We commend the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for suspending the plan to create additional 30,000 polling units in the country. The Secretary to the Commission, Mrs. Augusta Ogakwu, explained that “after taking everything into consideration, especially the controversy over the creation of the additional polling units that has been overheating the polity and the apparent inadequacy of time for the exercise, the commission took a decision to suspend the exercise until after the 2015 general election.”
INEC, she said, will continue to use voting points where necessary to mitigate population pressure in overcrowded polling units. It will also re-locate the polling units in unsuitable places. We urge the commission to do all in its power to solidify these arrangements well in advance to spare voters from embarrassment on election day.
The u-turn by INEC has been widely applauded across the country. Some litigants who had earlier taken the commission to court over the matter have decided to withdraw such lawsuits. It is clearly a good move and critics of INEC seem satisfied that the agency has changed its mind on the decision to impose the 30,000 polling units. The general outcry over the planned polling units and the lopsidedness in their distribution in favour of the northern part of the country has aptly demonstrated the vigilance and interest of Nigerians in the 2015 election, and their willingness to do whatever is required to ensure the fairness and integrity of the exercise.
Elections have always been problematic in Nigeria, even in the best of times. Adding the controversy on the new polling units was a trouble we can ill-afford in the already tense environment in the country. Indeed, when the plan was announced in August, questions were raised on the wisdom of creating new polling centres just a few months to the general elections.
The commission must have now seen that good intentions are not enough on issues such as the 30,000 polling units. The INEC believed it was trying to improve the convenience and speed of voting whereas many Nigerians saw the plan as a grand conspiracy by INEC to favor the North against the South. While INEC felt it was reforming the system, others felt it was trying to place the North at an advantage over the South.
There is an instinctive but unwritten rule about the Nigerian federation which has survived for nearly a century which anyone administering a Federal institution ignores at his or her own peril. It is the implicit equality of the regions. For INEC to have allocated 21,615 polling units to the North and only 8,412 to the South was an invitation to a crisis.
The allocation of the polling units to the geo-political zones was absolutely astounding for its lack of credibility. INEC allocated 7,906 polling units to the Northwest geo-political zone alone and only 8,000 polling units to the entire Southern region which has three geo-political zones. Worse still, the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, had 1,200 polling units whereas the entire Southeast geo-political zone comprising Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo States had 1,167 polling units.
On INEC’s side are facts that dictated the changes. When the present 120,000 polling units were set up in 1996, the Nigerian population was estimated to be 110 million which rose to 176 million in 2011 when INEC conducted the last general voters registration exercise. By 2010, the Electoral Act had also stipulated that each polling unit must not cater for more than 500 voters. Large polling units must therefore be disaggregated into multiples of 300 registered voters per voting point in order to reduce the tedium of the voting exercise.
But, these necessary improvements in the voting arrangements ought to be pursued at a time the country can see quite clearly the need for the changes without the cloud of an imminent election hovering on the horizon. All over the world, it is the standard practice not to do constituency delimitations or tamper with voting procedures in election years and the rationale for this is glaring. It should brook no dispute.
Prof. Jega was almost a unanimous choice for his present position as the Chairman of INEC owing to his personal integrity and past records as one of the few Nigerians who could be trusted with issues of justice and fair play which the conduct of elections in Nigeria requires. His integrity is still not in doubt but he must learn to be sensitive and properly communicate with Nigerians on issues such as the aborted creation of new polling centres that could be easily misunderstood.
