Table of contents

• Editorial: Nigeria

• T. A. Akinyele, The 2003 Elections in Nigeria: Views from a Policy Maker

•  Conversations

  •  Interview with the Special Advisor to the Governor of Kano State, Nigeria  on Research and Documentation, Dr Tijjani Namiye

 Editorial

Nigeria 

The Nigerian Elections of 2003 were controversial. Allegations of election fraud were made and  one of the presidential candidates,  General Buhari, threatened court action. Even so the elections were welcomed by a large percentage of the Nigerian population, disillusioned with military rule and anxious to see a civilian government  continue the tradition of democratic rule inaugurated  in 1999.

            Having regained its independence from the British after more than half a century of British  colonial domination, Nigerians were optimistic that their well- fought for freedom would  usher a new era of peace and prosperity. Peace did not last. The 1966 intervention by the military, ushered  thirteen  years of  military dictatorship. We are pleased to have the perspectives of Chief Akinyele in his analysis of the election of 2003. Chief Akinyele’s interest in the electoral process of Nigeria goes back to 1959 when he served as a Federal Electoral Officer. The 1959 election brought to the forefront legislators for the newly independent Nigeria. Chief Akinyele provides us with an excellent analysis of the sequence of events leading to the 2003 election and the present phase of democratization.

       Akinyele’s article is followed by an  illuminating interview with the Advisor to the Governor of Kano State, Dr. Tijjani Naniye. Numerous issues are covered, including the controversies surrounding the polio immunization campaign earlier this year. We are provided with a close-up view of democracy in action in one of Nigeria’s most populous states. Formidable problems confront the Kano State Government in terms of health care, education, and social services in general. It is encouraging to note, however, that a consultative  model of governance  prevails in that state and so, too, a much admired vigilance and  caution. The careful steps taken by the Kano State Government to evaluate contaminated  polio vaccines  early this year  earned Governor Shekarau and his advisory team a great deal of praise and several awards.

     We thank  Chief Akinyele and Dr. Tijjani Naniye for providing us with  valuable insights into some of the important issues confronting  Nigeria at this present time. We acknowledge some of  the various  organizations associated with the visit to Connecticut of the Governor of Kano State. Sponsors included  the African-American Affairs Commission, and the Connecticut Minority Supplier Development Council and individuals such as  Mr. Ola Aina, Mr. Salisu Abdullahi and Dr. Andrew Moemeka. This interview was made possible by his visit to Hartford Connecticut.

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The 2003 Elections in Nigeria: Views from a Policy Maker

T. A. Akinyele

         I have watched with more than keen interest the preparations for and the conduct of the most recent elections in Nigeria, meant to reaffirm the country’s commitment to the democratic process. Preparations started in May 1999 after 15 years of military misrule. These elections were designed as follows: (1) National Assembly (i.e., House of Representatives and Senate) elections, which took place on Saturday April 12, 2003; (2) Gubernatorial and Presidential Elections, which were administered on April 19, 2003; and (3) State Assembly elections, which were carried out on May 3, 2003.

A BRIEF PROFILE OF MODERN NIGERIA 

            Nigeria deserves special attention because it has features, attributes and a robust resource profile that should attract the interest of not only its citizens but also citizens of other countries of the world’s global village. Nigeria accommodates  vibrant, intelligent and resourceful concentration of people of African heritage, being the largest country, in terms of population in Africa, and the tenth most populated country in the world. Out of every five Africans walking the surface of the earth, one is a Nigerian. Nigeria’s population is twice that of the United Kingdom and about half that of the United States of America, scattered over an area of 923,768 square kilometers. It consists of 36 states and Abuja (which is the Federal Capital Territory), each with an average population of about 3 million divided into 774 local government units. The country, with about 250 ethnic groups and 80 religions, now operates under a variant of the American-type executive presidential system. It is important to note, however, that during most of its existence as a sovereign nation, Nigeria has been ruled by military dictatorships. The result is that over 60 percent of the population, the most vibrant and politically relevant portion, has known nothing but military rule.¹

Nigeria’s natural resources are enormous. Unfortunately, the proceeds from the exploitation of these resources during most of the post-independence period have been squandered by opportunistic and unscrupulous civil servants and politicians, including the many military elites who have ruled the country. Perverse economic policies designed and executed by corrupt military and civilian rulers have deprived Nigerians of true and genuine development. The country has huge exportable agricultural produce like cocoa, timber and rubber; an estimated 32 billion barrels of crude petroleum reserve, making the country the largest producer in Africa and the sixth in the world; the second largest untapped reserve of bitumen in the world; and several other solid mineral resources. With such enormous endowments of resources, post-independence Nigeria should have risen to be one of the richest and most developed countries in Africa. Unfortunately, it is one of the poorest and its citizens continue to suffer from relatively high levels of poverty and deprivation. Such poverty is due primarily to poor and ineffective institutions, which have allowed state custodians (i.e., civil servants and politicians) to squander the country’s development potential. Put another way, the absence of democratic governance in most of post-independence Nigeria, and the pervasiveness of authoritarian and corrupt civil regimes, as well as military dictatorships, have contributed significantly to the mismanagement of the country’s development prospects.²

DEMOCRATIC EVOLUTION IN NIGERIA 

            As it is well known by many, Nigeria gained its independence from Great Britain on October 1, 1960, after some twenty years of vibrant and intensive nationalistic clamor by leaders like Macaulay, Azikiwe, Awolowo, Bello, Akintola, Enahoro, and many others. The post-independence government was based on the British-type parliamentary system. While the politicians were fanning the embers of disunity because the regions were stronger and collectively better managed than the Federal Government, young military officers were eagerly waiting for the opportunity to seize control of the apparatus of government. Such an opportunity was provided by the various political events that took place between independence and 1964. The most important of these were (1) the snowballing effects of the Action Group’s intra-party crisis of 1962-1963, which embroiled the most progressive of the Regional Governments (that of the Western Region); and (2) the botched 1964 federal elections and subsequent labor unrest and political turmoil. On January 15, 1966, the military struck.³

 The second attempt at democratic governance in Nigeria took place from 1979 to 1983 and this time, was patterned after the American presidential system. Unfortunately, the experiment was doomed to fail. First, the military kept up its harassment of the civilian leadership and made it very difficult for the latter to govern. Second, civilian rulers, through their opportunistic and corrupt activities, provided the military with a good excuse to intervene. Finally, civilian politicians whose primary interest was not public service but self-enrichment spent an enormous amount of time fighting with each other, making it very difficult for the government to perform even basic functions. In December 1983, the military intervened and again took over the government.⁴

In the first and second attempts at democratic governance, it was clear that political institutions were not nationalistic in their formation, orientation and practices. Problems of regionalism and ethnicity were beginning to rear their ugly heads.⁵ Through some befuddled political engineering, the various military regimes that replaced civilian rule, attempted to remove these cogs in the wheel of political progress by trying to limit the number of political parties that could legally operate in the country and to ensure that all parties had a wide geographical spread to make them nationally acceptable. To ensure national cohesion, the new military-sponsored constitution provided a highly complicated formula for the election of the country’s civilian president, which required, among other things, that the successful candidate capture at least 25 percent of votes in each of at least two-thirds of the states in the country. All states of the federation would then have to be represented in the new president’s cabinet of ministers. The election of 1993 was to be the first one conducted under this new formula. It, however, was annulled by the military government of General Babangida when it became clear that Bashorun M. K. O. Abiola, an individual who apparently was not acceptable to the military establishment, had clearly won the election. It was in consideration of the fact that all attempts made in 1963, 1973, 1983, 1993 to move from one democratically elected government to another had been abrogated either by military fiat or some other calamity that Nigerians began to speak of the “democracy jinx” occurring every ten years. The 2003 elections are important to Nigeria’s democracy and democratization project in that they have broken the jinx. The question, however, is will this be a sustainable process or will the military soon return to mess things up?⁶

                        THE ELECTORAL PREPARATIONS 

            The political and socio-economic environment since 1999 and particularly in the last two years before the 2003 elections did not present any optimism about a trouble-free atmosphere for the elections. There were several cases of boundary and inter-communal clashes, ethnic uprisings (especially in the oil-rich Niger Delta Region), Sharia-induced unrests, economic sabotage, and other disturbances, throughout the period. In addition, many civil society organizations had become quite aggressive in their efforts to improve living conditions for their people. In the Niger Delta Region, for example, many youth associations, notably the Ijaw Youth Council and the Isoko Youth Movement, had become impatient with the military government’s inability or unwillingness to deal with poverty and environmental degradation in the region. Subsequently, these groups had become involved in violent mobilization to improve conditions in their respective communities and minimize further marginalization. Unfortunately, the even-handed response of the Federal Government to the crisis in the Niger Delta Region only exacerbated the problem and intensified the violence. Meanwhile, many citizens of the southern part of the country continued to decry the fact that the military had snatched the presidency out of their hands through the annulment of the 1993 elections. In addition, the unending arguments and counter-arguments over issues concerning revenue allocation, resource control, and the need for a National Conference to discuss the future union of Nigerian nationalities continued unabated. At the same time, executive-legislative bickering over attempts to establish constitutional checks and balances forced delays in the approval of the national budget and its subsequent implementation. All these developments encouraged many pessimists to suggest postponement of the elections. But the government of President Obasanjo was determined that the elections would hold in order to ensure continuity of the democratic process and to break the so-called “jinx”.

            In preparing for the 2003 elections, I believe the Federal Government took cognizance of lessons learned from the mistakes of the 1999 arrangements, and took pains to harmonize the constitutional provisions and the enabling electoral law and regulations, especially regarding the establishment of democratic institutions, such as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and political parties. Nevertheless, some bottlenecks were thrown into the process, although this time, the intervention was through constitutional means. Court cases were filed regarding various arrangements, such as the number of political parties and conditions for their registration. It is to the credit of Obasanjo’s Federal Government that no attempt was ever made to interfere with judicial processes in these electoral matters. Issues were also raised regarding whether all the elections should be held on one day or spread over several days. The amount of freedom of speech guaranteed during these periods, as well as the spirit of tolerance demonstrated by the Federal Government and the amount of transparency in the dissemination of information by the INEC, contributed to the general popular acceptance of the preparatory arrangements made for the elections. Those conversant with elections in developing countries have always affirmed that the ground for any possible rigging of elections usually starts with the way the registration of voters is handled. Because the INEC adopted computer-based methods, which were considered essentially transparent and fool-proof, the exercise generally received popular acceptance. There was opposition in certain sections of the populace, especially in the northern part of the country, against the use of the new national identity cards for obtaining voter cards. The decision to use this form of identification to secure voter cards was expected to significantly reduce the costs of preparing for the elections. Thanks to the persistence of the INEC that the new identity card system form the basis for registration, attempts by overzealous and opportunistic political agents to effect multiple registrations were defeated. Several applications for registration were disqualified, ranging from 2 percent in the least fraud-prone area to as high as 34 percent of total applications processed in some districts. Table 1 provides data on the number of registered voters by state, as well as on the number of disqualified applicants. There are a number of analytical deductions that can be made from Table 1 (also see Table 2). First, the incidence of disqualification of applications due to attempts at multiple registration occurred in all the states of the Federation. Second, the number of registered voters in the northern part of the country as a percentage of the total number of registered voters in all of Nigeria is 48.92 percent, while the corresponding figure for the southern part of the country is 51.08 percent.

TABLE 1: REGISTERED VOTERS IN THE NIGERIAN ELECTIONS OF 2003, BY STATE

Source:             The Guardian Newspaper, Sunday April 6,

 2003.TABLE 2: NORTH-SOUTH DISTRIBUTION OF REGISTERED VOTERS

It is also important to observe from Table 2 that attempts to defraud the system were more significant in the northern part of the country than in the south. In fact, the north’s 14.38 percent number of disqualified applicants as a percent of all disqualified applicants was higher than that of the nation as a whole. It would appear from these data that the effort made by the INEC to eliminate or minimize the incidence of fraudulent registration eventually paid off and vote rigging was an ineffective part of the electoral exercise of 2003.

After a lot of arguments by some of the registered political parties regarding the system of balloting to be used, the INEC adopted the open-secret balloting system. The latter allows for a certain level of privacy or secrecy. The ballot is thumb-printed and its dropping into the ballot box is carried out in the open and witnessed by interested parties. This system was adopted in place of the one that was supported by some of the political parties, which called for voters to queue behind the pictures or photographs of their preferred candidates. Here again, the INEC’s choice proved reasonable and more efficient, especially given the fact that eventually 30 political parties were certified to contest the elections and as many as 20 candidates were qualified to compete for the position of president of the country. An alternative method would have led to chaos and a possible breakdown of law and order.

THE ROLE OF KEY POLITICAL ACTORS

            Democracy as a generally accepted system of organizing the conduct of human affairs in a polity and ensuring the resolution of the conflicting interests of its citizens can only thrive in an environment that encourages and enhances the free exchange of ideas. Politics cannot be successfully practiced in an arm-chair fashion because it is a game pursued in a dynamic process in which the people, as the final arbiters, are watching the efforts of individual actors in their attempts to satisfy people’s yearnings for progress and socio-economic development. However, it must be admitted that the practice of politics requiring the emergence of majority rule embodies a game of numbers which may be manipulated if the actors are allowed by the electorate to be fraudulent. Practical politicians know that it is almost impossible to rig an election in an atmosphere of unpopularity. Furthermore, the dynamic nature of politics demands that politicians must appreciate the fact that there are “no permanent friends or permanent enemies” but permanent interests in the political arena. The practice of politics, which essentially involves a practical handling of human aspirations, requires adequate knowledge, expertise, experience and other remarkably good personal attributes, especially where the political stakes are high. Individuals aspiring to serve the public in some political role must be well informed on those things that matter the most to the people. Hence, a knowledge of the political and economic environment in which one plans to compete for public office is very essential for success. A politician who ignores or refuses to inform himself of the problems confronting his constituents is not likely to succeed in a competitive political system. For a developing country like Nigeria, an aspiring politician must also be well informed on additional complicating factors such as ethnicity and its several dimensions.²

            When thirty political parties were finally certified to participate in the 2003 elections in Nigeria, the INEC found itself unable to cope with the enormous number of candidates vying for public office. The INEC then decided to request more funds from the Federal Government, and seek foreign aid in order to cope with the technicalities of the computer-related arrangements affected by the large number of contending political institutions. Many political parties, especially the more established ones (e.g., PDP, ANPP, and AD) were inundated with applications for elective office. To make the process of selecting candidates to compete for each office more efficient and effective, all the political parties agreed to stage “primaries” or elections whose main purpose was to select candidates, through a competitive process to represent the party in the main election. Those parties that conducted their primary elections in a transparent manner and were able to reconcile internally conflicting interests of political aspirants stood a better chance of defeating candidates from those parties that either avoided primaries entirely or allowed the conduct of primaries to degenerate into avenues for party disintegration through intra-party bickering, dissensions and acrimonious court cases. In this regard, the AD avoided primaries in many of the political races, especially gubernatorial, while the ANPP lost control of its primaries—these two parties paid for these mistakes through extremely poor performance in the final national elections. Furthermore, it was apparent that the process leading to the emergence of the ANPP’s Presidential candidate, General Muhammed Buhari, a contestant from the North, was a clear breach of the unwritten but generally agreed zoning arrangement. The desire of Igbo-speaking contestants in the party’s presidential primaries to produce a consensus Igbo candidate was frustrated by the emergence of Buhari as a contestant. The election of the former military ruler in the primaries must have affected the overall chances of ANPP not only in Igbo-speaking areas, but generally in the South because many observers were anticipating a clash of southern-based candidates for the Presidential election. The ability of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to put its house in order before and after its well-organized primaries at all levels and particularly for the Presidential election seemed to have guaranteed its subsequent success, all things being equal.

THE 2003 NATIONAL ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS 

            The first set of elections took place on Saturday April 12, 2003, to choose 109 individuals to serve in the Senate, the upper house of the country’s National Assembly and 360 members of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber. The results, as published on the Internet by INEC, are shown in Table 3 and Table 5. Table 4 and Table 6 are derivative summaries of Table 3 and Table 5 respectively.

TABLE 3: RESULTS OF THE 2003 SENATE ELECTIONS IN NIGERIA

Source: http://www.inecnigeria.com/2003elections/results/senate/summary.htm

TABLE 4: DISTRIBUTION OF SENATE SEATS AMONG POLITICAL PARTIES IN NIGERIA AFTER THE 2003 ELECTIONS

TABLE 5: RESULTS OF THE 2003 ELECTIONS TO THE NIGERIAN HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Source: http://www.inecnigeria.com/2003elections/results/horeps/summary.htm 

TABLE 6: DISTRIBUTION OF SEATS IN THE NIGERIAN HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES BY PARTY AFTER THE 2003 ELECTIONS

A careful analysis of the data presented in Tables 3-6 reveals a lot about the dynamic configuration of Nigerian politics and implications for the development of the democratic process in the country. The results of the elections to the Senate show that the party with the highest valid votes (PDP), received 15,585,538 or 53.69 percent of all valid votes, which enabled it to win 73 senate seats or 68.2 percent of total seats declared. That achievement provides the PDP with the mandate that it needs to rule effectively and pass necessary legislation without much difficulty. It is also expected that with such dominance of the Senate, the PDP government would be able to easily secure confirmation of appointments to the public service that require the confirmation of the Senate. The analysis also shows that only 10 parties each scored over 100,000 valid votes (or over 0.34 percent of total valid votes cast), while the remaining 20 parties altogether scored only 235,279 valid votes (or 0.01 percent of total valid votes). The overall results show that total valid votes represent 47.73 percent of total registered voters and that if the rejected ballots were added to valid votes, a voter turnout of 49.32 percent would have been recorded.

            The three parties (AD, ANPP and PDP) that won Senate seats scored 26,505,403 votes or 91.3 percent of total valid votes cast, leaving the remaining 27 parties to share only 2,524,704 votes or an average of 93,507 votes per party. If a benchmark of 100,000 valid votes is established for participation in future elections, then only 10 parties can be considered as serious candidates for participating in future contests. Given the material and human resources that Nigeria has, it is not conceivable that its democracy can function effectively with such a large number of political parties. A fair and equitable method must be found to bring the number of political parties participating in elections and other democratic processes to a manageable level.

            In an analysis of the results of elections to the House of Representatives, the picture that emerges is similar. Total valid votes represent 48.06 percent of total registered voters while a total of 30,386,270 votes cast represent a voter turnout of nearly 50 percent. However, an examination of the data in Table 6 reveals some interesting phenomena. Because the area and population covered by a Senate constituency is about 3 times that of the House of Representative constituency, the assessment of popularity can become location-specific. Consequently, the same parties were able to make some in-roads into what appeared to be strongholds of some of the bigger parties, especially the PDP, such that while the party has 54.49 percent of total valid votes and 61.67 percent of the number of seats in respect of the House of Representatives, it garnered 53.69 percent and 68.2 percent respectively in the Senate elections. This observation is also buttressed by the fact that while only 9 parties scored over 100,000 votes or over 0.34 percent of total valid votes in respect of the House of Representatives, the remaining 21 parties scored 309,353 or 1.06 percent of total valid votes. However, one should be conscious of the fact that the data available on the Internet as of May 7, 2003 (which are used in this analysis), show that 14 constituencies of the House of Representatives are still outstanding—data from these constituencies, however, are not likely to affect the emerging scenarios.

            The fact that 8 political parties shared the 346 seats declared for the House of Representatives has implications for the work of the House and its relationship with the Executive. Since the leading party (PDP) has not been able to achieve overwhelming majority (i.e., 2/3) of the House, the cost of lobbying may increase as well as that of providing physical and other facilities for the legislative leaders and political caucuses in the House. On the contrary, some realignment, merger or carpet-crossing might occur to make some of the minor party representatives more relevant. It is also noteworthy that as a result of the elections, only about 20 percent of existing members of the National Assembly were able to retain their seats, an indication that the electorate were watching and monitoring their activities.

THE 2003 GUBERNATORAL ELECTIONS IN NIGERIA

            The gubernatorial and presidential elections were held on the same day, April 19, 2003. In a developing economy like Nigeria, where the government is the most important actor in the economy and also controls the allocation of a significant amount of resources, no community wants to be an opponent of the ruling party. Hence, the results of the National Assembly elections of April 12, 2003 had a significant impact on the April 19, 2003 gubernatorial elections. In other words some bandwagon effect of the earlier election on the second one was to be expected. The overall results of the gubernatorial elections are shown in Table 7.

TABLE 7: RESULTS OF THE 2003 GUBERNATORIAL ELECTIONS IN NIGERIA

Source:            Nigerian Tribune, April 23, 2003

Here again, as in the Senate elections, only three parties came out as winning some seats. However, if the results of the same elections in 1999 were compared with these results it would be observed that there are more losers than gainers.

TABLE 8: RESULTS OF THE GUBERNATORAL ELECTIONS OF 1999 AND 2003 IN NIGERIA: A COMPARATIVE VIEW

Although all the gains seem to be in favor of the PDP, it is important to examine the zonal dimension of the gains and losses in order to appreciate the various factors that influenced electoral chances from one zone to the other. It would also be necessary to examine the factors that led to upsets, which resulted in the defeat of 10 incumbent governors out of 36. It is the astonishing nature of the gains, losses and upsets that fuelled the complaints of rigging and other electoral malpractices by the losers. Many of these charges, however, cannot be substantiated by the available evidence. The Nigerian electorate has become wiser and more enlightened over their civic responsibilities and rights as a result of the political liberalization and democratization that has taken place in the country since 1999. The people have taken seriously the much publicized slogan of INEC that “your vote is your power, use it wisely.” Since 1999, citizens have taken a particular interest in observing the performance of elected officials at both the local and federal levels. Politicians in Abuja, as well as in the state capitals and local government offices, who have performed opportunistically, using their public offices to enrich themselves instead of performing the jobs for which they were elected, were punished severely by the electorate. Many of these poorly performing politicians suffered significant losses at the ballot box. What is important here is the fact that Nigerians are gradually learning to use the vote as an instrument to discipline poorly performing and opportunistic politicians, including those who rely on ethnicity to keep their public positions. It is becoming clear that politicians must perform their public functions effectively and efficiently and serve their constituents well if they plan to retain those positions. Competitive politics represent the future of governance in Nigeria and gone are the days of primordial political sentiments—the 2003 elections appear to have given notice to tribalists, opportunists, and the “money bags” that it is no longer business as usual. Nigerian politics are changing for the better as the electorate has become more sophisticated politically.

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS OF 2003 IN NIGERIA

Table 9 presents data on the overall results of the 2003 presidential elections in Nigeria.

TABLE 9: RESULTS OF THE 2003 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS IN NIGERIA

Source:            The Guardian Newspaper, Wednesday, April 23, 2003.