CDD’s Summary Report on Nigeria’s 2003 Elections

Introduction

CDD’s engagement with the last election took the form of an observation and research project which, though limited in scale, took in all six geo-political zones of the country and all stages from the commencement of campaigning to the announcement of results. In addition we benefited from our long-standing involvement with the democratisation process in Nigeria and were thus in a position to investigate certain issues which, we feel, complement the oversights published by the international observers and the coverage of large domestic observer groups. In most cases, CDD staff observed in areas with which they were already familiar, allowing them the benefit of contextual knowledge, and interacted widely with officials, candidates and their supporters and ordinary people before, during and after the polls. In addition, CDD was involved in voter education in tandem with other civil society groups prior to polls and conducted a specific pilot training project to widen women’s participation in politics in the North-East.

CDD Election Observation

In the period prior to the polls we met with political actors who nearly all evinced a strong desire for a peaceful and well-run election. All espoused non-violence and all said that if they lost they would seek redress through legal means or accept defeat. It was apparent that campaigning also involved an element of voter education, for example in how to mark the ballots correctly, making the point that those with a vested interest can be the most committed teachers. It is therefore more of a shame to see that many of these actors also pursued practices which could be said to help undermine the chances of a peaceful and well-run election, such as the maintenance of large ‘youth’ followings who were involved in scuffles, and the escalation of a financial war to secure as much support as possible in the latter stages of the campaign.

Also in the campaigning period it became apparent that there existed no level playing field for the exposure of national candidates on state media outlets, where the power of incumbency dictated somewhat partisan coverage; the official national website www.nopa.net becoming largely a campaign vehicle for the Executive, for example. CDD observers in the North-Central zone also voiced concern that unequal access also extended to logistical matters such as the availability of fuel (at the time subject to shortage), which was available to incumbents as governmental actors but not to the opposition party campaigners.

The other salient matter in the period prior to the polls was that nowhere in the country did INEC successfully carry out the three-day exercise in which temporary registration slips were to be exchanged for voter cards. This failure may have had effects later, in episodes in which we witnessed confusion over documentation by people attempting to vote, and more seriously, the continuing of the exercise into the polling days – meaning there was an abundance of such cards in national circulation during the logistically complex polling days – may partially account for the possession of multiple voter cards by non-registered voters, as was reported in Ogun state among other places. However INEC perhaps deserves commendation for the disqualification of nearly seven million voters as suspected fraudulent registrations in the period immediately prior to the polls; the relatively small number of protests about disqualification we witnessed may be confirmation of the wisdom of this.

As regards the polling days, we observed the same difficulties as did many other observers in terms of polls opening times, logistical difficulties, the lack of secrecy of ballots (sometimes addressed in an exemplary way by the initiative of polling officers), the lack of adequacy of polling infrastructure and the difficulties and possibilities for fraud and fatigue-related mistakes engendered by the drawn-out process of collation. We would add also the inappropriate siting of some booths – in one Lagos example under the porch of a candidate, the lack of allowance made for the feeding and refreshment of INEC field staff over a very long day, and the incomplete knowledge by many polling staff and party agents of the provisions of the electoral law – observers were in many cases called upon to advise in this regard as they were often the only ones with copies of the Electoral Act. Though some of the logistical, secrecy and training issues were seen to improve through the three polling episodes, other issues we have highlighted were not addressed in any meaningful way.

Reports from the North-West, South-West and North-East commend the actions of the security forces for largely policing the polls in an adequate way, and in remaining hands-off unless specific problems arose which demanded their attention. In many cases voters found their presence reassuring. In areas where there were insufficient personnel for blanket coverage, they were concentrated in areas of likely tension. Adequate security in Kwara state helped to avert what was widely predicted as a potential bloodbath. In Delta State, however, the small numbers of badly-equipped personnel was left at the mercy of politicians for transport and were completely unable to prevent the wholesale rigging, abuses and violence there. It was in this area also that the logistical arrangements were both clearly inadequate and eventually fraudulent, as many stations experienced no polling, only to have results declared later in the process. Over all, the logistical problems were most pronounced at the ward level of collation, where transport, furniture and transportation were in short supply. Against this background, the patience and integrity of polling staff and domestic observers must be greatly commended.

Although we cannot fairly describe the events on polling day as being thoroughly rigged, except in a notable selection of areas, we cannot ignore the role of money in buying influence prior to the polls. The distribution of cash to voters is not so worrying if those voters are able to take the money and still vote with their consciences, but when combined with the widespread lack of secret ballot it becomes cause for concern. What is more cause for concern is the distribution of cash to electoral officials, as was reported from areas in the Delta and Plateau, which can be seen to have compromised some of them in the way they dealt with process issues.

Without wishing to give the impression of a wholly manipulated process, it is worth detailing the huge variety of rigging attempts we came across. At the least disruptive end of the scale, unhappy onlookers in Ijebu-Ode, Ogun state, reported party agents in a particularly close-run ward handing out N200 ($2) notes to voters in the queue. In Kano agents were seen giving out both money and voter cards to their supporters. In Bauchi, underage voters were in possession of cards, but many were apprehended whilst trying to vote. In Shagamu, Ogun State, compromised INEC officials were distributing double the number of ballots to supporters of the incumbent; they stopped when confronted by other voters and observers. Lest it be thought that all rigging was due to the manipulations of the parties, it is worth citing one of our monitors from Edo state indicating that certain INEC logistical officials turned their jobs into a business opportunity, whereby parties bought books of ballot papers for a market-fixed price. Likewise, rural communities in the South-West and South-East rigged their own polls, without necessarily changing the outcome, by allocating all the unused papers between the candidates at the end of the day, thus inflating the numerical importance of their community in order to secure future access to state development assistance.

More regrettably, observations from the South-South, South-East and North-West show a number of traditional dignitaries to have been colluding with politicians and INEC to subvert the democratic process. In addition to small-scale street fights between youths in a variety of locations nationally, violence was used in a variety of ways. In Kano, agents were observed physically intimidating voters. In Delta State, party thugs destroyed polling stations, and armed men abducted ballot boxes. And at locations in Ebonyi and Enugu states there were shooting incidents aimed at preventing certain dignitaries from moving in public. Yet these egregious incidents took place at the same time as many other urban and rural locations were enjoying open and well-run polls in which party agents played a constructive role, and where voting took place in what can in some places be described as a carnival atmosphere.

What overall findings can we draw from the experience?

The phrase ‘free and fair election’ has been so abused in recent years that we find it almost meaningless as a tool of analysis. In any case, most of the observer groups, both domestic and international, agree in the specifics of what transpired in the polling episode, differing only in whether they thought that the endemic rigging attempts and sporadic violence rendered the process invalid, or left it broadly credible. To get a better understanding we should look at the competence and good faith of the various parties to the entire elections process.

We can break these down into three broad constituencies: the public, the competitors (both individuals and parties), and the bodies responsible for administering the various parts of the electoral episode.

1. It is the first of these groups, the Nigerian public, who deserve the most credit, in their various roles as citizens, audience, voters and ultimate judges of the process and the system. There can be no doubt that Nigerian citizens value a voice in their own government in and of itself, and that they still see the ballot box as the way to address the huge variety of problems which face them, is a tribute to their patience with a system so loaded against the interests of the powerless. On polling days which were affected by the weather and by human incompetence, when they were not also impeded by deliberate malpractice, voters, both men and women of all ages, turned out in numbers which put many a ‘developed’ democracy to shame, and waited sometimes for hours for the chance to use their vote.

It is to their credit too, that when faced with inflammatory calls to violent protest against the results, even those who do feel they have been disenfranchised by rigging have displayed greater wisdom than many politicians by refusing to put themselves at risk. As ordinary citizens, too, we should commend those among the polling station staff, security services, civil society observer organisations and also grassroots political party agents who carried out their roles properly, professionally and with dedication; it is to be hoped that this will be an example to their less diligent colleagues.

We can say that the will of the people was in many places at least partially expressed, in that in areas where they were allowed to, the citizens took the opportunity to kick out legislators and governors who had over the last four years treated them more as subjects in private fiefdoms, taking their endorsement and then ruling at arms’ length from the centre. Such representatives were removed notably in the South-West, but such use of ‘people-power’ was a near national phenomenon.

2. We can talk about the competitors both in the sense of the personalities and of the national and state parties, and it is disappointing to see on how many occasions the latter have been sacrificed to the interests of the former. The episodes of candidate selection and party primaries are a case in point: right back in 2002 many parties’ electoral chances were compromised because the wrong candidates were chosen – often by selection, not election – on criteria such as their personal resources or standing, or the favours they promised to deliver once in office. Thus many more popular and competent political actors were passed over. These in turn sought, and often gained, the nomination of rival parties, whose best internal candidates were in turn passed over. The phenomenon produced parties which, at the top, looked to be non-cohesive coalitions of convenience for the purpose of getting elected. Some of the surprise losses of states by a party previously strong there, to a rival newcomer, may well have been won by the same candidate but for the incumbent party if the selection of candidates had not been so compromised. But it is not enough to say that political parties showed their weakness in this electoral cycle – there are many ways in which they displayed their strengths. We encountered many cases of grassroots political party agents doing valuable work in voter education, and diligently carrying out the tasks of recording and collating results which allowed them to act as a check on abuses of the process.

3. The various authorities who administered the electoral episode can be criticised in a number of regards. By this we mean not only INEC, who have perhaps inevitably taken the lion’s share of the blame for mismanagement, but also the incumbent administration who used the late release of funds and control over senior appointments to make INEC’s independence of action less than complete. The late release of funds also compromised INEC’s logistical effectiveness. The manner in which the initial voter registration was conducted can also attract some share of the blame, as can the confusion over the supplementary exercise, and it is almost surprising that there were not either more fraudulent votes cast or more wrongful disenfranchisements. In pointing to voter registration as an issue we wish to add it to the issue of candidate selection as another example of the ways in which an election can be compromised long before it is staged. What INEC can rightfully be blamed for is the brief nature of the training of polling officials, the failure to make copies of the electoral act widely available, widespread neglect for the welfare of its own staff and the lack of awareness – to some extent corrected before the April 19th and May 3rd polls – of how to set up satisfactory polling booths. At a grassroots level, INEC was compromised at times by the independent action of its own officials, either in their partiality of allegiance or by their willingness to profit from their position and be swayed by bribery. Human fallacy cannot be blamed on an organisational structure, however, and in a field staff of this size it would be hard to avoid some bad apples. We hope that internal investigations will be held into the most public transgressions. It is forlorn to hope for the highest integrity from field staff if senior staff in an organisation are vulnerable to accusations of political bias, and so the institutional framework of INEC should be strengthened to make it a truly autonomous agency by the 2007 polls – issues such as the appointment of Resident as well as State Electoral Commissioners, currently made by Governors require reform. INEC should also be commended in a number of areas: for making replica materials available for voter educations, for its openness to the registration of large numbers of observers, for the donor-supported media results centre. However its work is not yet complete: a vital part of the judicial process of election tribunals rests on its making available booth-level breakdowns of results, with which those collated by party agents can then be compared to determine the accuracy of the announced results.

Other Recommendations

CDD staff made a range of other suggestions on how the electoral procedure and environment can be improved to reinforce the democratic process for 2007:
· On and prior to Election Day, administration and security of materials should be as tight as possible, to prevent accidental or deliberate misallocation of papers, boxes, voter cards and other materials.
· Empty ballot boxes and unused papers must be properly displayed or accounted for.
· Logistical provision for the transport of officials and materials must be improved, to counter late opening, delays in the counting procedure, and the reliance of officials on the assistance of party agents, observers and others.
· The long-winded counting procedure should be examined, as to whether its many stages insure against, or provide opportunities for, rigging attempts. The issue of staff and observer fatigue during this stage is worth noting also.
· INEC staff must be better trained and more aware of provisions of the Electoral Act or what constitutes adequate provision for secrecy.
· Voters cards must be distributed much earlier, to avoid their distribution confusing or compromising the election process. Ideally, this should be taken care of as part of a complete overhaul of voter registration, to become something like a permanent and constantly updated electoral roll.
· Physical material provisions should be reviewed to avoid unnecessary problems like ink remaining wet and voiding marked ballot papers, or smudging in too-narrow slots.
· INEC at the centre needs to provide better technical support to the State Independent Electoral Commissions, as provision in this regard was noted to be lacking in some regions.
· Voter education needs to be broadened and undertaken by all relevant government agencies, civil society organisations, media outlets and political parties. If awareness of procedural issues is raised confusion can be avoided and the public can take on more of the role of overseeing the correct conduct of the process.

Finally, there are two points which can be profitably addressed immediately, and we call upon the authorities to do so. The first is for INEC to speedily produce the polling-booth level breakdown of results, as an essential resource for election tribunal and a great contribution to transparency and openness in public life. The second is that the law as it stands must be enforced; reported transgressors of electoral regulations must be investigated, and, if guilty, should be prosecuted. Only in this way can the culture of impunity in electoral exercises be checked.

Conclusion

While the calls for annulment of results and claims to have won emanating from prominent losing candidates, especially in the presidential race, are sometimes less than credible, we find it hard to avoid the overall conclusion that the main concern of the incumbent government was not to run the most open election possible, but was instead to use the advantages of its position to remain in power by whatever means were possible.

Despite all the discrepancies and malpractice recorded, we can still suggest that the election was not an invalid episode, even though it was far from free and fair. The institutional impediments surrounding the administration of the elections made it difficult for INEC to have avoided the inadequacies prevalent in the elections even if it wasn’t the election authorities’ intention to administer fraudulent elections. In our view, there was a limit to how much rigging actually distorted the popular will, especially at the presidential polls.

Our position on the episode must therefore be that this was a satisfactory exercise only if seen as a stage in an ongoing transition to democracy, and not as a democratic success in itself. Even then, it is to be regretted that this stage had not been passed already: the last four years have been ample time for all involved to develop the values of participation in an open and representative system. The re-elected and newly-elected politicians would be well-advised to pay close attention to the lessons arising from their misconduct in 2003.

Note:

CDD deployed forty observers across the six zones of the country, selectively covering rural, peri-urban and urban communities during the National Assembly, gubernatorial and presidential and state assembly elections. The CDD Observation team was led by its Director, Kayode Fayemi and coordinated by Olly Owen, Research associate at CDD.