No doubt as an umpire, these are not happy times for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The scenarios playing out as the aftermath of parties primary elections, have brought to the fore, the decay and desperation that has come to characterize the Nigerian political landscape. Politicians leave nothing to chance and they are ready to actualise their ambition by all means, fair or foul. As an electoral umpire, the law bestows on INEC the responsibility not only to conduct fair contests amongst parties but to also ensure internal party democracy and fair play among all contestants. This much has become the challenge facing the commission as it has become apparent hat politicians only pay lip service to their desire for internal party democracy. They only remember the term when they have been short changed by superior powers.
With the conclusion of primary elections by political parties which the INEC monitored in accordance with provisions of the law, the commission expected little or no squabbles in the process of submitting names of candidates by the parties. During the congresses and conventions, INEC was on ground to record the outcomes and thus is aware of who the winners are. Surprisingly, when several political parties decided to forward names of aspirants alien to the commission thereby generating unnecessary acrimony and confusion in the polity. Imagine the name of a candidate who scored 5000 votes during the primary election making the list while the aspirant with 10,000 votes is left out. The parties have all conspired and are happy to reduce INEC to a mere onlooker in the process of selecting their candidates for elections.
Realizing the damage which the National Assembly has done, INEC’s Resident Electoral Commission (REC) in Cross River State, Mr. Mike Igini, said the electoral process is in danger. Speaking on the issues recently in Abuja, Igini said top officials of INEC, including the chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega, have just discovered that when they approached the National Assembly for amendments to enable INEC shift the 2011 elections to April, extraneous clauses were inserted to render INEC ineffective.
He said, “In public policy making, lawmakers must see their sacrosanct roles as statesmen and women who must make laws that are applicable at all times and not for the narrow elitist interest of a few. These facts need to be brought before the public domain so that the general public which reposes much trust on INEC, must know that on the matter of remedies for deviations in party internal democracy, INEC has been completely emasculated by lawmakers.
“It is noteworthy that as an electoral management body, INEC has been working under legal uncertainty as the Electoral Act was undergoing amendment being the guiding statute for conducting electoral processes. However, having perused within the last 24 hours the gazetted copy of the Electoral Act, 2010 of December 29 as amended, it has become clear that the dictatorship intent in elitism has triumphed over the overarching pluralism that Nigerian people clamour for in matters of internal democracy.
“Whereas, in the amended Electoral Act, 2010, this provision has been expunged by the lawmakers; more significantly, to nail the coffin of Section 87 (9), the lawmakers introduced a new provision to Section 31 (1) which completely strips INEC of any say in the matter of disqualification of nominees submitted by political parties. This new provision states that: ‘Every political party shall, not later than 60 days before the date appointed for a general election under the provisions of this Bill, submit to the commission in the prescribed forms, the list of candidates the party proposes to sponsor at the elections, provided that the Commission shall not reject or disqualify candidates for any reasons whatsoever.”
Arguing in the same vein, INEC National Commissioner in charge of Legal Services, Barrister Philip Umeadi, said the power of INEC to monitor the conduct of political parties also includes the power to ‘reproach’ and to call the parties to order when they go wrong. Umeadi said, “we have our reports about the primaries of political parties which we conducted and the electoral act gives us ample rights to refuse to accept candidates emanating from primaries that we in our opinion, feel does not conform to democratic practices.”
This has been the case with some parties. The quagmire that has been orchestrated by the national Assembly has now created an ugly situation where parties conduct congresses just to satisfy the provision of Section 87 of the Act and then turn around to forward strange names to INEC relying on Section 31 (1) of the same Act. Some observers have accused the lawmakers of deliberately creating the window of confusion to allow for power play and muscle flexing in the process of emerging as party candidates. Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, had raised alarm on the dangerous provision which could have allowed the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to still forward the name of President Goodluck Jonathan even if Atiku had done the difficult task of winning the party’s primary.
The democratic process is far from attaining an unassailable height where it becomes invincible. Internal party democracy has taken a worse turn because a handful of individuals opportuned to have power have decided to entrench anarchy within the parties. As the ruling party tows the line of confusion, smaller parties also benefit from the opportunity created. There are many politicians now parading themselves as candidates of party A and B that never contested any primary elections because the smaller parties don’t conduct primaries. Their candidates emerge as products of nocturnal meetings and negotiations. This reporter overheard some party officials negotiating a deal with some politicians to field them as candidates on the night INEC says submission of names expires. Those to be candidates were decampees from other parties who had nowhere to go but are bent on contesting elections.
Some candidates only became members of their present parties long after January 15, when INEC said time for primary election had lapsed. But presently such politicians have all managed to squeeze into the list of candidates. To all these anomalies, INEC can only bark because it cannot reject candidates sent by the parties for any reason.
With the conclusion of primary elections by political parties which the INEC monitored in accordance with provisions of the law, the commission expected little or no squabbles in the process of submitting names of candidates by the parties. During the congresses and conventions, INEC was on ground to record the outcomes and thus is aware of who the winners are. Surprisingly, when several political parties decided to forward names of aspirants alien to the commission thereby generating unnecessary acrimony and confusion in the polity. Imagine the name of a candidate who scored 5000 votes during the primary election making the list while the aspirant with 10,000 votes is left out. The parties have all conspired and are happy to reduce INEC to a mere onlooker in the process of selecting their candidates for elections.
But many even within the electoral body were unaware of the genesis that led to the revolution that has been witnessed since the submission of names of candidates to INEC. The source of all the brouhaha now going on in the polity is none other than the National Assembly which has cleverly made contradictory insertions into the Electoral Act. The legislature crafted some clauses in the Act that clip the wings of INEC rendering it lame on issues bordering on who becomes a party candidate. The Commission has presently found itself in a web of controversy. In respecting an aspect of law, it has monitored the congresses and conventions and has records of winners but another aspect of the law forbids it from upholding the results it has gathered from the field. The parties reign supreme on issues of candidacy.
Realizing the damage which the National Assembly has done, INEC’s Resident Electoral Commission (REC) in Cross River State, Mr. Mike Igini, said the electoral process is in danger. Speaking on the issues recently in Abuja, Igini said top officials of INEC, including the chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega, have just discovered that when they approached the National Assembly for amendments to enable INEC shift the 2011 elections to April, extraneous clauses were inserted to render INEC ineffective.
According to Igini, the amendments have led to “castration of INEC” and making it unable to enforce internal democracy in various political parties. In a one page address to journalists titled: “Amended Electoral Act 2010: The Death Of Section 87 (9) And The Internment Of Internal Party Democracy”.
He said, “In public policy making, lawmakers must see their sacrosanct roles as statesmen and women who must make laws that are applicable at all times and not for the narrow elitist interest of a few. These facts need to be brought before the public domain so that the general public which reposes much trust on INEC, must know that on the matter of remedies for deviations in party internal democracy, INEC has been completely emasculated by lawmakers.
“It is noteworthy that as an electoral management body, INEC has been working under legal uncertainty as the Electoral Act was undergoing amendment being the guiding statute for conducting electoral processes. However, having perused within the last 24 hours the gazetted copy of the Electoral Act, 2010 of December 29 as amended, it has become clear that the dictatorship intent in elitism has triumphed over the overarching pluralism that Nigerian people clamour for in matters of internal democracy.
“To be clear, Section 87 (9) of the preceding Electoral Act, 2010 clearly underscored the inherent ability of INEC as a Commission to arbiter timeously on contentious party nominations which do not follow stated party guidelines by specifying in Section 87 (9) of the old Electoral Act that: ‘Where a political party fails to comply with the provisions of this Act in the conduct of its primaries, its candidate for election shall not be included in the election for the particular position in issue,”.
“Whereas, in the amended Electoral Act, 2010, this provision has been expunged by the lawmakers; more significantly, to nail the coffin of Section 87 (9), the lawmakers introduced a new provision to Section 31 (1) which completely strips INEC of any say in the matter of disqualification of nominees submitted by political parties. This new provision states that: ‘Every political party shall, not later than 60 days before the date appointed for a general election under the provisions of this Bill, submit to the commission in the prescribed forms, the list of candidates the party proposes to sponsor at the elections, provided that the Commission shall not reject or disqualify candidates for any reasons whatsoever.”
“By using this blanket phrase ‘any reasons whatsoever’, the law makers have stripped INEC, the supposed umpire, of the ability to determine the qualification or status of any candidate submitted by a party, irrespective of any circumstances surrounding a candidate’s status, the party now dictates , how, who and why a candidate can contest in an election in which they are participating, even if INEC has doubts, it must seek legal interpretation in a court that has no timeline and cannot stop a party’s candidate from taking part in an election conducted by INEC.
“This is akin to a referee being asked to play the role of a spectator regarding who participates in an election. This development can only spell doom for internal democracy of parties which, as we all know, has been the primogeniture crisis for much of the conflict that has bedeviled development of parties and therefore the development of a sustainable democratic culture in our country because an open elitist field only selects candidates who have in most cases, not gone through proper party democratic approbation, as we are currently witnessing in the crises within most parties.
“When such candidates pass through such imposition, they also hope to go through the main elections by violent or forceful means. Any wonder why we have to constantly manage politicians who want to win at all cost at great cost to the public finances? Sadder still is the fact that this rape on the democratic process was enabled by lawmakers many of whom are now victims because over 50% of them are unlikely to return and have become casualties of the undermining of the pluralist controls which were inherent on INEC and the courts and which has been stripped without any time frames for remedial actions by section 31(1) and 87(10) of the new Electoral Act 2010.”
Arguing in the same vein, INEC National Commissioner in charge of Legal Services, Barrister Philip Umeadi, said the power of INEC to monitor the conduct of political parties also includes the power to ‘reproach’ and to call the parties to order when they go wrong. Umeadi said, “we have our reports about the primaries of political parties which we conducted and the electoral act gives us ample rights to refuse to accept candidates emanating from primaries that we in our opinion, feel does not conform to democratic practices.”
Jega gave the legislature another opportunity to correct some of the provisions that lawmakers felt could nail their coffins at the primaries. They did not only seize it but used to impact negatively on the democratic process. And when the chief electoral umpire complained, he was summoned and summarily ordered to shut up. Section 87 of the Electoral Act has now been rubbished by Section 31. While section 87 insists on candidates emerging through a democratic process that must be monitored by INEC, Section 31 says parties have the final say on who becomes a candidate irrespective of the means.
An example that played out recently is that of Kano State Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) governorship candidate. Though INEC maintained that the Kano CPC governorship primary election was won by Mohammed Sani Abacha who polled the highest votes, the party insisted on fielding the name of retired Colonel Lawal Ja’afaru Isah as its candidate. The commission had no choice and after some show of resilience, caved in to pressure and legal handicaps by accepting the name of Isah. Invariably and by implication, a party can forward the name of a candidate who never even contested in the primary election.
This has been the case with some parties. The quagmire that has been orchestrated by the national Assembly has now created an ugly situation where parties conduct congresses just to satisfy the provision of Section 87 of the Act and then turn around to forward strange names to INEC relying on Section 31 (1) of the same Act. Some observers have accused the lawmakers of deliberately creating the window of confusion to allow for power play and muscle flexing in the process of emerging as party candidates. Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, had raised alarm on the dangerous provision which could have allowed the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to still forward the name of President Goodluck Jonathan even if Atiku had done the difficult task of winning the party’s primary.
The democratic process is far from attaining an unassailable height where it becomes invincible. Internal party democracy has taken a worse turn because a handful of individuals opportuned to have power have decided to entrench anarchy within the parties. As the ruling party tows the line of confusion, smaller parties also benefit from the opportunity created. There are many politicians now parading themselves as candidates of party A and B that never contested any primary elections because the smaller parties don’t conduct primaries. Their candidates emerge as products of nocturnal meetings and negotiations. This reporter overheard some party officials negotiating a deal with some politicians to field them as candidates on the night INEC says submission of names expires. Those to be candidates were decampees from other parties who had nowhere to go but are bent on contesting elections.
Some candidates only became members of their present parties long after January 15, when INEC said time for primary election had lapsed. But presently such politicians have all managed to squeeze into the list of candidates. To all these anomalies, INEC can only bark because it cannot reject candidates sent by the parties for any reason.
NEC now has on its hand, a list of several people who grabbed their tickets to run by crooked means. The primaries in most cases have been nothing than sham contests made to look real by old crafty politicians who have now become veterans of rigging and maneuvering. The commission must now be wary of these characters who will surely try to play the game of do-or-die and win-at-all-cost during the forthcoming polls.
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