Editor’s Note:
Donald Duke is a former Governor of Cross Rivers State. In July 2010,
he delivered extemporaneously; an Insider’s Speech on how elections are
rigged right from the State level, a Speech which we believe is very
relevant now as it was then, especially with regards to the inconclusive
2013 Anambra Gubernatorial Election which is certainly an indication of
how the 2015 General Elections might look like.
Duke argued convincingly that the Chairman of the Independent
National Electoral Commission (INEC) has no say or control over the
success or outcome of elections; the best the Chairman can do, is to
chart a blueprint, but the implementation of that blueprint is outside
his control. He says, the most important people (Officials) in elections
in Nigeria are;
The Presiding Officers at the Polling Units;
they are the deciding factors and the ones with power to rig the votes,
and that usually they are Party faithfuls of the ruling Party in the
State. Duke stated further that by deliberately starving the Resident
Electoral Commissioner (REC) of funds, the REC becomes an ally of the
State Governor whom he now relies on to provide essential logistics,
including his accommodation and vehicles, information and human
resources, hence when it is time to hurriedly train people who will be
Presiding Officers at the Polling Booths, the REC will ask the Governor
to supply the names, and the Governor in turn will provide that of his
Party’s faithful (Who are civil servants-teachers et cetera, but Party
members) in collaboration with the State ruling Party Chairman.
He tells us that the standard is five hundred ballot papers per
Polling Unit (Booth), and that after the voters have cast their votes,
the leftovers are thumb-printed by Party members called in to do so by
the Presiding Officer. The former Governor says this is the real
election but he does not tell us why funds are not released on time for
elections or why the REC must fall back to the Governor; he also does
not say why the REC must ask the Governor to provide the people that
will be trained as Presiding Officers for elections, but we want to
assume that is borne out of gratitude to the Governor. And we also agree
with Duke that the best way out of this rot is a critical mass
participation of the Nigerian people in the Electoral Process,
especially on Election Day, so that there would be little or no
leftovers ballot papers for the riggers to thumbprint and rig the
election with. And here is the clincher; these despicable acts are not
an exclusive preserve of one Party, all of the Political Parties are
guilty of them.
The Donald Duke’s Speech is rather long but we highly recommend that
you make out time to read it as it will help you to understand and
better appreciate the challenges of the Electoral Process in Nigeria.
Below are large excerpts of the Speech reproduced from the full version
published by The Guardian:
“…The truth is, the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral
Commission has little or no bearing on the success of elections, that’s
the truth. To me, it’s actually immaterial because he is head of the
administration he takes the brunt. The best he can do is perhaps, draw
up a blueprint but the implementation of that blueprint is outside his
control…Let me now take you through the process of an election. We have a
hundred and twenty thousand booths in Nigeria. At the hierarchy, you
have the Chairman of INEC, then you have the Zonal Commissioners, then
you have the Resident Electoral Commissioners and they are the heads in
every State; the Zone as the name implies; we have six Zones in Nigeria,
so you have six of them. Then you have the Resident Electoral
Commissioners and there are thirty-six of them of course, and Abuja.
Then for each Local Government, you have an electoral officer. Beyond
that you have a hundred and twenty thousand polling booths, headed by
Presiding Officers. The people think that at the end of the elections,
the PDP would just decide who wins and who doesn’t and announces the
results. I think the process is a bit more sophisticated than that.
This is what happens; the Resident Electoral Commissioner is usually
from another State. The electoral officers, they move around. They are
usually from that State, but for the conduct of elections itself, you
would probably move from Cross River to Akwa Ibom or to Abia…When the
Resident Electoral Commissioner comes before the elections are
conducted- of course when he comes to the State, usually, he has no
accommodation; monies have not been released for the running or conduct
of the elections and all that because we always start late. He pays a
courtesy call on the Governor. It’s usually a televised event you know,
and of course he says all the right things. ‘Your Excellency, I am here
to ensure that we have free and fair elections and I will require your
support.’
Now, at that courtesy call, most Governors, at least I did, will
invite the Commissioner of Police because he is part of the action and
he sits there.
After the courtesy call, the Resident Electoral Commissioner now
moves in for a one-on-one with the Governor and then says, “Your
Excellency, since I came, I’ve been staying in this hotel, there is no
accommodation for me and even my vehicle is broken down and the last
Commissioner didn’t leave the vehicle, so if you could help me settle
down quickly;’ and the Governor says, ‘Chief of Staff, where is the
Chief of Staff here?’ And the Chief of Staff appears. Governor says:
‘Please ensure that the REC is accommodated–put him in the Presidential
lodge, allot two cars to him, I give you seven days to get this done.
Then the relationship has started; I am going to share some of these
things with you so that we don’t leave here with any illusions…Let me
take you down to what happens so that you can change it because if you
don’t change it, we here won’t suffer but I think of our children will.
We the elite, I am one of them, we send our kids to the best schools
around the World, when they come back they are misfits, they cannot fit
in and so ultimately we are designing a System that would destroy us in
the end…Now, back to the elections, once that relationship has been
established between the Governor and the REC, if you are a Governor who
is ‘A Governor’, maybe two nights after you just pop by at the Governors
lodge and see the REC and say ah, ‘ah REC how are you doing? Are you
OK?’ He says, ‘ah! Your Chief of Staff has been wonderful. He has been
very nice to me; he supplied me the vehicles and everything is Ok’.
A few weeks to the elections, the REC sees the Governor; you probably
have on the average about three thousand five hundred, four thousand
depending on the polling booths in every State. So, REC goes to the
Governor and says, ‘Your Excellency, could you please give us the names
of about four, five thousand people so that we can hurriedly train them,
we need them as Presiding Officers.’ You need experience. A good coach
is one who has played and has lost matches in the past?
The REC now goes down and says, ‘we need to conduct a training
programme for the Presiding Officers and em, headquarters hasn’t sent us
any money yet, you know.’ And the Governor is like: ‘How much would
that cost?’
REC replies: ‘twenty five million naira for the first batch, we may have
about three batches.’ Governor: ‘Ok, the Chief of Staff will see you.’
Now, the Chief of Staff, you call him: ‘Make sure, that we arrange
twenty five million naira this week and in two weeks time another twenty
five million naira and seventy five million naira in all.’
Chief of Staff: ‘Your Excellency, how do we do it?’
Governor: ‘Put it under Security Vote.’
In other words, its cash, ok, now, cash in huge Ghana Must Go bags –
some of my colleagues will shoot me- (turns to the audience) is any
former Governor here? (Crowd replies no!)
Good. Cash is lodged in huge Ghana Must Go Bags for the REC and of
course, to be fair to them, they call their electoral officers and say
the Governor has been very benevolent; he has given us this and that. I
say three batches because they have them in Senatorial districts. So,
you have one in Calabar, you have One in Ikom and Ogoja, those are the
headquarters of the Senatorial districts. Each one costs twenty-five
million. Of course, the sums are not properly retired. I don’t know how
much of this twenty-five million worked. But, there is a rapport this is
going on.
The Governor now turns round and says: ‘call me the Party Chairman.’
The Party Chairman appears and the Governor says: ‘INEC requires fifty
thousand people for conducting the elections. See to it that we meet
their needs.’ The Chairman goes and you hear in the evening on radio and
television: There will be an urgent meeting of all Chairmen and
secretaries of XYZ Party at the headquarters. They should report
promptly at 10am (because) matters of urgent interest will be discussed.
End of announcement.
Now we have texts messages, so it’s easier, in no time everyone is here.
It’s a very short meeting, please go back and within forty-eight
hours, submit from each Local Government two hundred and fifty names of
trusted Party members. So in a week the deed is done. The names,
sometimes even passport photographs if required are sent to INEC.
And the training programme is carried out. Let me pause a bit, this
is at Party level. They are usually civil servants. They may be
teachers, whatever, but they are Party members. The remuneration, for
each of them for the elections from Abuja is ten thousand naira for the
day’s work. But the State in its benevolence gives fifty to one hundred
thousand naira to each of these folks right before this election.
This is even where it gets even more interesting. So, you have each
of the three or four thousand polling booths; they are manned by Party
stalwarts. They are usually Party stalwarts. You don’t send any
peripheral member. The remuneration from Abuja has not arrived but that
of the State was received forty-eight hours prior.
On the day of elections, each polling booth has no more than five hundred ballot papers; that is standard.
There is not a polling booth that is more than five hundred. So only two
hundred people appear here, three hundred there, one hundred there,
fifty there, four hundred there, at the end of election what happens.
The Presiding Officer sits down and calls a few guys and says, ‘hey,
there are a few hundred papers here, let’s thumbprint. This is the real
election. Well, this is not a PDP thing. I am not here to castigate the
PDP; it’s a Nigerian thing. This process may sound comical and jovial,
it happens throughout the country, whether it’s Action Congress or APGA
it’s the same thing. We are all the same. They start thumb-printing,
some are overzealous. So at the end of the day you find some voting more
than the number of people that were registered to vote.
Otherwise they do it, you have ninety-five percent turnout. You
start wondering where the voters were; I didn’t see so many people. And
the election results are announced; XYZ Party wins and it takes a week
for this paltry ten thousand naira for each Presiding Officer to arrive.
Listen to this before you ask your question: Who is the most
important person in an election? – The Presiding Officer. And if there
are a hundred and twenty thousand of them (booths) there are a hundred
and twenty thousand Presiding Officers, they are the most important
people in the elections, not the Chairman.
So, as long as we keep applying that same method, you will get the
same results. It’s crazy to think that because you substitute Iwu for
Jega all will change. In other words, Iwu is a crook, Jega is a saint.
Jega is great, he has an impeccable reputation. Iwu was great, now he
seems not so great. OK, they are both professors, they have reached the
peak of whatever discipline that they profess. The point is that it is
the System and the personnel and the Chairman has little or no control
over that…Sometimes, we behave as if we invented democracy. We always
want to draw new rules. We should know the day of elections. It should
be fixed. We should know that on so and so date I think, America is the
4th of November or so and if it falls on a Sunday it doesn’t make a
difference. The point I am making here is that date is fixed, you know;
because in a democracy, election should be a norm, not an event. In our
democracy, election is an event. It’s like, we are going to spring on to
you with fireworks, hey, we are going to have an election, we are all
running around- I know most politicians are broke right now, so we are
all running around the field…In a democracy, you postpone an election?
You postpone things you didn’t plan for, not things that are there in
the Constitution that says you must do this, that and that…We need a
critical mass of Nigerians to get out and vote. It is important because
the more ballot papers that are legitimately used on Election Day, the
fewer available to be used to rig the vote, that’s the truth. Don’t keep
to yourself and think that they will announce results. They are more
sophisticated than that. And that’s why the aspirants who felt cheated
and had the resources to employ forensic personnel, like those elections
had the elections upturned in Edo and Ondo, because they could
establish multiple voting by thumbprint.
So, if it’s an AC State the procedure is the same. I remember a
State, that State will remain nameless. I hear the story that the then
President was so determined that he must change the leadership of this
State and he called the IG and said, ‘look, that Governor is a security
breach. Let’s have elections and flush the Governor out, and the
Governor knows he is under siege. A week before the elections, a new
police Commissioner arrives. And you know if you are a Governor and a
new Police Commissioner arrives before elections, you know something is
wrong somewhere and he spends two, three days without going to see the
Governor, which is again a breach of protocol. The day he decides to
see the Governor, the Governor says, I won’t be at the office. However,
if he gives him a particular address they may discuss. Then the chap
goes there and smartly salutes and it’s in a highbrow neighbourhood of
the city. (Shouts of Ikoyi rent the air.) ‘No! It’s Yobe!’ (The hall
explodes in loud laughter).
The Commissioner of Police walks up to the Governor and smartly
salutes and says: ‘Your Excellency, I just came to introduce myself. My
name is Mr. So, so and so. And the Governor goes: ‘Ah, you are welcome. I
heard you were here two or three days ago and I was wondering whether I
won’t see you. Anyway, you are welcome. Have you settled down?’ ‘Yes
I’ve been given accommodation and all that. And the Governor asks,
‘where was your last posting?’ He tells him, he says fine.
Governor: ‘That car over there, this is the key and this is your house.
The Commissioner of Police now says: ‘Your Excellency, this Obasanjo is a
very bad man. He is a very, very bad man. If you see all the things he
has planned for you eh Olorun maje.’
How do we move on? How do we get out of here? What I have done is
I’ve tried graphically to paint a picture of a process. How do we change
this process?
One, I think, since we cannot change attitudes as quickly, we must
ensure mass participation. In an election where there is a very high
turnout, the results are usually genuine. The most celebrated election
in Nigeria, June 12, 1993 what happened? People came out. The more
people who come out to vote the fewer–there may be mago, mago here and
there but there wouldn’t be much in such a critical manner to upset the
will of the people. Beyond that, if you don’t vote in an election, you
have no reason to criticize the Government and I tell folks everywhere
that guys, I would say, I have lived my life. You guys have not and you
are all criticizing Nigeria but did you vote in the last election? Most
of them say no then I say, you’ve lost the moral right to criticize what
the Government does because you were not part of the process.
Is there a way out? I think there is. I think we need to employ
technology. It’s just a suggestion and I want to share with you. I have
said this in one or two fora and I’ve heard people say it has not been
done in America or the West why should we do it here? I say they don’t
have the attitude we have here. Necessity is the mother of invention.
It is not necessary for us to do what I’m about to suggest.
For the purposes of this, 3455, this number is for a phone and that
number is unique to you and valid for that election or the set of
elections. And each Party has a numerical equivalent. AC could be 1, the
PDP could be 5, and the Labour Party could be 3, whatever. And on the
date of elections you decide that your number even if you don’t have a
phone, you can go to a centre where they have a bank of phones and once
you put in your number 3455 it recognizes you, it cannot be duplicated.
It’s only you that has that number and for that election on that date,
once it’s used it cannot be used by anyone else. Then you can do this
one from your house or anywhere, and any time between the hours of nine
to twelve. When it says which Party, you say 3 or 4 whatever the number,
they ask you, ‘are you sure you say Yes’. You press it then you’ve
voted. With that, I think we can conduct election but people say ah,
it’s to technological and I say, why do you always underestimate the
people in the rural areas? If you send them money this way, won’t they
be able to cash it? Why is it that when it is to conduct their civic
responsibilities it becomes high tech? I know this country, I ran a
State for eight years; I know the nooks and crannies of my State. We are
not the most enlightened of States in the country, but you see, I had a
deal with MTN and Glo to ensure that every community in Cross River
State has a base station; for that I gave them sites free of charge; so,
virtually every nook and cranny of Cross River has a base station; even
the most rural of places; even in Bakassi when we still had control of
it, and they all use it. They still use it to call their folks in the
urban centres to say send us money.
Why is that when it comes to civic responsibility it is high tech?…
I am not saying this is a perfect System, it can be fine-tuned, that
will ensure that within an hour or two everyone has voted and the
results are near perfect.
Of course, once you design a System, there are those whose work is to
un-design the System. There are people like that and they work
backwards. Once you have that we also think the same way. How do we work
backwards, where can this be faulted? It can be faulted in many ways.
The Service Companies if you are able to break-through the integrity of
the System, you know, here and there; but I think we are going to think
outside the norm.
The point I’m trying to make is we have to think outside the box. I
want to commend the Federal Government, each time the Government talks
about elections; it keeps on talking about credible elections with
brilliant sound bite. But it must go beyond the sound bite and let’s not
kid ourselves, by thinking that by putting a Jega there that all is
well. With Jega there, all will be well if he is able to design along
with his team a System that is virtually fool proof. In other words, he
himself must understand the System of elections; he needs to know how it
works and how it’s been holding…Where are we? We need to get out of
these holes; we need to traverse the length and breadth of this country.
We need to recruit an army of people may be five thousand in each
State, two hundred young men and women who will reach our (people), give
each of them a task to ensure that he registers at least a hundred
person. That alone, will bring twenty million people into the fold. This
is what they did in the Obama election.
Fortunately, I was monitoring the Obama election, whether you attain
voting age or not, you are able to send text and move around and get
people to vote. It’s one thing to register, some folk tell me, and ‘how
can I go to line up for hours to vote for this person’. This is again
what Pastor Bakare was talking about, if people are not excited about
the candidates they will not come out. ‘Look at the four people running,
they are all clowns. I’ m going to watch television; I’m not going to
vote because either way a clown is going to win’.
So, we have to get involved in the process. We can’t all run for offices, we all can’t. …”
Comrades Eneruvie Enakoko, Omotunde Adetula, Olaide Ekeolere, Papa
Siakpere, Abu Babangida and all of the Conscience Reports Team.
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A
group loyal to the Niger Delta activist, Mujahid Asari-Dokubo, Niger
Delta People’s Volunteer Force, NDPVF, has warned the authorities of
Benin Republic to free the former militant leader or be ready to face
its wrath.
The
sleepy town of Ogotu-Ekiti in Ekiti SouthWest Local Government Area was
on Tuesday thrown into confusion when information filtered that a goat
had delivered a human-like baby goat.
