After President Goodluck Jonathan took the helms of Nigerian affairs back in May of this year, the promise that attracted much ado about his presidency was the reform of the electoral process in the country.
After President Goodluck Jonathan took the helms of Nigerian affairs back in May of this year, the promise that attracted much ado about his presidency was the reform of the electoral process in the country.
Before then, Nigerian elections were run by a seemingly half-baked pharmacist (pun also intended) whose prior experience in the management of prescription drugs was not a match for the much more complicated endeavor of managing political animals -- Nigerian political animals -- without ibuprofen. Then the order was a disorderly trade in ballot papers, and ballot papers traded higher than even the U.S. treasury bills. But that was not the threshold. The threshold was the Copperfield-like magic trick of winning elections with more ballots than registered voters. The trick did not even warrant a fake saw and an assistant, but a pen and paper, where, after bank accounts were filled, pen wrote the names of winners on paper, and no one claimed the hand behind the pen. That was Iwu's film trick. Of course, the audience was not fooled -- Nigerians are more sophisticated than some think -- but complacency and self-interest have always been our two vices. Now, fast-forward.
Jonathan came, saw, and conquered. But, of course, the evil that men did lived after them. Iwu was fired but his evils lived after him -- many of his written-in "winners" remained in office and were constant reminders of those evils -- for a while anyway, but long enough to burglarize our homes and empty our refrigerators and cabinets. Then it seemed like someone (maybe Jonathan) woke the hitherto overfed (over-bribed) judiciary from its Naira-induced slumber. Who said one man could not make a difference. As Jonathan fired Aondoakaa (Ibori's crooked lawyer), the chips began to fall. Ibori, the master of them all, fled and landed in extradition camp. Some election challenges regained life. Delta State's Great Ogboru is an epitome of that life. The job, however, was haphazard. Although Ribadu and El Rufai came back, Farida remained. But I digressed.
Jonathan gave us Jega, Professor Jega. We sighed that, at least, he was not a pharmacist, because we needed to avoid proximity to mind-altering substances during the next election circle. Even better, we finally had a political scientist. From all indications, Jega seems to be a man of honour. Most folks have decided to give him a chance. I am one of them. I was taken aback, however, when he recently began scaling down expectations of a free and fair election. Speaking in tongues at the 2010 Achebe Colloquium in Rhode Island, U.S.A., he said: "I will not say there will be a perfect election, but we are committed to do our best and lift the standards that will make Nigerians to be proud of us, and overtime we will keep improving." Of course, no one expects a "perfect" election, but that was a classic case of scaling down expectations. To be sure, he promised that the standards would be "higher" than previous elections. What does that mean? Previous elections had no standards.
If Jega is serious about building a standard, the steps he needs at this point are actually baby steps, not even complicated ones. Two words: security and cameras. Indulge me. There are two rudimentary reasons why elections are easily rigged in Nigeria: the prevention of voters from going to the polls and the conducive environment for the manipulation of the results either by stuffing ballot boxes or discarding the boxes altogether for the closed-door forgery of "winners."
Let us begin with security. There must be security to ward off the thugs and the illiterate mercenaries. Voters must not be intimidated. Supporters of all sides must not engage in a free-for-all fight. No guns by teenagers or anyone. No cutlasses, knives, sticks, or, worst, dynamite-borne Okadas. No pick-up trucks of slippers-wearing and ash-footed illiterates. No dagger-drawn religious fanatics. No palm leaves-headed, yellow-tooted axe-wielding zealots. On election day, all campaigns must be banned, and no chanting within one mile of polling stations. In fact, no shouting around polling stations, period. Quiet, please.
While many are against sending in the Nigerian military to man the elections, I am not one of those people. Because the Nigerian Police, as we know, is a total failure, we cannot depend on its officers. The military, even given all its excesses, is good in certain things. Clearly, its officers are better than the Nigerian Police in things that are seasonal and do not require long-drawn civilian outposts or other mechanisms that grow their own minds. They are better in a mission-driven focus, much more organized, and better in following orders. The Police is disorganized, lazy, and suffer terminally from institutionalized corruption. Ask the kidnappers formerly in Abia State. Jega needs to go to the Commander-in-Chief for orders to the military to provide security during the elections. This is assuming Jonathan is serious about election reforms.
Cameras -- video cameras. You must have them in all polling stations. In addition to the voting machines, video cameras must be a priority for the Independent National Electoral Commission. The National Assembly must amend the electoral laws to require cameras in all polling stations, or Jega must enact a policy based on the existing law. Here is how the law and/or policy should read: "no results shall be certified unless with a video record of the counting of the votes." Better yet, having eliminated the intimidation factor, the video record shall begin with voting. All polling stations shall have cameras recording all voting activities. Of course, the cameras must not zoom into the voters' individual selections of candidates, but into the number of voters as they troop into the stations. No video record, no certification of either the polling station or the results coming from the station, period. Returning officers must, therefore, return ballot boxes with the video record. In fact, not only should the INEC have their own video cameras, the media should be given full video recording access to the stations and every other avenue associated with election results. All media houses, local or international, must be allowed to record. That way, we eliminate corrupting the INEC videos.
As we know, darkness hates light, and darkness is the friend of corruption. Light is our friend because we share a mutual enemy in corruption. For those of us who lived in Los Angeles in the 90s, we know that without cameras there would never have been a Rodney King. Now, most police vehicles bear cameras in the U.S. Cameras are actually for the police and the criminal alike. The same goes for the elections. With cameras, it becomes harder to accuse election officials of cheating, and, clearly, the voters are protected. To change bad behaviour in Nigeria, we must all watch and see the actors behave badly. This is not a new concept. Thieves in Nigerian villages long were paraded when caught. They hated it not just because of the poison ivy around their necks but because shame is a powerful deterrent in our society. But shame does not happen in darkness, because shame, unlike conscience, is external and does not happen without spectators and judges.
As I said, these are baby steps that must be accompanied or followed by more mature steps. But Jega must take them to walk right.
Theo I. Ogune, Esquire, is a Nigerian attorney in Maryland, U.S.A.
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