Assistant Politics Editor, DANIEL KANU, revisits the controversies surrounding the general election, which has been shifted to March 28 and April 11, as it concerns challenges before INEC and the nebulous security factor, few weeks to the election.
The postponement of this year’s general elections has continued to generate intense public discussion as to the real reasons behind the action and the assurance that the new dates would subsist.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had on Saturday, February 7, postponed the elections by six weeks, as requested by the presidency, on grounds of security challenges in the country.
Other reasons adduced were to allow for more time for voter awareness and enlightenment as well as enable voters collect their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs).
Finally, the federal election (i.e. presidential and National Assembly) has been slated to hold on March 28 while the state election (governorship and House of Assembly) is fixed for April 11.
The situation on the ground, which political observers say is a bit complex, has continued to raise more doubt on the certainty of the conduct of an election that has shown that the stakes are high, when compared to previous elections.
Although the electoral body had boasted that it would achieve at least 85 per cent distribution before the elections, the TheNiche gathered that the enthusiasm by those that have not collected their PVCs appear to be low.
The reason is simple: it has been quite difficult to collect the PVC from the designated centres for those who have registered, while some eligible voters may be denied it if the PVCs that are yet to arrive from where they are printed abroad is not delivered.
“I have been going to my collection centre, a primary school building at the last bus stop of Orilowo Ejigbo in Lagos and it is either the officials are not there or they will not find your PVC it give to you. I have been going there consistently in the last three weeks. It has been a sad story and I have vowed not to show up there again,” Mrs. Janeth Obong lamented during an encounter with TheNiche. She is not alone in such sad experience.
It was not surprising that the Senate summoned the INEC chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, to clear the air on some knotty issues concerning the election postponement, readiness of INEC to conduct the election, the PVC matter and the assurance that the new dates would be sacrosanct.
At the moment, INEC said it has achieved about 75 per cent distribution of the PVCs.
Going by the disclosure of Jega on Wednesday, INEC had put the current total number of registered voters in the country at 68,833,476 and going by the commission’s claim, about 52,233,396 cards have been collected by registered voters.
For critics, INEC perhaps is struggling to apply damage control measures to correct the very bad situation that has surrounded the distribution of the PVCs.
Even the commission’s conduct of voter registration for the benefit of those who had just turned 18 years of age was not spared by critics who say the exercise was inundated with shortcomings and, perhaps, political under-pinning.
INEC has done its third phase of distribution of the PVC exercise in not less than 34 states of the federation, including Abuja, going by its records.
It was an exercise it would be recalled that involved voters cross-checking their names in the displayed voters’ register and collecting PVCs in exchange for the temporary voters’ cards.
There were reported tales of woe everywhere, given the lapses that continued to trail the exercise.
In Lagos, for instance, when the exercise fell below expectation, residents took to the streets, storming the office of the commission.
It was the same news in some other states.
In many instances, the electorate who went to designated polling units to claim their PVCs had series of problems to contend with, ranging from inadequate attestation forms, swearing of affidavit in court, absence of PVC, even when the voter’s name and picture appeared in the register, among other concerns.
Experience during the conduct of the last Anambra, Osun and Ekiti states elections, for example, showed that registered voters heavily criticised the electoral body over its inability to address logistics issues before embarking on distribution and collection of PVCs in the states.
Some critics have expressed worry on some of the issues raised by Jega before the Senate.
For instance, the ability or inability of INEC to distribute the remaining PVCs in its possession, which is more than the registered population in at least two zones of the country; effectiveness of the card-reader given our environment and the assurance that the election will hold.
Jega said, for the purposes of ensuring that the electoral process was credible, the card-reader would be used in the verification of voters. This is a cheering news if its reliability is not corrupted or compromised by the system during the exercise.
“Cloned cards cannot work in INEC reader machines,” Jega had warned.
He said the electoral commission could not guarantee that the elections will hold as scheduled, arguing that only security agencies and service chiefs can guarantee security for the polls, though the commission remains ready to conduct the elections.
“I kept saying consistently that INEC is not a security organisation. We are an election management body. So, we rely a lot on security to be able to ensure that things are done well and that there is no disruption of the electoral process,” said Jega.
This position has made some critics to begin to give permutations that there may be issues beyond the ordinary eyes which perhaps only time will reveal.
Although the nation’s security agencies have assured that there is no cause for alarm on the conduct of the election, leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, has threatened that the election will not take place peacefully.
This was the revelation in the latest video purportedly released by the group.
In the video message titled ‘A message to the leaders of the disbelievers’, released on social media and obtained by United State-based SITE intelligence group, Shekau issued a warning to the President Goodluck Jonathan government that next month’s elections would be disrupted with violence.
“Allah will not leave you to proceed with these elections even after us, because you are saying that authority is from people to people, which means that people should rule each other, but Allah says that the authority is only to him, only his rule is the one which applies on this land. We say that these elections that you are planning to do will not happen in peace, even if that costs us our lives,” Shekau boasted.
In the view of the Special Representative, United Nations Secretary-General for West and Central Africa, Dr. Mohammed Ibn Chambas, Nigeria must set the standard for others to follow because the country has a special place in West Africa and, indeed, Africa.
Said Chambers, who was former president of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS): “2015 will be a year in which we will witness some very significant elections in West Africa. In addition to Nigeria, we have elections in Togo, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, Burkina Faso. These are all countries that, within the ECOWAS context, are very significant. Some of them, for example Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea and even now Burkina Faso, will be conducting election post-conflict. So, we expect to face some challenges there. It is in that context that we hope that Nigerian elections will be standard setting, so that we can hopefully use the expertise from Nigeria to support these other countries in the region.”
For Nigerians, the 2015 election is a serious one; it is a battle between continuity and change. It is one election that the INEC, security agencies and all stakeholders are expected to live up to expectation, if it must be peaceful.