In an article, ‘Can Jega make a difference in Anambra State elections’, published at the pack page of Daily Independent of Friday August 30 2013 Law Mefor spoke my mind when he identified two factors that have created additional interests and distortions in the Anambra State elections.
These Mefor summarises as federal forces and moneybags. Both come into the electoral fray with large ego. This must happen. That must give way!!They seek to satisfy themselves all the time in Anambra State elections. It does not nmatter what the people think even in a so-called democracy. It does not matter what the vote tallies are. There are the core issues that redefine the democracy for an otherwise easy-going population in love with healthy competition.
The essence of Mefor’s piece in my surmise was to identify the yet unresolved issues with previous elections, place them at the doorstep of the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) to guard against in the November 16, 2013 elections, and it is topical.
The writer identified three broad ways of rigging elections in Anambra State, as double candidature, hijacking and re-writing of electoral results and illegal trading with unused ballot papers.
The first one is by parties fielding more than one candidate, who sell themselves and their ‘programmes’ to the electorate as if both they are contesting elections and both will occupy one office .And because we still live in a country and state where victory is virtually guaranteed at the home base for primordial reasons it places the offending political parties at an undue advantage because since Anambra State is made up of 326 wards, each of hem might cover 163 over and over gain, while other candidates stretch themselves to cover all.
Mefor analysed that in the hijacking of electoral results, 120 become 1200, and so far the total figure is within the number of registered voters. I do not know why Mefor tried to give election criminals a code of conduct, that the later have not given to themselves. It might well have coincided so many times that the figures turned out fall within the number of registered voters, but in many cases it went beyond the ceiling.
In 2007 copiously referenced by the writer, the governorship election results were announced twice. It later emerged that the winning score by the ‘victoriuos’ candidate surpassed the total number of registered voters. It was therefore taken back and another was later announced. Incidentally the second figure announced coincided with the figures with which Chinwoke Mbadinuju was awarded victory in 1999, which simply means that whoever was piloting the rigging programme simple took the results un-cerebrally from an old result sheet. This of course defines it as state rigging, because it would take an INEC rigging to relate to previous records and some authority to back up the impunity. In 2007, that authority was not hidden.
However one needs to acknowledge that the incident of result –sheet rigging has largely been reduced based o the methods adopted I the 2011 National Assembly elections as observed in Anambra State and the governorship elections in Edo State. Every missing result sheet was cancelled and another with a serial number provided. In Enugwu Ukwu the result she went missing, during the senatorial re-run elections for Anambra Central. But when activists and party agents went on rampage on the radio stations, the sheets were smuggle back, but an INEC instruction led to the cancellation of the sheets and the issuance of new ones. What is needed is a consolidation.
Again the idea of transmitting results to the centre had been experimented with successfully in the Edo State 2012 gubernatorial polls. Individuals are not fool-proof. Even Humphrey Nwosu who did not want to play ball had it rough with the Ibrahim Babangida government in the course of announcing the results of the presidential elections held on June 12, 1993. Besides, the agents in the polling booths will not be in Abuja to confirm the results. INEC has however provided for an A 2-size results sheet to be permanently pasted in the polling booths and photographed by anybody who cares.
The third system of rigging mentioned by the writer is food for thought for loyalty of party members to their parties because this works only with collaboration and consensus of party agents, except with violence. But again accreditation, which ought to close before voting start partially addresses this if implemented to the letter. This is because before the first vote, the number expected to vote is already known. My new suggestion to INEC and party agents are that a new form should be introduced which captures the results f accreditation, including the register number/card number of accredited persons. Like the eventual results sheets, these sheets should be given to agents in advance and signed by all to agree on accreditation results before voting starts. To make this effective, the Electoral Act requires to redefine excess voting using the accreditation figure a a benchmark and not the voter register.
But Mefor was not exhaustive on the sources of rigging. For instance the just concluded voter review exercise in Anambra State where only one registration outlet was provided in every ward was a way to disenfranchise. INEC failed in that exercise and may need to revisit it. The denial of voting right is itself a form of rigging. That is one of the three major ways the 2010 governorship election was rigged in Anambra State.
Another way of rigging which translates to disenfranchising is thuggery. Suspected supporters are beaten up and chased away at the polling booths. This is one area the Security agents have been failing. This was the 2012 rerun elections for House of Representatives in Anaocha and Dunukofia Local Governments were rigged. Yet the security agencies are solely controlled by the federal government. This is a loop hole that needs to be plugged, since federal government has been identified as a factor in the turn of electoral events in the state.
Then there is the mass movement of persons for locations and their arming with accumulated voter cards. This constant rigging factor in which students are easy victims is yet to be addressed by INEC, security agencies and the media. It may never fully be addressed until we advance to electronic voting. It is then that the fingerprint of the illegal voter could be used to identify who he is and where he is coming from.
But one thing INEC should not fail to do in its operations this time is to light all electoral venues in advance and record all activities in all polling booths with cameras, which must e transparently produced n demand. Political parties should also be free t record the activities to check that held by INEC.
However Mefor in the course of laying the foundation for his arguments on the subject had to ix up certain material facts which should not be left that a way by those who now the correct thing.
The rigging of 2010 election results was carried out at various levels. At the lat level, the results of some local government arrears were out- rightly re-written in an Awka hotel with the collaboration between the one declared winner and a major participant in the 2007 gubernatorial elections discussed above, who is also preparing for the same role for 2014. So Peter Obi did not even score 97,000.
Yet after the re-writing, the total was not enough to give victory to Peter Obi because it failed to add up to a minimum f 25 percent f votes cast in 14 local government areas and that was when the final rigging came with a telephone instruction of Maurice Iwu.
The writer also claimed that Chris Ngige and Chukwuma Soludo, ‘being gentlemen’ did not go to court. Well Soludo did not go to court, but Chris Ngige did, which is good for Nigeria. Or how could anyone live with all the ills that we are reviewing here and not see the need to fight some and improve the course of the nation.
Not going the court did not make Soludo a gentleman and going to court did not take that title off Ngige. A gentleman is not necessarily one who sees a wrong and fails to right it. Soludo hastily congratulated the man that was declared winner, and later discovered when details trickled in that he ought to be ahead of the unpopular person declared winner through the manipulation of Iwu’s INEC and Goodluck Jonathan’s federal government.
In fact he (Soludo) was placed second, behind Chris Ngige, who won the elections in the field. It was too late for him a direct action. That hasty declaration from Soludo’s error of judgment is the reason Obi is still governor, after placing third in the field.
Ngige’s case brought out the worst of the corruption in the judiciary, which also plays a part in election perversions we have in the nationwide.
The final mix-u to address is that the ghost 93,000 voters arising from mainly double registration in the INEC register is post-2011 Jega-led INEC registration of voters and not the one used to conduct the 2010 governorship elections. Before the former there was even no way of knowing which voter is a ghost voter. It was a mumbo-jumbo of sorts organised by Iwu, himself introduced to his job by Andy Uba, who surprisingly is still the Chairman of Senate Committee n INEC as an aspirant.
In sum, INEC has a lot of work to do to make the Anambra State gubernatorial elections free and fair, starting from an extension of the new voter registration opportunity and aggressive enlightenment to back it up.
