Guardian 2015 elections will be different from past exercises, says Ikoiwak WEDNESDAY, 24 JULY 2013 00:00 ANIETIE BEN AKPAN FEATURES - POLICY & POLITICS Rivers State Resident Electoral Commissioner, Mr. Aniedi Ikoiwak, speaks about plans of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for free and fair elections in 2015 and other issues to ANIETIE BEN AKPAN in Eket. HAS INEC done appraisal of past elections as it prepares for next round of polls? We have done an appraisal where we did well and where we did not do well and where you need to improve. We have come to a conclusion that the accreditation processes were not fully carried out as envisaged by the commission. We had situations were people were working from answer to questions. Accreditation problem is supposed to determine the level of credibility and fairness of the poll; that is by ascertaining the number of persons who actually report at the polling unit to vote. And if that process can be gotten right, it means that the outcome of the ballot would also be gotten right. If we determine that 100 people were accredited, you don’t expect more than 100 votes in that unit. But we discovered that some of the people we used, especially the ad-hoc staff, were not really standing on this instruction. They allowed the politicians to fool them to the point of working from answers to questions. Most of them left the form for accreditation until after the elections and that means you determine the number of votes before coming to determine the number of accredited voters. That was an area that was porous — that allowed the politicians to influence the outcome of the polls in some areas. What is the commission putting in place to check these anomalies? The commission intends to perfect this accreditation process in such a way that every legible voter will be accredited by a device that will not be altered or be manipulated by even the officials of the commission. By the time this is done, whatsoever you want to do with all the ballot papers is irrelevant because by the time you go and thumb-print and come and put ballot paper in the box, the number of accredited voters has already been taken by this device, which you cannot, by any means, alter. By the time this is done, if the number of votes in the box is higher than the number accredited, automatically, such votes become a nullity. The device will also prevent anybody voting from outside to come and put the paper in the box; and it will also prevent a voter getting more than one ballot paper because, if by mistake or deliberate act somebody gives you two ballot papers to go into the cubicle to thumb-print, automatically, the box will have an increase — more than the number of accredited voters. This system has been tried in other Africa countries such as Kenya and Ghana and it has been very successful. Some of these things (experiment) were actually adopted in the All African Electoral Conference that was held in Abuja, where notes were compared and they discovered that Nigeria’s electoral system had more to offer other African countries. They (other countries) picked something from Nigeria’s electoral plan and went ahead, since their elections were closer and they applied some of these things and they worked for them. So, we cannot see how we, the commission, that actually brought some of these ideas cannot implement them in 2015. What I want to say is that the 2015 elections would be totally different from any other elections ever conducted in this country because the electoral commission has been able to identify the pitfalls or wrongs of the past. It has also sincerely come up with programmes and devices that would be able to prevent some of those occurrences of the past. The leadership is also honest about carrying out all these. One thing about politics, one thing about election is your ability to say this is what I have to do and you go straight to do it. I think that is one thing we have to give to the present Chairman of the commission. The accreditation process is the key because taking the result implies that you are going to change something that has already been recorded. You can recall the information in the device to confirm what was recorded. So, there will be no need of somebody coming to change anything, may be from 200 to 400 because by the time you change it, the accreditation position still remains 200. This time around, its not the issue of who did this; you would be known, as this device, this polling unit was manned by so and so person and the result of the election from this unit didn’t reflect the level of accreditation. Once that is established, the person you asked to change the result himself would know that he is going in. One thing most Nigerians don’t know about the 2011 elections is that there are lots of prosecutions going on for those who committed one electoral fraud or the other. Are you giving the assurance that multiple voting would be checked? Multiple voting, as I said, was as a result of the problem in the accreditation. Once the accreditation process is put right, other things would fall in place. Accreditation that will be done in 2015 will identify somebody and accredit that person and there will be no way of altering that accreditation. And as long as you can’t alter the accreditation, there is no way you can alter the result of the election. It, therefore, means that one person would be accredited at a time. With that, there would be no way for that person to double-vote. That is exactly what is going on. When that is done, it would take Nigerians to a point that you have to win election because people wanted you to win and not because you know somebody or you have all the money in the world or because you can bring thugs. It won’t be necessary to bring thugs to come and cause problem because everything you carry, even if you carry the ballot boxes, papers, and all the results and run away, it will not still benefit you. If you have all the voters’ cards distributed, it will not make any difference to you because you will still need the owners of the cards for the votes to be counted. It means that if you put all the cards in this house, on the day of election, you would still go out to bring all the people who own those cards, for the cards to be able to translate themselves into votes. So, what would be the sense in you doing all these things only to go back to the same people, because rigging is a method of depriving the actual man from deciding whom he or she wants to vote for? But this time around, the process of depriving that person is made so tight that you cannot do it. What are you going to do? You would not need to go all this long only to return to the same people and you still allow the people to determine who they want to vote. Now, politicians would be more focused. They would think of how their own programmes would convince the masses to vote for them so that the real meaning of democracy, which is a government of the people, by the people and for the people would be attained. In your screening, what percentage of multiple-registration did you discover? In printing the permanent voters’ cards, the commission has discovered that between 15 and 20 percent of those who registered in the 2011 elections were involved in multiple and double-registration. And none of those persons, who have their names in the new voters’ register, will have the cards printed for them because in 2011, after the registration of voters, the period was too close to the elections for a correct review to be done to the data collected from the fields. What was used for the election was like a raw data — something you take from the field and you take it to the election. So, some Nigerians, who manipulated the system by doing multiple and double-registration, had concluded that they were free because they had seen their names; they did not know that it was a raw data. These data, in the past years, had been subjected to serious review to the extent that wherever you registered more than once, your name would be deleted, not actually taken out of the system. Your name would be deposited in the system so that when you bring your temporary card and argue that you had registered and this is your temporary card, we would still use your pin number to look into the system, to know why your card was not printed. When you do that, and we discover that it was as a result of multiple-registration that your problem arose, at that point, you would know whether the law allows you to do that. You said INEC might not need the police in subsequent elections; can you throw more light on this assertion? What I am saying is that by the time Nigerians realise that the election is supposed to be something for the people; by the time the credibility is fully restored in the electoral process; and by the time those who sit on the fence to bring thugs would realise that their thugs would not do anything, there would come a time, not necessarily in 2015, when elections would be conducted without having the security agents to protect ballot boxes. The security can be there in the election, to ensure that there is no trouble around the electoral environment but the actual protection of the ballot boxes and electoral materials are things that, in future elections, would be eliminated because when people realise that there is no point going to kill and carry something that doesn’t benefit you, many people would refrain from it. When you have a reduced level of crime, you don’t really need so much of security. So, for those Nigerians who still think we are in yester years, some of them would go to jail in 2015. Arising from the 2011 elections, some people are currently being prosecuted nationwide. The mere fact that you have been taken to court is enough to tell the world that you have done something wrong. No matter how you manage to free yourself, people would still see you as blameworthy. And the next time you are asked to do something against the electoral process, you would refuse because you would remember the bitter experience. How did the recent re-organisation by INEC go? There were so many insinuations about the re-organisation in the commission. People said lots of things including tribal, ethnic, zonal tendencies and so on but by the time the restructuring was through, it was clear to everybody that the intention of putting the commission into a better light was attained. Even the staff members were jittery about the re-structuring. Some of them thought that the restructuring would put them out of work because they come from a different backgrounds or because they don’t have somebody to speak for them and so on. But at the end of the day, we discovered that it was their experience, qualifications and grades that put them where they were and, everybody is now where they are supposed to be — round pegs in round holes, square pegs in square holes. So, that has given people confidence in the commission: that internally, we can sit down, damn all the consequences and restructure the commission without looking at where somebody comes from, without looking at who we know. We tried to put people, who never had people to put them or speak for them. But their qualifications, experience, grade levels and so on were enough to put them where they are. This has given the commission a lot of confidence. For us who work in the commission, there is more energy to give now than what it used to be because there were insinuations here and there that it would cause one to begin to doubt whether if you put in your best, it would not be seen as undermining somebody else’s interest. But to everybody in the commission, it’s very clear that your best would be acknowledged, your best would be an added value to the system. The leadership of the commission has been able to secure what I would call a vote of confidence not only from members of staff, but also with other organisations that have something to do with the commission. And so, I have no doubt in my mind that the target set to have full, credible, more acceptable and enduring elections in 2015 would be attained.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 07:52:22 +0000
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