Disenfranchisement: Blame INEC not Boko Haram (The Punch)

APRIL 9, 2015 : MODUPE OGUNBAYO 0 COMMENTS

   

 

I most certainly do not hold brief for Boko Haram. But – sorry to inform you - the murderous group is immune from blame for the inability of many willing but now disenfranchised voters to participate in the 2015 polls. Rather, it is the inability of the Independent National Electoral Commission to proactively institute measures against such contingencies that is causing the disenfranchisement of nearly 10 million people. This statistic excludes the bloc that refused to collect their ready Permanent Voter Cards.

Nigerians are voting in the country’s most crucial elections in 22 years and many people – myself included – cannot be part of the process. It is not for unwillingness. I registered for voting in 2010 as INEC mandated before the 2011 elections and got a temporary voter card used in the polls. It promised that the PVC would be ready before the 2015 democratic process. Fast forward to February 2015, officials of the electoral agency told me my data – and that of all voters in my unit – stored in their database during the 2011 registration, disappeared due to a computer glitch. It blamed me for this development for not re-registering in November 2014 when the agency made the announcement that affected individuals should do so. My unawareness of that development because I was outside the country then became moot.

In Lagos State where I live, more than two million people are similarly disenfranchised. At the polling unit which I frequented in the vain hope that a solution could be got to my dilemma, I heard various obstructive reasons preventing many among the electorate from getting their PVCs ranging from job mobility to misspelling of names. Admittedly, mistakes occur but there should be efforts at inclusion of corrective measures to override that margin of error.

But, there is an area where Boko Haram is indirectly complicit in this saga. Due to these insurgents’ onslaught, nearly 15,000 people have died and Nigeria boasts of, perhaps, the largest number of Internally Displaced Persons after Syria and Iraq: Six million. The electoral agency said during a recent parley with journalists that only the IDPs located in displaced persons’ camps in Abuja, located outside the North-East states of Yobe, Adamawa and Borno are allowed to vote. This development arose because INEC said it could risk the life of its personnel by sending them to these states. Abuja’s IDPs are less than a million.

This statement made the six-week poll shift in ensuring a return of the IDPs and conduct of polls in these affected areas seem amorphous. The electoral body will not send its personnel to the areas whether they are liberated from Boko Haram or not. The pre-poll postponement scenario where INEC was unwilling to conduct elections in these areas for this reason still holds sway contrary to the position of the military chiefs which used that as the basis for shifting the elections. Provision of soldiers for security purposes in the affected places is untenable because they – typically – have also refused to crunch their boots on the soil of these so-called recovered areas for fear of reprisal from Boko Haram. The polls could just as well have been conducted on February 14 and 28. Nothing changed there.

INEC also said the IDPs stationed outside Nigeria in neighbouring Chad and Niger Republic would also not vote. Ironically, these areas eagerly want to vote as they boast of states with the highest PVC collection in the country which the President’s campaign claim is a bias in PVC distribution in favour of Muhammadu Buhari of the opposition. Borno, the epicentre of Boko Haram’s terrorism records PVC collection of 1, 934, 079 registered voters and 1, 407, 777 people collected their voter cards representing 72.79 per cent. But, a majority of these people have been robbed not by Boko Haram but, by the INEC. The insurgency has been rife since 2009. There was an election in 2011. Adequate proactive plans could have tackled these issues given that it had four years to plan and prepare.

The resultant gaffes are too costly for these delicate elections. The leading democracies of the world tell us that voter registration and review are one of the most important parameters used in gauging the transparency and fairness of an election.

In ensuring the IDPs can vote, the US’ method of absentee voting could be a panacea where members of the electorate who are unable or unwilling to vote at polling stations because of physical impairment or other exigencies – which in Nigeria applies mainly to the IDPs – can exercise their democratic right nonetheless through absentee ballots. Usually, these special ballot papers are personally collected before election days and must submitted for verifiability.

The IDPs camped in Niger and Chad can also benefit by imitating America’s Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act permitting the US military and nationals stationed or living abroad to cast votes in federal elections.

The nation has models from electoral agencies in the developed world – like the US which Nigeria models its democracy after – to learn from in correcting anomalous erasure of prospective voters’ case as evidenced in my situation. With the exception of North Dakota, the US allows prospective voters to even register on Election Day. In the mid-1990s, the US formulated an easier way of conducting this process to avoid the cumbersome electoral gridlock often cited by voters as reasons for low voter turnout on election days. This led to the enactment of the National Voters’ Registration Act of 1993.

This legislation, also called Motor Law, allows uniform data recording services obtainable through driving licence registration centres, disability centres, schools, libraries and mail-in registration in some states.

In recent years, Nigeria’s biometric information gathering has incrementally improved. Vehicular information, driving licences, national identity cards, banking information, education details, travelling passport data among others contain computerised personal information which can readily be employed in collating data from affected persons for onward transfer to Nigeria’s outsourced PVCs’ production outlet in China, thereby reducing those disenfranchised.

However, a key component that can make these ideas actionable is the mandatory existence of political will in Nigeria. INEC’s chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, has indicated his unwillingness to return as the head of the agency but his replacement can take up these challenges. It should not be an onerous task for his replacement it he is so inclined to do so. Besides, these technologies and financial resources to do so are within Nigeria’s scope of implementation within four years’ intervals when the country’s elections normally hold. The incoming INEC chairman must also carve strategies to lessen, or outrightly remove, mutual suspicion among the political parties on his intentions.

Ms. Ogunbayo, a policy analyst, wrote in from Lagos.

Twitter- @themodupe

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