With barely a few weeks to go, the question asked above is germane. This means that without beating around the bush, the most sensible position now is to adopt the option proffered by the Federal House of Representatives. We may care to recall that last week the Federal House of Representatives very sensibly called for the need to use both the temporary voters’ card (TVC) as well as the Permanent Voters Card (PVC) as the means of voting in the pivotal St. Valentine’s Day presidential elections next month. It is not just a need, it is imperative to do so.
There is in fact no alternative to this position. And for the sake of our rather fragile democracy the issue must be put to rest now. The resolution of the house must be placed alongside the heartening if belated, emergence of a national democratic agreement. This is the only way to describe the accord concordiale (with apologies to the late redoubtable Dr. Kingsley Ozumba Mbadiwe) signed last week between the leading presidential contestants Goodluck Jonathan (PDP) and Muhammadu Buhari (APC). Adopting the recommendation of the House of Representatives will further cement and enhance the very welcome agreement.
For to state the obvious, the foundation for an acceptable election, begins with a voter registration process which is widely perceived as being inclusive as well as demonstrably fair. Discord understandably emerges when there is a feeling that an attempt has been made at disenfranchising potential voters or worse still, an attempt at voter suppression. The registration has therefore to be seen as demonstrably inclusive. This is why some countries such as Australia, Brazil and the Seychelles have made voting compulsory. In their reasoning, in a democracy there are two obligations; the first is to pay taxes in order to sustain the state in the process becoming a community of stakeholders with a vested input in the revenues of the state as in ‘no taxation without representation’ and the other is to have an all inclusive democratic participation and avoid voter suppression by making voting compulsory.
The option of the House is non-negotiable because the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has proved to be so administratively inept. The commission which is a vital component, indeed the umpire of a democracy embarked upon ‘reforms’ to the electoral process which it clearly did not have the managerial capacity to implement. In addition, alarmingly, it had enough time to implement the reforms as well as the request for budget appropriation with which to do so.
Now that INEC has failed so miserably, it cannot and must not be allowed to hold the country to ransom and imperil our fragile democracy by insisting on the use of PVC’s. The St. Valentine’s Day’s election is far too crucial for what it is now turning out to be, like a wild goose chase. With over 15 million people yet to pick their PVC’s and mass confusion about the difference between PVC and TVC there is no basis for INEC to continue to cover up its glaring failure by adopting a self-serving dogmatic position.
What is unfortunate here is the institutional failure involved. 15 years after the re-instatement of democracy, the seemingly innocuous process of voter registration has been bungled. This is in contradistinction to countries such as Ghana, the Republic of South Africa and Zambia where the registration of voters has for long been taken for granted as routine. Since we are not here re-inventing the wheel, we ought to be very ashamed of our institutional failure. After all, democracies are built upon and sustained on the basis of strong institutions. This means that circumspection on the part of INEC will be most welcome.
INEC also needs to put its house in order before Election Day. For, unfortunately, bungling the registration exercise could just be an indication of a deeper systemic failure. It is to be hoped that the logistics failure revealed for example, during the governorship election in Anambra State does not rear its ugly head again.
With so much riding on the election which is just under a month away, INEC is clearly in a race against time to prove both its mettle and justify its budget.