The politics of ‘Jega must go’

It is therefore understandable why, with the possible exception of Professor Humphrey Nwosu, all the past chief electoral umpires in the country left office with their reputations in tatters. In essence there are systemic pressures embedded in the job of being the INEC boss which appear to have programmed incumbents of the office to fail. […]

It is therefore understandable why, with the possible exception of Professor Humphrey Nwosu, all the past chief electoral umpires in the country left office with their reputations in tatters. In essence there are systemic pressures embedded in the job of being the INEC boss which appear to have programmed incumbents of the office to fail. The current calls by the PDP and supporters of President Jonathan for Professor Attahiru Jega, the INEC boss, to be sacked and the resistance to such calls by the opposition APC and others must therefore be understood within this context.  In an earlier piece on Professor Jega (‘Jega’s Poisoned Chalice’, DT 12 February 2015), I opined that in apportioning blame for the failure of any electoral umpire in the country, about 80 per cent should be down to systemic issues outside the control of the umpire while 20 per cent should be down to the competence or lack of it of the electoral umpire.
Today my reflections will focus on the 20 per cent area where the umpire has the latitude to make a difference. I will like to make the following observations about Jega’s INEC:
One, while it can be predicted that the outcome of  any election in the country will be contentious because of the centrality of power in our type of societies, the perception of the neutrality  or otherwise of the electoral umpire by the contending parties will be crucial in mollifying the aggrieved parties. A key issue here is PERCEPTION (rather than the intention of the umpire) and the critical constituencies are the contending political parties. Obviously different electoral umpires have different schemes for improving their rating in the public perception index. One of the critical questions any umpire must pose and answer is what happens when measures to improve the integrity of the electoral process affect the perception of neutrality of the umpire. Should the umpire go ahead with such a measure or back down?
Two, as an appointee of the federal government, one of the first challenges of the electoral umpire is how to allay any suspicion that he is a lackey of the appointing authority. In the case of Attahiru Jega, there are two contending identities – his identity as an appointee of the President who must allay fears of the opposition that he is not doing the bidding of President Jonathan who appointed him or that of his political party, the PDP. There is also his identity as someone from the ‘core North’, where the clamour for power to be ‘returned to the north’ is strident’ and where the opposition APC is believed to be strong. Both of Jega’s two relevant identities have been under stress. For instance, in the 2011 election won by Jonathan, Buhari clearly indicted INEC of complicity in his loss and claimed that Jega’s INEC deliberately programmed its software to short-change him. APC also blamed Jega’s INEC of complicity in their losses in the last gubernatorial elections in Ekiti and Anambra states and in fact declared that they had lost confidence on the ability of the INEC chairman to conduct credible elections in the country. Today, certain measures undertaken by Jega, perhaps with the best of intention such as the creation of additional polling so that voters will not have to trek long distances to vote, the introduction of permanent voter cards and card readers have created crisis of confidence among certain stakeholders, especially the PDP and supporters of President Jonathan. Again if we bear in mind that the key issue is PERCEPTION rather than INTENTION, we will realize the futility of a good electoral umpire sticking to his gun on any policy when certain critical stakeholders do not trust that intention. This is especially important if we realize the aphorism that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Jega’s greatest failing as INEC chairman in my opinion is in not realizing that perceptions triumph intentions in our type of society and in apparently believing that stubbornly clinging to one’s intention amounts to demonstrating that one is principled.
Three, as a rule of the thumb, any measure that INEC wants to embark upon, which does not receive the express blessing of the two major political parties – the APC and the PDP – will make the electoral body  to fail that crucial test of perception of neutrality. It is in this context that we must situate the calls for Jega to be sacked and Jega himself must accept part of the blame. For instance while Jega  may be right to introduce card readers to help improve the integrity of the elections, for as long as one key stakeholder has a dim view of it, it must be jettisoned otherwise you are giving that stakeholder room for suspicion. There are certainly several worrying questions around INEC’s preparations for the election. Take the issue of permanent voters’ cards: Why are they being printed in piecemeal such that less than ten days to the election we still hear that about 700,000 are still being printed?  Why was the distribution of the PVCs so shoddily done across the country? Why was the card readers not trialled during the several standalone elections in the country? These questions and more are more worrying when one realizes that Jega’s INEC has conducted the most expensive elections in the history of the country and that it has more than four years to prepare for this one.
Unfortunately the strident calls for Jega to be removed and the APC coming to his stout defence does not aid the perception of his neutrality – just as it did not help him when PDP was defending his conduct of the 2011 elections. Those who threaten hail and brimstone if Jega is removed unfortunately only add to the perception of neutrality crisis he currently faces.
Four, precisely because the ‘politics of Jega must go’ has been reduced to the simplistic binary of the ‘good guys versus the bad guys’, (or between those who want to rig elections versus those who want to resist rigging elections), serious interrogations of the performance of INEC and how to make the body better, has become mute points. Again precisely because of this reductionism  removing Jega at this point will be counterproductive and will in fact negatively affect the integrity of any election conducted by his replacement as the person will be seen as compromised or someone specially brought in to rig the PDP back to power.  PDP hawks pushing for the removal of Jega may in fact discover that his removal will only turn out to be Pyrrhic victory for the party.
Five, Jega urgently needs to learn how to carry stakeholders along rather than assuming that his intentions, not matter how noble, are enough. While I do not believe that Jega is trying to favour any region or party as he is being portrayed by some people in the media, he should also know that he does not have enough antecedents for people to trust him and his ability to deliver on his promises.  For instance despite the huge money he blackmailed the country into pumping into INEC as a condition for guaranteeing free and fair elections in 2011 and his assurances that INEC was fully ready for the elections, on Saturday April 2, 2011, Nigerians were already five hours into the National Assembly polls when Jega suddenly went on national radio and television to call of the election! Again despite assurances of being prepared for the governorship election in Anambra state in 2013, the entire exercise was marred by logistic challenges. And this was just governorship election in only one state! And the same happened in several other elections conducted by INEC under Jega. In fact even the 2011 elections which were widely hailed as successful were so regarded only because Jega’s predecessor in office, Professor Maurice Iwu, had set an extremely low bar of expectation. I am among those who believe that INEC was not fully prepared to conduct the election on February 14 – contrary to the claims of Jega – and that the postponement of the election was a saving grace which must be utilized to plug all loopholes.
INEC under Jega has underperformed in my opinion but removing him at this stage when the government is being suspected of schemes to scuttle the entire elections will be a serious error of judgment.