Nigeria: The Historic PDP Presidential Primaries

This is the contest

There are reasons why I have concluded that the nominated candidate of the ruling party would be the next elected president of Nigeria.

So far, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) appears to be the only party that has properly extended its representation across the country, either by winning or usurping representation in the gubernatorial or legislative arms of the government.

In any case, it was such a privilege to be part of an international audience that drew in Nigerians at home and as far afield as Australia and the United States to those of us in Europe as we monitored the presidential primaries of ruling party which at 3:45AM CET still had a good few states to be counted.

Africa time commencements

The PDP convention itself took on an African time dimension, it was to kick off at 10:00 prompt, but prompted or promptly is never to be believed, it was at least 5 hours on before things got into a motion.

Some rogue court had placed an injunction on the chairman of the ruling party preventing him from operating in that capacity; at some stage the chairman delegated his functions to his deputy which ended it with the convention presumably being declared open twice.

The presidential candidates gave their speeches with the supposed consensus candidate from North going on about the zoning policy which for all intents and purposes was technically torn up when President Yar’Adua yielded to the forces of mortality.

After the speeches the voting went smoothly with each delegate posting their hand-written ballots in to the ballot boxes of their respective states.

The count and the audience

The count started just before midnight and many have been burning the midnight oil witnessing an historic moment where votes have been cast and they are publicly counted without opportunists taking advantage of subverting the will of the delegates.

Bringing together Twitter, Facebook, video streams from Nigeria Connect (good audio) and Channels TV (good video) and news lines from 234Next, the eyes of the world have gazed on what is possible with Nigerian democracy.

This experience needs to be extrapolated to the real national voting exercise in April, I wonder if the Ushahidi and FrontlineSMS technologies can be deployed in the polling centres and enumeration centres to keep an eye on the will of the people gathering actionable evidence against those who try to subvert our democracy.

The party for all

One can only commend the foreign correspondents that have committed to staying to the very end until the final count is done and certified with a nominated candidate.

The trend as it seems is showing the incumbent president as the consensus candidate for the whole of Nigeria, he even took his opponent’s home state with 71% of the delegates – such is his appeal.

The sole female candidate seems to have only managed to get her own singular vote counted.

For a review of the Twitter feed of the PDP Primaries can be access on the hash tag #PDPPrimary or #PDPPrimaries which has more results.

Zimbabwe: Mugabe is a coward

Release my results

Follow me through this analogy – I have just completed a number of academic examinations leading to a major qualification – at the time when I was to receive the results, half the results were released but the whole detail that would prove I was qualified was not released.

Then as I clamoured with the examination board to release the rest of my complement of results, someone took the decision to remark my papers.

I am then left in a quandary, the first being why all my results were not released on time in the first place and then what could have lead to having my papers remarked without information as to why.

Nigeria not an example for good

This is just an analogy; the reality creates a worse feeling for all concerned because the first instance relates to when the Nigerian military government under Ibrahim Babangida cancelled an election that took place in June 1993 having released half the results of that election, a situation that plunged us into another few years of despotic rule.

The failure of democracy in Africa can be directly traced to the failure of simple democratic processes in Nigeria. The situation is so bad that you never find Nigeria at the forefront of speaking up for democratic reform because our processes are so tarnished and not credible enough to give us the moral right to talk to others about doing things right.

Some commentators would contend that the electoral debacle that happened in Kenya in December 2007 only happened because Nigeria provided no leadership in matters of electoral rectitude where the voice of people in votes are properly and correctly presented in the figures sanctioned as official.

Recounts before results

The second part of my analogy pertains to developments in Zimbabwe, where the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has decided to recount the votes cast in 23 districts covering the presidential, parliamentary, senate and council votes.

I find it incredible that first of all, only the complete parliamentary results have been released and only part of the senate results, the rest have been kept from the public who have a right to know what their collective voices have said about who should govern them in Zimbabwe.

I would have had no problems with the recount of districts that have results released, but I cannot see how there can be a recount when the results have not been released.

There can be a recount sometimes, if the results are close, but all parties should be privy to those results and the reasons for the recount. Unfortunately, the ZEC appears to be a pliant organ of the ZANU-PF rather than an independent arbiter and custodian of the democratic process for the good of Zimbabwe.

Mugabe is a coward

The real situation is simple, the Grand Despot of Africa and strong man of Zimbabwe, Mr. Robert Mugabe is a coward. He cannot bear to see that he has been rejected by Zimbabwe after all he did to terrorise the people or buy the election by giving away car keys on the eve of the election.

Mr. Mugabe, is coward because he was afraid to hear his fellow African leaders of the SADC tell him that his time is up, Mr. Mugabe knows the real truth and his cohort of hardliners whose loss of ruler-ship would make them fodder for the Coliseum of the hungry lions of retributive justice are steeling him up for stealing the election.

This is where a country like Nigeria or South Africa should have stepped in and pre-empted what might turn out to be a travesty of democracy.

Give me Brutus or Judas

I despair for what would happen in the end, but should it take a Marcus Junius Brutus to get rid of this Caesar that has destroyed his country or a Judas Iscariot to betray this non-Messiah with the goal to sacrifice one man for the good of the many?

It is time to have Mr. Mugabe despatched, Zimbabwe has been too long under the strangled-hold of this despot, it is time to forcibly take his grasp off the neck of the people and let then thrive as they should for a future that Mr. Mugabe does not have the time, the vision or the will to give.

Invade for democracy

This is one time where every well meaning voice must speak up for the democratic right to have the results of a vote released, correctly, promptly and without controversy.

If this recount is another ploy to adjust the results to meet the needs of people who cannot accept that their time is up, it must be repudiated with the greatest force possible and this time the sovereignty of Zimbabwe should and must be violated to ensure that the people’s voice and votes are what counted to reflect what they have intended.

Zimbabwe deserves respite and this is one cause that is a blight on Africa, only second to the disgrace in Darfur – Zimbabwe must be free by the vote or by the boot.

Nigerian uniqueness or French aberration

New day new man

France wakes up to the dawn of a new era; the son of an immigrant would be the next president, a tough election that saw the end of a generation of grandee politicians for the fresh air of the baby boom generation and the almost happened first female president.

Most of all, French democracy was energized, alive and vibrant with an 85% turnout, only countries with compulsory voting laws can genuinely exceed that number.

Politics afresh

One thing I noticed about these elections was that the electoral commission, if there is any organisation by that name in France was never in the news in terms of readiness, ability or efficiency - it was not even early evening before we knew the results of ballots cast earlier in the day.

As Jacques Chirac goes into retirement after about 5 decades in politics and 12 years of his Presidency, I do not hear that he has muscled his way into trying to head the party/coalition that was formed to re-elect him 5 years ago.

Neither did I hear of him trying to use his clout to affect the choices that the French have to make about who they think should lead them, people who thought they had a vision for France presented themselves having fulfilled certain pre-requisites and the people voted.

Losing gracefully

Once the results were known, the loser conceded defeat gracefully, why? Because the results were the express will of the people; seen to free and known to be fair - if there were any observers it would be to learn how to conduct elections rather than with the view to prevent widespread irregularities.

So, one wonders if there are countries that make use of French expertise in other areas of commerce and development, why they cannot also employ French expertise in reaching the kind of transparent outcome in the exercise of republican democracy.

The French are no different

The French are just as human as you and me, they have not evolved into some extraordinary species, rather, they have shown respect for each other and the will of all ordinary citizens of the republic.

I would suppose one reason to keep Nigerians illiterate is to have politicians herd them like cattle into electoral compromises they would not have taken if they knew better about their rights to vote and have their votes counted and returned correctly in the announced results.

If we had achieved a tenth of what French delivered in their elections in Nigeria, we would probably have the hopes that the French have for the future rather than the fears that stem from an election where the mandate is suspect.

Is there a Nigerian harbouring a secret desire to be French today?

Before we lose the Nigerian elections gracefully

Understanding the rules of contest

Before we close shop and walk away from the bad situation of the elections in Nigeria, let us review some of the issues at hand.

There is an increasing tendency to accept that the deed is done to the extent that some are now being dubbed sore losers who cannot accept defeat gracefully.

Any contest should have a set of rules which are adhered to, there is a way to declare a winner through some sort of point-scoring managed by some umpire; that process should be seen to be just and fair for the loser to concede defeat gracefully and the winner take all the spoils in victory.

When it comes to the Nigerian elections, whilst the umpire in this case is INEC we have had international election monitoring observers review the process by planting independent personnel all over the country to ascertain that the voting process meets international standards.

Their conclusion is, the Nigerian election does not measure up to international standards, and this would be regardless of the reports of Nigerian bloggers whose oversight in terms of the election would be too narrow in scale and sampling to appreciate the trend towards fairness or irregularities.

Nobody is trying to do Nigeria down, rather these observers are trying to help Nigeria realise the real benefits of a democracy which by definition is the government of the people by the people for the people.

We have too long been plagued with a variant which is the government of the people by some people for their people (Read pockets and narrow interests).

One might wonder what international standards are and why we do need elections observed at all.

Quoting liberally from the OSCE Election Observation Handbook updated in January 2007, this forms the crux of what a democracy should expect as part of a democratic process.

Why Observe Elections?

Elections are a celebration of fundamental human rights and, more specifically, civil and political rights, and election observation therefore contributes to the overall promotion and protection of these rights.

A genuine election is a political competition that takes place in an environment characterized by confidence, transparency, and accountability and that provides voters with an informed choice between distinct political alternatives.

A genuine democratic election process presupposes respect for freedom of expression and free media; freedom of association, assembly, and movement; adherence to the rule of law; the right to establish political parties and compete for public office; non-discrimination and equal rights for all citizens; freedom from intimidation; and a range of other fundamental human rights and freedoms that all OSCE participating States have committed themselves to protect and promote.

Election observation enhances accountability and transparency, thereby boosting both domestic and international confidence in the process. The mere presence of international observers alone, however, should not be viewed as adding legitimacy or credibility to an election process.

Although the presence of observers may indicate that the process merits observation, it is the observers' conclusions about the process, based on the ODIHR's (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights) methodology, that will form the ODIHR's opinion on the election.

Observers safeguard our democracy

Election monitoring involves being able to observe all phases of the election process this includes the preparation, the registration, access to the candidates, the electioneering campaigns, the voting process, the vote counting, the results collation, the results declaration and then allowing the winners to duly assume the position to which they have been elected.

However, what people miss about this whole electioneering process is the fact that elections are a fundamental human right in a democracy, this context seems to be missing from the minds of both the politicians and the their electorate.

It allows for politicians to think villages, towns, states or regions are theirs for the taking without contest or competition and the people acquiesce to that delusion such that their votes fail to count.

This ought not to be so; Annex A of the same reference document says "Democratic government is based on the will of the people, expressed regularly through free and fair elections."

Democratic countries must subscribe to the principle that affirms that everyone has the right to participate in free and fair elections.

The poor preparations of INEC are well-discussed and documented, the flawed gubernatorial elections of the weekend of the 16^th of April and the jaw-dropping ill-preparedness for the elections of last weekend which had ballot papers still in South Africa 24 hours to elections are evident.

The verdict

However, on the whole, when the observers reviewed the whole process, the elections had fallen far short of basic international standards and were marred by violence, poor organisation, lack of transparency, widespread irregularities, significant fraud, voter disenfranchisement and bias.

That is as damning an indictment of a process that one can get in diplomatic language, noting that we did not even scrape the very basic international standards, those who think we should forget this and move on would have to reflect this matter again.

The chief EU observer went on to say, "These elections have not lived up to the hopes and expectations of the Nigerian people and the process cannot be considered to have been credible."

Before we get all defensive about Nigeria and the Rome that was not built in a day, the observer has nothing to gain apart from hoping that people of our country get the government they have elected through processes that are not too extraneous to oversee.

We should be disappointed because this election was supposed to set an example for all other nascent democracies, but the lessons that would come from this would probably harden the inability-complex of many who prefer to conduct elections shabbily rather than encourage others to excel in protecting the democratic rights of their people.

Belling the cat

In the extreme, one can say with regards to the Nigerian Elections that the commendation for good work done as elicited by the Chairman of INEC is really trying to persuade Nigerians that in allowing for their fundamental human rights to be breached, abused and taken, they can be proud of having no one to lead them against this atrocious onslaught.

Who of those who aspire to lead Nigeria can stand up for the rights of every Nigerian to be able to know that whatever votes they have cast would be the votes that were counted and those that are honestly reported?

For now, there are none brave enough to bell the cat, either winners who know for sure that the elections that have rigged in their favour and have no integrity to challenge the injustice or the losers who knowing that this is the case would clog the process with the courts for their own ends rather than the principle of demanding the restoration of the fundamental human rights of 60 million Nigerians who were eligible to vote.

Because there is no one to bell the cat, we Nigerians would be lumbered with another unaccountable self-serving indolent machinery of nepotism, corruption and graft, four years on from now, would things have changed? I think NOT!

Commending the civic Nigerian

Arise, O Compatriots

First, I must commend ordinary Nigerians, for their longsuffering, unquenchable hope, infectious optimism and sense of civil duty.

The vote was arranged and despite the rotten lack of preparation and planning that would outrage any paying customer, they went out to their local polling stations queued up, waited and eventually some got served, they voted and moved on, they had done their part.

The next level of optimism is in expecting that single vote to count along with all other legitimate votes to produce the for majority will of the people, that person that has ministered the prospective best for Nigeria or the probably aspiration to improving the lot of Nigerians.

I got a feel of this expectation and hope when I spoke to my mum yesterday morning, she was half-hoping her vote would count and half-worried that whatever counts would not produce a mandate accountable to Nigerians, such that the elected once in office would go out to line their pockets as those before them.

The coverage

The BBC and CNN gave considerable coverage to the elections in Nigeria all through the day and I had a suspicious feeling that this was as a result of the shameless gaffe of the Chairman of the INEC when he let out on Friday that the ballot papers were still in South Africa.

It is interesting to note that Nigeria seemingly does not have the kind of facilities secure enough to produce sensitive ballot papers keep those under wraps till needed, for a country that has such a large number of law enforcement agents and armed forces, one would have thought; first a secret location for the activity would be found, then a rotation of personnel would keep the place secure.

However, one might surmise that those personnel could have been persuaded to turn a blind eye to highly place miscreants who want to steal the ballots, though printing the ballots in South Africa would only have put that out of sight of poor resourced bandits.

The wayward ballot

As the day began we heard about a failed attempt to blow up the INEC headquarters with a petrol tanker; I do not know the layout of the area, but one would wonder how such an important building could have be erected in such a vulnerable place at the foot of an incline. Ijebuman has a very interesting take on why the attack was not successful - it would have funny if it were not so tragic, said Chxta; it would have been tragic if it were not so funny, said I.

The ballot papers did arrive in Nigeria at 16:00 on Friday and there began the frenzy to get the ballots out to the polling stations which were to open 2 hours late. INEC even suggested the Air Force might to called upon to help get the papers out to the nether regions, well they should not have been on standby, they should have been engaged in the logistics process as a sure run.

However, a BBC correspondent only had to go to a polling station on the outskirts of Abuja to find that the papers had not arrived hours after the station were supposed to be open.

When some voters learnt that the ballot papers provided who not go round the number of registered voters, they went into a rampage, one of the violent reactions resulted in the death of a few policemen.

Forbearance and patience is giving way to frustration and that gets taken out on hapless officials who have to stretch resources to accommodate the criminal failings of the centre.

All lights come from CNN

When the vote ended, the shame of it all was exposed with an innocuous news item on CNN, the ballot enumerators were seemingly counting in the dark and the lights from CNN were used to help them do the tallies - Why? The most critical infrastructure problem in Nigeria which is the distribution of electricity had failed at a point where Nigeria's great democracy was being exposed to the world.

In secondary school we had lanterns for nights when the light were out, the enumerators could have been given high luminosity lanterns - the quip the the followed the report highlighted the long trail of un-preparedness that the Chairman of INEC would eventually come out to declare a success.

One Ambassador Young appeared on CNN in an interview and tried to equate the irregularities in Nigeria with happenings in Florida 2000 and Georgia, the interviewer did not buy any of that trash.

Religious men or men of integrity

This brings me another issue, about the vote and the progress of democracy. When I called home the undercurrent I received in terms of who people would vote for was that everyone wanted to vote for a godly man.

In fact, it was not so much a godly man because that is a representation of character but religious men, people who wear their religion on their sleeves, whose every waking word includes God vouching for their every deed but whose reality is probably a deceitful lip-service that counts for too much in Nigeria.

It occurred to me that what we really need are men of integrity, honest, truthful and with a sense of responsibility and duty regardless of if they go to Church everyday, pray at the mosque 10 times a day or make chicken sacrifices to animist gods in the deepest jungles.

Basically, religion does not make an honest man, however, if it forms the basis of the principles that guide a man of integrity that is fine. Unfortunately, a lot of religious people would be voted for and if there be a man if integrity amongst them, hopefully that person also has a deep sense of responsibility to know that it is call to serve the people.

Nobody is building Rome again

Rome was not built in a day we hear, time and again, my question is who is trying to build Rome again? That Rome has come and gone and new Rome exists hopefully built on the lessons of the Romes of the past.

In the same vein, nobody goes about reinventing the wheel; we take the same principle and apply to the unsophisticated push cart, the bicycle or expensive automobile.

Why is it that when it comes to democracy in Nigeria we cannot take lessons from other democracies and brains from the conduct of elections even in places like South Africa and Ghana, probably India or the new democracies of Eastern Europe, perhaps the young democracies of Spain and Portugal?

I left out America, Australia, Canada and the UK because the countries mentioned have hardly practiced democracy from more than 60 years, in fact, most have been doing so in the last 10 to 30 years.

Using the experiences of others

It is not as if we do not utilise the best technologies in our banks and business or use the best gadgets to make life easier in Nigeria, at least during the voter registration exercise some bloggers commented about the use of fingerprint technologies.

If for our individual and business good we adopt all these methods, process, procedures and technologies why should the most important common good of Nigeria be left to expectations of poor performance and everyone subscribe to the excuses rather than a clear determination to do things right having learnt lessons and acquired expertise from those who have done it successfully before?

We cannot continue to rely on the hopeful miracle of everything turning out right when adequate planning can do a lot to ensuring that everything does turn out right.

Meanwhile we wait for the legitimate count of the votes, but if 24 instead of 25 presidential hopefuls appear on the ballot papers, we would be doing this again very soon - If the keeps bottle anger permanently corked is another matter entirely.

Nigerian ballots probably in the air

The admission of flaws

The conversion of INEC into the Sultans of the Ballot and the Genies of the Vote continues apace.

Having had the President finally admit that there were flaws in the elections conducted last week is probably more a damage limitation exercise than one of sincere contrition.

It would appear some external pressure has been applied to make the government wake up to some stark realities which the President expressed in quite succinct words - The world is watching us and we cannot afford to disappoint ourselves, our friends and the world - indeed, we have all been watching how the vote that went in produced a tally of some other spurious count from which some pre-determined winner emerges, though like a fellow blogger noticed, those winners seem to go into hiding rather than come out to celebrate - Go figure!

Ballots are in the air

However, what leaves me breathless like I have just been punched violently in the belly is the response of the Chairman of INEC to the rumour that a truckload of ballot papers marked in favour of the ruling party had been seized.

Apparently, sorry, the reality is, the ballot papers needed to conduct the elections throughout the whole of Nigeria tomorrow are not yet in the country. Yes, the ballot papers are not yet in the country; they are being printed in South Africa after the outrageous politicking adventure of INEC came unstuck.

In fact, the Federal Government, earlier in the week had to release NGN 15 billion to INEC to help them handle this development which everyone but INEC knew would happen - I suppose the INEC budget had already been expended on other matters of graft and importuning than the conduct of elections.

So, INEC has just less than 24 hours to ensure that ballot papers reach the nether regions of the country such that the people have full access to the choices available which should include Atiku Abubakar, the current Vice President of Nigeria.

One can say, if the ballots have left South Africa already, then they would be in the air, just the reality of the elections being conducted with any level of professional ability would be welcome.

Candidates amiss

However, I predicted over a month ago that the Vice President's application to contest would probably be granted so late that some people would not have the choice of voting for him, allowing those whose names appear on the ballot to capture alternative preference votes, handing the Presidency to someone else, which would probably be the Healthy Sick-man from Katsina State - Umaru Yar' Adua.

The simple thing is that INEC whilst anticipating the fact that they might lose the battle to disqualify the Vice President, they did not have the contingency that the Chairman said was available to handle the eventuality that is now the current situation.

So, rather than postpone the election to ensure that all due processes for conducting free and fair elections are met, the polling booths would open two hours later on Saturday.

Only a forlorn miracle

From INEC's track record, if they had some polling booths opening 6 hours late or not at all last Saturday, having had all the time to adequately prepare, but wished for a miracle of efficiency rather than the effectiveness of proper planning; they cannot have improved enough to manage the logistical failures of last week in a better way for this weekend.

It is within this circumstance that we find Nigeria's true democracy sacrificed to the criminal mismanagement of the elections which would result in the lack of culpability for committing Nigeria to a possible state of disquiet, unrest and anarchy, just because INEC could not be bothered to do it right.

We probably should forget about counting the ballots and start counting on judges to make sure our votes count.

References

The INEC Blogs

Democracy - Counting the votes or Counting on judges?

Count each vote please

The kind of democracy that the United States espouses is probably not the kind of democracy that many other democratic nations would ascribe to. This is most evident in the turmoil that is about to engulf Mexico.

The Election 2000 dispute between Al Gore and George W. Bush, came down to the difference between counting each vote meticulously and the television networks making extrapolations and projections on a sampling of votes which then lead them to call an election for either party.

When the Mexican Electoral Court approved the counting of just 9% of the votes when a wider range of supposed irregularities were alleged, it was clear that resolving a suffrage through the courts rather that the count would lead to chaos.

Democratic ambivalence

Beyond this, the current American government displays a worrisome ambivalence to democracy; the ones they have supported in Afghanistan and Iraq are verging on failed states, the Palestinians popularly elected a “terrorist” organisation for which they are being punished, then Iran and Venezuela are democracies only that they are governed by anti-American figures.

The most interesting observation however is juxtaposing the American reaction to the recent Thai military coup and failed Venezuelan military coup of 2002.

Though the US has not vehemently defended the democratic cause in Thailand they have expressed their concern as “a very sad development”; this was not the case with Venezuela, they were not quick to condemn the coup and it appears they might have been culpable in the vent too.

The support the US offers to so-called liberation groups to destabilise democracies from within should be cause for concern, I would wonder how America would react if external forces intervened to perfect their not so perfect democracy.

References

Thai leaders ban political action

Foreign Policy In Focus Policy Report: Venezuela’s Failed Coup, the U.S.’ Role, and the Future of Hugo Chávez

The Observer | Special reports | Venezuela coup linked to Bush team

U.S. Goals Are Thwarted At Pro-Democracy Forum

Iran: Tehran Opposes U.S. Pro-Democracy Initiatives