Nigeria’s 2015 Elections: Before the Numbers Game

Temporary Voter’s Card (with Incomplete Biometric Data Capture)

“Democracy is a game of numbers, and we have those numbers”, is a familiar cry to many Nigerian political observers. Those who use this cry however, show no desire to acquire those numbers, at least not legitimately. Have you heard a statement from any political party concerning the Permanent Voter’s Card (PVC) and Continuous Voter’s Registration (CVR) rounds that have been or are being carried out by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)? I haven’t, and neither have any of my friends or family members.

You may think that this is by the way, and INEC is totally responsible for voter mobilisation, but it really isn’t. Here’s some much needed perspective.

PERSPECTIVE

These are what I believe to be the problems likely to occur in the 2015 elections, some have already been experienced in the Ekiti and Osun elections held earlier this year. Have the political parties learnt from those experiences? Remains to be seen.

2015 Election Problems

PVC Collection The PVC is supposed to replace the Temporary Voter’s Card issued by INEC for the 2011 elections. So far, INEC has done at least two rounds of PVC distribution to more than 20 states. Another round begins in November. In the news, I have read of PVCs going uncollected at various locations. Some have said that it is evidence of false registration in those areas, but I think it is more than that. Here’s why.

During the 2010/2011 election rounds, I was a student of the University of Port Harcourt. I registered to vote in Alakahia, my resident off-campus community. Almost all my colleagues in school also registered around school. Uni-Port graduates about 10,000 students yearly, but for this case study, I assume that 5,000 students per level registered in the Uni-Port community. Using a normal 4 year academic programme, that amounts to 20,000 students registered. All of those 20,000 students are expected to have graduated and left the school community now. However, their PVCs would be sent to those communities in which they registered, only to be returned uncollected.

This is clearly a problem that the government (executive and legislative), INEC and all political parties should have foreseen. INEC says it has, and so enabled the Transfer of Voters.

Voter Transfer A voter may have changed his residence in the four years between the 2011 and 2015 elections. I have, and most of the student community has as well. How, then, can he transfer his voting permit from his former constituency to his present one? Simple! He does a voter transfer.

But how does INEC intend to carry out this transfer? A 9-step process involving an application, some back and forth between former and current constituency, and the intrinsic Nigerian bureaucracy. This process requires a good degree of patience, on the part of the citizen, to see it through from start to finish. I don’t have numbers on successful transfers INEC has carried out so far, but knowing Nigerians, I can wager that it is way less than those who require transfers.

CVR Continuous Voter’s Registration (CVR) was created to cover a number of people. These are:

• Newly Eligible Voters – Those who just turned 18. It is estimated that this category of prospective voters are more than a million.

• Previously Unregistered Voters – Those who did not register to vote in 2011.

• Registered voters with issues – like the photo used where just two of ten fingers were captured, voters who have issues such as uncaptured biometrics are advised to register anew.

• Transferred voters – the transferred voters use the CVR to get new voter’s cards issued to them.

ODDS WITH POLITICAL PARTIES

All I’ve written so far boil down to the role political parties are failing to play. Voter Courtship

Each political party is interested in growing a support base amongst the people. The parties have to court the new or/and old, disinterested voters to get registered first, before they court them to vote for their party. Have any of them done this? Not yet!

The PVC collection is supposed to end, I think, two (2) weeks before the elections, could be 30days even, but no party has started early. Transfer of Voters requires that the process must be done at least 30days before an election. February 14th 2015 is is 110days. Remember, at least 30days are required for Transfer of Voters, and New Voter’s Registration. This means that all they have is 80days, including weekends and the public holidays. The time to act is yesterday, today you can attempt catch-up.

Aside: In all this, you may say I did not blame INEC at all. INEC is an independent organisation. Unfortunately, elections are seen as the main goal of their existence and as such they seem to only operate during election season. Paraphrasing Donald Duke, we take elections as special events in Nigeria, this is wrong.

INEC is funded by the Budget of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. This budget is scrutinised and assented to by the National Assembly, comprised of members of all political parties. If these parties were honest about the timely production and distribution of PVCs, or/and the early commencement of CVR, they could have started action on that. Thus, they are all to blame.

Yes, the system and process is not perfect, but it is what exists now. Political parties can and should understand it and try to utilise it properly. This is in lieu of crying foul when proper groundwork has not been done. Go all out and court/educate your supporters, have them register and vote properly. Do this, and stop thinking that having a large population automatically translates to a higher number of votes.