On. Our. Marks.

The elections are 11 days away and instead of a sense of urgency from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), some civil society organizations say they get a sense that things are ‘slowing’ down. There are several things that INEC has to sort out, have ready and presumably communicate to the public before the elections start on April 2. And while we hope that everything will be ready, there is no question that for those worried about the massive and hopefully uncontrollable (in a good way) groundswell of public interest in the 2011 elections, slowing things down is to their advantage. This is because the more last minute the arrangements are, the more opportunity for shoddy preparations and shady dealings which will provide the platform for electoral fraud.

The most pressing issue, and the one we hope INEC is focusing most of its attention on is the question of how many registered voters INEC is preparing for at each polling unit. For some reason the number 500 keeps coming up even though the Electoral Act is silent on this issue and election process observers believe that due to the unprecedented number of registered voters – new polling units will have to be created to manage the extra numbers. For instance, during the registration process, INEC center PU 023 in Ministers Hill, Maitama Abuja, registered at least 2000 Nigerians. We know from the verification exercise that not all of those who registered at that center were captured as potential voters for that center and if indeed only 500 people are going to be accommodated at each center, where should the extra go? We need to know this now so we can make arrangements since movement is usually restricted during elections. According to the election timetable, INEC plans to publish notice of poll information on the 18^th of March which covers the dates and hours for election, those entitled to vote and the polling units. Hopefully the communication will be on multiple platforms, not just the INEC website because we need this information to be disseminated as widely as possible. Other wise, many will be disenfranchised especially in the rural areas where the most fraud is allegedly perpetuated.

Next is the issue of multiple registration. One published account says at least 800,000 people are guilty of multiple registration or is it that the number by which the total number of registered voters has been inflated due to multiple registration? We are being diverted by the story that ‘prominent figures’ have registered multiple times and the demand for these names to be released. The real question is: how does INEC intend to stop those guilty of multiple registration from voting during the elections if INEC does not intend to use the fingerprints from the registration exercise?

Another troubling issue is the story that before voting begins the polling officials will carry out a verification exercise to ensure that everyone there is entitled to vote there before, voting starts. The time allocated for this verification exercise is from 9am to 12 noon. What happens if all 2000+ people who registered turn up to vote in PU 023? Can the polling unit officials really be expected to verify ALL these people before voting begins? Opposition parties, international observers and activists need to take this issue up immediately and get clarification from INEC. A better idea would be to have the two exercises happening simultaneously: verification at one desk and voting at the next.

How can the electorate, armed with the experience of past rigging and with knowledge of all the areas where ‘trouble’ will creep, ensure that elections take place efficiently and fairly? The ball is not solely in INEC’s side of the court; we can do our best to make sure the game goes our way and our votes are made and counted.

One of the things communities around a polling unit can do to protect their mandate is to prepare the infrastructure for the polling booth officials. Let’s get at least two tables and as many chairs as possible under a shade first thing in the morning on voting day and not give the polling booth officials any excuse to waste precious time. Also where possible let’s create our own make shift voting booths to have a little privacy for voters. The ballot box should remain in the open where everyone can see it but around the table where the ballot is going to be marked we can either use tacks and heavy cardboard or even old cartons to build walls on the table by tacking the cardboard to the top of the table. Or where the location is suitable, just use a curtain and a rope to shield voters from those who want to influence them. If you create this booth early, before voting starts, it will make it harder for anyone to argue against it.

And although the Electoral Act says polling officials should not be given any ‘gifts’ – I think it is acceptable to arrange for a cooler with cold water and a few drinks and even arrange for food sometime in the afternoon to ensure the polling officials have no reason to take breaks in order to find something to eat and drink.

Another thing is to be armed with the necessary phone numbers for the resident electoral commissioner and other local INEC officials. Don’t waste too much time trying to call because many people might have the same idea and the lines might be busy – instead send SMS messages with all the required information such as the PU number, the location and what the problem is.

Above all, do not forget that we will be doing this three times (don’t know whose bright idea that was) and hopefully we’ll improve with each experience. Let’s caution each other to be patient, to be calm and to be determined to contribute to the development of democracy in Nigeria. Every vote must count in this election, let’s get set to make it happen.

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When women wasted a great opportunity

Exactly 100 years and 7 days ago women celebrated the centennial anniversary of international women’s day; the one day in the year dedicated to women raising awareness about issues they care about.

In 1911, the year zero of international women’s day, most women around the world did not have the right to vote (only women in New Zealand, Australia and Finland had a national right to vote); they had limited rights to property and inheritance, they could not provide evidence in certain cases, married women had no legal rights and the entry of women into certain professions was questioned or even prohibited.

Within this context, women around the world have indeed come a long way and there is a lot to celebrate. Apart from a hand full of countries in the middle east, women have the right to vote and to be voted for and women have reached not only the pinnacles of government and academia, but of science, literature, art and business. There are legal precedents and policies protecting the right of women to their own bodies, their own minds and their pursuit of happiness and wellbeing.

And celebrate we did…at least around the world. In some countries, days before the 100^th anniversary of International Women’s Day (IWD) the media focused on issues important to women, Air India and Air France ran female only crews on flights; Presidents and their First Ladies delivered good will messages to women and the men and children who love them; celebrities blogged and twitted on women; rockets and fireworks went off and female charities and organizations benefitted from additional funding. Most importantly, though, in the midst of all the celebrating, there was a concerted effort to focus and keep attention on the problems women and female children still encounter in their various communities.

At home, in Nigeria we all know what some of the most pressing issues are: health (maternal and infant mortalities amongst the highest in the world); education (data says two-thirds of all illiterates in the world are women); economic slavery (development experts say woman is the face of poverty); poor legal framework (global and regional conventions still not been passed into law) and even more abysmal enforcement of the few legal protections that women have. So as someone who has been aware for a long time of the developmental and social limitations placed on women but only recently realized ‘there must be something I can do to help’ other than cry and complain; I tried to find out what was going on in Nigeria.

Enquiries led to the National Women’s Development Center in Abuja where Mrs. Josephine Anenih, Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development planned to deliver a press briefing. Our theme for IWD was the UN global theme: equal access to education, training and science and technology: pathway to decent work for women. When the briefing ended with the unveiling of the newly minted UN Women logo, I was I left feeling let down and absolutely uninspired. Here is what did not happen but so easily could have.

One, there were no young women and girls of school age given a role to play. Instead we had a stream of associations such as wives of custom officers given two minutes to address the audience. If the theme was about education and training, then the audience should have been younger; the average age of all the women there was at least 40, not counting a few babies in the audience.

Two, there could have been a few minutes dedicated to the issues and the goals for Nigerian women going forward. The Federal Ministry of Women Affairs has been leading the advocacy for the adoption of two documents into Nigerian law: The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979) and the African Unions Protocol on Human and People’s Rights of Women in Africa (2003) but continues to face opposition even though Nigeria has ratified both without reservations. It would have been nice to know what the strategy was for achieving this goal and what practical steps would be taken to ensure our alignment with the theme of the day: that our young women and girls get a quality education in science and technology.

And three, in the spirit of elections, it would have been great if the women centered organizations and civil society advocates for women’s rights, equity development, hosted a debate or dialogue session for a few politicians to share their plans for women in Nigeria. Undoubtedly, the campaign schedules for the presidential candidates are very full – but what about men and women vying for the Senate or the National House of representatives? Would they not care to share their plans for the group which constitutes half the population of the country?

The truth is while we have come far; we have farther to go. Two weeks ago the Attorney General of the Federation, Mohammed Adoke appointed a seven-member board for the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons and Other related Matters (NAPTIP) and not a single member was female. Arguably if trafficking were not considered a problem predominantly faced by women and children, there would still be a need for a more balanced board to reflect the demographics of Nigeria. With this and other more recent examples of sexism and discrimination in general and party politics, should our celebration of the IWD been all about patting ourselves on the back?

If women want to make greater strides in development, politics and social issues we have to do things a little differently. We cannot rely on the government to do everything for us including advocate on our behalf. It would help a great deal if the people in government were committed to the development of women but they are not – and it is up to us to device ways to make them care. If the Ministry of Women Affairs and its agency, the National Centre for Women Development have to toe the government line, then the decades old activists and advocates should lead the way. Women need a plan to put before the next President of Nigeria and the incoming legislators and executives – and this would have been a perfect opportunity to sign off and present it to women as we head to the polls. 104 is still a great number – maybe we can learn from what we did not do and get our acts together for 2015.

Published in Thisday on March 15 2011

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For God and politics

Whoever said religion is the opium of the masses must have been
thinking about Nigerians. Religion is the one thing that destroys
rationality faster than an ice cube on a hot toaster and this why most
democratically inclined nations try to keep God and government apart.
Nigeria, the home of churches and mosques which sit astride side by
side, states simply and with rare precision in Section 10 of the 1999
Constitution that “the Government of the Federation or of a State
shall not adopt any religion as State Religion”.

Our federal and state governments have been repeatedly blessed by
self-acclaimed men of God, so although we have no state religion, we
supposedly have God’s chosen people working amongst us. Somehow
though, we have been exalted with being at the bottom of every human
and social development index. It is hard to imagine how much worse
things could be if these men were not so consecrated.

Slowly but surely, since the zoning argument for PDP failed, the April
elections have swung to being a little bit about religion (even though
no one will admit it). For over a year, President Jonathan has been
the acclaimed chosen one to rule Nigeria – placed against all odds in
one of the most powerful positions in the country. His story is the
stuff on which drinking myths are spun. The quiet, unknown deputy to
the only state governor impeached and removed for corruption during
the Obasanjo administration, he becomes Governor of Bayelsa. Then he
is selected out of many eager volunteers to become the unthreatening
vice president to the ailing presidential candidate, Alhaji Umaru Musa
Yar’adua. It must have been surreal to everyone close to him. What I
remember most vividly about those first few months of the Yar’adua
administration was how surprised and even startled Vice President
Goodluck Jonathan looked in all the pictures…it was almost like he
could not believe where he was. And then barely two years later,
President Yar’adua dies and against all plots, schemes and sincere
conniving, the vice president becomes the president. It is easy to
understand why people might consider him the one anointed.

However, there are several problems with self anointment and the
inclusion of religion in politics. The first is that anyone can claim
to be anointed. You do not need any specific qualifications or ideas
or even a patent – you can just say you have been chosen to lead and
there isn’t much that can be said about that. But what does it say
about us as a nation that we welcome or listen to politicians who say
they are the chosen ones? Nigeria is in such dire straits that it is
forgivable to think the solutions lie in a miracle but it is unlikely
that one man can wave a wand and solve our problems; but tell that to
the pastors, reverends and people who have proclaimed that all our
troubles will be solved once President Jonathan is re-elected.


The second is that religion dictates the acceptability and suitability
of our political candidates but not our assessment of their
capabilities. We all know that in Nigeria the winning ticket for the
presidential elections must have a Christian and a Muslim. And no,
Abiola-Kingibe is not the exception because they were never sworn in
and it was never intended that they would be. It is not about how
good the president and vice president can be or have been in their
public and private lives – it matters more if they are the right
religion.

The third problem is that religion provides ‘winning’ candidates with
the cloak of inevitability and prevents us from asking what winning
really is. The mosques and the churches are loud with discussions and
sermons about God and politics. The Pastor says ‘when God says yes,
nobody can say no’. The Imam says ‘when God says a person will achieve
something or get something, nobody, repeat, nobody can do anything to
change it’. These are messages for winners and losers alike. Even when
you cheat, steal and kill – it matters not if you win because winning
is everything and everyone, including God, loves winners. And if you
lose? Well, even if you are a saint who has done absolutely nothing
wrong other than being born a Nigerian, you are on your own because
nobody loves a loser.

Fourth, religion is an effective mask to cover up everything bad under
the sun because at the end of the day no one knows the mind of another
except they ‘display’ it with their actions. Which is why in corrupt
ministries, departments and agencies around the country, the employees
make a show of piety. Opening prayer before we share the contracts and
squander the money meant for Nigerians and closing prayers to protect
us and our loot as we ride through the electricity deprived streets
and slums that line the road to our mansions. Meanwhile mosques and
churches shamelessly reserve the front rows and seats for these same
people; making it clear that our practice of religion is not to uplift
and inspire us but to deceive us and keep us docile (except when we
are needed for so-called ‘religious crisis’).

And finally, the fifth problem is that religion as practiced in
Nigeria strips us of responsibility. We, as a people, can fold our
arms and do absolutely nothing and then we say ‘God is in control’.
God has given man reason for a purpose; he has given us great skills
and intellect to help our communities and ourselves yet we abdicate
all obligation. Months ago before the ‘God for Jonathan’ campaigns
started in earnest journalists asked the same ex-president Obasanjo
who was responsible for foisting Yar’adua on us as President, “on
2011, where do you stand? Are you for Jonathan, IBB, Atiku or Gusau?”
And Obasanjo’s response: “I stand where God stands”.
This is the man who is responsible for most of the political
dysfunction and the most criminal elections we have ever held in
Nigeria so far (2007). This is a man who is responsible for
manipulating the primaries in his home state, Ogun. And this is a man
who is using the same battle cry he used in 2007 saying the 2011
elections are a ‘do-or-die affair’. And this is a man who stands where
God stands?

Let us beware of politicians who mention God all the time when we live
in a godless society. Let us beware of pastors, priests and imams who
endorse politicians and most of all let us beware of our own
susceptibilities which might make us believe these people even against
all the evidence around us. The 2011 election is the opportunity to
make rational and logical choices about where we go as a nation and
while we pray in private for God’s guidance, we must not abdicate our
responsibility and let self proclaimed anointed ones steal the
elections and continue to rob generations of a decent future in
Nigeria.

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Duped Again!

“The performance of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), whose chairman and directors were all appointed by the President, has been so inept that some experts think it was set up to fail.”

Considering everything we have witnessed or heard so far about the voter registration process, about the verification exercise, about the sale and destruction of voters’ cards, this statement would seem fair and apt. However, it was made four years ago on April 19 2007 in an article in The Economist titled ‘How to steal yet another election’.

Nigeria is the kind of place where you are constantly being surprised. Even when you think you have heard it all…even when you think you have become blasé about the level people will stoop to or the absolutely stupefying mind racking disregard the government has for its people…something comes along which drains all understanding from your head, with the same finality as a sledgehammer coming down hard on an ant.

Last week one of the stories making the rounds was that INEC might resort to using a manual voter register for the April elections. After spending almost a trillion naira for a problematic and painful registration process then we hear manual registers are going to be used? As Governor Ngige put it a lot more eloquently than I could, INEC reverting to a manual register would amount to ‘a rape of the sensibilities of the people’. But what is new? What makes this rape any different than all the others? Excess Crude Account has been depleted from $20B to $3M in a little over a year? Entire country held hostage by terminally ill PDP president refusing to hand over to PDP vice president? Over and over again our sensibilities are abused, shredded into pieces, stomped on and then flattened with a steamroller for good measure and still we go on.

I was not worried by INEC’s silence when the stories of multiple registration broke out, because I assumed the expensive system procured to guarantee free and fair elections would ‘deal’ with the issue. Then came the stories about people buying and selling voter registration cards from as little as N100 to as much as N10,000, I was still not perturbed by INEC’s stoic stance because I assumed the system around which the registration process was built would also keep our elections relatively clean. But when I heard that the voters’ registration cards were being burnt…then I was troubled. This meant that people would not be able to vote and this would leave room for ‘fake votes’ to ‘fill up the gap’ left by those who had let hunger, apathy, or greed disenfranchise them. So I placed my ear to the hot melting tar on the ground to hear if INEC would address this urgent problem. Maybe INEC would speak to the public through full page adverts in the papers or through the radio and television – urging people not to succumb to temptation or threatening those caught with all sorts of dire consequences if they are found out…but still nothing. As I tried to wade through the meaning of this silence, the stories of manual registers began to break out. Okay. It is all beginning to make sense. INEC, who is always complicit in electoral fraud in Nigeria was merely going through the motions in order to provide good reasons for their decision to return to the manual registers and the old ways of ballot stuffing.

Now suddenly INEC says the Electoral Act does not require e-voting (only e- voter registration). So what was the point about the 10 fingerprints? Was it not to ensure that it would be impossible for a person to vote more than once? Was I alone in assuming that all the data captured from all the polling stations across Nigeria were going to be fed into one central virtual location so that people who turn up more than once on the list will be identified and eliminated by virtue of their unique fingerprints turning up more than once on the data base?

Now the story from IT experts is that collating all the data would take too long? Science can send people into space and in Nigeria we cannot borrow or buy the technology to collate the data of 60 million people in 6 weeks? How long could it possibly take and if indeed time is the issue, why didn’t we start the process earlier?

In July last year INEC Chairman Prof. Jega was emphatic that the entire foundation for credible elections in Nigeria rested on a clean voters register. As he pounded the circuit trying to convince us all, Vanguard of July 23 2010 quoted him as saying “We closely looked through the existing voters register sampling over 100 polling units from randomly selected 19 states. What we found were massive inadequacies including under age registrants, hundreds of blank or blurred photographs and multiple registrations by same persons”. Pray tell – once you substitute ‘hundreds of blank or blurred photographs’ with ‘thousands of voters with partially captured fingerprints’ would we not have the same identical register we had in 2007?

The now four year old article in The Economist concluded with saying that ‘Nigeria is going backwards’ because everyone (excluding PDP and INEC of course) was in agreement that the 2007 elections were ‘far worse than those of 1999 and 2003’. Everything is on track to ensure we do not deviate from our backward slide: we are all set to break the 2007 record for fraud and violence in the 2011 elections with INEC aiding and abetting all the way.

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