In answer to an interviewer’s question, Archbishop Desmond Tutu [1931-2021] once said, “Of course faith is a risk, but it is a risk that I cannot risk doing without.” The great Archbishop was talking about religious faith, but as the 2027 general and presidential elections loom on the horizon, Nigerians are expected to have faith in the laws, regulations, guidelines, institutions, processes, tech tools and personalities that will conduct those elections. Having faith in any one of them is a risk.
Having faith in the Electoral Act 2026 is a risk. Even though it was in the works for a long time, it was eventually passed without a requirement for electronic transmission of results, as stridently demanded by opposition parties and civil society groups. More curiously, a provision was later added to prevent courts from annulling an election due to age falsification or presentation of false academic credentials. Having faith in this Act is a risk but it is a risk that tens of thousands of election candidates all over the country cannot risk doing without, since it is the governing law of the elections.
Having faith in INEC, which styles itself on the number plates of its numerous Prado jeeps as “Election Management Body”, is a risk. Its refusal to register new political parties even though some of them apparently satisfied the criteria for registration; its playing cat and mouse games with opposition parties and recognising party factions that are clearly not where most of the party members belong; and its rolling out a condensed election timetable, giving parties a very short duration to present their membership registers, which a court later annulled, all point to a risk of having faith in it.
INEC will draft tens of thousands of youth corpers as ad hoc staff in the 2027 elections. Having faith in youth corpers is a risk. Quite alright, they are just out of tertiary institutions; they are better educated, more energetic and more idealistic than primary school teachers who for many decades did this job. However, corpers are restless; they do not tolerate bureaucratic delays in the payment of their “allawee”, shabby accommodation, being served substandard food, being pushed around by policemen, or being patient with unruly party thugs at polling stations. Relying on corpers as ad hoc election staff is a risk, but it is a risk that we cannot risk doing without.
Where else in Nigerian society can we find a large store of educated manpower to serve as election ad hoc staff? The answer is, civil servants. But there is a risk there. Years ago when I accompanied the Sultan of Sokoto to visit India’s Central Election Commission in New Delhi, its Chairman, Dr. McGill, told us that his commission has only 200 permanent staffers but during elections, it balloons to five million, simply by conscripting federal and state civil servants. Why can’t we do the same here? Dr McGill, who lived in Nigeria for five years as Program Manager of a World Bank funded agricultural project, said, “Both India and Nigeria inherited our civil service from the British. Since then, ours has been slightly damaged but your own has been badly damaged.” Sob! Sob!
While INEC distributes what it calls “non-sensitive election materials” to its local offices days before an election, it does not for security reasons, distribute the “sensitive election materials” [ballot papers and result sheets] until the morning of the election. There is a risk of late arrival of these materials. A bigger risk is that INEC relies on Road Transport Workers to deploy their vehicles to deliver sensitive election materials to polling stations before 7am. Relying on road transport workers is a risk because they are unruly, are not time sensitive, are penny pinching, and could always say they were queueing up at petrol stations or had a flat tyre due to potholed roads. Relying on them is however a risk that we cannot risk doing without since INEC does not have enough vehicles of its own to deliver materials to all 176,000 polling units within a short space of time.
On election days, for INEC election officers to operate their BVAS machines, relay the results to its central servers and post them on iRev for public viewing, it relies on this country’s tech infrastructure, the phone networks and Wi-Fi. Having faith in them is a risk, because the weather, vandals, cost of diesel to power GSM operators’ masts all make for poor services, but it is a risk that we cannot risk doing without.
Having faith in INEC’s returning officers is a risk. Almost all the returning officers in governorship elections are university Vice Chancellors while the collating officers at local government levels are almost all university Professors. These are supposedly the best educated people in Nigeria, for that matter from the last pocket of idealism in Nigerian society, i.e. the universities. Yet, having faith in them is a risk because ASUU could call a total, nationwide and indefinite strike in the middle of the election season. Besides, most professors are of advanced age, and during the 2015 presidential election result collation, one of them was unable to read the paper in his hand even with the help of a torchlight.
In presidential elections, INEC Chairman himself is the returning officer. This wasn’t the case in 1979, when FEDECO under Chief Michael Ani appointed a senior civil servant, Mr. Frederick Louis Oki Menkiti, as the Returning Officer Presidential Election. Having Professor Amupitan as Returning Officer in next year’s presidential election is a risk because leaders of opposition parties are likely to allege bias on his part, having recently staged a march to INEC’s headquarters, saying Amupitan must go.
On election days, security agencies are as critical as election officials. They are expected to control unruly crowds, secure election officials and materials, prevent thugs from snatching ballot boxes, prevent compromised election officials from stuffing ballot boxes, and accompany results to collation centres. Having faith in the neutrality and efficiency of security agencies is however a risk before they have already shown their hand well ahead of the election, such as, deploying policemen at Abuja’s A Class event centre at the weekend, on the orders of the FCT Minister, to prevent the Turaki-led PDP faction from holding a convention to adopt former President Goodluck Jonathan as its presidential candidate. If Oga Jonathan had done that in 2015, would APC ever have come to power?
More than INEC or the security agencies, political parties and their candidates are the biggest stakeholders in elections. They are the ones who must fire up supporters and voters; imbue them with purpose and sentiment; knock at their doors on election days and transport them to polling stations, and provide water and food to ease their wait. In 2007, Bauchi voters invented a slogan that is now catching up fast in Northern Nigeria, “A kasa, a raka, a tsare.” That is, vote, escort [to collation centre] and guard. ANPP candidate Malam Isa Yuguda rode on the back of that slogan and defeated the almighty PDP to win the Bauchi governorship. This time around, it is a risk for candidates to rely on voters to guard the ballot, so they deploy well-armed thugs to do the job.
All over the world, the mass media is a critical factor in elections. Nigeria now has 93 million registered voters. Pray, how many of these will ever get to see a presidential candidate, including even the president? Most of what voters think they know about a candidate is what they glean from the media. While radio and TV stations are tightly controlled by NBC and print newspapers have a code of professional ethics [often observed in the breach], the wildest and most influential card right now is the social media, where anything goes. Myths are made and reputations are destroyed overnight on the social media.
To have free and fair elections in Nigeria, we must have faith in the relative neutrality of the Federal Government and its agencies. Apparent neutrality is most assured during a transition from a military regime, such as in 1979 and in 1999. Things become more complicated when an incumbent President, the ultimate guarantor of fair elections, is himself a candidate in the election, as in 1983, 2003, 2011, 2015 and 2019, or even, when an outgoing civilian president is supporting his party’s candidate, as in 2007 and in 2023. No wonder that only once did a president suffer defeat in an election here, and even that is counted by pundits as a near miracle.
Therefore, as we march towards the 2027 elections, having faith in Electoral Act, INEC, youth corpers as ad hoc staff, civil servants as possible ad hoc staff, Road Transport Workers to move election materials, our tech infrastructure to support BVAS and servers, VCs and Professors as Returning and Collation officers, Prof Amupitan as Returning Officer presidential election, security agencies, mass media, political parties and their candidates, as well as the Federal Government’s neutrality are all a risk. But since we must make do with what we have, they are risks that we cannot risk doing without.
