Enyeribe Ejiogu, Olakunle Olafioye and Henry Okonkwo
Electoral materials theft and other vote-related irregularities, which again manifested in the Bayelsa and Kogi governorship elections held recently would, perhaps, have been prevented if President Muhammadu Buhari had signed the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill into law.
Stolen electoral materials make it possible to rig the election by allocating false votes to a preferred candidate with a view to securing ‘victory’ at the polls.
During the Eighth Assembly, President Buhari consistently withheld his assent to the bill even after it had been passed and re-passed four times, with amendments considered to help in ensuring free and fair elections by the Senator Bukola Saraki and Yakubu Dogara-led Senate and House of Representatives respectively.
The rejected bill made provision for accreditation data from the Card Readers used at each polling station to be electronically transmitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) central server at the headquarters.
Such data would have shown the total number of registered voters at the polling unit and total number of those accredited on the day of election. In addition, the bill provided for the digital transmission of the number of actual ballots cast, the number of valid and invalid ballots, as well as the number of votes obtained by each candidate at the polling unit. The correlation of the accreditation data and the recorded votes would have given a true picture of what transpired at the polling units, and thereby conclusively removed the possibility of rigging at that stage, made the election transparent and ensured that only votes cast would count.
Thus, without the above in place, the governorship elections in Bayelsa and Kogi states won by the All Progressives Congress (APC) were charaterised by monumental rigging and unprecedented violence.
While the opposition is still smarting from the outcome of the polls, many analysts have heaped the blame on the doorstep of President Buhari for declining to assent to the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill.
The 8th National Assembly began work on the Bill in 2016 and sent it to the President in 2018 as the country was preparing for the 2019 general elections.
In a letter addressed to the 8th House of Representatives on December 6, 2018, President Buhari said: “Pursuant to Section 58(4) of the Constitution of the Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended), I hereby convey to the House of Representatives, my decision to decline Presidential Assent to the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill 2018 recently passed by the National Assembly.”
Buhari claimed that he withheld assent because he was “concerned that passing a new electoral bill far into the electoral process for the 2019 general elections which commenced under the 2015 Electoral Act, could create some uncertainty about the applicable legislation to govern the process. Any real or apparent change to the rules this close to the election may provide an opportunity for disruption and confusion in respect of which law governs the electoral process.”
The president also cited drafting issues as another reason for declining to assent to the bill. He wrote: “It is also important for the following drafting amendments to be made to the bill: (a) Section 5 of the bill, amending Section 18 of the Principal Act should indicate the subsection to which the substitution of the figure ‘30’ for the figure ‘60’ is to be effected; (b) Section 11 of the bill, amending Section 36 should indicate the subsection in which the proviso is to be introduced; (c) Section 24 of the bill which amends Section 85(1) should be redrafted in full as the introduction of the ‘electing’ to the sentence may be interpreted to mean that political parties may give 21 days’ notice of the intention to merge, as opposed to the 90 days provided in Section 84(2) of the Electoral Act which provides the provision for merger of political parties; (d) the definition of the term “Ward Collation Officer” should be revised to reflect a more descriptive definition than the capitalized and undefined term ‘Registration Area Collation Officer.’”
In the aftermath of the rancorous polls in Bayelsa and Kogi, Nigerians have become more worried and agitated that elections in the country would continue to fail credibility tests until the nation reforms its electoral system.
In response to this concern, Mr Joseph Ibezim, a media and marketing communications consultant, while commenting on the way forward, told Sunday Sun: “When the All Progressives Congress (APC) and President Muhammadu Buhari were campaigning in 2015, they sought the votes of Nigerians on the premise that they would bring about change in the conduct of governance, which would encompass comprehensive reform, particularly in how we conduct our electoral processes. The desire of most Nigerians has been that rigging would be eliminated from our elections or significantly reduced to the point that our balloting processes and the results show a reasonable degree of transparency and credibility. That was why when the former chairman of INEC, Prof Attahiru Jega, came up with the idea of the Card Reader machine, which enhanced the biometric data capture method introduced by Prof Maurice Iwu, who presided over INEC during President Olusegun Obasanjo’s tenure, Nigerians welcomed it wholeheartedly as further evidence that our electoral processes were finally going towards accepted global best practices. Under the present leadership of INEC, the electoral umpire said that results and accreditation data from the Card Reader would be transmitted directly to the INEC server. The mobile networks gave enthusiastic endorsement of this as they said that the data transmission technology that would make it possible was already domiciled in their on 2.5/3G systems. Bear in mind that the Supreme Court had previously given judgments on election petitions that dwelt on the issue of the Card Reader. Against this background, the 8th National Assembly, in seeking to make our elections more transparent, enshrined provisions in the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill, to give legislative backing to the INEC guidelines on the electronic transmission of accreditation data from Card Readers and election results from polling booths direct to the INEC central server.
“The 8th NASS passed the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill, but as we all know, President Buhari did not give his assent and, therefore, the bill did not become law. Otherwise, I don’t how election rigging of the kind we saw in the 2019 general election and in the Bayelsa/Kogi governorship elections would have easily happened, if the provisions of the stillborn new Electoral Act had become law. That is why I believe, like most other people, that President Buhari should make the signing of the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill, when it is passed again by the present 9th NASS as one of his presidential priorities and legacy. This should rank equally with his desire to give Nigerians 24-hour power supply, daily, the whole year. I expect the members of the National Assembly to move expeditiously and patriotically to pass the Bill, which must necessarily have clear and unambiguous provisions for electronic transmission of Card Reader data on accreditation and election results at the polling booth direct to the INEC server at the headquarters. That is the irreducible minimum we expect from the National Assembly. By promptly signing the bill into law, President Buhari would cast his name in gold and in the hearts of Nigerians at home and in the Diaspora. After all how can you begin to talk about Diaspora voting when the votes of Nigerians at home are not yet allowed to count? President Buhari, I want to repeat, is at a critical moment in our nation’s democratic history to establish a legacy by making our elections transparent. That is my simple submission and I can tell you that many other people I have had occasion to discuss this with hold the same view.”
A former presidential aspirant on the platform of Alliance for New Nigeria, ANN, Dr Elishama Ideh, said that Nigeria’s quest for credible elections would remain a mirage until the nation reformed its electoral system.
“I sincerely believe President Buhari’s failure to sign the electoral reform bill had a role to play in what we witnessed in the recent governorship elections. Perpetrators of election violence, rigging, ballot snatching, vote buying, voter suppression etc, will continue to have a field day as long as that bill remains in the cooler. So, the president must be held responsible for the deteriorating political and electoral climate in our country today,” Ideh said.
Also reacting, Prof Remi Sonaiya, presidential candidate of Kowa Party in 2015, said although Nigeria needs to reform its electoral system, she added that Nigerians must rise to the challenge of holding their leaders accountable.
Her words: “I am not sure that it is the signing of the Electoral Bill into law that will turn things around. Although I believe that we need electoral reform, there is no doubt about that. The way we are conducting election in this country does not make sense. We keep doing the same thing over and over again.
“I am not surprised by the outcomes of elections in Kogi and Bayelsa states. The handwriting on the wall was very clear that things would not go well. And that is what has come out. I think that there is a need for the citizens of this country to rise up to demand the kind of accountability that we require from our government. We can’t just continue to allow them to ride roughshod over our lives and condemning us to substandard level of living. It is not longer acceptable. I think we need to educate ourselves as to how to hold our leaders accountable.”
A former Minister of Women Affairs, Josephine Anenih, in her reaction, expressed reservations on whether the signing of the electoral reform bill into law was capable of sanitising the nation’s electoral system judging by the level of violence that trailed recent elections in the country.
She said: “Whether the president signs the bill or not , did we not see the level of violence during the elections, where armed men invaded voting centres and shot sporadically to scare the people before escaping with ballot boxes and came out with fake results. If there was proper security people would have been able to vote properly whether the elections were conducted electronically or manually. That is more than rigging,” she opined.
For the Vice President at the Centre for Values in Leadership (CVL), Mr Rasheed Adegbenro, election malpractice has eaten so deep into the veins of politicians that electoral reform might not be enough to sanitise Nigeria’s electioneering process.
Adegbenro argued that signing the Electoral Act into law should not be seen as the silver bullet that would change the face of elections in Nigeria.
“I don’t think anything would change with our type of politicians. So, even if President Buhari had signed the law, nothing would have changed. The electronic voting would still be programmed by individuals that would be easily influenced by politicians to manipulate the process. There is no election that is not rigged by politicians all over the world. It is even worse in advanced countries like the United States and the United Kingdom,” Adegbenro said.
Expressing the same view, Deputy Director of Justice Development and Peace Commission (JDPC) Mr Joe Nkamuke, justified the president’s refusal to sign the Act last year.
According to Nkamuke, the Act presented by the leadership of the 8th Assembly was laden with booby-traps. “What is important is to find out why the president turned it down? There were some elements of the bill that were out of consonance with the reality of the political system in Nigeria,” he said.
He explained further: “How come there you had a president and leadership of the National Assembly who belonged to the same party, but they get into conflict whenever they wanted to pass a law. The Eighth NASS under Saraki was not actually contributing to the bigger picture of the government of the day. So, both the executive and legislature were not only setting traps, but they were also looking for who to push into the trap. Otherwise, the normal thing should have been that at the committee stage of any law, the executive would covertly approach the lawmakers to disclose what they might like or not like. The mere fact that it wasn’t done at that stage shows they were working out of consonance with each other.
“For me, the reform of the electoral law is quite overdue. However, even if you review them, are the politicians not the very people causing the trouble? Our politicians are not quite ready for electoral governance that has to go through some level of rectitude. Catholic bishops at one of their conferences said that our politicians behave as if everything that they touch would go bad. Otherwise, why did former President Goodluck Jonathan throw away the Uwais Report? If we had implemented the Uwais Report, which later President Umar Yar’Adua had set up, we wouldn’t have been in this quagmire we find ourselves in. Uwais Report was quite clear on its reform. So, don’t just look at the rejection of the laws, rather take a holistic view of the electoral laws and system.
“The major problem is the mindset of our politicians. They believe that elections must be won by all means. So, whatever instrument anyone of them can use to steal votes they take to it, but I don’t think laws alone will make any difference. I think there’s the need for a reorientation towards accepting nationalism and imperative of federalism and constitutionalism and republicanism. They need understand that voting is a fundamental principle of alternation; that you may not win now, but you may win tomorrow. The thing with our politicians is that they all want to win today.”