The anatomy of rigging
By Olu Jacob



A few years ago, Aminu Bello Masari, who was then the Speaker of the House of Representatives, was sitting with Ehipo Ejiga, a brilliant raconteur and member of the House when Mr. Ejiga suddenly asked, “Mr. Speaker, is it possible to go to heaven without dying?” Mr. Masari, whose dour demeanour hides a sharp wit, turned to Mr. Ejiga and said, “Yes, it is possible. If you are a member of the PDP.”

For good or ill, after the massive rigging that made the 2007 elections one of the worst in history, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has become a synonym for fraud. The choice of Attahiru Jega to chair the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has been for many Nigerians the single most important factor that gave them faith in the current process.

According to Saidu Muhammed Dansadau, a former senator from Zamfara State, “There are two major routes to rigging. Where you have the majority of the people supporting your party and, therefore, willing to allow you to tamper with the process. And secondly, when you have an INEC chairman who turns himself into a returning officer and goes to the Villa to announce election results even before all the votes have been accounted for. You cannot do that with Jega.”

Let them sue

Indeed, Mr. Jega, despite the shoddy manner in which he has handled election matters of recent, has done enough to ensure that the polls are credible.

The choice of the Open Secret Ballot system, a modification of the Option A4 which was successfully used in the 1993 elections, was quite inspired. The worst incidents of rigging have always occurred when secret ballot is used. Often, party agents on the losing side refuse to sign the results sheet, because the numbers do not tally with their expectations.

The story is told of the agent who told the inimitable Arthur Nzeribe that he had evidence that the other party was rigging the polls, evidence that would be useful in court. And the senator had answered, “To hell with evidence. Let us rig, let them sue.”

Over the years, elections in Nigeria became a matter of out-rigging your opponent, until the use of Option A4 or the open ballot, which makes people queue up behind the candidates of their choice. It wasn’t so free, however, because the very act of queuing behind candidates exposed people to all kinds of dangers in a country where political differences run deep. Many people simply would not turn up for voting to avoid being marked down as the enemy.

In the 2011 elections, the method is modified. The open secret ballot means that while the accreditation of voters from 8am to 12 noon will be done in public, the voting itself will be secret, thus preserving the sanctity of the exercise.

Does that mean then these elections cannot be rigged at all? Abubakar Bawa Bwari, who is running for the governorship of Niger State against an incumbent PDP governor, said it would be decidedly more difficult now. “But nothing is beyond the PDP,” he said. “You never know what they are planning next.”

Mr. Bwari would know. A former majority whip in the House of Representatives, he had been a party stalwart until a few months ago when he left to contest under the ACN.

To be sure, it has always been easy to rig elections in Nigeria. And despite prevailing opinion, it is not just the PDP that rigs elections. As politicians like to say, every party rigs elections in areas where they can.

Indeed, everyone is guilty of the crime; from the electoral body which makes materials available in some centres and not in others; to policemen who choose the moments to look away; and politicians who steal ballot boxes and papers. Even voter apathy helps; politicians notice the absence of people on a queue and proceed to thumbprint ballots to make up for the shortfall in that centre.

This in no way suggests that government officials are uniformly corrupt. People have died trying to protect ballot boxes before, policemen as well as electoral officers.

One of the worst cases I know happened during the great rivalry between the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) and the Nigeria Peoples Party (NPP) in Niger State. A group of thugs hijacked a bus carrying election officials who were transporting the results and burnt everyone in it.

The methodology of rigging

The former Cross River State governor, Donald Duke, made some comments last year about the methodology of rigging. He spoke mainly of how electoral commissioners posted to states get compromised during so called ‘courtesy calls’ on the governors.

But there are various levels of rigging. In the most comprehensive method, the process begins with voter registration exercise. The parties in power at various stages ensure that multiple registrations, underage registrations by minors, and fictitious names are used to beef up the number of registered voters.

Once you have the numbers and the extra voters’ cards, the next step is to plan how to distribute those cards on Election Day to people who will use them.

Find suitable centres, find agreeable party agents, find the right election officials, bribe the police and SSS, and make sure the people of that area are traditionally supporters of your party or have been extravagantly induced. It is suicidal to go to a place where you are unpopular and try to rig elections there.

Sometimes, nothing so complex occurs. In the last election, I was at a centre where the police and the Electoral officers were given money to leave the scene, while supporters of a politician in the contest who had bought ballot papers came by and started thumb printing on the ledger.

To stay or not to stay

Rigging requires many people to be successful. In last week’s aborted election, at least one governor from the north central state had reportedly tried to use ballot papers obtained illegally to flood the votes.

An INEC contractor who spoke to NEXT on condition of anonymity said the governor got a huge cache of the papers used as sample for training NYSC members and other electoral officers.

“We contacted Jega and told him the problem. He said we must make sure that anywhere we see such a thing, we change the ballot. So we had to do some security changes in the papers,” he said.

One of the most ingenous thing about the current ballot papers and result sheets is the serial numbering, so that the papers meant for a certain area cannot be used for another zone. Although it had its drawback, like last week when some states and zones had so much papers and some had none, yet the papers could not be moved around to places with shortages.

Yet, Mr. Jega alone, enormous as his responsibilities are, cannot stop rigging – which was why he had insisted that people stay at the polling units after voting to see the placement of results. This tactics has helped in 2007 in Kano and Bauchi States where voters waited around to ensure the safety of their votes.

However, there have been conflicting signals from the Inspector-General of Police and the National Security Adviser, both of who have warned that voters who stay after casting their votes do so at their own risks.

There is no doubt that this year’s election will be better than the last one held four years ago, but how much better will depend on a number of factors. Yet, as Mr. Dansadau said, “Anyone who hopes to rely on rigging to win election this year is living a life of illusion.”