Status of PVC collection as of today

http://www.inecnigeria.org/?inecnews=distribution-of-permanent-voters-cards-as-at-february-17-2015

INDEPENDENT NATIONAL ELECTORAL COMMISSION
DISTRIBUTION OF PERMANENT VOTERS CARDS AS AT FEBRUARY 17, 2015
S/N	States	Number of Registered	Number of Cards	Remarks
		Voters	Collected by Voters	%
(a)	(b)	(c)	(d)	(e)
1	ABIA	1,396,162	1,115,634	79.91
2	ADAMAWA	1,559,012	1,328,136	85.19
3	AKWA-IBOM	1,680,759	1,468,708	87.38
4	ANAMBRA	1,963,173	1,499,317	76.37
5	BAUCHI	2,054,125	1,745,441	84.97
6	BAYELSA	610,373	404,119	66.21
7	BENUE	2,015,452	1,548,074	76.81
8	BORNO	1,934,079	1,320,667	68.28
9	CROSS RIVER	1,175,623	879,249	74.79
10	DELTA	2,275,264	1,728,524	75.97
11	EBONYI	1,074,273	714,351	66.50
12	EDO	1,779,738	1,145,782	64.38
13	EKITI	732,021	503,431	68.77
14	ENUGU	1,429,221	1,065,210	74.53
15	FCT	881,472	541,359	61.42
16	GOMBE	1,120,023	1,064,577	95.05
17	IMO	1,803,030	1,252,030	69.44
18	JIGAWA	1,831,276	1,706,814	93.20
19	KADUNA	3,407,222	3,133,813	91.98
20	KANO	4,975,701	3,487,155	70.08
21	KATSINA	2,827,943	2,620,829	92.68
22	KEBBI	1,470,648	1,316,656	89.53
23	KOGI	1,350,883	914,164	67.67
24	KWARA	1,142,267	843,792	73.87
25	LAGOS	5,905,852	3,685,322	62.40
26	NASARAWA	1,242,667	1,196,583	96.29
27	NIGER	2,014,317	1,413,015	70.15
28	OGUN	1,829,534	747,556	40.86
29	ONDO	1,524,655	1,071,010	70.25
30	OSUN	1,407,107	1,012,678	71.97
31	OYO	2,415,566	1,569,390	64.97
32	PLATEAU	2,001,825	1,406,528	70.26
33	RIVERS	2,537,590	1,923,139	75.79
34	SOKOTO	1,611,929	1,380,840	85.66
35	TARABA	1,340,652	1,196,583	89.25
36	YOBE	1,099,970	824,401	74.95
37	ZAMFARA	1,495,717	1,458,519	97.51
	Total	68,833,476	52,233,396	75.88

The V-Day that never was

If all things had gone the way we initially planned, on this day, we would have been reviewing how the 2015 general elections started off yesterday. Many would have been waiting anxiously to know how their candidates performed. Of course, there would also have been accusations and counter accusations of electoral fraud and possibly violence. Those, after all, are the typical scenarios from elections, as far as our history goes.

Our reality today, however, is that the dates of the elections have been re-loaded by the single authority with the legal backing to fix (and move) dates for our elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). But as we all know today, INEC may have announced the rescheduling of the elections, but the forces behind the shift were certainly not that of the commission. So, whodunit? It’s the security forces as represented by the National Security Adviser. After all these years of trying to stop the rampage of the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, particularly in the north east, the military forces say they have suddenly found the secret to routing the criminals in six weeks. And those weeks have to fall within the period earlier fixed for our elections.

There is no need to stress the obvious that we cannot go on with elections if the security of life and property cannot be guaranteed. And that much the security agencies say they cannot guarantee because they need all the concentration and focus they could muster on the joint operation they have entered into with other neighbouring countries to tackle the insurgents. It is curious however that having received more troops from other countries, we would therefore expect our security forces to now have more of its personnel available to provide security cover for the rest of the country during the election. But the military say these six weeks require serious focus and concentration.

And talking about the foreign troops coming into Nigeria to help, I remember the fears we had expressed to the INEC Chairman, Prof Attahiru Jega following the successes of the gubernatorial elections in Ekiti and Osun states. On both occasions, the country deployed a more than usual number of security and election officials to cover those states. We often teased then what would happen at our general elections and wondered if we would be calling on the United Nations or a regional body like the African Union to help deploy troops to us during the period. Somehow, this reality is beginning to dawn on us.

It is also clear that even though this rescheduling of the elections was masterminded by the military, INEC itself has a lot to gain from it, given that it was also faltering with some of its preparations including the availability of all the voter’s cards. While we may not blame INEC wholly for the failure of many to collect their permanent voter’s cards, the agency must take the flak for the cards they were yet to produce or take delivery of as at the Saturday they announced the shift in dates. One also hopes that all other agencies (state and non-state) whose roles include mobilising citizens to participate in the electoral process will step up their work to sustain the tempo and also encourage many others not interested to get involved in the elections. It is a tall order though, given the fickle nature of our electorate. But try, we must.

The one point I want to stress is the need for the political class to roll back on the hate messages that had built up to a crescendo just before the elections were shifted. And by the political class, this covers not just the political parties but their supporters in every strand of society, including, very unfortunately, the clergy. The hate messages have gone viral and stand today as the greatest risk to our existence as a country. If and only if our security agencies were independent and neutral, I would expect them by now to be picking up the masterminds of the hate messages, including ethnic and religious bigots. Failure to do so would only lead to heating up the polity the more. While we are preparing for elections not war, we must be on our guards not to plunge the country into war after all.

On a happy note however, many non-state agencies especially civil society are working to support the relevant international agencies which are documenting some of these hate messages which would become useful in a future prosecution of the persons for crimes against humanity. The culprits here would include unexpected persons and institutions like religious leaders and journalist who willingly propagate hate messages. It would also include ordinary citizens who spread hate messages on the social media.

And for the security forces, they need to ensure they clean up their acts within these six weeks as a future request for time would not only be rejected but would amount to a desecration of our Constitution.

Preparing for electoral loss

Someone said a politician is a dealer in hope. By that it is meant that a typical politician carries on with so much confidence of victory in the elections such that his/her supporters are almost driven to believe that they have won the battle before the ballot is cast. That explains why it is impolitic to say ‘if I am elected’ but to say ‘when I am elected’. A lot of such is playing out this election season here in Nigeria. But as everyone knows, there will be more losers than winners in the elections which start less than two weeks away. So are people preparing for electoral losses? I can almost hear someone say ‘it is not my portion’.

Whether we accept it or not, there will be losers in the elections. And it could be anyone. The contestants know that fact, despite sometimes trying out some braggadocio acts when the result is out. Too often, they mellow after the initial ‘gra-gra’ and even end up partnering with the eventual winner to ‘move the state forward’, if not to push their personal interests and recover from their financial losses. That’s why the private closets of many a politician has enough mementoes of different political parties to be dusted up for use as the occasion demands.

But that is one secret many of them don’t let their supporters know. And if the supporters know, it hardly reflects in their quality of support or limit how far they go in supporting their principals. I have observed from a vantage position the sourness in the heart of many supporters of politicians when such politicians eventually did not get their party tickets and never bothered to try their luck in alternative parties or did and lost. In one case a gubernatorial hopeful complained of being cheated out of the contest. He threatened everything and made his supporters believe he was on the way to another political party to achieve his aspiration. After a few weeks, he sneaked back to the hierarchy of the old party and pledged allegiance, leaving his supporters in the lurch. Some openly cursed the politician for ‘using’ them. Truth is the politicians are adept at ‘using’ people and in the process setting the ‘ordinary’ people against one other and taking advantage of them.

It is therefore to those supporters that we should advise to look beyond the elections to see where they will be in the picture and what would be left of their personal relationships with their fellow ‘ordinary’ citizens. This season has certainly brought out the beast in many citizens, fighting their otherwise closest relations and friends. This builds up to anger and bitterness which escape through hate messages, malice keeping and hatred just because friends, neighbours, classmates, co-workers, religious brethren and families support different political parties and candidates.

And this is where many of us find this particular electoral season very dehydrating and energy sapping, seeing as compatriots so easily build high walls of distrust and go for each other’s jugular. It is indeed scary. The volume of venom circulating on the cyberspace is enough to annihilate a country and one only hopes this is not eventually manifested in the physical realm. We need to stem or reverse this tide and urgently too. We need to advise citizens to not only plan electoral victory but prepare for electoral loss or defeat, which is a natural possibility in any contest. After all, 13 of the 14 presidential candidates will lose and their supporters, who could be anyone should brace up to that.

One way of preparing for electoral loss is to acknowledge that the eventual winner is going to be a fellow Nigerian, nothing more. Why then must we split hairs over who wins? Why would right-thinking citizens want to wake up the day after the elections to not being able to have an honest and open conversation with their long-time neighbour or even members of the same faith, just because they supported different candidates in the elections? Truth be told, the candidates in the election do not even have personal knowledge of and could not be bothered with the identities of the supporters who are willing to put their lives on the line for them. As many supporters as get bloodied physically or traumatised even on cyberspace altercations are left to sulk and remain mere statistics, at best. Even those who get killed ‘die wrongfully’, in the lyrics of the late Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.

The lessons of 2011 are still fresh in our memories. Only last week, a television station ran a news report showing that many of the victims of the 2011 post-election violence were yet to be compensated as promised by government. But some others were compensated. Has anyone wondered who the lucky ones were? It would most certainly be the elite, who lost some of their luxury goods. And certainly not one of the poor, anonymous fellows who were in the thick of the fight; spewing their anger all over the place. The moral of that report is that when the chips are down, the foot soldiers get sacrificed to serve the selfish interest of the ruling class.

It is safe therefore to advise everyone going into the elections to prepare for a ‘plan B’, which is defeat, just in case things don’t go their ways. After all, no matter the result, we all share one thing in common, the country Nigeria, which we must preserve.

Published on February 1, 2015 in The Niche newspaper http://www.thenicheng.com/preparing-electoral-loss/