naptu2:
This is my election money post.
I ORIGINALLY POSTED THIS ON OCTOBER 1ST, 2020
(Naptu2's note. I actually started writing this in the middle of the night on September 18th/early morning September 19th).
Money elections
I started writing this on Friday night/Saturday morning, but I had to leave for my adventure before I could finish it and I didn't save what I had written, so I'm giving it another go.
I heard about this issue in 1983, 1987 and 1989, but it wasn't until 1991 that I got the opportunity to see it firsthand.
Dear diary, do you remember that I told you about a man that lived at a place called Ekiti Lodge? I told you that he was a politician and businessman in the 1950s and '60s, a judge in the 1970s and '80s and he became a politician again in the early 1990s.
He wasn't very successful in his second stint as a politician. You see, he had a reputation of being an honest and no-nonsense judge. He was the kind of person that some Nigerians would describe as being troublesome (because he didn't take any nonsense and he didn't allow people to dish any nonsense) and Nigerian politics doesn't like honest people who that are very principled. But that's not the theme of this piece.
The man contested in an election in 1991 and that gave me an opportunity to study this issue from the inside.
There are three sets of people that usually sign the result sheet after an election and these three set of people are usually given original duplicate copies of the result. The three set of people are (1) the returning officer, (2) the party agents (3) representative of the police.
Police
Usually the duplicate copy is given to a representative of the divisional police officer (DPO) if the election/collation is at the ward level, a representative of the area commander if the election/collation is at the local government level, a representative of the commissioner of police if the election is at the state level and a representative of the inspector general of police if it is a presidential election result.
(Now I'm going to deviate from what I planned to post on Saturday because I've realised that this is an opportunity to post something that I've wanted to post since January. So here is one of my abandoned posts).
It was this fact that gave governor Hope Uzodinma victory at the Supreme Court.
INEC had conducted the Imo State governorship elections in 2019. The results that INEC declared (at the end of the process) showed that Emeka Ihedioha had won the election, Uche Nwosu came second, Ifeanyi Ararume came third and Hope Uzodinma came fourth. Many of the contestants were not happy with the results and they headed for the Election Petition Tribunal to challenge it.
Hope Uzodinma of the APC alleged that INEC did not include results from 388 polling units in areas where he had a strong support base and he claimed that he would have won the election if those results were added.
INEC claimed that elections in those polling units were marred by violence, ballot snatching and other irregularities. It claimed that it cancelled the votes in those polling units because of the irregularities.
However, the APC stated that INEC had no authority to cancel votes from those polling units because it is only the courts that can annull the votes. It stated that cancelling the votes amounted to disenfranchising voters that voted at those polling units.
INEC stated that it had no results from those polling units.
The APC then got its polling agents to testify and they tendered their copies of the results, but the PDP poked holes in their stories during cross examination. For example, the PDP showed that some of the results sheets did not have the signatures of all of the party agents that were present during the election.
Then the APC subpoened the Imo State deputy commissioner of police in charge of operations (DCompolOps), Rabiu Hassaini, to bring the police's copy of the results and testify at the tribunal. DCompolOps are usually in charge of election security at the state level, while DIGPol Ops is usually in charge of election security at the federal (presidential and National Assembly elections) level.
Rabiu Hassaini arrived at the tribunal with large bags filled with the police's copy of the results from the 388 polling units and he testified in support of those results.
However the PDP objected to Hassaini's testimony on two grounds.
1) The PDP stated that Hassaini did not provide evidence to show that he had the Inspector General's permission to testify.
2) The PDP also alleged that the results that were presented by Hassaini were forged.
The tribunal accepted the PDP's objection and excluded the results that were presented by Hassaini. Therefore, it declared that Emeka Ihedioha of the PDP was the winner of the election. The APC appealed the decision of the tribunal.
The Appeal Court upheld the decision of the tribunal. However, one of the judges gave a dissenting opinion. He wrote that the subpoena to Hassaini was routed through the office of the Inspector General of Police and that meant that the IGP was aware and gave his approval for Hassaini to testify, otherwise he won't have appeared at the tribunal. He further wrote that the PDP did not provide any evidence to show that the results that were tendered by Hassaini were forged.
The APC appealed the decision of the Appeal Court and the Supreme Court unanimously alligned itself with the dissenting judgement from the Appeal Court. The Supreme Court ruled that Hassaini had the permission of the IGP to testify and that the PDP did not prove that the results that were tendered by Hassaini were forged. Remember that by law, Hassaini, who was the representative of the Imo State commissioner of police, was entitled to an original duplicate copy of the result.
The Supreme Court therefore ruled that INEC unlawfully excluded the results from 388 polling units and when those results were added the total enabled Hope Uzodinma to leapfrog from the fourth position to the first position. And that's how Hope Uzodinma became governor of Imo State.
But that's not the main theme of this post. The main theme of this post is the party agents and the huge amount of money that is required to mobilise them on election day.
As you've seen in the previous section, it's very important that you have agents at all the polling units and collation centers. The polling agent serves the following purposes:
1) He enables the candidate to know the actual result of the election.
2) He enables the candidate to know if there has been any electoral malpractice at the polling unit or collation center and he also enables the candidate to gather evidence of such malpractice. This evidence will be very useful at the tribunal.
3) He enables the party and candidate to know if the electoral umpire has made a genuine mistake and he also ensures that the mistake is corrected. This evidence will be
4) Basically, the party agent protects the interest of the party and the candidate at the polling units and collation centers.
So, as you can see, the party agent is very important. The candidate/party must have an agent at every polling unit and every collation center so that there'll be someone to protect his interest at all these places. Now imagine if it is a presidential election!
There are 119,973 polling units in Nigeria and 57,000 other polling centers. This makes a total of 176,973 places where voting is conducted. That's not including the collation centers!
These are the possible collation centers.
1. Registration Area (RA)/Ward Level
2. Local Government Area (LGA) Level
3. State Assembly Constituency Level
4. Federal (House of Representatives) Constituency Level
5. Senatorial District Level
6. State Level
7. Collation and Declaration of Presidential Election Result at the National Level.
According to INEC. . .
So you need to have your party agents at these collation centers in addition to the polling centers. Nowadays, with the advent of information communication technology, particularly the Internet and mobile phones, political parties and candidates also set up situation rooms where they'll receive reports from their agents in the field in real time. They also have analysts in these situation rooms who can analyse the data that's gotten from the agents and advise the candidate accordingly.
The staff at the situation rooms during a governorship election are usually from out of state. This because they need to monitor the situation right from the release of sensitive materials in the early hours of election day until the final result is released and this means that they need to be at the situation room for two or three days straight. Meanwhile the candidate needs every vote that he can get, so he wouldn't want potential voters locked up in the situation room.
All of these people must be mobilised and the equipment in the situation room must be procured
Elections usually begin early in the morning and continue till around 10 or 12 o'clock when counting begins. Sometimes the elections are extended due to late arrival of materials and the party agent might be at the polling unit till 3pm. These polling agents must eat breakfast and lunch while they are performing their duties.
Collation of the results might start in the afternoon of election day and continue all night and into the next day. The party agents at the collation centers must eat lunch, dinner and breakfast while performing their duties.
Furthermore, nowadays, these agents need mobile phone airtime in order to relay reports to their situation rooms and they also need to be able to transport themselves to their duty posts and to be able to monitor the movement of results from the polling units to the collation centers.
All of these cost money.
That takes me back to the stories from 1987, 1989 and 1991 (and even from the early 2000s). There were stories of political parties and candidates bringing food to polling units and feeding everybody there, including their opponent's agents. There were also stories of parties and candidates inducing their opponent's agents to switch allegiances. Can you imagine a situation in which an agent appears at the tribunal to testify against his own candidate?
Party agents usually refuse to sign the result sheet if they believe that the election was compromised, but can you imagine a situation in which a party agent not only signs the result sheet, but he also testifies that the election was free and fair, despite the fact that it was rigged against his candidate?
This is why political parties and candidates do all they can to select their most loyal followers to act as polling agents and they also spend a lot of money to ensure that the agents are happy and fully mobilised on election day. Your conclusion is very apt. But what does this spell for candidates with lower financial warchests, does this mean election goes to the highest bidder in a country like Nigeria where loyalty is hard to find especially amongst men in politics. Is this the case in large developing democracies? |
