Professor Attahiru Jega, the widely admired chairperson of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has repeatedly promised that the commission under his leadership would not endorse false election returns.
Jega’s INEC has both the responsibility and the power to avert the vote-tallying anomalies that could derail this promise. Complaints of ballot-stuffing and corruption of low-level electoral officials have been the staple of previous Nigerian elections. To ensure that the current ongoing voting does not tread a familiar path of electoral mendacity, INEC's actions must be firm, fast and determined.
Initially, the commission was widely commended for the relative success of federal parliamentary elections, which took place on 9 April after a false start the previous weekend. Losers in the early returns included the incumbent speaker of Nigeria’s lower House of Representatives as well as the daughter of a former president, who had sought election to the upper legislative chamber of the Senate.
But five days after those polls, many of the contests remain inconclusive, the declaration of results is still incomplete, and the early optimism could wither if nothing convincing is done about these complaints. In many parts of the country, voting has been marred by serious violence.
Four days after the legislative elections, INEC has so far confirmed 39 election-related killings. By far the biggest single set of complaints, however - and a major cause of the violence - are worrying reports of both the falsification of polling returns during collation and the declaration of false returns.
In parts of Benue State in northcentral Nigeria, for instance, some localities have returned entirely implausible turn-outs, in some cases as high as 98 percent, resulting in just enough votes to edge out what looked like certain victory for underdogs. The contest for the Senate seat in Anambra State in southeastern Nigeria has degenerated into a farce with two different representatives of INEC announcing two different winners for two different parties before a third official stepped in to announce a stalemate and an investigation.
To enhance the credibility of the returns, the electoral commission had instituted a system called “open-secret” balloting. Under this system, the presiding officers at each voting precinct or station must first verify that intending voters who present themselves at polling places are on the voters' register and possess a voter’s card.
Those who meet these requirements are then accredited to vote. The accreditation process takes up to four hours, after which eligible voters then cast their ballots, observed by party agents and under the protection of law enforcement. After the polls close, the presiding officer counts the votes in the presence of voters, announces the results in the precinct and pastes a copy of the result for that precinct publicly at the venue.
The problems with Nigeria’s electoral process begin after this point. Thereafter, the presiding officer must go to the constituency's central collation centre to deposit the result. In the creeks of the Delta, this journey is made by boat; in the semi-Sahelian states of the northwest, this journey can traverse several hundreds of desolate kilometers. Each electoral constituency comprises several voting precincts.
In the legislative elections, there have been quite credible allegations that polling results were altered between the precincts, collation and declaration of results. The commission must act swiftly to address these reports.
Under existing practice, election returns, once announced, cannot be changed except by a court or tribunal. This does not allow for reasonable exceptions or limitations permissible under law, such as where there has been a genuine error in the declaration of returns or where returns have been manifestly falsified. Incumbents have in the past relied on this to pressure electoral officials into announcing falsified results.
Candidates who have complaints against declared returns must lawyer-up for an expensive and often lengthy litigation process. Such cases have been known to last for as long as the four-year tenure of elected public officials, leaving both frustrated candidates and a bewildered public in their wake. Very few of such cases succeed, and many are trailed by allegations of judicial corruption.
To avoid much of the resulting cost and confusion, INEC must take effective steps to minimize the perception that it cares little about how winners and losers emerge in Nigeria’s elections. The laws governing elections in Nigeria empower the commission to issue a “Certificate of Return” to winners - and only those persons who present such certificates can be inaugurated into office.
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The standard for issuing a certificate of return is an objective one, requiring the commission to accredit only those who have won, not merely those who have been declared as having won under a cloud of credibly attested electoral malpractice. As a result, the leadership of the commission must institute internal processes to verify the credibility of returns announced by its officials at the end of collation.
Where it cannot confidently attest to the credibility of a return, the commission must decline to issue a Certificate of Return. Instead, it should publish its reasons for refusing to do so. Any declared winner who is dissatisfied with this decision or the reasons for it can challenge the commission to justify itself in a court of law.
By doing so, the commission will extricate itself from perceptions of encouraging or tolerating electoral corruption, reinforce the modest steps it has taken thus far to infuse credibility into the process of choosing Nigeria’s political leaders, and fulfill its promise not to endorse false election returns.
Chidi Odinkalu is with the Open Society Justice Initiative and Udo Jude Ilo is with the Open Society Initiative for West Africa.
