Prospects for credible elections in Nigeria

By: Jibrin Ibrahim

As the 2007 elections approach, tensions and anxieties grow about the future of democracy in Nigeria. This is perfectly normal as Nigerian elections are periods of self-doubt about the reality of the two great pillars of belief in Nigerian politics that almost all actors claim to be committed to – democracy and federalism. The historically lived realities of violent campaigns, primordial claims to power and electoral fraud make elections moments of anguish and frustration to most citizens of the country.

Three major challenges face the future of elections and democracy in Nigeria as we move towards the 2007 elections. The first challenge is that of the vast knowledge and repertoire of the techniques of electoral fraud and electoral violence at the disposal of the political class which they have used to frustrate the rights of Nigerians to elect their leadership. The second is the will and capacity of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and security forces to prepare adequately a level playing-field for free and fair elections. The third is the growing tensions within the political class, ethno-regional zones and within political parties which are threatening the political stability of the country. These challenges are however not insurmountable and indeed Nigerians are showing an increasing capacity to organise to protect their mandate. We shall start by stressing the importance of the 2007 elections.

Importance of the 2007 elections
The 2007 elections are very critical to the future of Nigerian democracy for a number of reasons. This election would be the first time there has been a third consecutive election in the country. Both the First and Second Republics were overthrown by the military after heavily rigged and acrimonious second consecutive elections in 1966 and 1983 respectively. The Third Republic under General Ibrahim Babangida was stillborn as he annulled the 1993 first round elections. Nigeria therefore has a history of problematic second round elections but has never tried a third round. The Nigerian Constitution imposes a two-term limit on the President and State Governors. Over the past two years, both the President and many State Governors have repeatedly tried to review the Constitution to seek to prolong their stay in office. Their attempts have failed so far. Given this background, the 2007 elections are taking place in a very acrimonious context in which the President and his deputy are involved in a titanic battle in which each has been trying to block the capacity of the other to be in power in 2007.

One fundamental question all Nigerians are posing is the following – given President Obasanjo’s determination to determine the occupant of Aso Rock, the seat of power, in 2007 as a minimum agenda, is there an impartial arbiter for the elections? Will democracy not be a victim of this titanic battle of President Obasanjo to make the political choice Nigerians have the right to make?

Moving towards programmed failure?
Following the extensive reviews of the 2003 elections and the stakeholder meetings organised by INEC in December 2003 and February 2004, it was agreed that four critical issues on the road map to free and fair elections in 2007 needed to be resolved by 2005.

The first was that the Constitution should be reviewed to provide real autonomy to INEC, all of whose officers – Chairman, National Commissioners and Resident State Electoral Officers – are appointed by the President. There was a consensus that such powers should be removed from the hands of the President. In addition, it was agreed that INEC should be financed directly from the consolidated Revenue Fund so that the Executive cannot starve the Commission of necessary funds. The Constitutional Review Process was sabotaged by the Third Term agenda and has been jettisoned.

Secondly, the revised Electoral Bill which has some improvements relative to the Electoral Act 2002 should be revised and passed into law. The most significant improvement is the imposition of limits on campaign expenditure by political parties. This law was finally enacted in June 2006.

Thirdly, the process of the registration of voters for the 2003 elections was done in an incomplete and inept manner and so many citizens are not on the voters’ roll. INEC has consistently refused to obey the provisions of the Electoral Act which requires continuous registration of voters. It has also refused to update the roll by registering those who have come of age since 2003 or were missed out in the last registration. As happened previously, INEC seems to be waiting for time to run out so that the registration can be organised in a hurried and botched manner. INEC has announced voter registration will start on 7 October but many indicators show that they are not ready – insufficient cameras, delays in release of funds, ad hoc staff not yet trained etc.

Fourthly, INEC is yet to commence working with the issue of new voter identity cards with embossed photographs and biometric features. Nobody understands the delay especially as we all know that three years after the national identity card process was started, most people have not yet been issued theirs. When will INEC start the process for the new voter ID card? Are they waiting until it’s too late so that they can mess it up again?

Very clearly, most of the essential signposts on the road map to free and fair elections in 2007 are not being addressed in a timely manner by INEC. It seems that there is an unfolding design to produce failed or no elections in 2007.

Power shift and ethno-regional tensions
The language of Nigerian politics is often expressed within the syndrome of ethno-regional domination. It is a language whose grammar is defined by two elements. The first is the control of political power and its instruments such as the armed forces and the judiciary. The second is the control of economic power and resources. Both are powerful instruments that are used to influence the authoritative allocation of resources to groups and individuals. The current Nigerian solution to ethno-regional domination is defined as power shift.

The concept of power shift arose to remove the ambiguity associated with zoning and rotation when General Abacha seemed to have assumed that zoning in the post-Babangida era would start from himself a Northerner, rather than from the South. The idea was to focus on what was presented as the essential issue of a Southerner taking over power. Nor surprisingly, the concept has been an emotionally charged one.

The transition in 1999 when power was said to have shifted to the South was a pacted one. It is widely claimed that the pact involved Southern assurance that after President Obasanjo’s tenure, power would shift back to the North and a process of north-south alternation would commence. As we move towards the 2007 elections, this expectation of a shift to the North has become acrimonious. Many southern politicians are currently arguing that the North has held power for thirty-nine years while the South would have held power for only fifteen years at the end of Obasanjo’s tenure in 2007.

The population census issue is lurking in the corner as we move towards the 2007 elections. The 2006 census results will be announced before the elections and the figures are expected to be used in distributing constituencies. Whether or not the relative north-south population distributions change, the figures are bound to generate controversy and political tension.

The death of the third term agenda
General Obasanjo came to power in 1999 in a groundswell of optimism that Nigerian leaders had learnt their lessons and would henceforth respect the desire of the Nigerian people for the respect of the rule of law, democracy and federalism. Obasanjo had three important strengths in his curriculum vitae. His war record had demonstrated his nationalist credentials. Secondly, his hand-over to the elected Shehu Shagari regime in 1979 portrayed his capacity to bow to democratic demands for a Second Republic. Finally, his engagement in civil society with the Africa Leadership Forum and Transparency International had shown a track record of democratic struggle and commitment to combat corruption that led Nigerians to believe that this President would not be like the other military leaders who tried to manipulate the country to perpetuate their self-rule and loot the treasury.
Nigerians were wrong. Obasanjo failed to resist the temptation of believing that because he enjoys ruling, he is the only one who can rule. Over the past three years, he has deployed various stratagems to prolong his rule including the organisation of a huge National Political Reform Conference as a springboard for self-perpetuation.

In spite of the rather negative tone in our comments so far, it is unwise to give up on a relatively positive outcome of the 2007 elections and indeed the deepening of Nigerian democracy. The outcome of President Obasanjo’s attempt to prolong his rule is a case in point.

On 16 and 17 May 2006 the Upper and Lower Chambers of the National Assembly threw out constitutional reform proposals designed to allow President Obasanjo to have a third term of office against the letter and spirit of the 1999 Constitution. Obasanjo is already Nigeria’s longest serving ruler; he had been a military dictator and is now in his eight year as “democratically” elected President. Indications started emerging immediately he began his second term of office in 2003 that there were plans to prolong his rule beyond the constitutionally determined tenure of 29 May 2007. The major argument was that the President was engaged in a successful process of economic reform and struggle against corruption and needed more time to institutionalise the reforms and make them irreversible. Numerous forces in the country were however opposed to the prolongation agenda and fought against it leading to the defeat of the prolongation agenda on 16 May. It was an intense and titanic battle in which vast resources were deployed and networks of actors activated.

At the heart of the struggle were different perspectives about the future of Nigerian democracy and economic development. The third term struggle was indeed a political framework through which Nigerians sought to define and act for a democratic future. Precisely because of this larger dimension of the struggle, it is useful to end this report by pointing to the potentials it suggests of the rising agency in the construction of democratic citizenship in the country.

The President’s men had developed an elaborate plan for the prolongation agenda. It was first put in place at the level of the National Political Reform Conference. The idea was to use the strength of State Governors to push through the prolongation plan. Most delegates to the Conference were appointed by Governors and a Constitution was surreptitiously introduced to the Conference which had a prolongation plan. The delegates however rejected the proposal in spite of great pressure from their Governors and the Presidency.

Following that set back, additional forces were marshalled to push through the plan at the level of the National Assembly. The forces included the top political fixers in the country, the business community organised in a forum known as Corporate Nigeria which provided both finance and economic justification for the prolongation. Security agencies under the leadership of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission were brought in to engage in selective prosecution of actors who opposed Obasanjo’s self-perpetuation plan. In addition, assuming that every Nigerian has a price, huge amounts in bribes, apparently, up to a million dollars per legislator were offered to those who supported the plan. The party machine was also brought into play. All those who resisted the prolongation plan were threatened with expulsion while supporters were assured of automatic re-nomination for the 2007 elections. And yet they failed.

The basis for failure was that although Nigerian political parties and most of the political class have an anti-democratic political culture, the Nigerian people have a resilient commitment to democracy which was for example demonstrated during the struggle against the annulment of the June 1993 elections. In the case of the battle against the third term, civil society played a major role. The National Civil Society Coalition against the Third Term, the Transition Monitoring Group and the United Action for Democracy, amongst others, played a major role. The political opposition, including the Vice President, some Governors and political parties were also active. In the National Assembly, a small group of legislators known as the 2007 Movement opposed the move and their numbers and strength grew as more Nigerians rose to oppose the third term agenda. Even religious leaders joined the fray as many of them openly and vigorously condemned the third term agenda. Even bankers played a major role by phoning and informing journalists about amounts and recipients of bribes passing through their banks.

The mass media, especially the private television stations and newspapers, became the vanguard of the struggle and they ran a very effective name and shame campaign against legislators supporting the third term agenda. Even musicians came in with songs and poems condemning the third term plotters. Street kids were the final arbiters. They started beating up legislators from their constituencies who were supporting the third term agenda. At the end of the day, legislators realised that supporting the third term agenda was not in their interest and the whole plan collapsed. The important element in the narrative is that in the process of this struggle, considerable agency in the construction of democratic citizenship has been generated. The question before all democratic forces in Nigeria today is that as we move towards the 2007 elections, can this agency be sustained to ensure that the elections are not sabotaged?

In our study (Ibrahim and Egwu, 2005) we emphasised that the 2003 elections were not rigged everywhere in the country. In many places, citizens and opposition politicians were able to organise and protect their mandate. Currently, there is a new consciousness rising in the country that people must organise to defend their franchise. This is a positive sign. Nigerians are no longer assuming that their votes count, they are planning how to ensure that they vote and that their votes are counted. During the struggle against the third term, many communities initiated procedures for the recall of the representatives who were supporting the third term agenda. People now know that they can recall, or attempt to recall, their legislators and that such action empowers them to demand for accountability. The import of this rising consciousness is that if indeed there is a plan for a programmed failure of the 2007 elections, Nigerians will combat that plan and try to salvage the elections. The degree of their success is the outcome we are waiting to see.

October 2006

Select reading
Human Rights Watch, Nigeria’s 2003 Elections: The Unacknowledged Violence. New York, 2004.

Human Rights Watch, Rivers and Blood: Guns, Oil and Power in Nigeria’s Rivers State. New York, 2005.

Ibrahim, J., ‘Legislation and the Political Process: The Third Term Agenda and the Future of Nigerian Democracy’. Seminar paper, Centre for Democracy and Development, London, 21 April 2006.

Ibrahim, J. and S. Egwu (eds), Nigeria Elections 2007: Defending the People’s Mandate. Global Rights, Abuja, 2005.

Ikelegbe, A., ‘The Economy of Conflict in the Oil Rich Niger Delta Region of Nigeria’. In Nordic Journal of African Studies, vol. 14, no. 2, 2005.

Ikelegbe, A., ‘Civil Society, Oil and Conflict in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria’. In Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 39, no. 3, 2001.

National Civil Society Coalition Against Third Term Agenda, Don’t Destroy Our Unity with Third Term Agenda. Abuja, 2006.

Tamuno, T.N., Peace and Violence in Nigeria, Nigeria since Independence History Project. Ibadan, 1991.

Transition Monitoring Group, Do the Votes Count: Final Report of the 2003 General Elections in Nigeria, Abuja, 2003.