Underage voters with fake voter's cards, missing voters registers, ‘strategic’ insecurity leading to excessive violence and snatched ballot boxes, characterised last Saturday's gubernatorial election held in Sokoto State, North West Nigeria.
Underage voters with fake voter's cards, missing voters registers, ‘strategic’ insecurity leading to excessive violence and snatched ballot boxes, characterised last Saturday's gubernatorial election held in Sokoto State, North West Nigeria.
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Scores of observers from several civil society organisations witnessed an indiscriminate number of children below the mandatory voting age of 18 years flagrantly voting at polling units across the state's 23 local government areas.
In numerous places, the election was wrought with fraud, as underage voters, aided by policemen, immigration officers and other security personnel, brandished fake voter's cards which they presented to officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for accreditation and voting.
A video recording of the election at Shiyar Rafi Polling Unit in Tureta Local Government showed a policeman guiding several minors to queue along with adults. A closer inspection of their voter's cards stated "Asarara" as the same address for all the children born of different parents. Their cards also claimed they were all 18-year-old students, curiously born on the same day of January 1, 1993.
But more fraudulent was the date of issue on their voter's cards: January 22, 2012. Only cards issued before the 2011 general elections were authorised for the Sokoto governorship election, INEC spokesman, Kayode Idowu, affirmed.
He said that unlike previous elections held in Kogi, Adamawa and Bayelsa States where updated registers were used, INEC didn’t meet the Electoral Act's requirements to use an updated voter's register in Sokoto State.
“The Electoral Act requires us to update an initial register 30 days before an election, which we couldn’t do because of the allowance we didn’t have. So though we have an updated register for Sokoto, we used the register that we compiled in January last year for Sokoto election,” Idowu said.
“Those who were not 18 as at January 2011 but who turned 18 and were captured for the update of the register sometime about a month or two ago, those people could not even vote in the Saturday election because we could not use the register that was updated for Saturday election”.
Reality on ground in Sokoto however showed underage voters had a filled day at the polls which saw the former governor, Aliyu Wamakko of the People's Democratic Party (PDP), return for another four year tenure with an astounding win of 518,247 votes from the total 728,108 votes cast.
Agents of political parties were quick to pass the buck. When asked why they were allowing minors to vote, they would respond: "It's not our business. Ask security". One policeman when questioned why he was condoning the illegal act, shrugged and replied, "Wetin you want make I do now?"
In several communities where underage voting took place, elders like Mohammed Adamu proffered 'stunted growth' caused by socio economic hardship and extreme weather conditions as the excuse for the stature of the children he claimed are adults.
"They are up to 18 years. Why? Because we have problem here," Adamu said. "One, overwork will make a person not to become bigger. Two, they are illiterate people. They don’t have enough education to give them diet food. This is another problem which all our areas we are facing. Also because of hot sun our people here they will not fit to become big."
But for election observers like Chinedu Nwagu of the CLEEN Foundation, a non-governmental organisation which since 2003 has been monitoring the conduct of security operatives on election duty, the truth is glaring.
"These are children who are obviously not up to 18. There is no mistaking it," said Nwagu while observing at Kware Road Polling Unit in Wamakko Local Government Area. "I asked one who told me he is 18, born in 1994. But then that would mean when he registered in 2011, he was 17, which is illegal."
Several other mysterious happenings occurred in Wamakko LGA, the re-elected governor's constituency. While accreditation started as late as 10:30am in several places, the original electronic printout of registers having the pictures of voters disappeared on election day. Arkilla Registration Area with 37 Polling Stations having the highest number of 42,929 registered voters in Wamakko LGA was a case in point.
"At the collation centre, they said they couldn't find the [electronic] register. So we were given the manual register to use," said Lydia Ibiloye, a National Youth Service Corps member who was the Presiding Officer at Kware Road Polling Unit under Arkilla.
Dayyabu Zakari who was the supervising presiding officer for Arkilla Registration Area said there was a "mix-up" of voters' registers. He said on the instructions of an INEC national commissioner, the manual registers which bear no image of voters were used.
"One Polling Unit's printout was taken to another Polling Unit. Almost all the polling units were affected. About 27 or so," Zakari said. "Since we cannot assemble all the registers and sort everything according to polling unit, we said we should rush and get the manual register because the printout is a product of the manual register."
The true picture on ground according to Ibiloye was, "the manual register did not have many people's names in it. So we had to ask them to write their names on paper before they vote".
Wamakko LG was arguably the worst local government where voting held, INEC officials said, as it was discovered only six Polling Units of a total of 177 Polling Units had voting cubicles. It was a case of open voting where people gathered around you to see who you were voting for. Nothing changed even after the Resident Electoral Commissioner for Sokoto State was duly informed.
Also worrisome was the "excessive violence" across several of the 3,035 polling units in the state's three senatorial districts, as reported by Local Government Returning Officers during their presentation of results to the State Returning Officer, Abdullahi Zuru.
Violent political thugs, popularly known as 'Area Boys,' went on a rampage snatching election material including ballot boxes in Wamakko LG; Sabon Birni LG; Gada LG; Kebbe LG; Goronyo LG; Sokoto North LG; Dange Shuni LG; Illela LG; Gwadabawa LG; Yabo LG; Wurno LG; Tambuwal LG; amongst others, leading to the cancellation of results of several polling units.
Even election monitors were not safe, as Aliyu Mohammed, an observer with the Centre for Peace Building and Socio-Economic Resources Development (CePSERD) narrated how “we ran for our lives” after a truck full of knives-carrying thugs descended on a Polling Unit in Yabo Local Government, “chased everyone away”, carted the ballot papers and then “started burning tires”.
“The security deployment was just terrible,” noted Nwagu, the Manager of CLEEN Foundation’s Accountability and Justice Division, while condemning as “very worrisome” the use of local government controlled vigilante (informal police) groups to secure polling units. “The security scare, particularly the presence of area boys, influenced a lot of irregularities. I wouldn’t score the Police twenty percent.”
Senior INEC officials, at a meeting held at the Sokoto Guest Inn at about 9pm after the day’s election, however revealed to observer groups from the International Republican Institute (IRI), Project Swift Count, the Federation of Muslim Women's Associations in Nigeria (FOMWAN), the Organisation of Justice for Equity Sustenance, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), amongst others, that the insecurity in the state was “actually a strategy” which allowed underhand activities take place.
“The police failed,” senior INEC officials told the observers. “INEC as an organization had a list of identified flashpoints known for recurrence of violence, thuggery, and area boys. INEC gave the police all that information and the police still posted nobody to these areas. Instead they were seen at road blocks when they were needed in polling units.”
Amidst the gross insecurity, some Youth Corps members are believed to have made some 'fast' cash from politicians. Amongst a group of corps members discussing, it was mentioned that a Presiding Officer and other INEC officials In Tambuwal LG, the constituency of Nigeria's House of Representatives Speaker, ‘received’ N50,000 from a politician in exchange for ballot papers.
For other NYSC ad-hoc staff who refused to ‘play ball’, they also had their share of events as they worked in fear, especially as the language and cultural barrier posed a major hindrance.
The Wurno Local Government Returning Officer reported how in Kwargaba Polling Station, the Presiding Officer was "threatened with dangerous weapons" for challenging political thugs who had insisted voters show them who they were voting for before casting their vote. In Chimmola Kudu in Gwadabawa Local Government, the Presiding Officer was ''forced" to accredit and allow unqualified people vote, also disclosed the returning officer for the local government.
The threat Youth Corps members faced was however only fully realized during the meeting of INEC officials with observers. Responding to a comment from a representative from the National Democratic Institute on how NYSC ad-hoc staff were seen hiding their identity, a senior INEC official disclosed several Youth Corps members had been held hostage late into the night.
“As at one hour ago we just rescued the last batch of corps members. They were held under hostage. Today we saved so many of them. They kept calling that please they want to lynch them,” the official said. “Most of the corps members had to hide what they were even wearing as corps members. So the issue of corps members not wearing their uniform was for security,”
While another “major problem” encountered was how INEC identification, mostly ‘Presiding Officer’ tags, had “flooded the state” before the start of the election, concerns were raised about security preparedness for the February 25th governorship election in Cross River State, in Southern Nigeria.
Several lessons should be learnt from this election, Nwagu told a roomful of journalists during CLEEN Foundation’s release of its preliminary statement on the conduct of security operatives during the Sokoto election.
“Security officials should be better coordinated and priority should be given to security presence at polling units,” the lawyer and security expert said. “Security officials should be given more training in crowd control. They should be better equipped to manage conflict situations, and be directed to arrest and prosecute political thugs irrespective of their sponsors.”
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