- Other stakeholders must cooperate with INEC to check the trend
Although the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) initially absolved itself of blame in the alleged underage voting in the recently concluded local government election in Kano State, it is heartwarming that the commission has decided to investigate the allegation despite the fact that it was conducted by the Kano State Independent Electoral Commission (KANSIEC). The investigation should unearth whether the state SIEC indeed used the voter register given it by INEC or whether it used another register. It is important to get to the root of the matter because underage voting is a serious electoral offence that undermines the credibility of elections.
To deny that underage voting is real in the country is to choose to play the ostrich. Prof Lai Olurode, a former INEC commissioner testified to its reality and its dangers in a newspaper interview on Monday while reacting to the same allegations of underage voting in Kano. Olurode, INEC National Commissioner for the South-West from 2010 to 2015 said: “The Kano State example is a bad signal and a warning that we really have a lot to do and the voter register is key. The register must be clean; it must not have ghost names or underage voters.”
He added that “In the course of my service to the nation during the Jega’s era, it was happening in many parts of the country but there are specific geographic locations where it is very common which means the problem can be tackled if responded to promptly by all the stakeholders.”
Interestingly, while some people simply turn back when told they could not register underage persons for elections, some others do not take it that calmly, “When you see community leaders coming to meet you with a prepared list of children to be registered and you refuse, you come under threat. In some parts of the country, when you refuse to register a child, they go away but in some other parts, the people are the ones who will demand that the child is registered.”
Election is a sacred responsibility and its sanctity ought to be preserved at all cost. And the place to begin is the voter register. Once we do not get this right, the electoral process becomes compromised ab initio. While INEC takes responsibility for producing clean voter register, we do understand that other factors outside of the control of the electoral body have sometimes played out to make the job herculean, if not impossible.
For instance, whereas security personnel, including the police, the Department of State Services (DSS), etc, are drafted to provide security at election periods to ensure that only eligible persons are allowed to vote, this is oftentimes not the case during the registration exercise. Moreover, because the bulk of the staff engaged by INEC are ad-hoc, including young and innocent Nigerians on national service who bear no arms, there is a limit to how far such officials can resist in the face of threats by political thugs hired to foment trouble if their request to register underage children or commit other electoral offences is rejected.
To the extent that these nefarious practices not only take place in our communities, but are often done at the prompting of chieftains of political parties, community leaders should see themselves as having a great role to play in educating and dissuading the citizens from such practices that clearly undermine our democracy. We say this because no matter how sophisticated the equipment deployed for the conduct of elections is, it would come to naught if human elements are allowed to frustrate the process. The same is just as true of our security agencies; they must rise to the challenge of providing security for every stage of the process while also ensuring that those whose activities run foul of the law are brought to book.
We urge INEC to intensify the process of cleaning up the register. With some elections holding this year, the least the commission can do is to get the process under way. The challenge of underage voting and other electoral malpractices must never be allowed to mar next year’s General elections.
