Table of contents

• Editorial: Nigeria

• T. A. Akinyele, The 2003 Elections in Nigeria: Views from a Policy Maker

•  Conversations

  •  Interview with the Special Advisor to the Governor of Kano State, Nigeria  on Research and Documentation, Dr Tijjani Namiye

 Editorial

Nigeria 

The Nigerian Elections of 2003 were controversial. Allegations of election fraud were made and  one of the presidential candidates,  General Buhari, threatened court action. Even so the elections were welcomed by a large percentage of the Nigerian population, disillusioned with military rule and anxious to see a civilian government  continue the tradition of democratic rule inaugurated  in 1999.

            Having regained its independence from the British after more than half a century of British  colonial domination, Nigerians were optimistic that their well- fought for freedom would  usher a new era of peace and prosperity. Peace did not last. The 1966 intervention by the military, ushered  thirteen  years of  military dictatorship. We are pleased to have the perspectives of Chief Akinyele in his analysis of the election of 2003. Chief Akinyele’s interest in the electoral process of Nigeria goes back to 1959 when he served as a Federal Electoral Officer. The 1959 election brought to the forefront legislators for the newly independent Nigeria. Chief Akinyele provides us with an excellent analysis of the sequence of events leading to the 2003 election and the present phase of democratization.

       Akinyele’s article is followed by an  illuminating interview with the Advisor to the Governor of Kano State, Dr. Tijjani Naniye. Numerous issues are covered, including the controversies surrounding the polio immunization campaign earlier this year. We are provided with a close-up view of democracy in action in one of Nigeria’s most populous states. Formidable problems confront the Kano State Government in terms of health care, education, and social services in general. It is encouraging to note, however, that a consultative  model of governance  prevails in that state and so, too, a much admired vigilance and  caution. The careful steps taken by the Kano State Government to evaluate contaminated  polio vaccines  early this year  earned Governor Shekarau and his advisory team a great deal of praise and several awards.

     We thank  Chief Akinyele and Dr. Tijjani Naniye for providing us with  valuable insights into some of the important issues confronting  Nigeria at this present time. We acknowledge some of  the various  organizations associated with the visit to Connecticut of the Governor of Kano State. Sponsors included  the African-American Affairs Commission, and the Connecticut Minority Supplier Development Council and individuals such as  Mr. Ola Aina, Mr. Salisu Abdullahi and Dr. Andrew Moemeka. This interview was made possible by his visit to Hartford Connecticut.

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The 2003 Elections in Nigeria: Views from a Policy Maker

T. A. Akinyele

         I have watched with more than keen interest the preparations for and the conduct of the most recent elections in Nigeria, meant to reaffirm the country’s commitment to the democratic process. Preparations started in May 1999 after 15 years of military misrule. These elections were designed as follows: (1) National Assembly (i.e., House of Representatives and Senate) elections, which took place on Saturday April 12, 2003; (2) Gubernatorial and Presidential Elections, which were administered on April 19, 2003; and (3) State Assembly elections, which were carried out on May 3, 2003.

A BRIEF PROFILE OF MODERN NIGERIA 

            Nigeria deserves special attention because it has features, attributes and a robust resource profile that should attract the interest of not only its citizens but also citizens of other countries of the world’s global village. Nigeria accommodates  vibrant, intelligent and resourceful concentration of people of African heritage, being the largest country, in terms of population in Africa, and the tenth most populated country in the world. Out of every five Africans walking the surface of the earth, one is a Nigerian. Nigeria’s population is twice that of the United Kingdom and about half that of the United States of America, scattered over an area of 923,768 square kilometers. It consists of 36 states and Abuja (which is the Federal Capital Territory), each with an average population of about 3 million divided into 774 local government units. The country, with about 250 ethnic groups and 80 religions, now operates under a variant of the American-type executive presidential system. It is important to note, however, that during most of its existence as a sovereign nation, Nigeria has been ruled by military dictatorships. The result is that over 60 percent of the population, the most vibrant and politically relevant portion, has known nothing but military rule.¹

Nigeria’s natural resources are enormous. Unfortunately, the proceeds from the exploitation of these resources during most of the post-independence period have been squandered by opportunistic and unscrupulous civil servants and politicians, including the many military elites who have ruled the country. Perverse economic policies designed and executed by corrupt military and civilian rulers have deprived Nigerians of true and genuine development. The country has huge exportable agricultural produce like cocoa, timber and rubber; an estimated 32 billion barrels of crude petroleum reserve, making the country the largest producer in Africa and the sixth in the world; the second largest untapped reserve of bitumen in the world; and several other solid mineral resources. With such enormous endowments of resources, post-independence Nigeria should have risen to be one of the richest and most developed countries in Africa. Unfortunately, it is one of the poorest and its citizens continue to suffer from relatively high levels of poverty and deprivation. Such poverty is due primarily to poor and ineffective institutions, which have allowed state custodians (i.e., civil servants and politicians) to squander the country’s development potential. Put another way, the absence of democratic governance in most of post-independence Nigeria, and the pervasiveness of authoritarian and corrupt civil regimes, as well as military dictatorships, have contributed significantly to the mismanagement of the country’s development prospects.²

DEMOCRATIC EVOLUTION IN NIGERIA 

            As it is well known by many, Nigeria gained its independence from Great Britain on October 1, 1960, after some twenty years of vibrant and intensive nationalistic clamor by leaders like Macaulay, Azikiwe, Awolowo, Bello, Akintola, Enahoro, and many others. The post-independence government was based on the British-type parliamentary system. While the politicians were fanning the embers of disunity because the regions were stronger and collectively better managed than the Federal Government, young military officers were eagerly waiting for the opportunity to seize control of the apparatus of government. Such an opportunity was provided by the various political events that took place between independence and 1964. The most important of these were (1) the snowballing effects of the Action Group’s intra-party crisis of 1962-1963, which embroiled the most progressive of the Regional Governments (that of the Western Region); and (2) the botched 1964 federal elections and subsequent labor unrest and political turmoil. On January 15, 1966, the military struck.³

 The second attempt at democratic governance in Nigeria took place from 1979 to 1983 and this time, was patterned after the American presidential system. Unfortunately, the experiment was doomed to fail. First, the military kept up its harassment of the civilian leadership and made it very difficult for the latter to govern. Second, civilian rulers, through their opportunistic and corrupt activities, provided the military with a good excuse to intervene. Finally, civilian politicians whose primary interest was not public service but self-enrichment spent an enormous amount of time fighting with each other, making it very difficult for the government to perform even basic functions. In December 1983, the military intervened and again took over the government.⁴

In the first and second attempts at democratic governance, it was clear that political institutions were not nationalistic in their formation, orientation and practices. Problems of regionalism and ethnicity were beginning to rear their ugly heads.⁵ Through some befuddled political engineering, the various military regimes that replaced civilian rule, attempted to remove these cogs in the wheel of political progress by trying to limit the number of political parties that could legally operate in the country and to ensure that all parties had a wide geographical spread to make them nationally acceptable. To ensure national cohesion, the new military-sponsored constitution provided a highly complicated formula for the election of the country’s civilian president, which required, among other things, that the successful candidate capture at least 25 percent of votes in each of at least two-thirds of the states in the country. All states of the federation would then have to be represented in the new president’s cabinet of ministers. The election of 1993 was to be the first one conducted under this new formula. It, however, was annulled by the military government of General Babangida when it became clear that Bashorun M. K. O. Abiola, an individual who apparently was not acceptable to the military establishment, had clearly won the election. It was in consideration of the fact that all attempts made in 1963, 1973, 1983, 1993 to move from one democratically elected government to another had been abrogated either by military fiat or some other calamity that Nigerians began to speak of the “democracy jinx” occurring every ten years. The 2003 elections are important to Nigeria’s democracy and democratization project in that they have broken the jinx. The question, however, is will this be a sustainable process or will the military soon return to mess things up?⁶

                        THE ELECTORAL PREPARATIONS 

            The political and socio-economic environment since 1999 and particularly in the last two years before the 2003 elections did not present any optimism about a trouble-free atmosphere for the elections. There were several cases of boundary and inter-communal clashes, ethnic uprisings (especially in the oil-rich Niger Delta Region), Sharia-induced unrests, economic sabotage, and other disturbances, throughout the period. In addition, many civil society organizations had become quite aggressive in their efforts to improve living conditions for their people. In the Niger Delta Region, for example, many youth associations, notably the Ijaw Youth Council and the Isoko Youth Movement, had become impatient with the military government’s inability or unwillingness to deal with poverty and environmental degradation in the region. Subsequently, these groups had become involved in violent mobilization to improve conditions in their respective communities and minimize further marginalization. Unfortunately, the even-handed response of the Federal Government to the crisis in the Niger Delta Region only exacerbated the problem and intensified the violence. Meanwhile, many citizens of the southern part of the country continued to decry the fact that the military had snatched the presidency out of their hands through the annulment of the 1993 elections. In addition, the unending arguments and counter-arguments over issues concerning revenue allocation, resource control, and the need for a National Conference to discuss the future union of Nigerian nationalities continued unabated. At the same time, executive-legislative bickering over attempts to establish constitutional checks and balances forced delays in the approval of the national budget and its subsequent implementation. All these developments encouraged many pessimists to suggest postponement of the elections. But the government of President Obasanjo was determined that the elections would hold in order to ensure continuity of the democratic process and to break the so-called “jinx”.

            In preparing for the 2003 elections, I believe the Federal Government took cognizance of lessons learned from the mistakes of the 1999 arrangements, and took pains to harmonize the constitutional provisions and the enabling electoral law and regulations, especially regarding the establishment of democratic institutions, such as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and political parties. Nevertheless, some bottlenecks were thrown into the process, although this time, the intervention was through constitutional means. Court cases were filed regarding various arrangements, such as the number of political parties and conditions for their registration. It is to the credit of Obasanjo’s Federal Government that no attempt was ever made to interfere with judicial processes in these electoral matters. Issues were also raised regarding whether all the elections should be held on one day or spread over several days. The amount of freedom of speech guaranteed during these periods, as well as the spirit of tolerance demonstrated by the Federal Government and the amount of transparency in the dissemination of information by the INEC, contributed to the general popular acceptance of the preparatory arrangements made for the elections. Those conversant with elections in developing countries have always affirmed that the ground for any possible rigging of elections usually starts with the way the registration of voters is handled. Because the INEC adopted computer-based methods, which were considered essentially transparent and fool-proof, the exercise generally received popular acceptance. There was opposition in certain sections of the populace, especially in the northern part of the country, against the use of the new national identity cards for obtaining voter cards. The decision to use this form of identification to secure voter cards was expected to significantly reduce the costs of preparing for the elections. Thanks to the persistence of the INEC that the new identity card system form the basis for registration, attempts by overzealous and opportunistic political agents to effect multiple registrations were defeated. Several applications for registration were disqualified, ranging from 2 percent in the least fraud-prone area to as high as 34 percent of total applications processed in some districts. Table 1 provides data on the number of registered voters by state, as well as on the number of disqualified applicants. There are a number of analytical deductions that can be made from Table 1 (also see Table 2). First, the incidence of disqualification of applications due to attempts at multiple registration occurred in all the states of the Federation. Second, the number of registered voters in the northern part of the country as a percentage of the total number of registered voters in all of Nigeria is 48.92 percent, while the corresponding figure for the southern part of the country is 51.08 percent.

TABLE 1: REGISTERED VOTERS IN THE NIGERIAN ELECTIONS OF 2003, BY STATE

Source:             The Guardian Newspaper, Sunday April 6,

 2003.TABLE 2: NORTH-SOUTH DISTRIBUTION OF REGISTERED VOTERS

It is also important to observe from Table 2 that attempts to defraud the system were more significant in the northern part of the country than in the south. In fact, the north’s 14.38 percent number of disqualified applicants as a percent of all disqualified applicants was higher than that of the nation as a whole. It would appear from these data that the effort made by the INEC to eliminate or minimize the incidence of fraudulent registration eventually paid off and vote rigging was an ineffective part of the electoral exercise of 2003.

After a lot of arguments by some of the registered political parties regarding the system of balloting to be used, the INEC adopted the open-secret balloting system. The latter allows for a certain level of privacy or secrecy. The ballot is thumb-printed and its dropping into the ballot box is carried out in the open and witnessed by interested parties. This system was adopted in place of the one that was supported by some of the political parties, which called for voters to queue behind the pictures or photographs of their preferred candidates. Here again, the INEC’s choice proved reasonable and more efficient, especially given the fact that eventually 30 political parties were certified to contest the elections and as many as 20 candidates were qualified to compete for the position of president of the country. An alternative method would have led to chaos and a possible breakdown of law and order.