What is the update on INEC’s preparations for the governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun states?
Preparations for the elections in these two states started sometime last year. We gave a long-term intention of election about a year ago, notifying the whole world that the elections in these two states would come up on 14 July in Ekiti and 22 September in Osun.
In Ekiti State, campaigns have started by the political parties. What we are expecting is the conduct of primaries for the election in that state. In the two states, we have embarked on what we call the ‘Registration Area’, the Continuous Voters Registration, which is just the template which we employ before any general election, in this instance, for the position of governor. We started this on Monday in the two states with stakeholders meeting even as I am talking to you. We took off yesterday and it is going to last for six days and end on 16th April. This will be followed by claims and objections, for people to find out if anything is amiss with their demographics.
With the two states, it is so far, so good. We are starting very early with them. As far as Ekiti is concerned, we are on course. As far as Osun is concerned, we are moving earlier than what we had hoped, because in most other cases, we started the Registration Area, about one month to the election. We are having the CVR in Osun about six months to the conduct of that election. That is how far we have gone.
Now, in terms of other operational issues, we are very much on course. There are very robust measures put on the ground for the conduct of the primaries by the political parties in Ekiti. These will happen anytime between now and the next two weeks. As of yesterday, 11 out of the 68 political parties that we have had expressed their intention to conduct primaries. There is still window for more to come in. But so far, only 11 political parties have written us formally about their intention to conduct primaries to present candidates for the election.
Talking about permanent voter cards (PVCs), the chart out there shows that states in the southern part of the country have the highest number of unclaimed PVCs compared to their counterparts in the North. What is responsible for this trend?
Well, I don’t know where you got the figures from but all the states have various degrees of unclaimed PVCs. One thing I want you to realise is that for most of those who were registered in 2011, their PVCS weren’t ready until 2015. There were migrations, especially when you talk about students who have graduated, corps members who have completed the national service. Before the PVCs were issued, it took a very long time. This is one thing that could account for this.
I will use a state like Ogun for example. We discovered that most of the names on these uncollected PVCs were not Yoruba names. So, we want to believe that it was due to migration in most of these places. I am not saying that migration is solely responsible but even with that, people who registered and haven’t collected their PVCs, the commission has provided an ample opportunity to correct this anomaly by asking for transfers. If you want to transfer to a new place, you can. If you find it difficult to obtain your PVCs in your old place, you can transfer your registration or your status to a new place by just going to a new abode or new polling unit and then do the needful there.
The register will tell you exactly what you will do. The registration officer will tell you what to do. So, that is that. In Osun and Ekiti states, it is different. I must tell you that both of them have over 200,000 unclaimed PVCs, which is worrisome. It is more worrisome in Ekiti which has less than a million registered voters with that large number of uncollected PVCs. But what we are trying to do is to encourage them. Even if you have an issue with your voter status, you can transfer and then come as a new registrant in a new place. So, what we have done is to make registration even mobile now if there was problem with collection of the PVCs. Don’t forget that it is the collection of the PVCs, not distribution. We aren’t distributing. The onus lies on the people to go and collect [their voter cards]. But even with that, what we are trying to do now is to take a holistic look at all the uncollected PVCs, see whether we can form partnership with the communication companies. We have their phone numbers, we can appeal to them through SMS to come and collect their PVCs at designated places. These are some of the things we are trying to see; whether we can do but I doubt whether this is achievable in Ekiti, whose election is very close. It may be possible in Osun but for these two states we still have a high number of uncollected PVCs like you rightly noticed.
What will INEC ultimately do with the unclaimed PVCs in the event that people don’t come forward to pick them?
We haven’t made a decision on that. The first thing that came to our mind is to encourage people to collect. And in all honesty, people are collecting but the rate is so slow. It is not what we would have imagined. We still have more than seven million uncollected PVCs all over the country, but it is appreciated that people are collecting.
The first line of action is to encourage people to collect rather than talk about uncollected PVCs. We want to lay emphasis on collection. A decision will be taken ultimately because you have to reach a point before you know what to do with them. In case you are not even aware, these PVCs have life spans. So, we may leave collection to the expiry of their life spans but as I have told you, we haven’t come to that. What we are doing now is to encourage people to go and collect.
Is the commission doing anything in terms of sensitisation of prospective voters to encourage them to make efforts to collect their PVCs?
We are doing a lot, not just the commission. In fact, everybody has now become an advocate for this CVR. In fact, I cannot talk about apathy on this issue because well over 7 million people have been captured. Our initial projection was about 8 million. We might even hit the 10 million mark or above for the CVR. This doesn’t show insensitivity at all. There is no need for sensitisation, people are really aware. You can be sure that even apart from voting, the card itself has some other uses, especially identification. It is an acceptable way of identification for citizens now. So, the level of awareness is high as reflected by the figures that have been registered so far, about 7.5 million as I am talking to you and we might hit over 10 million. I can assure you that there is enough sensitisation on CVR.
Recent there was so much public outcry over alleged underage voters in the Kano State local government election. The INEC set up an investigative panel led by Engineer Abubakar Nahuce. I am also aware that the panel has submitted its report. When will the commission unveil its findings?
You are right in your observation that the committee has finished its assignment. You are also right that the committee has made submission to the commission but INEC hasn’t looked at that report. It has not adopted a position on it. I don’t want to be preemptive but I want to assure you that in just two weeks, a white paper will be issued on this report and Nigerians will read our findings.
Still on the PVCs, it is alleged that INEC relaxes its rules on collection of PVCs; that while registered voters in the South cannot issue PVCs by proxy, the commission waives its rule in the Northern part of the country. What is your take on this?
I like the way you put it. You said allegation. I like that. It is mere allegation. What this means is that I am not talking about a part of the country. To us at the commission, one part of the country is as good as the other part and our activities are uniform. What we do is just to encourage our people to go out and do the needful instead of putting blame on people. Anybody who registers knows that he has to go and collect. People should go and collect. If you go there and you cannot find your PVC, it is a different story but people don’t usually go out to collect their PVCs. That is what we should address. There is no part of the country that is given preferential treatment. Our operations are uniform all over the country. We use the same template.
The other time, we heard about marginalization in some parts of the country even regarding this ongoing CVR. When we looked at our records, we discovered that even two out of five states from this region were among the eight leading states in the ongoing CVR. So, we need to really exercise a lot of patience. Find out the truth because most of these things aren’t true. But I want to assure you that our operations are uniform everywhere. You cannot collect by proxy. If you say that there is collection by proxy in one area of the country, you can be sure that it will be uniform all over the place. As far as we are concerned, collection by proxy is totally illegal.
We have about 68 political parties now and INEC has said more are still coming. Nigerians are already expressing reservations that we may have an unwieldy arrangement that will overwhelm INEC logistics for elections. What is your reaction?
Well, political parties aren’t planted, they are products of the constitution and the commission works within the law. Any association that meets the condition of the law must be registered and that is exactly what we are doing. It doesn’t constitute any form of logistics headache to us. Don’t forget that there was a time we had three parties fielding candidates for elections in this country. We later had about 47. The number doesn’t constitute any form of nightmare. It is the management of that number that we have to be very proactive about and we are very much aware that we could even hit 90 and we are working accordingly to see that it doesn’t constitute headache to the commission.
We had a sub-Saharan summit during the week. If you see the ballot paper of the Democratic Republic of Congo, you will be shocked. It was a whole book and that is a country that is not as large as Nigeria. There are so many countries with large numbers of political parties. It is management that is important. But whatever the case maybe, we have laws that bind us and those are what we will use. In some countries, there are guidelines for you to be put on ballot papers, but we haven’t come to that. This is a free-for-all registration. It is an all-comers game as of now but even with that, if we have up to 90, I am sure it will not constitute any logistic encumbrance for the commission.
You said INEC is complying with the provisions of the constitution since this is a multi-party democracy. I am also aware that INEC chairman has complained several times about these political parties as regards breach of regulations guiding their operations. He said some of them don’t even have functional national secretariats in Abuja, substantive National Working Committee and other infractions…
Yes, even in composition of membership.
So, why have you continued to increase the number?
I thought you were going to remind me that we deregistered two parties recently because of non-compliance with their own rules and the Electoral Act. Of course, the court told us that we were wrong. That we had no right to deregister a political party and that is where we stand as of today.
What this means is that it is easier to register a political party in Nigeria than to deregister it. That is the law as of today. So many associations are there floating, angling to be registered as political parties and once they attain that status, it is difficult to deregister them. They exist in their headquarters alone, that is, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). But that is not the law. But as I told you, we have deregistered once and we have been told that we cannot deregister a political party.
We are having governorship elections in Osun and Ekiti states very soon and INEC has been complaining about vote buying. What are the safeguards in place ahead of these elections?
We are working very closely with all the stakeholders, including the political parties themselves. We have made it clear to them that we are aware that there is vote buying and we said loud and clear that it is something that the commission would not tolerate.
We are working with security agents to ensure that this doesn’t happen in any of the places. This is something we intend to do. We will not allow any form of the pay-as-you-vote syndrome to happen in any of these states. It is a syndrome that is just creeping itself into the electoral process and it is not welcome because it is totally illegal.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has continued to dismiss INEC as an appendage of the presidency. Are you not worried that the main opposition party in the country has that perception about the commission? Does it not cast a slur on INEC’s integrity?
That is an allegation that has been there since 1999. Since the day we started democracy, it is a song that people have been singing all the time. ‘It is INEC, the Federal Government and the ruling party’. We were all witnesses to what happened in 2015. There was a ruling party, there was INEC and there was a government but what happened? I am asking us to ponder on this. The commission keeps improving on its independence, keeps improving on its operations and you can see that from the elections that we have conducted. Look at the results and reflect. Ponder on them and see whether it can answer your question. This commission is not an appendage of any government. It is not a member of any political party. As of today, there are 68 political parties and none is heavier than the other. All parties are equal, as far as we are concerned and that is the way we operate in the commission.
Has the All Progressives Congress (APC) notified you of preparations for its national convention?
No, they haven’t notified us of their convention. As of today, they haven’t.
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