NAS and the Subject of Electoral Reform
It is important to point out here, that the National Association of Seadogs as a responsible corporate citizen of Nigeria and the World, committed to the attainment of a Nigerian nation-state that is truly democratic and egalitarian did make a formal submission to the Justice Uwais Panel which was also published in The Nation, a national newspaper. It is not the first time that NAS would make her views known on how Nigeria can put in place an electoral system that would enable the country achieve her democratic objectives. In 2006, NAS made a similar submission to the National Political Reforms Commission on many topical issues of national concern including the subject of Electoral Reforms and the conduct of Elections in Nigeria. It is perhaps instructive to state that most of the recommendations of the Justice Uwais Committee mirrors the submission made by NAS which to my mind, the organization and its members should be proud of. I will discuss these recommendations in light of the input made by NAS to the debate on electoral reform in Nigeria.
A. Political Parties and Candidates
In the submission by NAS, the subject of Independent Candidacy was given prominence as a way of allowing “other persons whose qualifications and motivations are more altruistic and who may be acceptable to the electorate if allowed to stand for election” to have access to the electoral process as against regular party candidates “whose only qualification is their personal relationship with the party machinery or the ability to oil the same machinery”. It was therefore recommended that the relevant provisions of the Constitution and the Electoral Act be amended to allow independent candidacy. It is good to see that the Justice Uwais Committee accepted this recommendation. However, NAS added a qualified proviso to preclude abuses and mass proliferation of candidates by recommending that the opportunity for Independent Candidacy may require a candidate’s nomination by a substantial portion of the registered voters within the constituency in lieu of a political party framework.
The Committee Report also agrees with the recommendation by NAS that “the number of political parties should be streamlined to a manageable proportion.” Personally, I am in favor of a Nigerian political system with two strong political parties that are ideologically based and cut through the ethno, religious and regional divides that the political class uses to manipulate the electorate and take their minds off issues centered politics. In addition to this recommendation, I strongly urge in the context of the NAS recommendation to the Justice Uwais Committee, that “the abuse of the power of incumbency in the use of state resources to garner undue advantage in the electoral process should be addressed.”
Regarding placing a ceiling on individual donation to Political Parties, NAS is in agreement with the Justice Uwais Committee that funding of political parties be more transparent. In its own recommendation to the Committee NAS had noted the worrisome dimension of unrestrained donations to political parties as constituting a danger to the electoral process. The lingering Anambra State crisis of leadership between the Ubas and former Governor Ngige and now, between the Ubas and the sitting Governor Peter Obi highlights the “possibility that a party, process, candidate and, even a constituency can be hijacked by the highest financier.” In addition to placing a ceiling, political parties should publish donations exceeding these limits.
B. Independent National Electoral Commission
I agree with the report of the Electoral Reform Committee that INEC should be unbundled. The fear however, is that this recommendation does not result in the creation of several layers of bureaucracy which become a burden rather than a relief to the electoral process. Albeit, the critical challenge is how to ensure the independence of INEC as an unbiased umpire of future elections in Nigeria.
In its recommendation to the Justice Uwais Electoral Reform Committee, NAS identified two issues that are germane to the independence of INEC. These are the manner of appointment of members of the Commission and the source of funding to ensure its independence. It is a welcome development that the recommendation by NAS on how members of the Commission should be appointed is in agreement with the recommendations of Justice Uwais Committee. NAS recommendation is that “nomination to [INEC] should be taken away from the Presidency, the onus being placed upon a non-political body such as the one that nominates Supreme Court Judges.” It was also recommended that “the Commission should … come under the supervision of the Judiciary since the Executive or the Legislature should not be saddled with the responsibility of guiding and regulating the process that ushers them into power.” The same should be applicable to the various State Electoral Commissions.
Other measures recommended by NAS to preserve the Electoral Commissioners from partisan politics and bias include ensuring that members of the commission should not be card carrying members of any political party and ten (10) years preceding their appointment should not have been involved in active partisan politics. Members should also be “disqualified from seeking elective public offices or accepting political appointment within eight (8) years after their tenure.” NAS recommendations also agree with the Justice Uwais Committee report that “all electoral management officials at each level of the electoral administration should be recruited transparently through public job vacancy advertisements free from political interference.” I had earlier noted the negative reaction of the President to this piece of recommendation.
A key recommendation of the Justice Uwais Committee report is that funding of INEC should be a first charge to the Federation Account. NAS in its submission to the Electoral Reform Committee had canvassed for an independent source of funding to ensure the independence of INEC. It had recommended that the “federal government should swiftly establish a fund of sufficient size to ensure INEC’s financial independence or amend the Electoral Act to allow the Commission’s budget be drawn directly from the Federation Account.” However, NAS had also advocated that an effective financial management and controls system be put in place with a request that “INEC’s financial accounts should be thoroughly audited by a private audit firm to deter and detect financial misconduct.”
Additional recommendations by NAS to achieving the operational efficiency of INEC as manager of the electoral process include the following:
• INEC’s use of its Electoral Institute to ensure that it has a permanent pool of well trained, patriotic and qualified people that will execute their jobs in the spirit devoid of favoritism or partisanship;
• Maintaining an open and transparent process by allowing INEC meetings to be open to political parties and accredited observers and making sure that agendas, minutes of meetings and decisions are published on its website in a timely manner;
• Holding regular consultative meetings at national, state and local level with political parties and civil society organizations and will include participation of security agencies.
• Introducing the use of information technology in voters’ registration process with clear rules for identification of registered voters at the polls to ensure transparency, effective registration and verification at the polls while preventing fraud;
• Implementation of the national identity card as a means of verifying and processing qualified voters;
• Amendment of the Electoral Act to provide more detailed and standard guidelines for voting, counting, collation, enumeration, authentication and announcement of the electoral results in line with acceptable international and regional conventions and standards; etc.
It is our strong belief that “these requirements would help an independent audit to be undertaken if necessary to trace polling station result from the polling station level through to the final aggregated results.”
C. Electorate and Civil Society
Many have argued that no change or reform can succeed when those to whom the reforms are meant for are ignorant of it. This is what the General Ibrahim Babangida transition willy-nilly sought to achieve with MAMSER but the insincerity of his government led to the failure of this political education process. In its recommendations to the Electoral Reform Committee, NAS noted the need for better participation and collaboration “between the electorate and civil societies” through “public enlightenment to reduce voter apathy” and reinforcement of “the actual monitoring of voting so that persons that INEC declare as winners are a true reflection of the wishes of that constituency as voted.” NAS had also recommended that to strengthen voting and monitoring of elections by domestic observers “the statutory class of petitioners be broadened” to allow groups and individual within civil society to challenge election results.
A total and complete re-education of the Nigerian citizenry is advocated through an elaborate campaign to be undertaken jointly by INEC and the Center for Democratic Studies to re-orientate Nigerians to their civic responsibilities and on how the electoral process works. In addition, the Social Studies curriculum for primary and secondary schools should be updated to focus on this critical aspect of our democratic growth. Nigerians should be taught early on their voting rights, constitution and constitutional rights, human an environmental rights etc. All these exposure would help to build a new generation of political actors to run the electoral and democratic system in the future.
NAS had also called for “a system [to] be put in place to enable Nigerians in Diaspora participate in the electoral process including voting at elections.”
D. Legal Framework
Legislation has remained the primary way for providing the framework under which elections are conducted. In Nigeria’s recent history, especially in the 10 years of democratic practice under review several electoral laws have been enacted to guide the conduct of elections. These include the Electoral Decree of 1998 under which the1999 elections were conducted; the 2003 Electoral Act which was trailed by controversy and condemned in the court of public opinion as being ill conceived, grossly inadequate and below international best practice; and the 2006 Electoral Act which included amendments to the 2003 Act but made no difference to the conduct of the 2007 elections and prompted the President to inaugurate this reform process
It is therefore imperative that any legislation regarding the electoral process must give consideration to ensuring full adherence to the principles of political rights and freedoms that govern the conduct of elections and are contained in declarations, conventions, protocols and other instruments adopted by the UN, AU, ECOWAS and the Commonwealth to which Nigeria is a party to. Such legislation must also guarantee effective mechanisms that ensure compliance with and enforcement of these laws, and capable of bringing to an end the continuing atmosphere of impunity that prevails within the Nigerian electoral process regarding election offences and their perpetrators offences, including those of a criminal nature.
It is also important to ensure that the legislation provides for safeguards that will ensure that the authorities do not interfere in the judicial process and that INEC is subject to the rule of law and therefore bound by court orders.
E. Electoral System
NAS in its submission to the Electoral Reforms Committee has called for the overhaul of the existing electoral system in a number of ways, including constituency delineation, candidate registration procedures, voter registration and voting procedures. A number of the detailed requirements regarding the call for a system overhaul are contained in the official memorandum submitted by NAS to the Committee. However, some key recommendations are provided as follows:
• Review of the option A4, popularized by Nwosu (NEC chairman) in 1993 that provided for open ballot system for possible adoption and modification to ensure secrecy of the vote for tendered ballots. Good to note that the Reform Committee has opted for an open secret ballot but government has indicated its preference for secret ballot.
• Create a forum to enable non-partisan international independent observers to monitor elections and give their feed backs promptly.
• Amend the Electoral Act to include more detailed regulations prohibiting the abuse of state resources during an election period as well as provide effective measures to monitor abuse of state resources and ensure that perpetrators are held accountable.
• Retain 30% appointive offices for women.
• Provide controls against the sponsorship or promotion of any religious course by Government with people’s funds.
F. The Role of the Media
The Electoral Reform Committee has provided a sanction of N1, 000,000 for biased reporting by media organizations. While the sanction is a step in the right direction the amount it proposes is sheer tokenism. I would propose higher penalty and stiffer sanction, in the region of N50, 000,000 to dissuade media organizations from willfully violating the proposed law on unbiased media coverage.
Now, let’s consider some key views canvassed by NAS position on this aspect of the electoral process.
i) NAS is of the view that in compliance with the provisions set out in the Nigerian Broadcasting Code appropriate “regulations should be developed by the legislature to provide proportional access to radio and television for political parties and candidates competing in elections, not only stipulating fair and equitable coverage, but also providing a framework where these provisions are guaranteed. In cases where candidates and parties purchase airtime for their advertisements and coverage of their rallies these programmes should be clearly signposted as such.” Similarly, broadcast media should provide fair and impartial coverage of all political parties and candidates during the campaign period without discrimination against any political party or candidate;
ii) The structure of the Nigeria Broadcasting Commission (NBC) should be modified in order to foster its institutional, functional and financial independence. NBC should have sufficient resources to be able to guarantee that the media cover elections according to the principles of fairness, balance and impartiality;
iii) The NBC should ensure publicly funded media distribute an equal allocation of free airtime to political parties and candidates competing in an election in order to ensure equity of coverage for all;
iv) The NBC should have a more formal transparent mechanism for dealing with complaints about media violations during elections. The records of political content that the broadcasters are obliged to maintain during the campaign period pursuant to 5.2.7 of the Nigerian Broadcasting Code should be made available to the public and candidates for inspection;
v) State-owned media should be given greater editorial independence. This could be facilitated through the concept of public service broadcasting, the introduction of which is strongly recommended to guarantee principles of public interest and editorial integrity. At minimum, the appointment of managerial staff at federal and state broadcasters should be reviewed so as to create independence from the government in power;
vi) State interference in media activities impeding the freedom of expression during the campaign period should cease;
vii) The Freedom of Information Bill should be adopted and duly implemented to provide a higher degree of transparency and accountability of public sector;
