Nwagwu: There is Urgent Need to Reorganise INEC

Chairman, Partners for Electoral Reform and Executive Board member, YIAGA Africa, Ezenwa Nwagwu, in this interview with Emaneh Gabriel, speaks on salient electoral issues including pressing need for the electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission, to be overhauled to achieve optimum result.

Some individuals have asked that the Chairman of INEC be suspended or removed from office. How would you react to this, especially with the outcome of the 2023 poll?

A – Recently, there is a resurgence of attack, if you like, sometimes, not even institutional, I’m talking about personal attacks on the leadership of the the Independent National Electoral Commission.

For me, a lot of people use sophistry to engage election issues. Just recently, Olisa Agbakoba, SAN, hugely respected because of his contribution to the struggle for the restoration of democracy and human rights in Nigeria had taken a broadside, asking for the sack of the Chairman of the Electoral Commission and he hinged his call on what we know, which is the logistic challenges that dodged the 2023 presidential election.

But let me just say it clearly that for many people now, what they do is, ‘believe me, because my name is Olisa Agbakoba’, but  we’re not just going to believe you because your name is Olisa Agbakoba. We’re going to believe you only from the point of the knowledge of the real issues that you are able to exude.

Number one, when he made that call, he stayed quite a lot on the issue of logistics. But anybody who followed the 2023 elections will have been able to look at the context in which that election held. The issue of the unnecessary colouring of the Naira, which brought about shortage of cash both for citizens and for institutions, and for an organisation like INEC that its activities actually depend on vendor relationship.

That catastrophic policy of the Central Bank was a setback for logistics for the election. We also know the issue of fuel scarcity during that period. The circumstance around that election was held around the period of fuel scarcity and the rest of them.

In good time, the issue of perennial and logistic challenge is something we’ve not been able to cure, because we’re also a big country.

And we’re also now battling with issues of insecurity, banditry in some parts of the country. So under that kind of climate, somebody who is a participant observer in election issues should not make the kind of call that Olisa Agbakoba made.

Even more importantly, he (Agbakoba) also said recently that he made a shocking discovery that our election is manual, and I asked him ‘Where have you been?’ if as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria you don’t know that election in Nigeria is manual, then it means that you have no right to make a call on issues that are not very substantive.

But a lot of people apart from Agbakoba share the view that the electoral umpire didn’t perform well in the election. Even though some of them did not call or are not calling for the sack of the INEC Chairman, the general feeling is basically on the inability of the Commission to transmit results in real time, as they promised.

The work of the leadership of INEC is to inspire confidence in the electoral process. And you don’t expect the leadership of INEC to come out to say before the election that there will be glitches. They should inspire confidence. And one of the ways to inspire confidence is a process that is their own. This process is entirely INEC’s initiative, the IREV. And I think many times we make that mistake. It is part of the reform process that the Professor Mahmoud-led commission initiated to help interested parties to follow the election.

Now, it is not a civil society creation. It is not a media creation. It is INEC itself that said, look, we’ve checked our records. There is no way anybody can get 1999 election results in the cloud. There is no way we can get 2007 election results in the cloud.

Now and I need this to be properly put in context and understood. The issue of transmission of results is an add on. I don’t know how many times we will put this, it is something that is added. The conclusion of election collation announcement of results ends when form EC8a has been given to a party agent. Once the results is entered manually, because election is polling unit-centric. It is very important to underscore this. It is a polling unit event. When everybody has cast their votes and it is counted. It is recorded in a form called form EC8a, that form is given to the party agents. It is given to security. It is that result that is entered manually, that is now uploaded into the IREV. Now what does that tell you, results and announcements have ended.

 Would you agree that INEC failed to educate citizens on some of these processes you have explained?

Nigeria is the only country where people say that you do not carry us along. You should carry yourself along, you should invest in knowing especially if you will have opportunity of public commentary.

Because the tragedy of public commentary is that ignorance parades as authority. Yes, there are institutions of states that have responsibility for voter education and for civic education. NOA for instance. Have you bothered about the budget of the NOA? What is the budget of NOA to carry out these enormous responsibility? It is NOA that will talk on polio. It is NOA that will talk on water sanitation. But has anybody taken the pains to say this organisation that has this enormous responsibility, what is the amount of money that is available for them to do this work?

Civil society organisations are donor dependent. Oftentimes you touch these issues, but how much can we do? It’s is a big country. It is my worry, is not the citizens.

My worry is public commentary. We provide our platform for ignorant people to explain things that they know little or nothing about and cause a whole confusion.

In fact, part of my recommendation is that we should also begin to have a connection between mental health issues and election commentary. Because oftentimes what you see baffles you.

There were four reports issued before this election, citing the number of places political parties have presence in the 36 states of the country. Not many of us have interest, those reports are available. No one went to check to know where people have presence or where they don’t have presence.

INEC published the percentage of party agents that political parties have  before this election. How many of us took time to find out what is the percentage of party agents that party ‘A’ had before the election?

Many of these political parties were claiming that they have citizen agents. That citizens will be the observers. That is preposterous. Preposterous because citizens agents do not get from EC8a, it is only accredited party agents that can collect form EC8A. So if you say you have citizen agents, it means you do not have agents at the polling unit level.

Are you trying to say that INEC does not have any blame in all that happened? They promised to upload results in real time. INEC assured Nigerians but at the end of it all, many Nigerians were not pleased.

Listen, issues of perennial logistic challenges that all of us know and I’m putting it in context that that’s what happened for the things that I and you also know. But  that in spite of that INEC pressed forward.

There is no way we can dismiss the shenanigans that happened during the election, there are such issues. But the positives, and that’s the point for me, the positives far outweigh the negatives.

The positives are so many. Number one, challenge me that the president of a country, as you know how it is done, will just say okay, let me lose in my state.

The chairman of a ruling party, will lose his constituency to an opposition political party. Many governors lost their deposits for the National Assembly where they have taken as retirement places. Those positives for me is something that we can.

So, I’m not saying that there were no issues. An election is not a church service. Election is a competitive enterprise. We give comfort to the real people who cause challenges in the election. INEC does not cause voter suppression. Politicians do in collaboration with disgruntled INEC officials, right?

INEC does not unleash violence; politicians unleash violence, and  their political parties. Now 90% of the time in discussing 2023 election, you focus on INEC and you leave the role of security agents. You leave the role of the political parties and their candidates and the role they play in making bad elections. INEC will bring its ballot box. In the most remote part of this country, there will be ballot box. INEC officials were killed in 2023 election, they are Nigerians.

INEC officials were kidnapped. By whom? Who kidnapped them? Who murdered them. We provide comfort for the political class and their inability to embrace reforms and conduct themselves in a manner that allows for free and fair election. So, I’m not saying there were no issues and nobody can say that. But I am more interested in the positives. And I’m saying those who should criticise, when you say INEC said it will upload results real time and it didn’t do so.

I am saying that you are dealing with a moral issue. It has nothing to do with the law. Because the law has been satisfied when collation and announcements has been concluded.

But we should be concerned about the credibility of an election?

What is the credibility of an election? The credibility of an election is not a one stop thing. And that has been the one thing we have laboured to say. If you talk about credibility of election, are you going to take away that BVAS worked well in 98 percent?  Is not part of the election.

I’m not bothered about outcome. Outcome of an election is a preoccupation of partisan people. If all you are bothered about is result, then you are not invested in process.

Election is a process. I am more interested in processes that lead to that outcome.

Let the politicians be interested in outcome. I’m interested in, did poll open on time? If it opens on time, in what number of polling units did it open on time? If it didn’t open on time? What did INEC do to make sure that people who registered are not left out in casting their votes?

The instrument to ensure that those who approach the presiding officer to cast their votes are your authentic owners, how did it perform? Also the collection and announcement of results. Now, if you have 176,000 polling units, and there are issues in 10,000 polling units, can you justifiably say that that election was bad? Because 10,000 polling units were affected by either violence or issues, in that 160,000 polling units that things went well, that is not important to you? It’s not important to the country that in 160,000 polling units, things went well?

Look at Lagos for instance, where we talked about voter suppression. Have you bothered to know the number of polling units in Lagos and find out the percentage of polling units that there were voter suppression?

There are 13,000 polling units in Lagos. In how many polling units did you have those challenges?

In Abuja here for instance, there were places where voting entered into the night; and most of our TV stations focused on that particular polling units where election was not completed on time. Did you bother about the greater number of polling units where election was concluded on time and there were no issues. So you don’t say because one place has problem, that the whole election is bad. That’s the challenge that we’re having. Until you understand that you need to deal with process.

So, I’m saying that elections may have gone bad in some places, but what is the overall? how do you look at overall. Now, to close on this matter. 13 million people voted in different ways during the election. Eight million people voted for the winner of the election. So if you are doing perception survey for instance and you go to the streets of Abuja, you are likely going to be talking to part of those 13 million people.

They will be higher in number than the eight million people and when people win election, they go and start chasing for Office, they no longer talk.

So, when you say many people are talking, Are you talking to the 13 million people who voted in different ways? Who are angry that the outcomes that they expected including civil society people who are still pained that the outcome that they imagined did not come to pass.

We also ran 2023 election on the climate of prophecy. Where pastors, and people believe their pastors, have said ‘this is what God has said that somebody will win the election’.

And if you’re a Christian like me once your pastor says this person wins, if he doesn’t win then it is rigged. But we should also understand that God Almighty is bigger than the pastor. If the pastor says something and it does not come to pass it means God did not say it.

These are the climate under which we ran 2023 election where prophecies became the barometer for measuring whether somebody win an election or not and the man who is talking has no understanding of the process.

What reforms should we be pushing for going forward?

So the first thing I want to be engaged in and I think the media and civil society should pay attention to is the issue of party organisation, political party organisation.

I think that this idea of political parties being food catching machines needs to change. Where people run primaries in a political party, lose in that political party. And then within 48 hours, they become presidential candidate of another political party. It diminishes us as a people. We need to engage those issues, and that is why some people are talking about unbundling of INEC so that you can have a political party, registration, oversight commission that looks at those issues of internal party democracy. We saw that the political parties were a shame. People who could not conduct their own primaries. 90% of the cases you have in court are pre-election issues that have to do with candidate’s selection.

I think that we need to pay a lot of attention to the issue of political party organisation. And donors need to invest in training of political parties. The PDP when it was set up had a PDI, a People’s Democratic Institute. Where it trained its cadres. It organised seminars and workshops. The PDI is dead today.

There are no political parties that have training platform for their members. Now membership of political party is fluid. Fluid to the extent that you can be APC in the morning, PDP in the evening and Labour Party the next day. we need to deal with that very quickly.

On the funding of political parties, we need to be clear that big pockets do not hijack political parties in the way we have seen it and chief executives of states do not become the people running those political parties because there will not be level playing ground if it is the governor or the president that funds the political party and not the members. That’s number one.

Number two is INEC. We need to look at INEC from the point of whether the interventions that we have used over the years are still working. For instance, the issue of returning officers from universities. Politicians have known that either way you are going to recruit your returning officers from contingent universities and there is already collaboration with Vice Chancellors by politicians to try as much as compromise returning officers. And we saw evidence of that in some of those places.

We need to see whether that’s intervention, we are not going to rejig it a bit. We want to also look at the appointment of resident electoral commissioners.

The media was also part of the struggle to make sure that people with partisan background were not allowed into INEC. What did we see? We saw that the National Assembly subverted all our efforts and brought in people who had partisan background and some of them had conflict of interest issues. And that manifested in the way they run election in their states. Many of them had partisan backgrounds. Many of them were appointed by people who are in government. So appointment of residents electoral commissioners and national commissioners need to have a deeper scrutiny.