RECENTLY Governor
Babatunde Fashola of
Lagos state decried the
sudden non-appearance of
the names of over one
million voters in Lagos
State from the
Independent National
Electoral Commission,
INEC’s voters register. But
responding to the
discrepancy noticeable in
the new voters register
vis-a-vis that of 2011, the
Resident Electoral
Commissioner, REC, for
Lagos State ascribed it to
changes between the
2011 Post-AFIS voter
register and the extant
voters register after the
Post-Business rule voter
register criterion is
applied.
This is strange because the
Chairman of INEC,
Professor Attahiru Jega, in
trying to rob the South to
pay the North with
electoral advantage,
defended the recent
allocation of new polling
units, by legitimating the
Post-AFIS register of 2011
and refuting the Post-
Business rule register. But
the anxiety of Governor
Fashola is just the
beginning of the evidence
of how the South West
will be robbed electorally
by Jega’s regional
elements in INEC.
It is shocking how the
present political elite of
the South West have kept
mute over the recent
lopsided allocation of
polling units by INEC using
conjectures and arbitrary
constructs that allotted to
the North West 7,906; the
North East 5,291 and the
North Central 6,318, while
it allotted to the South
West 4,160; South-South
3,087 and South East
1,167 and the FCT 1,120.
Many geo-political
allocations such as local
government areas and
wards were similarly
constructed from arbitrary
allotments by persons
who found themselves in
privileged positions,
without any reference to
credible and reliable
procedures, yet they have
remained the
authoritative reference
points for constituency
delimitation for a long
time to come. To give a
very graphic illustration,
the estimated population
of Ibadan city is 3,565,108
and Ogbomosho, another
big city in Oyo State, is 1.1
million; in comparison,
one of the biggest cities in
Yobe State is Potiskum.
In peace times its
population was 86,002,
but in creating new
polling units, Yobe state
got 790 new polling units
while Oyo got 580 new
polling units , even when
on the paper which INEC
used as reference point
the total number of
eligible voters in Oyo State
is 2,487,132, while the
total number of eligible
voters in Yobe State is
1,203,324. But to worsen
matters, states in the
North which have equal or
less number of eligible
voters like Oyo, such as
Niger State which has
2,427,081 got over 1000
new polling units. For
instance, Niger State got
1,683 new polling units,
about three times the
number of new polling
units allotted to Oyo. The
reaction of political
leaders in the South West
to this anomalous
disparity belies the
political sophistication for
which the South West is
renowned, given the
historical electoral
consequences of such
deliberate distortion of
electoral systems.
The recent quietude by
South West political
leaders may be explained
by their recent political
alliances with political
networks in the Northern
oligarch. Such quiet can
only be described as
implied collusion, in which
case they believe that
electoral victory from this
alliance will mean greater
empowerment. But it is
surprising that despite
such alliances, they do not
find it curious that even in
seeking victory through
electoral system
manipulation, their
Northern allies could not
trust their South West
allies with as much
electoral leverage as they
have allocated to
themselves. The truth of
this matter is that they,
unlike their South West
political allies, are not
fooled by such temporary
alliances of convenience.
They recognise that, while
alliances may be facile,
electoral constituencies
can be very difficult to
change once embedded in
the body politics. That is
why a state like Osun with
1,318,120 eligible voters
was allotted 121 new
polling units whereas
states with less number of
eligible voters like Gombe
with 1,208,927 voters got
three times more, with
403 new polling units
allocated to them
compared to Osun’s 121.
So why would someone in
Jega’s decision-making
structure rob the South
West of two polling units
for every one it allocates
to their electoral peers in
the North, which
translated means that
they are creating on paper
1500 voters in the North
for every 500 potential
voters in the South West?
Why is this manipulation
of the electoral system
necessary? To answer this
question, we need to
understand electoral
systems and how systemic
electoral frauds are
fomented institutionally.
Electoral systems describe
the proportional
representation of
constituencies in
governance legislatures. In
parliamentary systems, it
is the life blood of political
victories; in presidential
systems it dictates who
gets what, when and how
through legislative policy
making and oversight. By
using arbitrary criteria
cooked up by the
chairman of operations
Nuru Yakubu in INEC and
his regional devotees
instead of international
benchmarks, starting with
scientific delimitation of
constituencies, INEC is
trying to foist polling unit
configurations that will
make small constituencies
in the North look like
gigantic constituencies,
and big constituencies in
the South West look like
comparative electoral
dwarfs.
Since democracy is still
taking root in Nigeria
many stakeholders do not
take important landmark
events such as districting
or constituency
delimitation, which has
consequences for the
location and spread of
polling units as seriously
as they should. Hence they
often pay scant attention
when electoral bodies or
political authorities take
actions that may alter
political constituencies,
electoral maps and
consequently polling units.
The importance of such
actions for the outcome of
elections only become
obvious when election
results are released and
voters come to find out
that the game may have
been actually
programmed to be won
even before the ballots are
cast.
The question, therefore,
should not only be to find
out how the one million
voters disappeared from
the roll in Lagos, but a
wholesome review of how
INEC has conducted such
cleaning or editing of the
voters roll. This will also
include a line by line
examination of the
scientific and political rigor
by which INEC arrived at
its current polling units
allocation without any
record of a delimitation
exercise in which it
notified and consulted
with stakeholders from
the bottom to the top. If
such vigilance is not
revived. Jega and his
regional devotees will be
smiling five years from
now when they watch the
South West bemoaning its
large population towns
squeezing themselves
through narrow
compartmentalised
electoral corridors created
at INEC.
Hence to give some
deeper insight to the
issue, stakeholders may be
interested to know how
the White political
interests in the United
States managed to keep
Black Americans from
using their numbers to
impact elections in the
Southern states of the USA.
To dis-enfranchise Blacks
they used direct and
indirect means; direct
methods included the use
of violence, such as the
murder of 100 Black
Americans in 1873 in
Colfax, Louisiana who
were trying to protect the
votes for the Republican
politician they were
supporting. Other direct
methods included ballot
stuffing or the throwing
out of votes cast by Black
people or counting them
as votes for the person
they voted against.
Because of such injustices,
laws like the Enforcement
Act of 1870 was
introduced to protect
blacks and poor white
people who were often
the victim of such
disenfranchisement.
When such laws were
introduced, the powerful
white politicians in
authority started to
contrive indirect methods
of disenfranchisement,
such as the use of poll
taxes, which required
people to pay arrears of
taxes which obviously
most blacks could not
afford as eligibility to vote,
then they also used
literacy tests, at some
other places they used
ballot system which will
require effective reading
skills for a person to vote
correctly, to help illiterate
whites escape these
difficulties states like
Oklahoma introduced
something called an
“understanding” or
“Grandfather” clause , this
was finally struck down by
the voting Act of 1965 in
the southern states and
the federal voting Act in
1970.
But since then other clever
methods such the clever
manipulation of
registration of voters rules
and more recently, the
cunning demarcation of
districts such as the recent
demarcation of districts in
North Carolina to protect a
predominantly Republican
White district to hold a
senatorial seat in
Northwest Fayetteville
area of North Carolina, all
these show that the
success of democracy
requires constant
vigilance, a pre-requisite
that the political elites of
the South West appear to
have given up, for a mess
of northern oligarchic
porridge, if not how can
such an important issue
receive such tepid
attention, until 1million
voters went up in smoke?
The question therefore
should not only be to find
out how the 1 million
voters disappeared from
the role in Lagos, but a
wholesome review of how
INEC has conducted such
cleaning or editing of the
voters roll, and a line by
line examination of the
scientific and political rigor
by which INEC arrived at
its current polling units
allocation without any
record of a delimitation
exercise in which it
notified and consulted
with stakeholders from
the bottom to the top. If
such vigilance is not
revived..Jega and his
regional devotees will be
smiling five years from
now when they watch the
South West bemoaning its
large population towns
squeezing themselves
through narrow
compartmentalized
electoral corridors created
at INEC.
Mr. Bamidele Odubela, a
public affars analyst,
wrote from Lagos.