The Executive Secretary of the National Human Rights Commission, Roland
Evwubare speaks on the challenges facing the Independent National
Electoral Commission.
Rating of recent voter registration
Clearly, the
process could have been better handled and we certainly would have
achieved better outcomes. I am not blaming Mr Jega (INEC Chairman) as a
person, I am not blaming INEC as an institution and I think the
constraints they face are reflective of Nigeria’s current reality. So
even with all the money in the world and with the best of intention, as
long as you operate within the Nigerian environment, you will always
have such shortcomings as we saw with the voter registration exercise.
To the extent that
you don’t have proper infrastructure, even if you give Mr Jega all the
money in this world, he is not going to be able to move his Direct Data
Capturing machines from Lagos to Kotonkarfe within the time frame he
expects. As long as you don’t have power, you will have to then rely on
laptops with backup battery packs and if those packs go flat, that’s
it. Those little infrastructural constraints are what threatened to mar
the entire voter registration.
I will say we
managed to score, without being too critical – because I’m coming from
my perspective as a former academic – I will score Jega a C+ or a B- as
far as the voter registration went.
Expectations for the forthcoming elections
Given what we saw
with the voter registration exercise, I think a lot more has to be done
in terms of logistic support to make sure materials get to the right
place at the right time; to make sure the appropriate level of manning
and staffing is met at the various polling locations. If we manage to
get the logistics right, then the other component will be
participation. Assuming there is no voter apathy, then people will come
out to vote.
Will the process itself be free and fair?
That’s where the
character of the politician and quality of our political will then come
into the equation. But I suspect strongly, based on the outcome of the
party primaries, that our political class has not matured to the point
where they understand the true ideal of democracy. So I expect there
will be significant tension amongst participants and this then, of
course, dovetails into the next point of the effectiveness of the
coverage that will be provided by the security agencies.
There will be
three critical sets of actors in this process: INEC itself that should
provide the logistic framework in terms of the architecture, polling
stations, collation centres and the personnel and staff to superintend
the process; the players, the politicians themselves and their
willingness and ability to play by the rules; and then, of course, the
security agencies who then have to reconcile the tension by making sure
such tension doesn’t slip over into crisis point.
I must say that I
am nervous and I think many Nigerians are, based on what we have seen
so far out of the primary process. This election circle clearly is
better than the previous circle. But the disappointment comes from the
fact that we thought four years down the road, we will be significantly
better, not just marginally better than the previous circle.
Preparations for the elections
Mr Jega tells us we
are prepared; he tells us he is prepared and we’ve got to take his word
for it. He asked for additional money, which I think has been
appropriated and given to him. Will we have the completeness you will
expect? Certainly no. Everywhere else, elections are a continuous and
continuing process.
If you have a
process where the register itself, which is the basis of the entire
election, is updated regularly and on a progressive style basis, then
one major component of the election is assured and taken care of.
The next thing
then becomes the polling station. I have observed elections in African
countries where the village headmaster on a school day, his school was
one of the voting centres, the kids had their classes going on, no
disturbance. All the headmaster did was put on a reflective jacket,
went to a little hall at the end of a row of classrooms and he
conducted his voting exercise in that community. There were about 60-70
people who lined up to vote, within one hour it was all done. He filled
up his box, took it down the road to the nearest town, deposited it
there, came back to his school and became a normal headmaster.
It is when you, on
an adhoc basis, recruit youth corps members in the morning, retired
firemen in the evening to work as polling agents that you have problems.
The contract for the ballot paper
Because Nigerians
are an ingenious people and strange things happen in our country, in
the last elections, the ballot papers were flown in from South Africa a
day before the election. So if the election is three weeks away, we
still have plenty of time, by Nigerian standards. Anywhere else, the
people will be up in arms and panicking, but in Nigeria we are not too
worried.
We have amended
the Constitution more than two three times already in order to allow
for this election to take place. We have in-built mechanisms of
flexibility to ensure that we have an election. Now, whether it will be
of the sort of quality that we want is a different story. Will there be
election? Of course there will be election. Will there be ballot
papers? There will be ballot papers on that day.
The present crop of presidential candidates
In my current
position, I am supposed to be a neutral person with no allegiance to
one candidate or the other. That is the way we are supposed to operate
so that I don’t lose the objectivity I have as the head of the National
Human Rights Commission. That said, the sort of candidate we should all
be looking forward to as a people is one that understands what it is to
operate and exist in a fast-changing, fast-moving world. We are looking
for a president who will over the next four or eight years, lay the
foundation for a society that will be competitive in Africa and extend
to the rest of the world.
A president that
is willing and able to fund critical investment in education, from
elementary to tertiary level. We need a president who understands that
the population of Nigerians in the age bracket of 18-45 is almost going
to double, so where are the jobs for these people? What will they do
and where would they work? How will they make a living? We need a
president who understands that to create those jobs, you need to unlock
the creative potential of Nigerians.
The preponderance
of the employment in the western world is created in that small
business category. We need a President who at least can give us hope
that our tomorrow will be infinitely better than our today. Now, you
and I will be hypocritical if we don’t admit that the quality of people
we have as governors, senators, ministers even, House of
Representatives are mostly in it for self-aggrandisement to boost their
egos and the new word I just learnt in Nigeria, “to remain relevant”.
They are not there to serve, they are there to be big men so that
people go “rankadade” (may your days be long) to him, “dobale”
(prostrate) for him, or like from my own area, people kneel down to
greet him.
So it is this
atavistic, selfish, very narrow agenda that keeps them in public office
and they forget that their essential duty in office is to serve us. A
loophole in our current political construct remains the absence of
opportunity for independent candidacy. You ought to be outraged enough
to say that I want to run for House of Assembly in my state and I don’t
want to be a member of any political party. This is missing in our
system and I am hoping they will correct this in the next dispensation
when they do a full review of the Constitution.
Human rights commission’s efforts towards fair election
Unfortunately, the
commission can’t do much this year because of resource constraints. The
entire capital budget for the commission this year is N16 million. It
is not enough for us to do anything. So we are relying on our
development partners and donor agencies to see what sort of support we
can get. The United Nations and European Union are working with us to
see if they can give us some sort of support so that we can at least
play a small role in the elections.
