded in
the 2011 elections have been eroded. With the widespread
disenfranchisement of citizens due to their names missing from the voter
registers and other shortcomings by INEC, the inevitable low voter
turn-out has invariably undermined public confidence in the electoral
process.
Within his two years as head of the Commission, a lot have happened to
seriously dent Jega’s high reputation. The statements from certain
quarters that he may have been compromised to deliberately sabotage the
process, may be taking the argument too far, but it will suffice to say
that he has disappointed most Nigerians. The image he creates today is
far from the credibility we envisaged in our electoral system two years
ago; definitely a far cry from the optimism that the usually critical
Professor Achebe expressed. Two questions readily come to mind: for how
long can we tolerate the systemic organisational failures as witnessed in
the conduct of recent elections by INEC? Can Nigeria still trust the fate
of 2015 general elections in the hands of such a man whose integrity and
capacity to conduct acceptable elections has taken such a beating?
· Ozoene, former newspaper editor, contributed this piece from Abuja.