Bumpy ride to the polls

Things are really spinning out of order in an annoying manner as we head towards the general elections in Nigeria this February. It is bad enough that many citizens were unable to register for the elections during the very limited window opportunity provided by the electoral body. It is also worrisome that many registered voters are unable to collect their Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs), less than three weeks to the election, even as the electoral body admits that some of the cards are still being expected from the printers. As if that is not enough stress, the politicos have refused to allow us focus on more weighty issues about the elections.

For the past few weeks, so much focus had been on the academic qualification of Muhammadu Buhari, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC). One initially thought there was nothing to fuss over there, but it consistently made it to the front burner. Let me quickly address this issue dispassionately here.

Section 131 of the Nigerian Constitution says a candidate for president must have been “educated up to at least School Certificate level”. On the face of it, being educated up to school certificate level means you studied and got to the stage of writing the school certificate examination. You need not have passed the examination; otherwise it should have been couched as a person who “has obtained the school certificate”.

More importantly, the interpretation section of the Constitution (Section 318(1)) defined “School Certificate or its equivalent” to mean:

(a) a Secondary School Certificate or its equivalent, or Grade II Teacher’s Certificate, the City and Guilds Certificate; or (b) education up to Secondary School Certificate level; or (c) Primary Six School Leaving Certificate or its equivalent and

(i) service in the public or private sector in the federation in any capacity acceptable to the Independent National Electoral Commission for a minimum of ten years, and

(ii) attendance at courses and training in such institutions as may be acceptable to the Independent National Electoral Commission for periods totalling up to a minimum of one year, and

(iii) the ability to read, write, understand and communicate in the English language to the satisfaction of the Independent National Electoral Commission, and

(d) any other qualification acceptable by the Independent National Electoral Commission.”

Thus, even if a candidate did not obtain any other qualification, he or she would still be qualified under paragraph (c) if the person had just the primary six school leaving certificate had served in the public or private sector for a minimum of 10 years and satisfies INEC that he or she can read, write, understand and communicate in English. The clincher, however, is paragraph (d) which says “any other qualification acceptable to INEC”. The question, therefore, is: has INEC accepted Buhari’s qualification? Clearly it has and it has said so.

Another annoying issue ahead of the elections is violence. Although the major candidates and parties in the election openly embraced each other and promised to run a violence-free campaign, incidents of violence have been reported now and again, just like hate messages are flying all over the place openly and clandestinely. Like many citizens, I have received a few hate messages from known and unknown contacts, all claiming to love me, my faith, my region etc so much that they take the privilege to urge me to support a particular way. I waste no time to tell the senders that their messages are hate message and idiotic. This is where I expect to see the effectiveness of our security operatives to trace the sources of these messages and go after them.

And while all this is going on, highly-placed politicians, including state governors, have engaged in similar hate speeches such as referring to fellow citizens as cockroaches or suggesting illness and nearness to death of opponents. There are also the disturbing reports of physical attacks on the campaign team of President Goodluck Jonathan, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

While one condemns every act of violence, the police and other security operatives have no excuse for failing to arrest and prosecute culprits after every act of such violence. The problem stems from describing these acts as ‘electoral or political violence’ the same way we classify some other acts of violence as ‘domestic violence’. Whenever we do so, we then suggest that those acts of violence should be treated as ‘political’ or within the family, as the case may be. I submit that the best way to handle violence is to first see it as the crime that it is and act accordingly. That is the minimum irreducible standard we must insist on and we must do so as we continue on this bumpy road towards the general elections which is 20 days away.

Published on Sunday January 25, 2015 at http://www.thenicheng.com/bumpy-ride-polls/ 

A case for non-violent elections

After more than one week of mainly negative campaigning by the two major political parties, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) towards next month’s general elections, a seeming respite came last Wednesday. On that occasion, the presidential candidates of the two parties, incumbent president, Goodluck Jonathan and challenger, Muhammadu Buhari publicly signed a pact against electoral violence. It was supervised by two eminent world citizens of African extraction, former Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan and former Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Emeka Anyaoku. It extracted from both candidates a commitment to ensure peaceful elections and good conduct.

This peace deal, if only it would percolate through the ranks of the political parties and their supporters, represents a key step in rolling back the fear that has gripped the country since it became clear that 2015 is a rematch of 2011 presidential contest. As the electioneering commenced, there had been incidents of intemperate use of language by the parties and their supporters with fears that things could easily slip into more grievous situations. Two incidents in one week, the torching of a Jonathan campaign minivan in Jos and the bombing of APC office in Okrika, Rivers State set off the alarm bells. Matters are made worse by the involvement of religious and traditional leaders in the cacophony.

With the open embrace of peace by Jonathan and Buhari, it behoves us to hold them to account by ensuring that their supporters at all times are put in check. The attention of those supporters needs to be drawn to the rare photograph of a warm embrace, handshake and smiles between their principals to let them realise that this contest does not call for any bloodletting for two members of the elite class who have a way of connecting at that level.

It was also good that both men used that occasion to bare their minds on what they considered the cause or fillip for electoral violence. One reason, according to President Jonathan is the practice of winner takes all wherein a victorious party or candidate grabs every space in government without conceding opportunities to the loser. It makes good reason therefore to encourage the formation of broad-based government or what we call ‘government of national unity’ to ensure every party gets a chance. But that of course defeats the idea of ideological political parties and validates the idea of ‘come and chop’ or ‘food is ready’ governance.

I think however that the major causes of electoral violence include manipulation of the system and the citizens, breach of the rules or ignorance thereof. From our experience, the greatest threat to our electoral system is the political class itself whose members would not hesitate to bite their noses to spite their faces. And this explains the notion that election is too serious a matter to be left for politicians alone, more so, when many have chosen politics as a livelihood and would do anything to preserve such ‘livelihood’. 

The manipulation of the system finds expression in the muscling of interests and candidates during the internal selection processes of political parties and often results in pre-election violence which is usually under-reported. There is also the manipulation of the system in the main elections, a deliberate effort by the politicians; armed with deep pockets raised in inordinate fundraisers which themselves breach the law on political party campaigns, with impunity.

With such huge finances, crooked politicians find it easy to buy their ways to victory by compromising officials and daring the aggrieved persons to seek legal redress, which in our climes can often be long, tortuous and sometimes mere academic. This much Muhammadu Buhari alluded to on that occasion. And so, when interested persons see the legal system as unlikely to help them from the electoral rape they suffer, they would rather fight to finish on the field, thus resorting to violence.

By far the greatest threat to post election violence would be the issue of ignorance. For many of the voters, the election would begin and end in their locations. So, whoever wins in their polling unit would be assumed to be the winner of the final election. It behoves on the political parties and other agencies of citizen’s mobilisation to explain this to voters. 

Very importantly, in the presidential election, a candidate must not only win the majority of the valid votes cast, but must in addition score 25 percent of the votes in two-thirds of the states, which is 24. There is a possibility of a candidate not getting both of this in the first balloting, on which account a runoff election would be imperative to decide the winner by simple majority of votes cast. This fact needs to be explained to the voters as a step to avoiding unnecessary expectations, anxiety and possible violence.

I really wish the political parties could agree to stop the campaigning for votes now but focus on campaigning against electoral violence by beginning to talk more with their supporters. After all, with 27 days to the presidential election, most voters have already made up their minds how they would vote.

Published January 18, 2015

Time to exorcise religion from politics

The problem with sentiments is that you cannot limit the ridiculous extent it could be pushed to since they not based on laid down rules. A good example of that is the attempt to bring religion into politics, starting with the question of the faith of the occupants of public office. This issue keeps creeping into public discourse whenever we approach presidential and sometimes gubernatorial elections. It comes like the issue of ethnicity, geopolitical zone or state of origin of contenders to offices. This argument drains the energy from not only the contestants but their political parties and by extension, the citizens. And in so doing, we lose the opportunity to raise real issues of governance and competence of candidates.

This unnecessary discussion is again attempting to upstage more important issues this electioneering season. As stated above, there cannot be a limit to the extension of the argument. Last week, the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) in Enugu added its demand by questioning what it sees as the impending ‘Catholic-Catholic’ leadership of the state government. I know you are as confused as I was when I heard that. By this description, the Anglicans are saying that the next governor and deputy governor of Enugu State are likely to be Roman Catholics, meaning that an Anglican will not be in the Government House. Apparently they consider such a possibility as serious concern to the existence of Anglicans or the practice of their faith that their leadership had to address a press conference. So that is what we have reduced governance to? It is no longer about Christianity and Islam but since Enugu State is predominantly Christian, the division should now be one of denomination.

As ridiculous as this sounds on the surface of it, on deeper thought, I thank the Anglican priests for their selfish and narrow interest which has helped us reason further to show how so vacuous the whole discussion about religion in public office can be. As a matter of fact, the Anglicans, through the Archbishop of Enugu, Emmanuel Chukwuma are demanding at least the position of deputy governor in addition to at least three cabinet positions in Enugu state. And this point they mince no words about as according to Chukwuma: “we totally reject the intention (to field two Roman Catholics) and are warning that if they want peace to reign in this state and if they want our cooperation, it should not be Roman Catholic-Roman Catholic ticket”. They went ahead to say, “all those who want to become governor are Catholics and in the PDP, they are plotting to make their running mate a Catholic. We are saying give us an Anglican Deputy, otherwise you are looking for our trouble”.

By law, only political parties are qualified to sponsor candidates for election, not ethnic or religious groups. So there is no such thing as ‘Southern candidate’, ‘Muslim candidate’, ‘Christian candidate’ or ‘Catholic candidate’. But these are cheap points used by politically desperate citizens. I cannot therefore understand the argument of groups such as those represented by Archbishop Chukwuma, neither can I say this position reflects that of their entire church. What the church ought to do if it is bent on having its members in government is to encourage them to stand election not wait to be considered as running mate.

Besides, this whole talk about religion and politics seems to concentrate on and build upon a faulty premise that Christianity and Islam are the only religions in Nigeria. It is this same faulty foundation that emboldens the Nigerian state to set up Christian and Muslim pilgrims’ welfare commissions and spend public funds in footing the private interests of some privileged citizens.

I was just wondering, what if, for whatever that is worth, we agree with Archbishop Chukwuma that an Anglican should be made deputy governor and few other Anglicans appointed commissioners, what would happen if one of such officials changes his/her faith and denomination? Would the person thereby lose his/her seat, same way the Constitution requires legislators to lose their seat if they defect from one political party to another?

The time has come for religious and ethnic leaders to be told to limit their involvement in everyday partisan political contestations and allow the system to properly evolve.

Published December 28, 2014