\nA comprehensive expose on how elections are rigged in the country has been unveiled by one of the insiders in the political process and former Cross River State Governor, Mr. Donald Duke. Last Wednesday at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Duke gave a blow by blow account to a gathering of pro-democracy advocates, including the Save Nigeria Group (SNG), of the modus operandi of State Chief Executives and Resident Electoral Commissioners to thwart the mandate of the electorate, not just in states controlled by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), but all the others.
\nIn his opinion, it is not just a question of replacing the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, but getting a critical mass to come out to vote and ensuring that votes count.
\nThe Guardian today delivers excerpts of his extempore speech:<\/p>\n
\u201cLET me start this way. Professor Maurice Iwu is truly an enigma; he enjoyed the limelight. He enjoyed all the attacks, thrown and meted at him, he remained undaunted. I think, he belongs to the school of thought that believes that bad publicity is better than no publicity. So, even though he was being attacked and scolded and all sorts of things were said about him, he didn\u2019t shy away from even going to the United States and talking to Nigerians in the Diaspora about his work, he didn\u2019t shy away from it.\u00a0 I was told he organized a rally to ensure that he will come back to do the work he was appointed to.<\/p>\n
Why do I call him an enigma? The truth is, the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission has little or no bearing on the success of elections, that\u2019s the truth. To me, it\u2019s actually immaterial because he is head of the administration he takes the brunt. The best he can do is perhaps, draw up a blueprint but the implementation of that blueprint is outside his control. So, if elections are rigged in say -Taraba State- we don\u2019t do that stuff in Cross Rivers State (laughter),
\nEvery one looks at Iwu and he proudly says we did this or that. Hogwash!
\nLet me now take you through the process of an election. We have a hundred and twenty thousand booths in Nigeria. At the hierarchy, you have the Chairman of INEC, then you have the zonal Commissioners, then you have the Resident Electoral Commissioners and they are the heads in every state the zone as the name implies; we have six zones in Nigeria, so you have six of them. Then you have the Resident Electoral Commissioners and there are 36 of them of course, and Abuja. Then for each local government, you have an electoral officer. Beyond that you have a hundred and twenty thousand polling booths, headed by presiding officers. The people think that at the end of the elections, the PDP would just decide who wins and who doesn\u2019t and announces the results. I think the process is a bit more sophisticated than that.<\/p>\n
This is what happens; the Resident Electoral Commissioner is usually from another state. The electoral officers, they move around. They are usually from that state, but for the conduct of elections itself, you would probably move from Cross River to Akwa Ibom or to Abia, but these musical chairs don\u2019t mean nothing.<\/p>\n
When the Resident Electoral Commissioner comes before the elections are conducted- of course when he comes to the state, usually, he has no accommodation; monies have not been released for the running or conduct of the elections and all that because we always start late. He pays a courtesy call on the governor. It\u2019s usually a televised event you know, and of course he says all the right things. \u2018Your Excellency, I am here to ensure that we have free and fair elections and I will require your support.\u2019<\/p>\n
Now, at that courtesy call, most governors, at least I did, will invite the Commissioner of Police because he is part of the action and he sits there.<\/p>\n
After the courtesy call, the Resident Electoral Commissioner now moves in for a one-on-one with the governor the says, \u201cYour Excellency, since I came, I\u2019ve been staying in this hotel, there is no accommodation for me and even my vehicle is broken down and the last Commissioner didn\u2019t leave the vehicle, so if you could help me settle down quickly;\u2019 and the governor says, \u2018Chief of Staff, where is the Chief of Staff here?\u2019 And the Chief of Staff appears. Governor says: \u2018Please ensure that the REC is accommodated\u2013put him in the Presidential lodge, allot two cars to him, I give you seven days to get this done. Then the relationship has started; I am going to share some of these things with you so that we don\u2019t leave here with any illusions. A lot of us, folks who have gone through an election or have been elected for one thing or another, see groups like Save Nigeria Group (SNG), the CLP as woolly-eye dreamers, you have to come down to the backsides, since I am now a hybrid between both. I want to bring you both down to backsides.\u00a0 Let me take you down to what happens so that you can change it because if you don\u2019t change it, we here won\u2019t suffer but I think of our children will.<\/p>\n
We the elite, I am one of them, we send our kids to the best schools around the World, when they come back they are misfits, they cannot fit in and so ultimately we are designing a system that would destroy us in the end.<\/p>\n
Let me take our minds back to Somalia. Somalia is mono-religious, mono-ethnic; they only have clans (but) they have one tribe. What has happened there? It\u2019s a failed state because the elite in Somalia were so disconnected from the people that once they had some money, they buy houses in England, Washington and all those places; they were not investing, putting their best foot forward and I think that was what Pastor Bakare was talking about.\u00a0 If you want to be in a contest, you put your best foot forward; at the end of the day, there was such a disconnect that even till today, they cannot bridge it. Let me tell you, the last recognized President of Somalia is buried in Lagos- Siad Barre.<\/p>\n
We are multi-religious, multi-ethnic and multi-problematic. The reason why most people worry about us is if we explode, who will contain us? Let me also say this, I know what I am saying now is an aside, I will go back to the elections. When we conducted the census in 2006 or so, the raw figures said we were over two hundred million; when they went and processed the figures it came down to 140million.<\/p>\n
When you look at those figures and compare to those we had in 1991 at a growth rate of 2.1 or something like that, it is really just an extrapolation, because we were too embarrassed to admit our true numbers. If we get it wrong, we will fail like Somalia; in Somalia, half of them are in Kenya, Ethiopia, and a few are in Europe here and there; who will contain us in all of West Africa and Central Africa and for that it is imperative not just for ourselves but for the rest of the continent that we get it right.<\/p>\n
Now, back to the elections, once that relationship has been established between the governor and the REC, if you are a governor who is \u2018A Governor\u2019, maybe two nights after you just pop by at the governors lodge and see the REC and say ah, \u2018ah REC how are you doing? Are you OK?\u2019 He says, \u2018ah! Your Chief of Staff has been wonderful. He has been very nice to me; he supplied me the vehicles and everything is Ok\u2019.<\/p>\n
A few weeks to the elections, the REC sees the governor; you probably have on the average about three thousand five hundred, four thousand depending on the polling booths in every state. So, REC goes to the governor and says, \u2018Your Excellency, could you please give us the names of about four, five thousand people so that we can hurriedly train them, we need them as Presiding Officers.\u2019 You need experience. A good coach is one who has played and has lost matches in the past?<\/p>\n
The REC now goes down and says, \u2018we need to conduct a training programme for the presiding officers and em, headquarters hasn\u2019t sent us any money yet, you know.\u2019<\/p>\n
And the governor is like: \u2018How much would that cost?\u2019<\/p>\n
REC replies: \u2018N25million for the first batch, we may have about three batches.\u2019 Governor: \u2018Ok, the Chief of Staff will see you.\u2019
\nNow, the Chief of Staff, you call him: \u2018Make sure, that we arrange N25 million this week and in two weeks time another N25 million and Seventy-Five million in all.\u2019<\/p>\n
Chief of Staff: \u2018Your Excellency, how do we do it?\u2019
\nGovernor: \u2018Put it under Security Vote.\u2019<\/p>\n
In other words, its cash, ok, now, cash in huge Ghana Must Go bags \u2013 some of my colleagues will shoot me- (turns to the audience) is any former governor here? (Crowd replies no!)<\/p>\n
Good. Cash is lodged in huge Ghana Must Go Bags for the REC and of course, to be fair to them, they call their electoral officers and say the governor has been very benevolent; he has given us this and that. I say three batches because they have them in Senatorial districts. So, you have one in Calabar, you have One in Ikom and Ogoja, those are the headquarters of the Senatorial districts. Each one costs twenty-five million. Of course, the sums are not properly retired. I don\u2019t know how much of this twenty-five million worked. But, there is a rapport this is going on.<\/p>\n
The governor now turns round and says: \u2018call me the party chairman.\u2019\u00a0 The party chairman appears and the governor says: \u2018INEC requires 50 thousand people for conducting the elections. See to it that we meet their needs.\u2019 The chairman goes and you hear in the evening on radio and television: There will be an urgent meeting of all chairmen and secretaries of XYZ party at the headquarters. They should report promptly at 10am (because) matters of urgent interest will be discussed. End of announcement. Now we have texts messages, so its easier, in no time everyone is here.
\nIt\u2019s a very short meeting, please go back and within 48 hours submit from each local government two hundred and fifty names of trusted party members. So in a week the deed is done. The names, sometimes even passport photographs if required are sent to INEC.<\/p>\n
And the training programme is carried out. Let me pause a bit, this is at party level. They are usually civil servants. They may be teachers, whatever, but they are party members. The remuneration, for each of them for the elections from Abuja is 10,000 Naira for the day\u2019s work. But the state in its benevolence gives 50 to 100,000 Naira to each of these folks right before this election.<\/p>\n
This is even where it gets even more interesting. So, you have each of the three or four thousand polling booths; they are manned by party stalwarts. They are usually party stalwarts. You don\u2019t send any peripheral member. The remuneration from Abuja has not arrived but that of the state was received 48 hours prior.<\/p>\n
On the day of elections, each polling booth has no more than five hundred ballot papers, that is standard.<\/p>\n
There is not a polling booth that is more than five hundred. So only two hundred people appear here, three hundred there, one hundred there, fifty there, four hundred there, at the end of election what happens. The Presiding Officer sits down and calls a few guys and says, \u2018hey, there are a few hundred papers here, let\u2019s thumbprint. This is the real election. Well, this is not a PDP thing. I am not here to castigate the PDP; it\u2019s a Nigerian thing. This process may sound comical and jovial, it happens throughout the country, whether its Action Congress or APGA it\u2019s the same thing. We are all the same. They start thumb-printing, some are overzealous. So at the end of the day you find some voting more than the number of people that were registered to vote.<\/p>\n
Other wise they do it, you have 95 percent turnout.\u00a0 You start wondering where were the voters, I didn\u2019t see so many people. And the election results are announced; XYZ party wins and it takes a week for this paltry ten thousand Naira for each presiding officer to arrive.<\/p>\n
Listen to this before you ask your question: Who is the most important person in an election? \u2013 The presiding officer. And if there are a hundred and twenty thousand of them (booths) there are a hundred and twenty thousand presiding officers, they are the most important people in the elections, not the Chairman.<\/p>\n
So, as long as we keep applying that same method, you will get the same results. Its crazy to think that because you substitute Iwu for Jega all will change. In other words, Iwu is a crook, Jega is a saint.\u00a0 Jega is great, he has an impeccable reputation. Iwu was great, now he seems not so great. Ok, they are both professors, they have reached the peak of whatever discipline that they profess. The point is that it is the system and the personnel and the chairman has little or no control over that.<\/p>\n
Where are we now, we don\u2019t even know when the elections will be. The Constitution amendment seems to be stalling somewhere. So it\u2019s either in January or in April. Sometimes, we behave as if we invented democracy. We always want to draw new rules. We should know the day of elections. It should be fixed. We should know that on so and so date I think, America is the 4th of November or so and if it falls on a Sunday it doesn\u2019t make a difference. The point I am making here is that date is fixed, you know; because in a democracy, election should be a norm, not an event. In our democracy, election is an event. Its like, we are going to spring on to you with fire works, hey, we are going to have an election, we are all running around- I know most politicians are broke right now, so we are all running around the field.<\/p>\n
Secondly, if you have your ears to the ground there, are whispers that may be, we need to postpone this thing. The whispers are there. In a democracy, you postpone an election? You postpone things you didn\u2019t plan for, not things that are there in the Constitution, that says you must do this, that and that, you can\u2019t but \u2013you know two ways of moving forward. This is where I like what SNG and CNP are doing.<\/p>\n
We need a critical mass of Nigerians to get out and vote. It is important because the more ballot papers that are legitimately used on election day, the fewer available to be used to rig the vote, that\u2019s the truth. Don\u2019t keep to yourself and think that they will announce results. They are more sophisticated than that. And that\u2019s why the aspirants who felt cheated and had the resources to employ forensic personnel, like those elections had the elections upturned in Edo and Ondo, because they could establish multiple voting by thumbprint.<\/p>\n
So, if it\u2019s an AC state the procedure is the same.\u00a0 I remember a state, that state will remain nameless. I hear the story that the then President was so determined that he must change the leadership of this state and he called the IG and said, \u2018look, that Governor is a security breach. Let’s have elections and flush the governor out, and the governor knows he is under siege. A week before the elections, a new police Commissioner arrives.\u00a0\u00a0 And you know if you are a governor and a new Police Commissioner arrives before elections, you know something is wrong somewhere and he spends two, three days without going to see the governor, which is again a breach of protocol.\u00a0 The day he decides to see the governor, the governor says, I won\u2019t be at the office. However, if he gives him a particular address they may discuss. Then the chap goes there and smartly salutes and it\u2019s in a highbrow neighborhood of the city. (Shouts of Ikoyi rent the air.) \u2018No! It\u2019s Yobe!\u2019 (The hall explodes in loud laughter).<\/p>\n
The Commissioner of Police walks up to the governor and smartly salutes and says: \u2018Your Excellency, I just came to introduce myself. My name is Mr. So, so and so. And the governor goes: \u2018Ah, you are welcome. I heard you were here two or three days ago and I was wondering whether I won\u2019t see you. Anyway, you are welcome. Have you settled down?\u2019 \u2018Yes I\u2019ve been given accommodation and all that. And the governor asks, \u2018where was your last posting?\u2019 He tells him, he says fine.<\/p>\n
Governor: \u2018That car over there, this is the key and this is your house.
\nThe Commissioner of Police now says: \u2018Your Excellency, this Obasanjo is a very bad man. He is a very, very bad man. If you see all the things he has planned for you eh Olorun maje.\u2019<\/p>\n
How do we move on? How do we get out of here? What I have done is I\u2019ve tried graphically to paint a picture of a process. How do we change this<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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