How Nigerians abroad can sanitise Nigeria’s democracy, by Maurice Iwu

This, at present is one of the key challenges in the efforts to change the old order of doing things in our dear country.
Nigeria has made remarkable progress in the last decade. Don’t let any one convince you otherwise. Whether in the economic/corporate realm or in social life generally, Nigeria has made remarkable strides. Politically as well, the country has made historic progress.

In the modern world that we live as it is generally held and with good reasons, everything revolves around politics. That, of course, is the reason for our being here in this conference today. How do we get our politics right? What do we do to achieve the ideal democratic system of our collective aspiration? The challenge is to be realistic, to be committed and to be sincere in the pursuit of what we say we want.

The irritation in managing some aspects of our national life is that many, especially those who dominate the public media space and influence others do not align their dreams with realities. May be that is the nature of dreams.

Take the 2007 General Elections for instance. For forty seven years, Nigeria did not manage to successfully transit from one elected government to another. At crucial junctures in every Republic when election was due for change of government, a conspiracy by civilian and military forces thwarted the nation’s political progress, with self-serving politicians always ready to undermine democracy unless they had their way by hanging on to power.

Before the 2007 elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had called the attention of the nation to various problems in the political environment in Nigeria in which the election will be conducted. Among other things, the Commission had noted that too much money was being spent in politics and elections in the country and that the danger inherent in such a situation was that people with money rather than those with ideas and good intentions were bidding to buy off the electorate.

We introduced a new political finance regime with the aim of reducing political campaign expenditure, but the larger society paid no attention to the new initiative. The numerous political activists and even the media showed no interest in the issue.

Within the ranks of the political parties themselves, it was not difficult for all to see that things were not going on well. Indeed, there was no democracy at all inside the parties. The leadership of the various political parties ran their affairs as empires.

The system of primaries for instance, which serves to select candidates was turned into a joke as various parties shoved aside many of the hapless fellows who won the primaries and picked those who either had more money or had the endorsement of the party leaders. The Electoral Commission could not do much about this aberration as the Electoral Act had made the internal affairs of the parties just that, with the Commission having little say on such matters.

Still on the political parties. Some time before the 2003 General Elections, some of the politicians had gone all the way to the Supreme Court with a case for the criteria for registering political parties to be liberalized. The Supreme Court ruled in their favour on the matter.

The immediate implication of the situation became the sprouting up of thirty political parties for the 2003 elections, which ballooned to fifty (50) political parties in the country as every politician and a handful of associates had no problem meeting the condition for registering a party. While it must be admitted that this situation helped in lowering the tension in the political scene, as every politician could now become a party top shot of sorts and possibly a presidential candidate, there was the other side of the coin.

Groups and forces that could have coalesced into a strong opposition party now scattered themselves into small parties, each an entity of its own, but all failing to provide any meaningful challenge to the dominant ruling party.

To compound the situation, for the first time in the history of the country, the Presidency was thrown in a crisis. It split down the line following irreconcilable differences between the President and the Vice President. The latter left the government and the ruling party with his supporters and floated their own political party from which he ran for president.

As it turned out, disturbingly, some members of the ruling party and those in the leading opposition did not want the election to hold. The reason on each side was simply selfish. The nation found itself once more in a situation where another Republic may collapse and democracy truncated. But we were determined to conduct the 2007 elections, what ever the shortcoming may be.

And we did. Thanks to that incident Nigeria broke the jinx of forty seven years and has now entered a new phase as a democratic system where the end of two tenures of an elected government will no longer be a source of great anxiety.

In the days after the 2007 elections, the idealists, the mercenary public commentators and the confusionists within our society – and there are many of each – have taken to the media; the newspapers at home and the internet worldwide, to descend on the Electoral Commission and its Chairman in particular, for not giving Nigeria a first class election. And you ask yourself; how does any one that is sincere to himself and his nation expect a first class election out of what is obviously a troubled third class environment?

I have said it in the past and I will always repeat it with every sense of candour and responsibility to my nation; that considering the circumstances in which the 2007 General Election held, it was not only successful it was remarkable. It does not help our quality of analysis or sense of proper appreciation of our national affairs for anyone or persons to completely ignore the context in which an event held and still proceed to assess the same event.

It did Nigeria and its political development a lot of good that the 2007 General Election was conducted. It would have been an unmitigated disaster for the nation if the jinx of not managing to transit to a new government after an old one had completed its term in office had been allowed to reassert itself in Nigeria’s history.

One of the points easily and inappropriately held up by those who criticize the 2007 elections is that the verdict of various Election Tribunals upturned the result of some elections. Those who make this point miss the point completely. Election is a process and not an event that happens only on voting day. Election Tribunals are part and parcel of the electoral process. They were established to compliment the act of conduct of elections.

The mechanism of Election Tribunals was set in motion to help ensure that the right things are done in the process of elections. If therefore an Election Tribunal upturns an election result and either orders for a re-run election or in the extreme awards victory to a different person from the person earlier declared winner, what it means is that the system is working as it was made to work.

Even at that it must be noted that the total result of elections upturned by the Election Tribunals in the entire 2007 elections has remained negligible. And more importantly, most of the results upturned by the Tribunals derived more from technical reasons and failure of the political parties to do the right thing rather than lapses in the conduct of the elections.

This is where the well exposed and enlightened Nigerians in the Diaspora can effectively come in to help the country enhance capacity, values and doctrines that promote good governance and electoral democracy. In about twenty months hence the nation will be going through another round of general election. What did the nation do wrong in the past elections which it ought to improve on in the future election?

How can the influence of money in politics be curtailed? What should be the place of Nigerians living outside the shores of their fatherland to the electoral process? If the mindset of the Nigerian about election and politics has not helped the country over the past decades, how can such mindset be changed?

As you may be aware, INEC has introduced a new and modern regime of registration of voters. The electronic voters register has the potential of eliminating such vices as multiple registration and  registration of ghosts and the under-aged. With the new regime of voter registration the age-long practice of the entire nation coming to a virtual end for two weeks or more simply for prospective voters to get registered is no longer necessary.

The dynamic nature of the electronic voters register has made it possible for us to now commence a continuous voter registration scheme, which means that every Nigerian who turns eighteen years of age simply goes to the nearest INEC office and gets registered. This is the way it is done in civilized parts of the world today. This is the way it now is in Nigeria. Nigerians living abroad can plan to be registered whenever they are in Nigeria.

The introduction of electronic voters register is the first step in our plan to completely computerize the Nigerian electoral system.  We have already established a robust communication system in all the 774 local government areas of the country and are linking them to the 36 state capitals and Federal Capital Territory.  

The improved communication platform made it possible for results collated by the Resident Electoral Commissioners and their field staff to be sent to Abuja in real time for the 2007 elections.  For the presidential elections, for example, field results were also independently transmitted directly to INEC’s headquarters in Abuja through the Commission’s secure and dedicated electronic network.  This made it possible for the Commission to declare authentic election results on time.

In 2007, the use of customized ballot papers for each electoral constituency was introduced for the first time in Nigeria’s electoral history in order to minimize ballot-box stuffing.  
Perhaps, our greatest innovation in electoral system is the historic establishment of The Electoral Institute (TEI).

With two satellite campuses and partnership arrangements with three Nigerian universities, TEI is mandated to undertake the training of electoral personnel, research and documentation and further institutionalize the innovations and reforms introduced for the 2007 elections.  The Institute will seek to make electoral system reform an adaptive management programme which will constantly seek to optimize electoral democracy in Nigeria.  This is clearly an area of potential collaboration with and contribution from Nigerians in the Diaspora.

As part of the effort to improve the storage and distribution of electoral materials, we have built six (6) zonal stores in various parts of Nigeria and established 2 secured warehouses in Abuja and Lagos. We are constantly sourcing for software that will enhance our material handling and transfer protocol in these storage sites.

Early this year, we initiated a project to review the electoral constituency of Nigeria as mandated by the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (section 49, 71, 72, 73, 75, 112, 113, 114) and the Electoral Act 2006 (section 108). The law enjoins the Commission to undertake such review after ten (10) years or after any National Census and to propose as may be necessary a review of the Electoral Constituencies in the Country. It is pertinent to note that the last constituency delimitation within this framework was done twelve years ago during the military rule.

The prevailing distribution of constituencies in the country as stipulated by the 1999 Constitution is: 3 Senatorial Districts for each State and one Senatorial District for the Federal Capital Territory totaling 109 Senatorial districts; 360 House of Representative Constituencies; and 990 State Assembly Constituencies.

In compliance with the mandate of the Constitution, the Commission has taken steps to carry out this crucial national assignment. An Advisory Committee on Delimitation of Constituencies has been established to drive this project. The Committee, as part of its activities, is currently visiting the States to meet with stakeholders, with a view to reconciling its proposals with local realities. Again, your inputs in this national exercise will be greatly appreciated.

Nigeria has been blessed with a pool of well exposed and enlightened professionals living outside the country. You are placed in a position to be a stabilizing factor and a source of ideas for the enhancement of electoral democracy at home. I firmly believe that you have a lot to contribute in the scheme of our national development. We do not know it all, nobody does.

The challenge now is to build on the progress made. Nigerians in the Diaspora are in a position to contribute meaningfully in shaping the nation’s future for the better. I exhort you all to candidly avail the nation of the benefits of your exposure, intellect and expertise.

*Being presentation by Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC), P  rof. Maurice M. Iwu at the Nigerian Democratic Development Stakeholders Symposium at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, Atlanta, Georgia. July 15, 2008.