30,000 polling units: JEGA’s contradictions and defiance In his recent contradictory statements in the Guardian newspaper ofTuesday October 23, 2014, Professor Attahiru Jega appears intent upon fomenting conflict with his new polling unit allocations, which he appears besotted with irrespective of informed advice to the contrary from the Senate, security agencies, INEC Commissioners, and the political parties’ chairmen he sought their views at a meeting he convened. This is in addition to his defiance of an on-going matter in court instituted by a political party. To understand conflict and how conflicts in societies should be viewed, there are disagreements about whether conflict is constructive or destructive and whether they should be prescribed or proscribed. For the aforestated reasons, the understanding of conflict may be viewed from four schools of thinking, namely: the functionalist who argue that conflicts are bad and destructive and should be proscribed as much as possible; then there are the humanists who aver that conflict is part of human behaviour and are necessary for human relations because it may have transformative impact where it can be used to overcome repression and hegemonic domination. A third school, the interactionist view conflict as absolutely necessary for functioning, survival and healthy group activities, while a fourth school of thought, the structuralist, believes that conflict is a dynamic force rooted in social structures of domination due to incompatible goals, values and interests. While there are disagreements about how conflict should be viewed, there is wide agreement that conflicts arising from plural and heterogeneous societies where diversity is an issue, often stem from the intention of one group to dominate others, or attempt to change the rules guiding expected behaviour to favour specific groups. In Nigeria the perceptions of ethno-religious and political domination is real across the North/South divide and in many cases also misperceived. Such perceptions of domination may be actual or misconceived, but for an electoral umpire, such trust deficit is absolutely devastating to public institution building. This is why, even though Jega may have noble or dishonorable intentions, any act capable of fomenting mistrust among the political public for INEC should be kept at arms-length. Even the early philosophers such as Plato and his student, Aristotle, agree that factionalism of society arises often from the perpetuation of inequality in society fuelled by leadership incompetence and the zeal for political wealth and privilege, such assertion was also supported by Cicero who urged that the inequity of a master-slave relationship between groups of elites and others in society should be rejected. It is, however, clear from the words and acts of Professor Jega in recent months that, rather than create harmonious alliances between ruling elites and fraternal respect for citizens, he is bent on deepening the perceptions of inequity and dominium which has widened the divides of social exclusion in the Nigerian polity. When INEC announced the creation of over 21,000 new polling units for states in the North and 8, 000 new polling units for states in the South, many reflexively rejected such disparities, knowing that the utility of polling units serves equal purposes for all geopolitical zones of the country, and that regarding the population of eligible voters such disparity was not justifiable by any criteria. However, some people were ready to hear from the erudite professor who had surmounted some very huge national electoral challenges previously with admirable calm and candour. But as INEC and its officials continued to give fatuous explanations for the disparities, the perceptions of inequities grew stronger and have grown even stronger with many contradictions in Professor Jega’s recent defense in the Guardian newspaper interview. For example, the INEC chairman claimed that the new polling units have not been created, yet he did not refute claims that within his Commission memos and circulars to effect the new polling units allocations have been issued, and his personnel even given deadlines to execute such orders. He then claimed that the polling units were meant to meet the aspirations of Nigerians to decongest polling units on election days. This may be a good reason but is it the actual reason? By the policy process when a policy kite is flown to acquaint citizens of the identification of a problem or opportunity, this is often done to test its acceptability; the consultations with all sectors of stakeholders both from within and outside INEC so far on the issue of 30,000 polling units show that it is a very bad idea not on account of decongestion and emergence of new settlement but principally because of the inequity which attends Jega’s approach to the matter. For instance, there is no plausible explanation why the entire Southern Nigeria should be allocated 8,000 polling units equivalent to the allocation to the North West zone alone, nor can it be explained how the entire South Eastern zone was allocated less new polling units, than Niger State, or any of the 11 other states in the North which all got over 1000 new polling units allocated to them, while only Lagos, the most populated state in Nigeria was seen as the only area in the entire South that needs as many new polling units. In his entire explanation, Jega who is a Professor of Political Science did not give any scientific explanation to justify an exercise that the rest of the world conducts using GIS scanning, cadastral mapping and census data. Even the internal data which INEC has expended huge public funds to acquire are now being repudiated by Jega, albeit, unsuccessfully, hiding under cover of a purported Post-AFIS register, which many have described as a faulty register containing biometric data which is distorted by incomplete data capture. For reasons best known to Jega, he has tried to refute the existence of a Post-Business-Rule voters register, the same register vaunted by his Commission as the cleanest copy of the voter roll which helped to remove many double registrations and which was used to produce the Permanent Voters card that his Commission is distributing, and the same register used in Anambra, Ekiti, Osun and several by-elections by this same INEC. Finally, he was mute on the outstanding figures, which should be the outcome of adding the figures used to produce the PVCs and the figures estimated from the added number of eligible voters who registered in the recent continuous voter registration exercise. How a Professor who was zealous to get such clear figures in 2011 came to be very eager to purvey fuzzy figures, is a measure of the transition that Professor Jega has made and which now makes him a principal suspect in the instigation of social conflict that may attend the 2015 election. Professor Jega can abate this potential social conflict by coming clean with the Post-Business rule figure of eligible voters for the 2015 election, this is a matter that is a statutory right of voters and citizens to know, most of the figures are already in the public domain, but if INEC insist on the mixed messages it currently purveys, the full weight of the Freedom of Information Act may be thrown at the Commission, to inform us about the actual eligible voters roll and the evidence of authenticated delimitation of constituency exercise which informed this lopsided polling unit allocations. Dr. Tunji Ademola , a political analyst, wrote from Lagos
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 12:45:43 +0000
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