2011 polls: My story, by Jega

Prof. Attahiru Jega: We thank God that the 2011 elections have come and gone, we did our best under difficult circumstances to have free, fair and credible elections. We knew it would not be a perfect election but we gave it our best to ensure there was substantial remarkable improvement over previous elections and we […]

Prof. Attahiru Jega: We thank God that the 2011 elections have come and gone, we did our best under difficult circumstances to have free, fair and credible elections. We knew it would not be a perfect election but we gave it our best to ensure there was substantial remarkable improvement over previous elections and we are gratified that all observers both domestic and international have acknowledged that the elections of 2011 are a watershed and represents a substantial improvement over previous elections. True, the elections were not perfect, there were quite a number of areas where we would require substantive additional improvement. Frankly, I don’t think there is anything I would have done differently but I have learnt sufficient lessons from the 2011 election.

 

At least I know which area to pay greater attention to in order to bring about additional improvements. For example, the actual process in the polling unit was very transparent. It was impossible for anybody to abuse the process given its transparency, so the only way to commit fraudulent act is either to prevent the process from taking place or at the end of the process to see if they could change or alter the results before the collation. And unfortunately for anybody who tries to do that once the results have been declared and pasted at the polling unit, if anything changed in the process of collation, it would be discovered.

The point I am making is we have learnt a lot of lessons. In a chain there is always a weak link and perhaps the weakest link in the electoral cycle, given the benefit of hindsight, may be movement of results from the polling unit to the collation centre. Obviously that was predicated on proper security.

And then the security, also. Even though we know that this time around the police did their best under difficult circumstances, we also know that there were areas where there was inadequate security coverage. So you also find out that movement from the polling unit to the collation centres also lacked adequate security. So things could happen under such circumstances. But the challenge is for people to have evidence and to prove that something indeed went wrong. And if something went wrong, I believe that it can be proved and that is why the tribunals were there.

WT: Whose idea was it to use NYSC members in the electoral process?

Jega: When we came in as a new electoral commission, we discovered that there is a process to establish a relationship with the NYSC and we discovered that they have been used in the Anambra rerun elections in February of 2010. I was privileged to be a member of the NYSC governing council at one time and I have served as a corps member in my younger days and I know that the NYSC is a fantastic national service idea with many committed young men and women offer a lot of sacrifices for their country. So I have no hesitation whatsoever in trying to develop and strengthen that relationship which we found. Therefore, we were able to engage the directorate headquarters of the NYSC into further discussions and we signed a Memorandum Of Understanding with them. I think it was one of the best decisions we have taken. The NYSC have discharged their job very credibly. It is very unfortunate that after the elections, particularly the presidential elections, some people targeted them and attacked them and some of them even lost their lives. It was unfortunate, a condemnable act.

WT: Is the utilization of youth corps members in the future something you will encourage?

Jega: Definitely, I will encourage it. You see what has happened is that many people who discovered that the NYSC could not be bought or used to subvert the electoral process now wanted to ensure that they are removed from participation in the process. It was in my view a very high-level organized scheme by leading politicians who didn’t want the NYSC to continue to participate in the process. You will be amazed that as we are preparing for the rerun elections in Imo, for some funny reasons they have ensured that the NYSC are not going to participate. I don’t need to go into details, but it is very high-level scheming.

So, personally, I will do everything possible to encourage the use of NYSC corps members in the future and I would want to urge them not to feel discouraged and not to feel disenchanted with their experiences in the recent past, particularly after the presidential elections.

WT: In Bauchi and other places where you said were attempts to withdraw corps members to subvert the process, what did INEC do to counter the politicians?

Jega: What we did was we mobilized INEC staff from FCT and from the headquarters and we took into Bauchi and Kaduna over 500 additional complimentary staff just to make sure that wherever there were gaps we have filled them. Also in addition to NYSC members we trained students of tertiary institutions. So wherever the NYSC members were not sufficient we use students of tertiary institutions, like in Bauchi, particularly from ATBU, who have been trained so they can fill the gap wherever the NYSC corps members withdrew. It is just unfortunate that people were trying to take advantage of the traumatized NYSC members pretending they want to give them protection and providing them with aircraft when really what they wanted to do was to undermine the process.

WT: Before the election, INEC seems to have given many Nigerians the perception that the DDC machines that were introduced will really help to check fraud. But from what you have said, most of the fraud detection will just have to wait until after the elections. So is it that the machines never played a significant role during the voting process?

Jega: I don’t know how it happened, but there has been considerable misunderstanding among Nigerians about the purpose of the DDC machines. The key purpose of the machines is to first and foremost help us do a biometric capture of data and information for people who are eligible registrants in the electoral process. And we have done that. We’ve been able to record over 73 million Nigerians of 18 years and above. We’ve captured their fingerprints, their photographs, all their details. The database we are having now is probably one of the single largest one in the country. It is a tremendous national asset. Using the DDC machines have enabled us to do that. Secondly, the DDC machines and the data we were able to capture have also helped us to avoid the problem of having people making multiple registrations. We have done that and have eliminated double registrants from the register. So the register we have is much more credible because we have used advanced fingerprints-checking devices.

Having said that, the capacity is there for us in the future to take a DDC machine to a polling unit and say anyone who comes to vote should just place his fingerprints on a DDC machine and his photograph will appear. But this time around, we didn’t have the resources to do that and secondly we are mindful of the Electoral Act that states categorically that there will be no electronic voting. And we didn’t want to start using any kind of electronic verification during election so that somebody will not go to court and say that INEC is using a form of electronic voting.

I haven’t told anybody before or during the elections that we are going to use DDC machines for accreditation. But there were some representatives of some political parties who wanted us to do so. They were emphatic. But we told them categorically that we are not going to do that.

WT: On social networking sites, it is markedly clear you have a following of sorts among youth, some saying you should run for president. Is a political career something that is on the cards for you?

Jega: I am a political scientist, I am not a politician. And now I have a job to do as chairman of INEC, which is a tenured job of five years and I have done it for less than one year, so I still have some years to go. I think Nigerians have incredible capacity for wishful thinking. I appreciate those who think I have the capacity to do other things but for now I will rather concentrate on what I am doing.

WT: INEC has promised to prosecute multiple registrants. Nigerians are still waiting for that to happen…

Jega: It is regrettable that we did not prosecute as many of the multiple registrants as we will like to. But some have been successfully prosecuted and have been fined or jailed. But there were many. From the records which we issued a long time ago, we have detected over 870 thousand cases of multiple registrations. But it requires a lot of energy, a lot of resources and a lot of legal support to be able to successfully prosecute them. So we entered into an arrangement with the Nigerian Bar Association which has committed itself to giving us legal support to be able to prosecute them. But unfortunately, it took time for us to be able to finalise that arrangement. We will still prosecute them.

WT: One contentious issue in this latest election process is the incidences in Kano and Katsina States where the CPC were wrangling over the candidates to fly their gubernatorial flag. Somehow the whole matter also involved INEC, changing names of governorship candidates. Why was the situation clumsy?

Jega: This is the problem of the parties themselves. This question is better answered by them. All we did was to try to comply with the provisions of the Electoral Act in terms of who is a candidate. And we tried to be very meticulous and very firm about the definition of a candidate given the Electoral Act. Now, obviously, some candidates or some parties went to court and contested our positions and the courts have been giving all sorts of judgment. But what we have done is wherever a court gave a judgment we will respect that judgment and wherever we feel very strongly about it we will appeal the judgment, otherwise we respect the court’s judgment. The problems you mentioned were self-inflicted by the political parties themselves.

WT: Coming back to the case of Bauchi and Kaduna, opposition parties advised INEC not to conduct elections in those states because of the chaos there. Also under the Electoral Act they cited a section where they said elections must not be conducted under chaos, but INEC went ahead and held elections in these places…

Jega: It is true that there is a section of the Electoral Act that says that elections can be postponed if there is a natural disaster, violent uprising and so on. But these are anticipatory cases. For example if we are preparing for elections, let’s say two days from now and suddenly there was a hurricane or flood or any natural disaster which prevents that from happening, then you can postpone the elections.

But this is an election long after a crisis has happened. So the issue is, is there sufficient time for things to normalize before you do an election? So in both Bauchi and Kaduna it was not postponement because of a disaster but postponement for things to settle down after a crisis. What we tried to do is to avoid what I have earlier said about the possibility of state of emergency.

If we had pushed the election of Bauchi and Kaduna beyond May 29th, then obviously we would have invited, from the legal advice we have, a declaration of state of emergency in those states. And we think that allowing that to happen will create more problems in those places. The challenge was, was there sufficient security to do the elections after the crisis? From the security report we got, we have to rely on security report from security agencies, things were normalizing. In fact, Kaduna where there was a greater crisis, things had normalized faster than they did in Bauchi.

WT: But there were so many people in the refugee camps who didn’t participate…

Jega:  But how long will it take to resettle people in the refugee camps? It will take six months to do so. Are we going to wait for that long? The problem is the Electoral Act, people vote only in polling units where they have registered. So if you are in a refugee camp there may be a polling unit there but the people who are there because of displacement did not register there. How can they vote there? It would be illegal for INEC to move a polling unit from somewhere and bring it to another place.

No matter how we will want to be compassionate, there are legal constraints that prevented us from doing certain things. There are people who have lost their voters’ card in the crisis. This is regrettable, but the provisions of the Electoral Act are also clear. You don’t give cards 30 days before an election.

WT: How will you review security during the polls?

Jega: In comparative terms, frankly, we have had greater security mobilization and involvement during this election than in any other previous election I know of. If I can remember correctly, around November last year we created what we call Interagency Consultative Committee on Election Security both at the national and state level and at the local government level. All security agencies including paramilitary organizations were part of this interagency meeting. We met almost regularly, initially monthly but when we came closer to the elections almost on a two weeks interval. We were able to have greater coordination of all the security agencies involved in the elections.

Of course the more security you provide the more other innocent people become afraid. Participants will become worried about what such mass security presence can do and that can affect the participation of the people and the outcome of the process. We hope such things do not happen in future.

WT: Has INEC been able to quantify some of the losses and damages it has incurred in these elections?

Jega: If you mean quantifying in terms of actual cost we haven’t but we do have a record of our offices and vehicles that have been razed down or destroyed and our personnel who have been either injured or affected one way or the other. We have all that information. But then it is difficult to monetarily compensate people who have been injured or those who lost their lives, but we did our best to ensure that we have certain things in place just so we can minimize the suffering of those affected.

For example, we did a comprehensive insurance for all INEC staff as well as all our ad hoc staff, including the NYSC members. The insurance covers everything from injury to accident to death. Also, all our vehicles are insured. Certainly, we have incurred losses, some people have been traumatized for life given the experience they have gone through, either through intimidation, harassment or bodily injuries.

WT: Your colleagues in the academia served as returning officers, especially during the presidential elections. Was this an afterthought?

Jega: We decided as INEC that we will do anything possible to bring credibility to the process and to also insulate our staff from participating in roles that can be misunderstood. As you are aware in 2003 and 2007, Resident Electoral Commissioners were returning officers for governorship elections in the state and they were also the collation officers for the presidential elections. INEC officials at the state level, either electoral officers and so on were also the returning officers and collation officers at the lower level.

And that is why there were all these allegations of INEC officials collecting money to sell results or declare false results. As a new commission, we decided that we will insulate the staff of INEC from those activities and bring people whom we have carefully chosen, people who are persons of integrity who will do their best to ensure that the process is not undermined. That is how we brought people from the universities. I am very pleased to say that the people we have brought from the universities have in general satisfied our confidence and they have done well for our country.

WT: The Electoral Act has pegged a limit to what aspirants can spend during campaigns, whose responsibility is it to monitor that that provision was adhered to?

Jega: The Electoral Act gives INEC power to monitor the activities of political parties, to monitor their accounts and their campaign expenditure and so on. But to be honest with you when we came in as a new commission we do not have the capacity to effectively monitor campaign financing. Something that we have planned for the future is to set up effective machinery to be able to do that. It requires a lot.

You have to factor in the fact that we have so many candidates and a challenge is how to monitor how much each candidate has got as financial contribution and what they are spending. It is something that requires sophisticated technology as well as diligent field officers and investigators to be able to do that. INEC does not even have a desk that handles campaign financing. So what we have been doing is doing the easy bit by ensuring that the accounts of political parties are audited.

How will you respond to calls to scrap political parties that did not perform well in the recently concluded elections?

Jega: I believe very strongly in multi-party democracy. As a political scientist who has studied politics on a comparative basis, I don’t believe in the restriction of political parties. I believe that parties will phase out depending on their performance and how popular they are. If they are decoys, they are useless. What I wouldn’t want to see is to have an individual register a political party simply to collect money from government and that tendency may be there. Luckily, the electoral Act has been amended such that no money can be given to anybody.