National Assembly protecting some interests by refusing to pass Electoral Act —Atoye

Ariyo-Dare Atoye is the executive director, Adopt A Goal for Development and co-convener, Centre for Liberty. He and other partners under the auspices of Coalition in Defence of Nigerian Democracy and Constitution led protesters to the international Conference Centre in Abuja on Thursday to protest the delay in the passage a new Electoral Act. He speaks to DARE ADEKANMBI on what informed the protest.

 

YOUR group in conjunction with other civil society organisations led a protest to the National Assembly on Thursday. What informed that protest and what do you want to achieve with it?

I coordinate the group and we have close to about 10 partners under the group. The whole essence of the protest is to let the National Assembly and Nigerians know that the most important legislative business that should be and is before the National Assembly is the passage of a new Electoral Act that guarantees electronic transmission of results, transparency and credibility of our elections. We want the National Assembly to know that there is no way Nigerians will have confidence in their ability and sincerity to amend the 1999 Constitution without concluding the process of having a new Electoral Act that started about two years ago and which they failed to  pass on two occasions. We want Nigerians to put the National Assembly to task and possibly pause every process towards the amendment of the 1999 Constitution until the Electoral Act is passed.

 

Why is the Electoral Act so urgent?

It is so urgent because we want it tested in the Anambra State governorship election scheduled for November 6. We want the Act signed and tested in off-cycle elections. We don’t want a repeat of what happened in 2015 when Professor Attahiru Jega assured us that the card reader was going to work fine for us. Some of us who knew how technology works had told INEC and Nigerians that it is crazy and absurd to deploy a new idea on large scale. It is not done in any part of the world like, not even nations that are known for scientific innovations will deploy a new technology on a large scale without it being tested at a smaller level. We don’t want this bill hurriedly passed sometime next year and we will be struggling to use it to test some of the innovations in the general election. We also want electronic transmission of results to be expressly stated in the Act. We have seen a copy of what is currently before the National Assembly and Section 50 subsection 2 gives INEC the discretion to use electronic platform or not. But we are saying based on what we saw post-2015 elections when people went to court to challenge the fact that the Electoral Act did not capture the card reader, we don’t want the coming elections to be caught in the same legal lacuna. Therefore, we want the use of electronic transmission of results to be expressly captured in the Electoral Act.

We have reasons we are trying to make a case for this. Number one, in view of the fact that Nigerians have lost hope in the electoral process, the National Assembly must be able to do something. That will restore the confidence of Nigerians in the electoral process, that will make Nigerians to show commitment to the process and the issue of electronic transmission of results in one important provision that will help to rekindle the hope of Nigerians in the electoral process. Number two, insecurity is rising and we must be able to eliminate levels that will be so burdensome to the electoral process.  We want a situation where we are able to evacuate results from the first port of call, which is the polling unit. And that is what is being done globally. It is an archaic system when we move results from the polling units to wards, local government and so on. Even though they can still double check at those levels, the results must be evacuated from the polling units on election day to a central collation point which is via electronic platform to the central server of INEC.

We are happy that INEC has already tested the use of electronic transmission of results in Nasarawa, Edo and Ondo states when results were sent to a dedicated online website that allows Nigerians to view the results as they were being posted. Even though we experienced a bit of delay, it was better than the archaic system. But unfortunately, if the outcomes of those elections had been challenged based on the results posted on the website, it would have been difficult for those challenging the results to rely on the website provided by INEC because it has no legal cover. INEC only did it to show it has the capacity to transmit results from polling units to a dedicated website. Now, the fear is no longer on the part of INEC that is ready to implement this innovation. We don’t know why the National Assembly is foot-dragging. We know want politicians can do. So, we want to help INEC ahead of 2023 elections by saying the National Assembly should not make electronic transmission of results a discretionary power for INEC which has said it has the capacity to do it. Our lawmakers only need to make the provision available in the new Electoral Act. If made a discretionary power, the same politicians will put pressure on INEC to do ‘either or’ and we do not want ‘either or.’

The most important one, which we have also started campaigning for is that the leaders of the various ethnic groups should prioritise the passage of a new Electoral Act. The current administration led by President Muhammadu Buhari will not amend the 1999 Constitution in good faith. It is not committed to the restructuring of the country. What should be our preoccupation is to work and elect in 2023 leaders who will restructure the country and to make it a deliberate electoral commitment to elect lawmakers who will go to the National Assembly and have restructuring as number one priority. That is the only way we can rescue the issue of restructuring. It is going to be a sheer waste of time to engage this National Assembly on restructuring because the leadership of the current National Assembly defers to the presidency 100 per cent. The only thing we can rescue from the lawmakers, therefore, is to demand the passage of the Electoral Act. We already have a commitment extracted from the president when he did not sign the one passed by the Saraki-led NASS. The president said it was close to the election and asked that if he signed it, it would only go into effect post-2019 elections. We know it was a dishonest request from the president. However, today we can extract that commitment that the president has shown interest in a new Electoral Act. We are already in post-2019. He also told the INEC chairman and his team recently that he would commit to everything to ensure the success of 2023 elections.

 

One challenge people have raised about electronic transmission of results is the issue of mobile penetration, particularly in very rural and remote locations where neither data not voice call services is available. Are you talking to the telecoms operators in this regard?

I am not saying it can be achieved 100 per cent without hitches. But when you look at it holistically, you will see that anybody who is capable of having a PVC is capable of voting electronically not to even talk of electronic transmission of results. There was a technology used to get PVC for people, which is called the card reader. We don’t need a rocket technology to send results. Any area where people can receive call and send an SMS, this thing is do-able there. We are not saying every polling unit in the country is covered. When you look at the percentage of the areas that are not covered, we will be able to mitigate this by allowing the polling officers to move to a nearby area where they can access network to send the results. Mobile penetration in the country at the moment is very high. Internet penetration is significant. We believe every vote should count and moving to the next location where there is network will address that matter. Such that we will only be expecting results from areas where there are network issues.

INEC has met with the telecoms firms as well as NIGCOMSAT management. That was why it said it was ready for electronic transmission of results. The issue we have now is the National Assembly which is out to protect some unknown interest. I can make a claim from sentiment angle to say that they are out to protect sectional or political interest. But I don’t have any fact to justify the claim that the interest they are protecting is sectional or political. But what we know is that they are trying to protect an unknown interest. INEC has said it is ready for electronic transmission of results.

 

Why is this particular clause of electronic transmission of results so key?

For those who are trying to be mischievous, we have observed over time that most of the people causing problems during elections do not really have the capacity to send thugs to every pooling unit and rig elections. What they normally do is to wait at the collation centre to hijack results and rig elections. I am not saying they don’t destroy ballot papers at polling units. But it is usually insignificant because we are talking about a statewide or nationwide election. If it is an election for House of Assembly, they wait at the ward collation centres. When it is governorship, they wait at the local government collation centres. So, this will be eliminated with electronic transmission of results. All political parties need to do is to get good agents to man the polling units. We also support people waiting at the polling units to observe the counting of votes.

 

What will your group do if the National Assembly fails to pass the new law?

We pray that the National Assembly will not allow the situation where we will have another ENDSARS kind of protest. One thing the lawmakers must bear in mind is that the insecurity in the country requires them to inspire hope in the citizenry through the new Electoral Act and give a path to hope of electing leaders, different from the ones we currently have is significant. We can’t just say Buhari has failed. If he has failed, what is the alternative? There will be a large scale occupy NASS protest if the bill is no passed.

We went to the International Conference Centre to display placards peacefully to demand the passage of the law. We won’t stop there. In a matter of days, we will have a press conference. On June 16, we will have another mega rally if the law is not passed by then. We won’t stop until this bill is passed this month. The National Assembly has already promised to do so this month and we want to put pressure on them to ensure this happens.  We have lined up activities to compel them to so do. We are not going to do just online campaign, but also physical campaign like we did today. We appeal to Nigerians to join us in this campaign too.

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