Nigerian Democracy and Prospects for the 2011 Elections - Nasir El-Rufai

Elombah.com

19 March 2011

Nigerian Democracy and Prospects for the 2011 Elections - Nasir El-Rufai

(An address presented at Chatham House 17 March 2011)  

Written by Nasir El Rufai    

Nigerians generally believe that our country is important and its democratic health vital for the overall progress of Sub-Saharan Africa. This is not only because Nigeria is the eighth most populous nation in the world[1], it is also the seventh biggest democracy, and home to one out of every five Africans. The country is endowed with enormous human and natural resources, with a confident, resilient and entrepreneurial population living within its borders (162 million[2] by March 2011), and the largest African Diaspora - 2 million in the USA[3], about 3 million in

 Europe and up to 5 million in Africa and the Middle East[4]. We have the largest and most equipped military in the ECOWAS sub-region. We have in our territory, crude oil and a plethora of minerals of every description. We have gas - lots of it, which we hardly extract, and when we come across it by chance - mostly flare, worsening the global climate change problem. Many Nigerians believe that as a nation, we have a burden of being the exemplar for African resilience, resourcefulness, good governance and progress. And we have failed to discharge that responsibility, so far.

These facts and realities are however not enough for the world to care about what happens in Nigeria. I agree to some extent with the views expressed by Ambassador Princeton Lyman[5] that we must not as Nigerians take for granted our "strategic importance" to the Africa, US and the world just on account of our natural endowments and history, without getting our act together today and in the future. This note of caution is necessary because since the ascension of Umaru Yar'Adua as president in 2007, Nigeria's role in regional and global affairs as well as its capacity to govern itself have diminished and continue to deteriorate. Our democratic experience has been disappointing so far. Our political parties have become either franchises of state governors (the ruling party, PDP and the marginal 'opposition' ANPP) or sole proprietorships (most of all the other parties). All the parties practice no democracy internally and therefore incapable of manifesting those principles and practices in day-to-day governance externally. Our politics and governance show no clear standards of merit or values. Being successful in politics depends a lot on doing very little that benefits the ordinary people, bribing elites and the loudest stakeholders, and more recently, chance and simple good luck!

With these experiences, one would expect that Nigerians would have lost faith in democracy. I think they would have, but for the extended period we experienced military rule and its unintended consequences. So we are more suspicious of the military and have learnt to be patient with our 'civilians'. Chance events like the death of Umaru Yar'Adua, the ascension of Goodluck Jonathan to the presidency, his nomination of Attahiru Jega as the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) , Jonathan's denial of the zoning practices of the PDP, strengthened organization and activism by civil society and media, and the proliferation of new communications technologies have combined to give Nigerians some hope that all is not lost in our nation, our democracy and our future. Not just yet.

There has been an eagerness on the part of Nigerians to register to vote, and a massive turnout of voters is expected in April. They are also interested in not only voting, but protecting their votes, to ensure that their votes count. Some young people that organized an NGO - "Enough is Enough Nigeria (www.eienigeria.org)" to mobilize people to register, vote and protect their votes coined an acronym - RSVP, which was adopted by another political organization that I helped found while in exile - the Save Nigeria Group in sensitizing  people to participate in this election cycle.  The populace has been further mobilized and angered more by the excesses of politicians and high-rolling lifestyle in the last 3 years than anything we have witnessed in Nigeria in recent times[6]. The character of the 2011 elections as the first contest since 1999 without a foregone outcome has gingered not only the opposition parties but electrified the electorate as well. For this and other reasons that I will refer to in these remarks, there has also emerged a constituency that is not loyal to political parties, but interested in the personalities and programmes of the candidates, not just the fan fare, the dancing and music, and soapbox theatrics.

The 2011 National Elections

And we are once again at a crossroads. This makes it important that the 2011 elections must be transparently fair, such that the legitimacy of the results will be accepted as reflective of the preferences expressed by voters. In my humble view, and in light of the division in the country today due to the acrimonious debate on zoning, the election is an opportunity for reconciliation, but it could be a fillip to the insecurity, divisions and bitterness fostered in the campaigns.

The weight of discharging this burden rests primarily on INEC and the agencies involved in providing staff and implementing elections logistics - the Police, the State Security Service and the National Youth Service Corps that will constitute the bulk of the polling clerks that will be deployed to each of the estimated 120,000[7] or so polling units.

Most Nigerians are optimistic that the April 2011 elections will be qualitatively different from the 2003 and 2007 elections.

This is evident from their reaction to the appointment of the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, the speed at which the National Assembly approved the budget for the operations of the Commission and the enthusiasm they displayed before the commencement of registration of voters exercise.

The renewed confidence of the Nigerian people in the Electoral Commission and the future of democracy also manifested in their resilience and resolve to have their names on the voters roll. Some of them defied challenges of the weather, logistics and equipment to get their names on the register of voters. More importantly is the perception that those entrusted with the duty of superintending elections at this point in time have the courage, resilience, presence of mind and integrity to deliver credible elections despite their relative inexperience in managing elections[8].

The relative success of the voter registration exercise, INEC's willingness to extend it when it was clear that the original time allotted was inadequate, and the timeliness in publishing the final voters' register have persuaded Nigerians that the initial euphoria that greeted Jega's appointment (and some of his commissioners) were not entirely misplaced. Challenges remain. Attahiru Jega still has to work with INEC staff that have been deeply involved in the electoral malpractices of the last 12 years or more. Perhaps, with time on his side[9], he would have got rid them of them and brought in new hands, for training and orientation in electoral integrity. The fact that no one has ever been convicted of an electoral offence in Nigeria emboldens election riggers to remain in business. The reported practice of buying up voters' cards by unpopular incumbents is a new and interesting voter-exclusion strategy. Whether the voter's card will then be used for rigging is an open question. Public funds and assets are also being used by incumbents for campaigning and electioneering in clear violation of the provisions of the Electoral Act, and so far, INEC has been unable to do anything about that. Incumbents have often refused opposing parties the use of public facilities and fair access and broadcast facilities contrary to the law and the Code of Conduct that is binding on all the political parties.

Security red-flags have been raised by INEC in some states - and these are outside INEC's control unless addressed by the Police and other security agencies. Hot spots like some three states of the Niger Delta, Plateau, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Abia and Imo are so scary to the NYSC that finding staff willing to be polling officers may be a big challenge. The Judiciary's image has taken a beating in the last few years, culminating in the recent allegations contained in Wikileaks cables published recently[10]. With the judiciary perceived as compromised, electoral disputes are more likely to be settled extra-judicially with dire consequences for political stability.

Election monitoring helps, but monitors often get mobilized to the field in too little numbers and too late, and they tend to concentrate their activities in the urban areas. Most of the electoral abuses predictably take place in the suburban and rural areas, or in the case of the coastal states, in the riverine communities. Election monitors must concentrate in those locations. Opposition parties must invest in the recruitment, training and deployment of polling agents to man each polling unit, with mobile phones and web-enabled laptops to broadcast and send results declared at each polling unit. This is a horrendously expensive proposition, but it must be done otherwise the ruling party in each location will rewrite the results and steal the election. These suggestions and more will need to be considered and implemented if we are to support INEC organise decent elections in April.

The Zoning Debate and Aftermath

In my opinion, selecting a country's political leaders primarily based on where they happen to be born rather than more objective qualities like competence, capacity and commitment - amounts to a collective dereliction of national duty. It is therefore unfortunate that this issue of zoning has occupied political actors in the ruling party for so long. And the way and manner the debate over zoning has now divided Nigeria and threw us back to immediate post-1966 era is an avoidable manifestation of incompetent political management on both sides of the divide. The fact is that zoning is entrenched in the PDP Constitution[11], and indeed by the inclusion of "Federal Character" provisions in the 1999 Constitution, also implied in our Grundnorm. Goodluck Jonathan is not only a product of zoning and its beneficiary, but personally voted in support of its entrenchment as a power-sharing principle of the PDP in 2002 when there was a debate on the matter in an Expanded PDP Caucus Meeting. Herein lies the problem.

Running for president is the constitutional right of every Nigeria qualified by age and education, but denying zoning made President Jonathan appear dishonorable and untrustworthy in the eyes of all but those who wish to deceive him. Jonathan could have negotiated an exception to the principle without denying zoning. By focusing almost entirely on where a person happens to come from, the protagonists of zoning failed to emphasize competence and capacity to govern in an inclusive manner as the primary basis to put up persons for high office. Perhaps if both sides had spoken and acted differently, the debate would not have been necessary, and the consequent acrimony and bitterness that ensued would have been avoided. People that fail to honor verbal agreements do not go far in politics and I think President Jonathan has major hurdles to cross among Northern voters, for this reason.

The 2011 Voters' Register

The final voters' roll which have been biometrically validated on a state-by-state basis contains some 73.5 million voters. Contrary to the suspicion that the number is too high to be authentic, it is statistically consistent with our current population of 162 million, with a disproportionate percentage of young people - nearly 55% below the voting age of 18 years. The distribution of the voters across our six regions are[12]:

                South-East          7.6 million                            North-East          10.7 million

                South-South      9.5 million                            North-Central    11.9 million

                South-West        14.3 million                         North-West        19.8 million

Approximately 42.5% of the voters are resident in the South of Nigeria with 57.5% in the North. Indeed, what is now evident is that two zones, the North-West and South-West have between them some 34 million voters - nearly half of the voting population. For a candidate to be elected president, he must not only score the highest number of votes cast in the election ("the plurality provision"), but must also have scored at least 25% of the total votes cast in each at least 24 states and the Federal Territory of Abuja ("the geographic spread provision"). While President Jonathan has the advantage of incumbency, control of coercive machinery of state and huge financial resources to deploy, the factors I have referred to earlier make it very difficult to say that the next election is going to be the coronation of the candidate of the ruling party! And many incumbents in all the parties with the exception of a handful of states are at grave risk of being voted out!

There is a lot of disenchantment with the ruling party and in some states like Benue and Katsina, mass exodus to opposition parties may cause the PDP to lose at several levels. The PDP campaign rallies are drab celebration and dancing events with scanty crowds that have been described by one of the opposition candidates as ruling party's "farewell party". The two leading opposition parties - CPC and ACN - are exciting voters and drawing much larger crowds in most of the country than the ruling party. Financially and organizationally, Buhari"s new party CPC without any money or access to the resources of elected governors, has consistently attracted the largest crowds in campaign rallies. ACN's Nuhu Ribadu is better resourced financially than Buhari, and enjoys a huge following among the younger voters that find his anti-corruption credentials exciting.

Without any reliable pre-election polls as guide, one can only hazard an informed guess after the National Assembly elections of April 2. I am of the view though that if the elections are relatively free and fair as expected, it may well be that a clear winner does not emerge in the first ballot for the presidency on April 9. And in a second round between the two leading candidates, anything can happen! My point is that the 2011 presidential election contest is not over until the winner is announced. And how the elections are conducted will determine whether Nigeria succeeds or fails, and if its democracy survives the next four years or not, with broad consequences for the stability of the ECOWAS sub-region.

Politics, Democracy and National Vision

Nigeria's twelve years of democracy has not established a clear link between elected official and the electorate. Elected officials owe their positions more to political godfathers, violence and thuggery, bribery, electoral fraud and manipulation than the preferences of the electorate. There is therefore no incentive for them to perform once in office or fulfill any promises made. And our politics has become repulsive, or in the exact words of John Stuart Mills:

"The idea is essentially repulsive of a society held together only by the relations and feelings arising out of pecuniary interest.[13]"

For once in a long time, Nigerians see an opportunity to vote in an election where the playing field is near level. They see a head of electoral commission that they trust and believe that this time, their votes would count. They see an opportunity to reinvent our democracy. We are about to elect a government that must work for us, because those elected will know that they serve at our pleasure. What does all these portend for the future? Nigeria faces five key challenges that a future federal government must address decisively:

high levels of insecurity and near-state failure in many parts of the country: in Jos (ethnic killings and reprisals), Borno and Bauchi (anarchist Islamists called "Boko Haram"), Abia (kidnapping), and the Niger Delta militancy. Many of these security challenges have their roots in the recruitment, training and arming and deployment of thugs for politics.

infrastructure deficits like perennial electricity supply shortages, poor transportation and logistics infrastructure, near absence of rail and mass transit systems nationwide and the like.

unemployment and youth hopelessness: the challenge of finding jobs for nearly 4 million people that are added every year to the population of the under-employed and the jobless. There is an estimated 17 million first time voters that see this as their key issue.

collapse of social services like public education, and healthcare and the complete absence of a social safety net for the vulnerable groups, and

destruction of governance institutions and corruption: in the last few weeks, our judiciary has been the subject of much ridicule with the heads of the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court exchanging words, and lawsuits, while all kinds of allegations of corruption have been freely published in newspapers.

If INEC conducts decent elections next month, the link between politics and governance will be established and our democracy will begin to deliver real dividends. The new foundations for our nationhood and progress will be laid with politicians acting responsibly not fixing salaries of $2 million per annum each for 109 senators that barely pass 30 pieces of legislation in a 4 year session! We are all optimistic that this will be the case with the steps being taken by INEC and its sister agencies. And Nigerians are no longer complaining and agonizing. They are organizing to resist the electoral malpractices of the past, learning from the successes of Kano in 2003, Lagos in 2003 and 2007, and Bauchi in 2007!

The opportunity to build a nation, with unity in diversity, a sound democracy and a true federation will then be ours again. Whoever wins the election must not only address the front-burner issues above but work to amend the Constitution to devolve more powers and revenues to the States and Local Governments. The next administration must take steps to abolish the indigene-settler dichotomy that has been the root cause of most ethnic clashes in Nigeria. It must entrench transparency and reduce the information asymmetry between those in government and the rest of us. Our nation must be led by inclusive, balanced and broadminded leaders not ethnic champions and provincials that see only their backyard as the beginning and end of their "Nigeria".

If the 2011 elections turn out to be as flawed as the those of 2003 or 2007, I do not think the opposition candidates have sufficient confidence in the Judiciary to take their complaints to the Courts. In fact one of them has publicly declared that he would not. In that case, the discontent will spread to the streets of the major urban centres. I predict massive protests in various parts of the country, as we have witnessed recently in Cote D'Ivoire and some countries in North Africa and the Middle East, until those that steal the elections vacate office. Satellite television and radio have sensitized the people about what they can do and I think it has caught the imagination of our youths. This Generation Next is restless, dissatisfied and alienated, and they are connected using cell-phones[14], Facebook[15], Twitter and BlackBerry Messenger. These protests can go badly wrong and the need to restore order might mean some kind of military intervention, followed quickly by new elections a la Egypt. The options are really limited to these in my view unless we have credible elections in the next three weeks. And at this point, one can say that the probability of either scenario playing out is about equal.

So I am cautiously optimistic about 2011. I believe things will work out for Nigeria, and everyone, other than the incumbents in the ruling party want things to change for the better. I hope I am right about my optimism.

Thanks for inviting me.

Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai

Nigerian Democracy and Prospects for the 2011 Elections - Nasir El-Rufai at Chatham House - March 17, 2011

NOTES:
[1] See http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats8.htm, accessed March 16, 2011


[2] Nigerian population 2006 figure of 140,341,790 at an annual growth rate of 2.9% -  see http://www.population.gov.ng/, accessed March 15, 2011


[3] Ambassador John Campbell's (2010) book Nigeria - Dancing on the Brink mentioned this figure.


[4] Estimates from the Nigerians In Diaspora Organization (NIDO Europe and NIDO Americas), 2006


[5] See for instance: "Realities of Nigeria’s diminishing relevance to U.S., Africa." By Princeton Lyman summarized in http://www.usafricaonline.com/2010/01/08/nigeria-usa-interests-princeton-lyman/ accessed March 16, 2011.



[6] The salaries and allowances of the members of the National Assembly, as well as the running cost of legislative arm of about 25.4% of the Recurrent Expenditure of the Government of the Federation have been sources of resentment particularly in a population that is getting poor public services.


[7] The election agency in the Abacha regime (NECON) had about 78,000 polling units (PUs), and recently some parties have complained that some of the PUs are non-existent centres, created to facilitate election rigging. INEC has denied such claims. See for instance these stories in the Nigerian media: Part charges INEC on Audit of Polling. http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/News/National/5645005-147/party_charges_inec_on_audit_of.csp and "INEC accepts polling units discrepancies": http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/News/5660721-147/inec_accepts_polling_units_discrepancies_.csp


[8] http://www.vanguardngr.com/2011/03/will-the-2011-elections-be-better-than-the-2007-elections/


[9] See my views about the earlier election date of January 2011, which I thought was logistically impossible. http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Home/5594199-146/el-rufai_wants_2011_elections_delayed_.csp


[10] See Wikileaks Cable: Supreme Court Bribe in the Next Newspaper -  accessed March 15, 2011http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Home/5681717-146/wikileaks_cable_supreme_court_bribe_.csp


[11] Sec 7.1.c of the PDP Constitution


[12] See http://www.inecnigeria.org/a-release-certified-voters%E2%80%99-register-2011/  for the Voters' Register - Final, accessed 16th March, 2011.


[13] John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, with Some of the Applications to Social Philosophy (London, Longman, Green, 1909), 754


[14] At the end of 2010, the NCC announced that there were over 70 million mobile phones in Nigeria.


[15] An estimated 3 million Nigerians are on Facebook, according to an unconfirmed source at the NCC as at the end of 2010.