Nigeria needs electoral offences commission –Igini

Edo State Resident Electoral Commissioner, Mike Igini has described President Jonathan’s congratulatory phone call to the President-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari as laying a foundation that is only seen as a tradition in the United States of America. He said that by that singular action, President Jonathan has  listed his name in the democracy hall of fame in Nigeria.

In this chat with Expdonaloaded blog, he speaks on the just-concluded general elections, the challenges posed by the use of card reader, the lessons learnt, among other burning issues.
Excerpts…
The 2015 general elections have come and gone, followed with the supplementary elections in Imo, Abia and Taraba states. As an umpire in both the first and supplementary elections, what is your assessment of the outcome and future elections?
Evaluating the elections from our own perspective may be different from the perspective of the electorate. From our own end, we look at the election management processes at three levels, namely the pre-election, election and post-election phases. In doing this assessment, we are pre-occupied with some parameters, such as the goals we set to conduct an acceptable election; the plans we devise to meet these goals using resources at our disposal; the structures and inputs, including guiding laws, human, time and material resources that we put in, to enable the plans pull through; the controls we use to govern what we organize and the leadership at every level that we employ to bring the whole of these into reality. First, the main goal of elections is to select leaders who will help to ensure the developmental aspirations of a people. The goal of election management as a process is to conduct an acceptable election; that is, an election which is accepted as credible by stakeholders. In defining what makes an election credible, we examine, whether there was equality of political participation and free competition, and whether the mandate derived from the election is regarded as legitimately given. Having met the overarching goal of conducting acceptable elections in 2011 and 2015 to a large extent, we can say that the Commission has succeeded in helping the consolidation of democracy in Nigeria.  Democratic process, as a mechanism for ensuring the selection of proper representation of a jurisdiction is the minimalist conception of democracy. Whereas democracy as the totality of the processes including the selection of leadership representation, and the derivable benefits in which such selected leadership and the institutions they represent helps to meet the developmental aspiration of the people is the maximalist conception. Our role enables the minimalist conception, whereas all of us as a nation must then join hands to enable the maximalist level of democracy in Nigeria. That minimalist democratic goal is our primary remit. As to the maximalist remit of democracy which is the enabling of a democratic representation that helps to deliver the aspirational development of society, the remit is with the elected officials and everyone else in nation building from 2011 up to 2015 and thereafter.
Are you saying INEC has done well?
Looking at these parameters, I can say that the Commission has covered significant ground and has done well. Even though we are not yet at the zenith we aspire to be, we can still improve many aspects of our activities. In the pre-electoral phases of planning and organizing, we have learned from the pitfalls we experienced and these learning informed some of the innovations that attended subsequent elections. In the election phase, we have also witnessed areas of strength and weaknesses; a principal lesson which came out of the postponement of the earlier scheduled election date is that when materials are distributed on time, it reduces election-day struggles. We also learnt that relying on road transport unions to make individual transactions through group leadership can result in unexpected outcomes for local logistics as we experienced in Edo when the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) almost messed us up. We reviewed and changed our approach immediately in the April 11 election and we attained a resounding success, with personnel arriving at polling units as early as 6:30am in some places, while others got to the polling units at 7am before the 8am official time of opening the poll. We are currently dealing with retrieval of materials, issuing CTC for post-election dispute resolution and full evaluation of all processes to follow for documentation.
What about the Imo election and the several arrests of people?
Regarding the supplementary elections in Imo State and my involvement which l call my second missionary political journey, having been there in 2011 with my other colleagues for the same reason, the key issues are that in 23 LGAs with substantial number of registered voters, elections were cancelled for various reasons all-rooted in the desperation by politicians to manipulate the process. Some ad hoc staff like collation officers at ward levels disappeared with result sheets in both elections of the March 28 and April 11. All of these informed the decision of the Commission for the supplementary election. The real battleground was Oru East LGA described by the good people we interacted with as electoral flashpoint, renowned for election irregularities and the alleged posting of humongous invidious figures by political merchants. With 62 polling units and 24,990 voters in possession of PVCs which was the highest for any area affected by the supplementary election, it was considered a real battleground of electoral contest, particularly for those who, for the first time, would be facing real one-person-one-vote election in the area. Unlike before when it was reputed that some people somewhere would sit down to conduct mass thumb-printing of ballot papers and then go ahead to allocate arbitrary figures. Hence, our insistence on due process, which changed the narrative and probably the ability of voters to determine the outcome, hence the more dignified and credible final figures which was far less than previous moon-slide or landslide figures.  The voters had their day and were apparently pleased to be unfettered. That is how it should be in order to sustain voters’ confidence in the electoral process. All those arrested in Umuma and who are now in the police net, who attempted to undermine the process on Saturday would have their day in court to explain their conducts, otherwise there would be no end to this unrestrained electoral impunity in our polity. Such incidents further illustrates why we urgently need an Electoral Offences Commission with specialized electoral crime investigating officers adept in forensic electoral investigations and judicial officers specialized in the electoral legislative framework who can effectively prosecute electoral offences .
Are you disappointed that despite calls by some of you for electoral offences Commission, we still do not have one?  
You see, common sense suggests and studies in criminology have confirmed that every act that is rewarded would be repeated. The absence of punishment for all previous cases of election rigging is the foundation and indeed incentive for the tragedy of our situation today. Many people secured elected offices without the votes of the people but through the kind of things we aborted in Umuma in Oru East. We still have variants of these violations in so many places unchecked with the connivance of those entrusted to supervise the process.  To bring sanity and probity to the electoral process, surely, we need to establish an electoral offences Commission, with special jurisdiction inaugurated in an election year to deal with cases of voter registration, party primaries, rigging or attempt to rig election, or making false electoral return etc.
You consistently supported and sold to the public, the significance of the use of the card readers for the 2015 election. What is your assessment of its effectiveness and prospect for future elections?
We stood for the card reader head and heart and still stand by the idea because of the tremendous value it brings to the electoral process. In evaluating the card reader, we must always keep in mind that it only plays a singular role in elections, authentication of voters to avoid ghost voters. Therefore, what it does is to restrict the outcome of voting to the number of authenticated voters who actually showed up at elections and not about the total number of registered voters. It does not convince the voter to vote one way or another, so its utility is restricted to enhancing the fidelity of the voter register. The voter register is like the sample frame in a research exercise. You cannot give credibility to the claims of your findings in a research exercise if the sample from which the observations were made is not genuine and representative of the unit of analysis that you are studying. If for instance, you want to study the number of twins born in Kokori town, you must draw your observations from pregnant women in kokori who deliver twins; you cannot make observations of women at Central hospital in Benin and use that to make conclusions about twin deliveries in Kokori. So, your sample frame must be authentic and representative. In the same way, the outcome of an election should represent the voters in polling units, wards or LGAs, so that when a mandate is given through the ballot box, it can credibly be stated that a mandate was received by the larger number of authentic voters in those areas. It is easy to write the names of such voters in a book, but our electoral history has shown that people can devise methods to write whatever they like as representative of the voters and then use that arbitrary construct to award mandates. The bridge between the real list of voters and potential arbitrary lists is connected by the card reader, which is the only way of corroborating the evidence trail about those who vote in election. Gradually, there would be further improvements, we are incrementally coming to an end of the type of situation, where people parade questionable mandates without legitimacy and call it election.
But some people have questioned the credibility of some results from the last elections despite the use of the card reader?
In raising such doubts, the statement must be appropriately qualified. Recall that the card reader was bypassed in many instances deliberately by those opposed to it and also because of technical problems particularly, in the March 28 election. Where they were used, no one has questioned the veracity of the polling unit results. In the Saturday, April 11 election, the Commission issued a public statement that card readers must be used and also followed it up administratively with two different memoranda to all states, to ensure thorough use of card readers by electoral officers for both the governorship and state Houses of Assembly elections.post by expdonaloaded blog
At any rate, the card reader is the only short–cut we currently have to a national identity system, which can be used for elections. If the national identity system is fully operational, it would have been different because the national identity will be aligned with the voter register and it will be impossible to falsify voting identity as the national identity number is supposed to tally with all other identification requirements such as bank verification numbers, drivers licenses etc. As a matter of fact, in future the way to go is to ask a person to bring his national identity card which carries national identity number. If all current identification processes require the individual to present the national identity number before they are processed, such as driver’s license, bank verification, mortgage verification, land purchases, car registration, registration of children at school, registration in hospital and other points of interface with the state, it will be much easier to discard the need for a card reader, because anyone coming to register using the national identity number will have a copious history of interactions or a digital fingerprint with the state. So, if we get the national identity infrastructure right we can put many things requiring identification, such as the voter authentication in order on a more permanent basis.
Why do you think many people opposed the use of the card reader despite the benefits you have eloquently spoken about?
I will say that the main push-back came as a result of the normal human inclination to avoid uncertainties about change from old ways of doing things. The card reader was being used for the first time and people were understandably worried about its implications and the uses it may be put into if they were not in full control of the dynamics around it. Secondly, many people who are not tech-savvy and are still at analogue stage were of the view that such digital technology can be subject to manipulations by those who have better technical information, which in terms of strategy can result in asymmetry and any asymmetry in a contest is viewed with suspicion. More seriously, it has also been suggested that, there is the fear by many state governors and those who were hopeful of being elected as governors that if card readers were used successfully at the federal elections, there would be a clamour for its use for local government elections, and that would result in the possible loss of the current total control of LGAs by the states and so the card use must not succeed. These are some of the forces against the use of card readers. Very many people in the polity are not sincere at all.
Were you surprised at the level of opposition to the use of the card readers?
Frankly, I must say that I was totally disappointed by the level of surprise shown by the generality of politicians when it became clear that the card readers will be used. My disappointment stems from the fact that, the funding for the card readers was approved by the politicians. If any new policy is being introduced, the expected thing is that politicians should study such policies thoroughly, where they have insufficient information, they should seek consultation with experts and get executive summaries before approving it. Good legislative institution building expects that all legislatures should have research units and principal officers should have researchers who can institute qualitative and quantitative processes for illuminating fuzzy issues because no institution or individual can have full knowledge of all the range of issues that must be dealt with by the legislature and executives. Frankly, I was quite disappointed that after funds have been approved for such innovations, some of the people later showed surprise at its implications; it depicts gaps in the policy formulation and approval process. Are we saying, for instance, that if a policy for producing biological toxins were introduced, they would wait until it pollutes the atmosphere before evaluating its implications? We can make the same allusions regarding the card reader. Even political parties are supposed to have research units, so that after elections they should be able to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, so that they do not flatter themselves unnecessarily and thereby fail to take objective advice. If they can do that post-election; shouldn’t they pay more attention to pre-election issues that have electoral impacts? Anyway, as I stated before, the only function of the card reader is to authenticate voters who show up to vote. There is more to the process of election than mere authentication, but credible authentication makes it more difficult for people to manipulate and undermine the electoral process because it empowers the voter more. It also makes it easier to detect electoral fraud when you evaluate the process by reviewing the evidence trail.post by expdonaloaded.blogspot.com
Many stakeholders,  especially politicians in Edo State, election observers, local and international have noted that results of federal and state elections were remarkably different from other states of the South-South and South-East but similar to that of the South-West. What did you do differently? 
Well, looking at the process, we did our best to follow the stipulated guidelines from the electoral legislative framework viz: constitution, electoral Act, INEC guidelines for elections 2015 et cetra. If you are guided by the legislative framework, the margin for error is minimal. In terms of outcome, the outcome is completely dependent on the wishes of the voters. From the outcome of the elections, the Edo people voted the pattern they wanted in both federal elections and local elections. Why they chose to do so, is not for us to probe; that is for the political groups and analysts. However, with the benefit of one’s multi-disciplinary background in history, sociology and law, one can say that, Edo state being at the boundary between these political jurisdictions of the East and West, the potential for political ambivalence is high, but then, if we trace back to the first Republic, you will find that the politics of the Mid-West has always been susceptible to the balancing of a multiplicity of influences.
At a point in Edo State, there were reports of some problems in Orhionwon LGA, which led to a re-run election of the Senatorial and House of Representatives elections. What actually led to the cancelation of the election on March 28?
To go to the point, while elections were going on in that jurisdiction, there were several disturbing field reports from electorates and key leaders from the parties about non delivery of ballot papers at polling units at about 2pm, when accreditation was supposed to have been completed and voting ought to be well underway. We tried fruitlessly to reach our supervising field officers, and we had several reports from senior members of both major parties, the PDP and the APC, complaining about these same things. There were also several complaints by voters. Matters got to a very disturbing point, when it became clear that some of the NYSC ad-hoc staff may be in danger if we did not act timeously. I reported the situation to the national chairman, who advised that the police declare some of the field officers that could not be reached wanted until full information was available. And when sufficient irregularities were established, the national headquarters ordered a cancellation. This is what led to the re-run election which has since been conducted. The affected officers gave formal explanations of what led to the situation and the matter has since been dealt with as is appropriate within the administrative control measures of the Commission.
The PDP boycotted the re-run election in Orhionwon constituency 11 alleging bias on the part of INEC. What would you say about that?
In Edo state, it is the rule of the game and the choice of the electorates and not our preferences as umpire. Allegation of impartiality is completely untenable and nonsensical having regard to the unalterable facts behind the decision of the commission to complete the constituency 11 election that was earlier declared inconclusive and rightly so by the returning officer. Where the margin of lead between two candidates according to step nine of page 59 or step 11 of page 63 of the 2015 manual is not in excess of polling units where election have either been cancelled or not held, a return cannot be made until election is conducted in those polling units and that was the situation we were confronted with. APC polled 9,961 and PDP 8,540, in which case APC was leading with 1,421.post by expdonaloaded.blogspot.com... Yet in some polling units where election were cancelled or did not hold, we have a total of 4,813 voters whereas if election is conducted in those polling units in line with the regulations, the outcome could be different and the commission slated election for those polling units in the affected wards. The allegation of impartiality would have been something else if we acted contrary to the decision of the returning officer or if INEC refused to ask for a re-run because the APC was leading but rather we complied with the regulation governing how to make a return in a simple majority election that you cannot find both in the constitution and the electoral Act except the 2015 manual for election. However, we noted seriously and took steps to get to the root of the issues raised by the PDP about the disappearance of the presiding officer obviously not a corps member with original copy of form EC8A that we still have not been able to track and collation/returning officer cannot and could not have relied on the duplicate of one party to collate the result of the affected polling unit. Usually, in situation like this, such doubts and uncertainty would be resolved in favour of the electorates who were asked to come and vote on the 18th to conclude the exercise. Is there anything that l can do outside the laws and regulations? Clearly, the actions of a number of ad hoc personnel were terrible and portrayed partisanship and compromise; that is unacceptable. post by expdonaloaded.blogspot.com...Regrettably, we are the one that engaged them and took responsibility for their actions outside ethical expectations.
President Jonathan did what had never been done before in Nigerian history by accepting the outcome of election despite glaring short-comings and thus saved Nigeria of the rigour of post-election tribunal. How would you describe his action?
True, the president did what had never been done in the history of presidential electoral contest in Nigeria. By his action, he has erected a democratic hall of fame and earned himself a very respectable place in the national democratic escutcheon that emblazons that hall in which he is the first occupant. We look forward in future for more occupants who will earn enduring places in that citadel by their actions in nation building. Even with the regrettable and embarrassing card reader hiccups in his polling units, he maintained stoic calmness and exhibited verbal restraint with equanimity. He called for understanding from Nigerians that they should be patient with INEC over the early challenges on the election day. Moreover, he has laid a foundation that is seen as a tradition in the U.S where a candidate who is damnified by the outcome of election puts a call to the winner and by implication, endorses the process, before the winner makes a statement of victory. This tradition of validation by the opponent not favoured by the outcome does not mean absence of misgivings or questions that could be asked about the fairness of the process. However, election petitions can still be filed in courts to challenge the process and the return made, but often such serious breaches or violations are made subject of serious reform instead of subjecting the entire democratic heritage or system to ridicule and odium as was the case in the year 2000 U.S presidential election, regarding the Florida saga that led to the U.S government committing a whopping $3.6 billion to strengthen federal electoral institutions.
What does this statesmanly act of President Jonathan mean to other African Countries?
It is a very commendable benchmark that the president has set because our continent – Africa, has been so enmeshed in the “big-chief syndrome” that, his action has helped to break the mold. We have also witnessed such emerging leadership enlightenment in Ghana and Senegal, where a party other than the ruling party won in a general election and a seamless transition followed. I use the term “big-chief syndrome” because it is not part of the African culture to remove a king or leader. Our cultural phenomenology on that issue is usually a very unpleasant one, when a chief or leader is removed; he must either be expelled or killed. So, there is a certain degree of cultural expectation for resistance to such change, except it is voluntary, but like the other anachronisms that are being reformed in our traditional settings, not winning an election is not the same as the removal of a monarch, because a democratic leader is only the symbolic representation of an aggregate of policy ideas as purveyed in the political arena by a political party. Hence, loosing at a democratic election is not the rejection of the individual but a decision by voters to opt for alternative policy ideas from that offered by the losing party. Of course, in our context, there are other confounding factors. However, by accepting the verdict of voters, even before the full results were declared, the president has displayed an uncommon understanding of the pristine value of democratic praxis, in which an election verdict is regarded as the choice of voters principally because of the instrumental impact or potential impact of policies on their lives and not merely a competition of personalities and congenial abilities.
By setting this standard, he has made it easier for Nigerians to identify in future, those who will lead the country out of the path of enlightenment by refusing to concede to the verdict of voters. His action is even more important because in our country, it has no parallel at that level. Only former Governor Kayode Fayemi has shown such level of enlightenment in his reaction to the Ekiti State election.
Are we now about to end the business of tribunal as you have consistently advocated given Mr President’s acceptance of the outcome?
I hope we are. Indeed, that will be the ideal, for the results of elections as delivered at the polling units rather than judicial intervention to be the decider for elections. In this connection, we should look at the example of the United Kingdom. For about 99 years, until about nine years ago, no election in the United Kingdom was contested in court; the verdicts as delivered at the polling unit were accepted by the contestants unchallenged in courts. It showed a high degree of electoral credibility. Such credibility is what we must aspire to. To do that, those who are given the responsibility of conducting elections must not only act above board, they must be perceived by all stakeholders as acting above board, because the goal of an election is the acceptability of its outcome by all or most stakeholders as a legitimate mandate.