The Challenge of Electoral Democracy in Nigeria
By: Jude J. Ofor
 Published
September 7th, 2009
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By whatever acronym
coined, Nigeria’s electoral commissions have uniformly faced tremendous
challenges in fulfilling their mandates, beginning from the first republic to
the present. As their names (not structure) have changed, successive leaderships
of these commissions have faced remarkably similar criticisms to the point
where, as Ernest Hemingway once said, ‘all our words from loose using have lost
their edge’.
Electoral systems and institutions lie at the heart of representative democracy.
This critical role is reflected in their mandate to accurately capture the
direction of public opinion, which politicians in turn, are periodically
required to competitively mobilize to fashion the consensus necessary to make or
implement policy. This dynamic relationship between the people and their
leaders, in the full witness of democracy’s institutions, operates as both a
political culture for regulating behavior within the system and an institutional
framework for governance. This would immediately suggest that the true test of
electoral democracy lies, not in individuals but in the strength of
institutions.
It is instructive that halfway from the last elections and the 2011 elections,
the legal and institutional frameworks on which electoral democracy are based on
are yet to be properly debated much less defined. Instead what has been passed
off as public debate is a haphazard focus on the person of the INEC Chairman,
Prof. Maurice Iwu.
While it is true that individuals can and do inspire revolutionary change, in
some cases simply steadying the ship of state by maintaining the status quo is
as important as the former. It secures a beach head that enables the polity, a
platform for incremental change. In turn institutions grow organically from
challenges. They do not simply emerge from a vacuum. The history of Nigeria’s
attempts at civilian democracy is littered with the carcasses of successive
electoral commissions and their chairmen, felled by the staccato gunshots of
persistent criticisms and misplaced expectations. The result is that we have
repeatedly reconstituted electoral commissions, appointed new chairmen, and
produced similar results. The search and destroy mission of INEC is such that
conveniently ignored is the fact that nearly all professional bodies in Nigeria,
community associations, including those in the diaspora, are bedeviled by crisis
of succession! I’ve heard it said that one definition of madness is the
repetition of the same action while expecting different results! It is in this
specific regard that in my considered opinion, criticisms of INEC have often
lacked intellectual rigor.
Sustainable democratic order is predicated on the emergence of a competitive
market, a marketplace of ideas where politicians strategize to win public
opinion, and through such competition establish an enduring political culture.
This culture is secured by the appropriate functioning of institutions that
include civil society, the security agencies, judiciary and the electoral
commission. To effectively play its role, each of these institutions must be
nurtured, from infancy through middle age to maturity. In the case of INEC, its
effectiveness is further defined by the willingness of political actors to play
by the rules, the ability of security agencies to police such rules and the
dispassionate interpretation of such rules by the judiciary.
Two years to the next elections serious questions remain about the nature of our
attempt at representative democracy. These questions are exacerbated by
unresolved issues about the Niger Delta and the severe challenges these pose to
both the relationships between federating units and increasingly both
governance, security and public order. Inaction on the part of the National
Assembly has in turn stalled action on defining a clear legal framework on which
successful elections can be based. The result is a Nigerian political climate
that is at best defined by uncertainty.
Building an efficient electoral system that accurately reflects the will of
Nigerians is not rocket science. Simple technology exists to accurately capture,
collate and record the will of Nigerians in a manner that nullifies multiple
voting, ballot stuffing and thuggery, and forces politicians to actually
campaign for votes and earn the peoples mandate.
The primary challenge of electoral reform re-INEC, is to reinforce the electoral
umpire to enable it grow from a commission to an institution with the ability
for long term planning rather than ad hoc reactions to events external to it. In
the larger polity, there is a crying need for a rigorous debate on the necessary
and sufficient conditions for electoral reforms and the joint role of both the
institutions of government and civil society in making this possible.
The challenge of electoral democracy in Nigeria lies in the recognition of the
critical role that civil society and the political class holds in ensuring both
free and fair elections, and accountability in government. The institutions of
government like INEC, important as they maybe, merely reinforce this role. What
this immediately suggests is the joint role of all stakeholders, where effective
performance of one facilitates the performance of the other. The failures we so
readily assign to INEC are at worst equal and proportional to the failures of
all other stakeholders in our political landscape. To insert INEC and its staff,
from the ad hoc employee to the chairman, into this fractious landscape without
a robust support system from other stakeholders, is asking them to voluntarily
step into a minefield. He who thinks otherwise should take the first step!
Jude J. Ofor is a public affairs analyst
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