Last week, I cautioned against postponing the elections originally scheduled for February 14 and 28. I wrote the article on Friday, February 6, the day after the National Council of State (NCS) met in Aso Rock.
My conclusion was that based on the claim by Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Attahiru Jega, that he was ready for the polls, he should be given the benefit of the doubt.
“The will of the people which oils the wheels of democracy,” I insisted, “must always have a free reign. Anything short of that is a recipe for anarchy and Nigerians should not be sacrificed on the altar of the inordinate ambition of self-centered politicians.”
But in taking that position, I was still mindful of Jega’s antecedents as the electoral umpire. If the elections were held on February 14 and 28, could Jega have conducted a seamless, credible, free and fair ballot? I doubt.
There was every indication that despite his claims, the INEC was not fully prepared. On January 18, a month to the presidential and National Assembly (NASS) polls, this newspaper ran a lead story with the headline, “30% of PVC’s stuck in China,” which was a product of painstaking investigation.
We asserted that “More than 30 per cent of eligible voters may be disenfranchised by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the ballot next month. The INEC has not printed their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs), a crucial voting document, even as the election is 27 days away.”
In the course of our investigation, we spoke to Jega’s spokesman, Kayode Idowu, who claimed the story was not true. “Where did you get that information?” he queried. “As far as I know, it is not true. I am not saying they (PVCs) have been printed. They are being printed and will be ready before the election.”
The question that should concentrate the minds of all Nigerians is why must the PVCs be printed in China in 2015 when as far back as 2006, arrangement was made through a Public Private Partnership (PPP) with Chams Limited to print the cards in Abuja without fanfare?
As of 2007 Chams, and by implication Nigeria, was reputed to have one of the biggest card printing facilities in the world.
But even if the cards were ready and every one of the 68,833,476 registered voters had picked them up, there was still the issue of the card readers. How can Jega be talking about PVCs and card readers in a voting system that is largely manual?
That, perhaps, explains why both were not used in the 2007 elections because they are components of electronic voting system. As a former INEC employee told me on Friday, February 13, “it is actually laughable to use card readers for manual voting system.”
So, even if all the PVCs were available, and even if there was no insurgency in the North East, Jega would not have been prepared for the vote as originally scheduled. I doubt if the INEC will be prepared even after the six-week extension.
But what I find funny is that Nigerians are surprised that Jega’s INEC is not actually ready for the election.
It is even funnier that the Presidency is today convinced that there is something fundamentally wrong with the INEC headed by Jega because President Goodluck Jonathan had always used him as poster boy for his self-acclaimed zero tolerance for electoral malpractices even when he knew that all the elections Jega conducted were flawed.
In an article I wrote on April 5, 2011, three days after the NASS poll on April 2 was aborted by this same Jega, I passed a vote of no confidence, literally, in him. Let me quote from that article just to show that nothing has changed.
“I arrived London Saturday morning at about the same time accreditation of voters in the National Assembly elections started. And the buzz in town was about ‘Africa’s big election.’
“You can then imagine the disappointment when Jega cancelled the polls which had already started in some places because he suddenly realised that he had revved the engine of an electoral process that had no oil.
“Of course, the engine went kaput even before it started. The INEC Chairman will go down in history as an umpire who started an election without materials as critical as result sheets.
“Joe Kibazo, a Ugandan diplomat and media consultant, who was in Abuja for the Presidential debate which NN24 television organised, could not help but wonder aloud why Nigeria, ‘a country with some of the best brains any country in the world can boast of and huge resources finds it difficult to make the two – human and material resources – work for her.’
“The INEC Chairman hinged the cancellation on ‘unanticipated emergency.’ According to him, ‘the result sheets are central to the elections and their integrity. Accordingly, in many places, our officials have not reported at the polling units, making it now difficult to implement the Modified Open Ballot Procedure that we have adopted.
“Not only do we have to enter the results in the sheets, the number of accredited voters is also to be entered in the result sheet.
“While we could have proceeded with the elections in a few states of the country, where all the materials are available, such as Lagos, Kaduna, Kebbi, Delta, Zamfara and Enugu, among others, in order to maintain the integrity of the elections and retain effective overall control of the process, the Commission has taken the difficult but necessary decision to postpone the National Assembly elections to Monday, April 4, 2011.
“Some people have pleaded for understanding, applauding what they called Jega’s ‘rare ability to apologise for such lapses.’ That can only happen in Nigeria where fools are suffered gladly.
“But I refuse to hitch a ride on that hypocritical wagon because I don’t see how the man could be exonerated from this huge national embarrassment. If anything, he is the chief culprit. Worse still, he has not been honest with Nigerians.
“As at the time Jega issued a statement on Friday assuring Nigerians and indeed the whole world that he was set for the elections, some of the sensitive electoral materials were yet to arrive Nigeria. In fact, some only arrived on the day of the election at about 6am.
“Even before the statement on Friday, he had already claimed in a meeting he held with editors in Abuja on Wednesday that, ‘We in the INEC are ready and prepared.’
“If Jega was aware that most of the sensitive materials essential for the smooth conduct of the polls hadn’t arrived the country as at Friday, why was he assuring Nigerians that every arrangement had been concluded?
“Why didn’t he call off the elections at that stage to save the political parties and the country the huge cost of the false start?
“When he attended the National Council of State meeting last week, what did he tell them? Even if he did not want to orchestrate a national hysteria by announcing publicly that he was not prepared for the polls as some people claim, he should have quietly informed those that ought to know.
“That he did not means that he either believed the elections could indeed be conducted without the materials or he deliberately took Nigerians for a jolly good ride.
“Whichever is the case, Jega has exhibited gross irresponsibility because this goes beyond being incompetent.”
Those are excerpts from an article I wrote in 2011, four years ago.
How true are they still today? Jega is incompetent and has no capacity to deliver free and fair elections.
I hope he does not throw this country into a crisis.