Tony Momoh
12 August 2007
column
Lagos — PROFESSOR Maurice Iwu is one man people now hate to touch. He lost everything he had to his name because of the elections that he presided over on April 14 and 21.
People will tell you he gained by it, even in Imo State where his family has a huge representation in the government of Ikechi Godson Ohakim of the Peoples Progressive Alliance. But I am no hater of persons because others hate them.
I do not even hate, cannot bind myself transmitting dark thoughts in the direction of anyone. But I cannot help but point out lapses I have noticed on the part of people, especially when they have something definite they have to do but they fail to do it or are seen to be doing it poorly, even wrongly. So, I do my disliking, not hating, on the facts, and will come out boldly to praise you where I believe you have scored a point.
I do sincerely believe that because Iwu scored a point, he is entitled to praise. Was he not with President Umaru Yar'Auda recently and did he not come out of the meeting expressing views on electoral reforms that people were angrily reacting to? They told him to shut up and hide his head in shame because he said our Electoral Act is good enough to be sold to other countries. I agree that our electoral act is not perfect, but if the proposed reforms which even made the ANPP hop onto a government of national unity saddle is all that will make elections in our country free and fair, then we are again embarking on a journey in the wrong direction.
The major problem is not in the Act but in ourselves. Iwu did not use the act to conduct the April 14 and 21 elections and so the Act should not be held responsible for the colossal fraud that the elections turned out to be. Stay with me while we look the problem straight in the face.
First the Act. The Act is the outcome of a Constitutional order. The order is to be located in section 153 of the Constitution. That section creates federal executive bodies, 13 of them.
These bodies, because they are given powers never to be allowed to be controlled by anyone outside the rules and procedures regulating their affairs, are the Code of Conduct Bureau, the Council of State, the Federal Character Commission, the Federal Civil Service Commission, the Independent National Electoral Commission, the National Defence Council, the National Economic Council, the National Judicial Council, the National Population Commission, the National Security Council, the Nigeria Police Council, the Police Service Commission, and the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission. The appointment of the chairmen of some of the bodies is streamlined to ensure their total independence.
One of such appointments is that of the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). His appointment is recommended to the Council of State which is comprised by the President, the Vice President, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, all 36 governors of the states of the federation, all former heads of state, all former chief justices of Nigeria, and the attorney-general of the federation. After they have endorsed the recommendation of the president, the Senate must vet the credentials of the person recommended and approve the appointment which the President then makes.
To ensure that he can act without undue pressure, the term is a secure five years which can be renewed. Of course he can be removed for abuse of office or some other misconduct only when the Senate approves a petition to that effect by two-thirds majority of its members. What other constitutional assurance does a chairman of the executive body need? The functions of the bodies are also well settled, to be spelt out in detail by an Act of the National Assembly. The first part of the Third Schedule to the Constitution shows the membership of each body, its powers and functions.
Outside the functions spelt out by the Constitution, only the National Assembly has power to confer any other functions and these must be documented in an Act of the National Assembly. It is in the light of the constitutional provisions on the establishment of INEC and the laws made by our parliaments since, say, independence, that we should be assessing what records of performance or non-performance we ought to be looking at when we say we need to reform the electoral process. Those who have time to do so should look at the Electoral Act 2006 and see how detailed the provisions to conduct a credible election are.
There are 10 parts in the Act and all have to do with the commission's establishment, staff, procedure at elections (spelt out in 52 of the 106 sections of the Act), political parties, procedure for election to local governments, electoral offences, determination of election petitions arising from the elections, and miscellaneous provisions.
One interesting provision in there is that secrecy of ballot is so important that in an election petition, it will not be permissible for anyone to disclose for whom he voted. But need this question arise when INEC provided for no secrecy during the election? I saw the Senate President voting and being covered by television.
He voted for the PDP! The detailed provisions in the Act are so clear that if we spread them out and assessed the elections Iwu presided over, we will be comfortable with the conclusion that the elections had no law regulating them. But the truth is that the management of elections in Nigeria did not start with Iwu and the problem has never been the letter of the law, but the spirit in which the law had been implemented.
Right from the early 50's when we started conducting elections, shadowboxing has been the rule. But rules do not shadowbox, people do, and in the case of elections, in 1954, 59, 64, 65, 79, 83, 92/93, 99, 2003 and 2007, people, not laws, had responsibility for preparing for them, conducting them and attending to their outcome.
These people are those manning the government in power, and those directly involved in the electoral process. Also right there as interested persons have been the security agencies, community leaders, opinion leaders and business groups. In one short way of hitting the nail on the head, people make the difference in the success or failure of elections. And in Nigeria, effectively since the structure that buried in our minds the fatal picture of northern and southern interests, preferences have been expressed and these preferences have dominated the census, the political structures, the allocation of seats in parliament and the interventions that have been decisive in who should be in charge at the centre.
The conclusion to be drawn here is that decongesting the centre is the first thing to do when you want to bring meaningful changes to the way we pick those who represent us. Monetization of the process is even less important. When we say that people anchored what we inherited that Iwu added evil value to, we have to ask what Britain did when we were discussing the structure we wanted for our country, from the time of the Macpherson Constitution in 1951.
We must ask the role of James Robertson who was governor-general at the time the elections to the Federal parliament were conducted in 1959, and why, if we must believe the documentary of BBC recently published in The Punch, would the colonial masters put a seal of secrecy on two files that must not be open to anyone until after 100 years! The files are in respect of two personages, James Robertson and Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe who later took office when the NPC and NCNC formed the government at independence in 1960..
In that documentary, those who were in the colonial office in London and the colonial administration here in Nigeria, confessed to manipulating elections in favour of certain segments of the population and certain favoured political parties. One of them said Britain taught Nigerians how to rig elections, and destroyed democracy in Africa! But if they taught us, have we not grown enough to know that what we were taught is evil, is a direct denial of the people's right to choose their leaders?
It is not as if we have not tried to right the wrongs associated with the ballot. To prevent the destruction or stealing of boxes of opponents at a time there had to be as many boxes as there were candidates, we opted for one box. Because candidates were kidnapped or prevented from filing their papers, we made rules that made it almost impossible for executive positions to be filled without contest.
When we started filling the boxes with all sorts of rubbish in the name of ballot papers, we took decisions that all ballot papers used must bear party symbols and be serialized. To prevent people from going into polling booths pregnant and coming out without swollen tummies, we brought out the box for everyone to see so that no mago mago would be possible in the secrecy of the booth. And to be sure that you voted for those you wanted, a secluded place was provided for you to take that decision, but the voting had to be in the open. That was why we called it Open Secret Ballot.
The same secure steps were taken to prevent abuse in the counting, announcement of results and documentation in proof of what transpired. And to be sure that justice was not only done to all but also seen to have been done, we provided for tribunals that would look at grievances and pronounce on them. What else can we expect from documents regulating the electoral process? But in spite of these details, we have added value to the evil we inflict on the process every time we conduct elections.
The outcome is that the people, over the years, have been more ready for democracy than us who lead them, who snatch boxes and fill them with ballots from the pit of hell; who write up results before the elections are conducted and wait to produce them when a true reflection of what the people had done queuing for hours would have over the years reduced the frustration we have had with conducting elections.
Even recently, we have been seen to boldly compromise the judicial process for resolving electoral grievances. Yet the documentation of what is to be done is right there in black and white in the Electoral Act. Who then needs revision and review? We the people who conduct elections, who vote at elections, who take decisions in respect of the outcome of elections", we need fundamental change of focus, we need deliverance from the perspective of taking and taking to the mindset of giving for the general goods.
Prof Maurice Iwu, like many before him, abused the opportunity he had to right wrongs that were known, identifiable and identified. He knew those wrongs, rattled them off so often you would believe he was swearing never to forget that they had to be wiped out from the face of the earth. He promised, swore, to go down in history as the chairman of the electoral body that conducted the fairest and freest elections Nigeria had ever had. I believed him. You may well have, too. But he did make history, as the worst supervisor of elections Nigeria has had, and possibly will ever have. God forgive Iwu, but anyone speaking about electoral reforms must be preoccupied with reform of the human person, the Nigerian. The first casualty of the reform should be the disgraceful disengagement of those who manned INEC during our outing of shame, and their possible prosecution for gross misconduct and abuse of office.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2007 Vanguard. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
