Okoye: Issue of Placeholder Has No Place in Our Constitutional and Legal Framework

National Commissioner and Chairman of Information and Voter Education of Independent National Electoral Commission, Mr. Festus Okoye, was onARISE NEWS Channel recently, where he fielded questions bordering on placeholders, the new lexicon in the Nigerian political scene, illegal substitution of candidates, among other issues. Peter Uzoho, who monitored the interview, brings excerpts

I

I the last few days, we have been hearing of placeholders for vice presidential candidates and the excuse that they give is that there is a window for them to substitute. Is there room for placeholders, particularly with regard to vice presidential candidates?

The constitution makes it very clear that you cannot run alone as a presidential candidate – that you must nominate an associate to run with you for that particular position. As far as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is concerned, the political parties’ candidates have nominated associates to run with them as presidential candidates. So, as far as we are concerned, there is no form submitted by any of the political parties in terms of their nominations, where they said we are submitting this name as a placeholder or a space-holder or a vacuum holder – no. The issue of space-holder or placeholder is a unique Nigerian invention that has no place in our constitutional and legal framework. What is in the issue is that the political parties have nominated associates to run with them as their vice presidential candidates and that is the position of the law as at today, and nothing has changed.

In Senator Ahmad Lawan’s case in Yobe North, he did not take part in the primaries as he was, at the time, busy with his presidential aspiration. And then, Bashir Machina, who contested in the senatorial primaries, won. Machina is saying he is good enough to also be a senator of the Federal Republic, and that having won, his name cannot be removed, and he has threatened to go to court. What is your take?

In relation to your second question, I completely agree, that somebody who has not tested party primaries may not be in a position to be nominated as a candidate. Now, INEC is not in a position, as at now, to make a determination in relation to what you are saying, or to make a determination in relation to whose name was submitted by each political party. The commission monitored the primaries of the different political parties, their senatorial primaries, primaries to the House of Representatives and so on, and we have our reports. So, if there is somebody who emerged from party primaries, if somebody’s name is submitted, it is the responsibility of that particular individual to utilise the provisions of 285 of the Constitution, Section 84 of the Electoral Act and Section 29 of the Electoral Act to seek redress before a properly-constituted court of law.

Moreover, what the law provides is that, at the end of this nomination process, if any of the candidates that have been properly and constitutionally nominated withdraws in writing, with a sworn affidavit, that the political party that nominated him must and shall conduct fresh party primaries within a period of 14 days and then, make such a replacement. But the person must withdraw in writing through a letter submitted to the political party that nominated him, together with an affidavit, indicating that he or she has voluntarily withdrawn from the race. So, that is the state of the law, and that is the state of the nomination process as of today. 

Are you saying the political parties that have put placeholders now -the APC, Labour Party and other political parties-  can no longer change the vice presidential candidates they have put as placeholders, or they can change?

No, what I’m saying is that there is a period for withdrawal. If any of the vice presidential candidates withdraws in writing with a sworn affidavit, within the timeframe prescribed by the law and the timetable, then there can be a replacement. But that must be in writing with a sworn affidavit.

I was looking at something with keen interest on Sunday, regarding the recognition of a party candidate, according to Sections 33 to 34, where it says that the candidate has to participate in the primary before he can emerge. What is happening with the Godswill Akpabio’s case, and also juxtapose that with what is happening to the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan? 

I will not go into specifics relating to particular candidates that have been nominated or have not been nominated. I will just tell you what the issues are, what the processes are and what the procedures are. Now, basically and fundamentally, the conduct of party primaries is within the domestic realm of each political party. Section 82 of the Electoral Act obligates every political party that wants to conduct party primaries to give the Independent National Electoral Commission the 21-day mandatory notice of its intention to conduct party primaries.

Now, if a political party does not give the Independent National Electoral Commission this 21-day notice, whatever it does becomes invalid. Now, the 18 registered political parties gave the commission this 21-day notice and we gave them the leeway, we gave them the elbow room to go and conduct their party primaries. They did the screening of their aspirants, they chose the venues of their party primaries and they chose the time.

Now, the procedure is that when a political party is conducting its party primaries, it will give us (as I pointed out), the venue and the time, and then we will send monitors to these places. We will monitor the conduct of such primaries and then issue a report. Thereafter, we give the national chairman of every registered political party that conducted party primaries an access code with which they will upload the list and personal particulars of their nominated candidates. When they are doing this upload, the commission is not there. Now, they have done this upload into our INEC Candidates Nomination Portal and the portal shut down at 6pm on the 17th day of June 2022.

Our responsibility this time around is to publish the list and personal particulars of the nominated candidates in their constituencies within a period of seven days, and that’s exactly what we are going to do. Section 285 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, which is the fundamental law of the land obligates any aspirant that is aggrieved by the processes and procedures for the conduct of the party primaries, somebody, who is aggrieved with whether the provisions of the Electoral Act have been violated or the provisions of the Constitution have been violated or that the rules and regulations and guidelines of his or her political party have been violated, to seek redress before a Federal High Court, and if the Federal High Court comes to the conclusion or makes a determination that the Electoral Act has been violated or that the rules and guidelines of a political party have not been complied with, it will make the necessary determination and issues the necessary orders, which we are constitutionally and legally bound to obey.

 So, that is where we are today. So, we have not published the list and personal particulars of the nominated candidates. I have not even seen the list of the nominated candidates, because these things are being downloaded at the nomination centre. We are not concerned about who has been nominated and who has not been nominated. Everything you are hearing emanates from the political parties themselves and not from the commission. You will hear from the commission the moment we publish.

The spokesperson to the Segun Oni Campaign Organisation, Moses Jolayemi and his principal were saying that INEC was compromised in the Ekiti election. Was INEC compromised? And what lessons has your organisation learnt from this entire process so far?

Well, the responsibility of the Independent National Electoral Commission is to organise, undertake and supervise elections. Our focus was on the processes and procedures of the conduct of the elections. In the past, we had issues and problems and challenges with the issue of deployment of our materials and staff. So, we focused on the issue of deployment, and from the report of the observers and from the report of critical stakeholders and from the report of political parties, it was very clear that as at 8.30am, over 90 per cent of all the polls had already opened. We also focused our attention on the deployment of technology in the electoral process. And also from the report of independent observers and also from the report of even international observers, it was very clear that BVAS performed optimally.

You can also see that even in terms of result upload into our result-viewing portal, as at 8pm on election day, over 94 per cent of the results had already come in real-time. So this Ekiti election was run transparently and it was also run in a very accountable manner. So, as far as the commission is concerned, we performed very well in terms of our processes, in terms of our procedures and also in terms of following our timelines that we embedded in our timetable and schedule of activities. So, as far as the commission is concerned, we did very well in Ekiti. But we also learnt a few lessons from the conduct of the election, which we are going to take to the Osun governorship election that will take place on the 16th day of July, 2022. 

Could you share with us some of those lessons that you learnt? Also, what is your reaction to a strongly-worded letter written by SERAP to your chairman, saying that if you do not prosecute those who were found to have been buying votes and engaged in ballot box snatching and other electoral malpractices, then you would be facing legal action?

I think that the era of giving ultimatums is no longer a very good way to go. I thought that what SERAP should do is to seek an appointment with the Independent National Electoral Commission so that we can explain to them what the issues are, in relation to the prosecution of electoral offenders. Now, at the level of the polling units, you will agree with me, we have four officials at the level of the polling units: the presiding officer, the assistant presiding officer I, II and III. The presiding officer is a corps member. There is a possibility that the presiding officer I is also a corps member and the rest may be students of federal tertiary institutions.

So, these are the people we have at the level of the polling units. The commission does not have a police force of its own nor do we control the security agencies. So, when an infraction takes place at the level of the polling units, it is the responsibility of the security agencies to carry out arrests, do their own investigations and then, the reports of those investigations and arrests can now get to the commission before we would be in a position to prosecute. If no arrest is made, if no investigation is conducted, there is no way the commission can prosecute.

So, our position has been: we are too busy with the processes and procedures of conducting elections and we have made it very clear. We went to the National Assembly and urged them to bring into being, an Electoral Offences Commission and Tribunal, that will take the responsibility for the arrest, investigation and prosecution of electoral offenders so that we can concentrate on our core mandate, which is the conduct of elections.

So I think that those who are giving an ultimatum to the Independent National Electoral Commission are not going in the right direction. What they should do is to seek an appointment with the Independent National Electoral Commission. We will sit down and dialogue, and then they will also tell us in what area they can give assistance so that together, we can make our electoral process very credible. But the issue of giving an ultimatum will not work in this particular instance.

What is the INEC, which is responsible for voter education, doing to educate the Nigerian voter to just desist from vote buying?

You know, this issue is not just the responsibility of the Independent National Electoral Commission. It is the responsibility of the Nigerian people. It’s the responsibility of all the critical stakeholders in the electoral process, to find ways and means of sanitising the electoral process so that we can give meaning and value and potency to the votes. The Independent National Electoral Commission has done its own bit by securing the secrecy of the votes through re-engineering the voting process, through making sure that the voting compartment is secret and also insisting that people should not go into the voting compartment with photographic equipment to photograph how they voted.

 The entire electoral process is organised in such a way that what we have is an open-secret ballot. You make your thumbprint in secret and then you vote in the open, and this is what some of them have been exploiting. I think that the basic issue is that we must take our advocacy and grievances to the political parties and the candidates and the aspirants, who go to the average Nigerian voters and corrupt them, relying on their vulnerabilities, relying on the poverty of our people and also relying on some other variables within our context. So, I think that that is where we should focus our attention.