Nigeria’s fragile political system is facing a new wave of scrutiny. Its notoriety for staging elections with dubious outcomes stood out in bold relief again during the February 2019 local council polls in Kano State. The polls generated an enormous uproar in the social media because of underage voting. Minors were recorded on video in queues with Permanent Voter Cards, being accredited and casting their ballots without any inhibitions. This malpractice underscores the tainted electoral process in the country, and it is ominous for the 2019 elections.
Regarded as illegal because a citizen has to attain the age of 18, underage registration/voting is endemic in the country. Politicians, who collude with electoral officials, security agents and the judiciary, with the aim of winning at all costs, employ it to undermine the ballot box, through inflation of figures. Yet, reports about the menace in the past were limited to a few newspaper photographs of minors filing out to vote. Perhaps, this was why it did not provoke much outrage.
With the explosion in the use of the social media, that has changed. Indeed, the Kano State Independent Electoral Commission said there was no underage voting in the LG polls because the videos on the social media were recycled from the 2015 elections. That defence is suspect. Already, the Independent National Electoral Commission has instituted a committee to investigate the polls since it gave KASIEC the soft copy of its voter register to conduct the election. We recommend a thorough probe.
Underage voting is rampant, especially in the rural areas, where there is minimal media attention. There, politicians employ intimidation and bribes to compromise INEC officials. Where this does not work, they resort to violence. INEC has admitted that its field workers are habitually threatened by politicians who insist on minors registering and being accredited to vote.
A former INEC National Commissioner, Lai Olurode, has also attested to this, saying he was almost lynched during elections a few years ago for refusing to allow underage voters. “There are certain areas of this country where even if they know the person is a kid, they will insist that the child must vote,” Olurode lamented. “I had to run for my life at one of the election centres in a part of the country because these people said children must vote or there would be no election at all.” His counsel that underage voting could be curbed through enlightenment of the citizens is wise; it should be an integral part of INEC’s strategy to eradicate the menace.
Clearly, INEC has a Herculean task on its hands: elections in the country are won by hook or by crook. In 2007, the then President, Olusegun Obasanjo, described the elections as a “do or die” affair. This was confirmed when, in their assessment of that poll, global bodies condemned it as the worst electoral heist ever in history. It was daylight robbery in several states, the result of which the courts overturned.
The issue resurfaced last week when INEC insisted that it had a case of double registration against a sitting governor. With the benefit of hindsight, the number of registered voters, which stood at 68.8 million for the 2015 general election and increased to 73.9 million in January 2018, might not be able to stand the test of rigorous appraisal, a fact alluded to by independent observers.
In its final report, the European Union Observation Mission to the 2015 polls that brought the All Progressives Congress to power noted that the number of PVCs distributed by INEC was too high. The report said, “…in 11 states over 92 per cent PVC collection was reported, which is implausible given that the deceased have not been removed from the list since 2010.” Arguably, as of February 2018, the register had not been vetted to weed out the padding. This negligence ridicules the political system and gives undue advantage to crooked politicians.
With electioneering imminent, INEC must wake up to the reality of underage voting and purge the register of underage voting. This should be done by using technology. With its biometric database and other technological inputs, it can identify the underage and multiple registrations. The plan to collaborate with the National Population Commission to identify the dead people on the INEC register should be pursued to a logical conclusion.
However, the scientific synchronisation of the INEC register with the records of the National Identity Management Commission is the way forward. The NIMC records the comprehensive biometric data of all Nigerians, so INEC should merge its records with that of the NIMC.
In the course of registration, accreditation and voting, INEC should train its officials to use discreet technological tools to place a red flag on questionable voters. Although these people can be registered, they should not be able to get PVCs nor have their votes count, as during the compilation at INEC, the query on these names should disqualify them.
Electoral crimes thrive in Nigeria because offenders are not punished. Following the 2011 polls, INEC prosecuted only 200 people out of the 870,000 cases of registration offences it identified. The electoral umpire has prosecuted only 61 offenders from the 2015 polls. To deter the craze and vouchsafe free and fair elections, INEC should prioritise the prosecution of election riggers. Special courts to try cases of election offences should be established and cases dispensed with expeditiously.
