A comprehensive expose on how
elections are rigged in the country has
been unveiled by one of the insiders in
the political process and former Cross
River State Governor, Mr. Donald
Duke. Last Wednesday at the
Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Duke gave a
blow by blow account to a gathering
of pro-democracy advocates,
including the Save Nigeria Group
(SNG), of the modus operandi of State
Chief Executives and Resident
Electoral Commissioners to thwart the
mandate of the electorate, not just in
states controlled by the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP), but all the
others.
In his opinion, it is not just a question
of replacing the Independent National
Electoral Commission (INEC)
Chairman, but getting a critical mass
to come out to vote and ensuring that
votes count.
The Guardian today delivers excerpts
of his extempore speech:
“LET me start this way. Professor
Maurice Iwu is truly an enigma; he
enjoyed the limelight. He enjoyed all
the attacks, thrown and meted at him,
he remained undaunted. I think, he
belongs to the school of thought that
believes that bad publicity is better
than no publicity. So, even though he
was being attacked and scolded and
all sorts of things were said about
him, he didn’t shy away from even
going to the United States and talking
to Nigerians in the Diaspora about his
work, he didn’t shy away from it. I
was told he organized a rally to
ensure that he will come back to do
the work he was appointed to.
Why do I call him an enigma? 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.
So, if elections are rigged in say -
Taraba State- we don’t do that stuff
in Cross Rivers State (laughter),
Every one looks at Iwu and he proudly
says we did this or that. Hogwash!
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 36 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, but these
musical chairs don’t mean nothing.
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
the 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. A lot of
us, folks who have gone through an
election or have been elected for one
thing or another, see groups like Save
Nigeria Group (SNG), the CLP as
woolly-eye dreamers, you have to
come down to the backsides, since I
am now a hybrid between both. I
want to bring you both down to
backsides. 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.
Let me take our minds back to
Somalia. Somalia is mono-religious,
mono-ethnic; they only have clans
(but) they have one tribe. What has
happened there? It’s a failed state
because the elite in Somalia were so
disconnected from the people that
once they had some money, they buy
houses in England, Washington and
all those places; they were not
investing, putting their best foot
forward and I think that was what
Pastor Bakare was talking about. If
you want to be in a contest, you put
your best foot forward; at the end of
the day, there was such a disconnect
that even till today, they cannot
bridge it. Let me tell you, the last
recognized President of Somalia is
buried in Lagos- Siad Barre.
We are multi-religious, multi-ethnic
and multi-problematic. The reason
why most people worry about us is if
we explode, who will contain us? Let
me also say this, I know what I am
saying now is an aside, I will go back
to the elections. When we conducted
the census in 2006 or so, the raw
figures said we were over two hundred
million; when they went and
processed the figures it came down to
140million.

When you look at those figures and
compare to those we had in 1991 at a
growth rate of 2.1 or something like
that, it is really just an extrapolation,
because we were too embarrassed to
admit our true numbers. If we get it
wrong, we will fail like Somalia; in
Somalia, half of them are in Kenya,
Ethiopia, and a few are in Europe here
and there; who will contain us in all of
West Africa and Central Africa and for
that it is imperative not just for
ourselves but for the rest of the
continent that we get it right.
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: ‘N25million 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 N25
million this week and in two weeks
time another N25 million and
Seventy-Five million 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 50
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 its easier, in no
time everyone is here.
It’s a very short meeting, please go
back and within 48 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 10,000
Naira for the day’s work. But the
state in its benevolence gives 50 to
100,000 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 48 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 its
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.
Other wise they do it, you have 95
percent turnout. You start wondering
where were the voters, 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. Its 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.
Where are we now, we don’t even
know when the elections will be. The
Constitution amendment seems to be
stalling somewhere. So it’s either in
January or in April. 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. Its like, we are going to spring
on to you with fire works, 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.
Secondly, if you have your ears to the
ground there, are whispers that may
be, we need to postpone this thing.
The whispers are there. 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, you can’t but –you
know two ways of moving forward.
This is where I like what SNG and CNP
are doing.
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 neighborhood 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?

.

sahara reporters

Interesting...


Btw check my signature for the latest promo on NL

Have always loved this duke guy...the story is just like a movie am so loving it and learning a lot from it...Nice one mr dude u most have done a lot of riggn sha wen u where governor...well I lik u sha u didn't run for senate lik other governors who wants to remain in power...am running to sahara to finish dis movie called naije riggn.

Wow I dnt regret readin dis lng epistle....dis piece is surely a step in d right direction in d reduction of riggin of elections.wat an open confession d necessary body should tk cognizance of dis

I read the whole tng frm begng till end so interestng! but i thnk our so called nollywood will do good by puting dis into a movie, b4 hollywood does it for them!

Nice piece..definitely an eye opener

Interesting; front page pls

This is an eye opener!

kennyonthrone: Wow I dnt regret readin dis lng epistle....dis piece is surely a step in d right direction in d reduction of riggin of elections.wat an open confession d necessary body should tk cognizance of dis

So interesting and engaging. 'Didn't even know it was long till I saw others stating so lol..

Interesting piece.

MOD, front page please.

This is a big eye opener! Mods front page pls

Interesting.. love this.

He located the most important ingredient for election rigging to succeed .....Voters apathy and indifference.

Abeg make una post the source, I can't fit wait to read am finish, the way body they do me eh to read this post finish eh no word for dictionary can fit explain am.


I just hope we learn from this confession and set up ways to block all this loophole being exploited to rig an election. Throwing, shifting of blame and throwing accusation won't help us at all.

Can't believe I read everything......

Mr. Donald Duke, the most handsome governor Nigeria has ever produced. I like this guy so much( no gay-ism intended ooo). Mods this topic must hit front page asap! Not all those pictures of celebrities that are displayed on FP. This piece is very educating and sounds very true.

He has even suggested means of avoiding mass rigging by advising electorates to come out en-mass to vote on election days in order to make use of all the ballot papers. Wonderful!

This is a beauty. Oga at the top will be contained in 2015 God willing. All the stolen aviation money will become useless and the whole effort would have been in vain.

This is true! Read this piece sometime ago but did not take time to digest it! Donald duke always a clown! One of my favourite ex governors

This Issues have always being very glaring, and Govt can never do anything to alleviate it because if they do, No business of Rigging as usual, Btw, why won't INEC build a lodge for their staff in all the states and LGA's, to avoid excessive familiarity with the Politicians? Anyway, Nigeria must be fine someday. Think Positive, Act Positive and be the Change you want to see in the World.

Desric: This Issues have always being very glaring, and Govt can never do anything to alleviate it because if they do, No business of Rigging as usual, Btw, why won't INEC build a lodge for their staff in all the states and LGA's, to avoid excessive familiarity with the Politicians? Anyway, Nigeria must be fine someday. Think Positive, Act Positive and be the Change you want to see in the World.

dat part also got me thinking, y must d inec official b alowed to frertanise wt siting politician? and funny enough no party is raising dust on this! meaning, all of dem hav somethng to gain frm it.

That is why I believe the number of state governor, loyal to GEJ will determine his winning election come 2015. Those governors just need 50% support from their state indigine the deed is done. Jega will sit-down in Abuja and his REC will send him result. Just hope APC and G-7 alliance will work, GEJ will be come history by 2015

Front page!!!!!!!!
So nigerians can stop thinking e-campaigns would win elections.

explains y only a total of 300k or more peeps voted in anambra compared to the registered 1million voters. we need to change our thinking and also advance in terms of elections and the use of computers

Nice article....now we know d fault is not only from INEC Chairman but also from the kind of people INEC select as its REC....I think there should be a way such that anybody selected to be a REC must have taken an oath and also must have undergone proper screening,I won't mention d issue of funding cos no matter how much INEC pays dis peepz they will always be greedy.Overall it's all about the integrity of the kind of people INEC allows to conduct the election.....thumbs up Donald Duke.

this is very interesting.... Front page pls.....

This epistle reeks of sincerity. Up Duke