By Tonnie Iredia

Voter turn-out in Nigerian elections, that is, the number of voters who actually vote in comparison with the total number of those who registered to vote is usually incredibly low. The general belief is that the trend is attributable to poor public enlightenment suggesting rather wrongly that many Nigerians are unaware of the fundamental importance of participating in elections.

It is probably for this reason that political parties and the nation’s organs of mass communication especially the poorly funded National Orientation Agency NOA, are blamed for not doing enough to mobilize people to vote. However, the outcome of the latest presidential and national assembly elections held on Saturday, February 25, 2023 failed to give credence to the general belief which without any empirical evidence indicts Nigerians.

Of course, it is true that some people ignore voting in the country because of its huge security implications but a major contributory factor to low voter-turn out, which is always discountenanced,is the electoral body’s incessant shoddy job.

The latest set of elections and all others before it, started several hours, after the scheduled time. In many polling stations, voting ensued into the dangerous dark hours of the night. In some other locations, polling stations were attacked and the voting process disrupted even in locations where security operatives were present. Into which sub-heads would ballots in such locations be placed?

Will the owners of such ballots be categorized among voters or among those who were absent during elections?  Is it rational to conclude that there was deliberate low voter turn-out on the part of Nigerians in locations where disruptions and other improper conduct adversely affected voting?

None of these questions can be answered with ease because state actors in Nigeria are never required to be accountable. A good example in this regard is the failure to hold our electoral body accountable for the inexplicable numbers it reels out at every election cycle as registered voters.

To start with, there are too many non-Nigerians who are strangely in possession of our voter cards.Who registered them? Less than two weeks to the February 25, 2023 elections, the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) claimed it seized 6,216 voter cards as well as Nigeria’s national identity cards from foreigners in a clampdown across the country.

Speaking at a one-day retreat organised for all state comptrollers in preparation for a smooth conduct of the general election, Isah Idris, the Comptroller General of NIS, disclosed that the arrested foreigners caught with the two important documents reserved for only Nigerian citizens, had been “eased out of the country.”It was not happening for the first time.

If as Idris revealed, many non-Nigerians who were prohibited from having the cards had them, how they acquired the cards need not be traced far beyond insider abuses in Nigeria’s societal institutions – the immigration service inclusive.

As for Nigerian citizens who are entitled to voter cards, the story is even more bizarre. Only three days ago, the Nigerian Army announced its retrieval of no less than 1,671 Permanent Voter Cards (PVC) in an apartment in the Olodi-Apapa area of Lagos State. Three persons were also reportedly apprehended in the said apartment along with ballot papers, cutlasses and Indian hemp.

As if to give credence to the story, General Isang Akpaumontiathe Brigade Commander paraded the suspects and the recovered items before journalists at the Ikeja Cantonment. Remarkably, Lagosians who could not access their voter cards before elections cried themselves hoarse while the authorities continued to argue that those who had no cards either did not register or were careless with their cards. It was also officially suggested that the dilemma of most of such persons was that they registered twice. When will INEC be made to properly account for voter cards? 

History tells us that many citizens whose cards are supposedly missing or who originally found it hard to get any cards are victims of sharp practices by officials of INEC. As far back as 2011 for example, registration materials sent to Anambra State found their way into centres located at a shrine in the deep Nziko forest of Nteje in Oyi local government area of the state. Investigations by the media revealed that viable locations such as Onitsha Eke Awka, Ozubulu, Nnewi and parts of Anaocha had insufficient registration materials.

Interestingly, the forest centres were officially documented in the records of INEC headquarters. For voter cards to get to the real people instead of forest ghosts, civil society groups need to vigorously monitor INEC with a view to making the Commission accountable for what it is mandated to do. This could help its leadership to clearly perceive the lethargy in the institution in which an important function such as registration of voters is used to treat citizens as the object instead of the subject of democracy.

The admonition for people to always highlight the failures of a public bodyalong with its successes and challenges, have painfully often led to unduly cosmetic assessments of INEC and other public bodies. There is need for analysts particularly the media to focus on specific cases and follow the issues to their logical conclusion. It would be unpatriotic for instance, to not make officials account for the recent theft of 1671 cardsin Lagos.

Where and when the army sends the suspects and the materials to; and how the case is handled till the end must be monitored and reported upon by all media organs that are empowered by section 22 of the Nigerian Constitution to hold those in authority answerable to the people. It is only if this approach is sustained in Lagos and similar notorious locations such as Kano, the home of ‘stunted’ voters and other centres bedevilled by subsisting electoral malpractices that Nigeria can begin to talk about credible elections. 

The commendation which INEC got for introducing electoral innovations would have no meaning if the Commission is populated by rouge officials (no matter how few) who also thwart the innovations. Just before the 2023 elections, different groups fought gallantly to stop persons with substantial partisan political interests from getting into INEC but the ruling party led by the Senate Committee on INEC frustrated the efforts.

This left the electoral body with a heavy challenge akin to those of law enforcement agencies with many insider thieves. The announcements of innovations such as the introduction of a framework on how to replace and retrieve lost or damaged voter cards have thus remained good only on paper. INEC must for once find time to place huge emphasis not only on operations but also on how to manage the process, otherwise its workforce will continue to betray its leadership. 

This piece cannot appropriately end without reference to the fact that what happens at INEC is hardly different from happenings in other organizations. Last year, the process of registering and obtaining a national identity card was no less tardy. The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) fixed deadlines without proper planning, just as none of its centres had sufficient or reliable materials thereby leaving Nigerians to bear the brunt of poor official performance.

Last week, innocent citizens died from the reckless operations of a Lagos state staff bus which collided with a train further eroding public confidence in Nigeria’s railway system. During the same period, a Lagos State Coroner indicted doctors of the Premier Hospital for medical negligence more particularly described as “failure of appropriate response, substandard and inadequate optimal care.” When will service delivery in Nigeria be institutionalized to prevent avoidable disasters?

Nigeria can no longer run away from bringing to book, those found wanting in the discharge of their duties. Here, it is expedient to reiterate the instructive point by Mike Okiro, a former chairman of the Police Service Commission that police authorities should deal decisively with their operatives who watched thugs that disrupted the last presidential elections.

If this is done, the point will be aptly made that those whose dereliction of duty complicate INEC’s work also have an obligation to be accountable. On its part, INEC should undertake an audit of voter cards it printed while making public, the account given by all Resident Commissioners and Electoral Officers nation-wide.It is time to stop blaming the general public for the lapses of state actors.