Poor Professor Attahiru Jega! The Independent National Electoral Commission’s chairman has become virtually everybody’s favourite punch bag since August 19 when INEC announced it would be increasing the roughly 120,000 polling units (PUs) that have existed in the country since 1996 to 150,000 ahead of next year’s general elections. The cause of what clearly looks like a lynch mob attack of the INEC boss has been over not so much the increase itself, as its nationwide distribution; of the roughly 30,000 proposed additional PUs, 21,615 (72 per cent or so) will be created in the North against 8,412, (28 per cent or so) for the South.
As a respected professor of Political Science, a battle-tested former president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), a former vice-chancellor of Bayero University, Kano, a second generation university, and the INEC chairman since 2010, the man is obviously smart enough to know he would be the subject of attack for taking any decision that smacked of even the slightest bias in favour of the North, the region he comes from and which is the permanent underdog in the propaganda war for public opinion.
Even then the man, I suspect, must be taken quite aback by the virulence of the attack he has come under personally and as INEC’s chairman from the leadership of some sections of the country and their commentariat over INEC’s decision.
The first shot seems to have been fired by a little known but apparently well funded non-governmental organisation called Election Integrity Network (EIN). Barely two days after INEC made its decision public, the NGO published a full page advert in several newspapers, including Vanguard (August 21), signed by one Dr Ademola Babajide, in effect accusing Jega of planning a Northern hegemonic agenda. “EXPOSED” screamed the headline of the advert.
“Prof. Jega,” the advert claimed in its second paragraph, “was said to have ignored and over ruled the observation of the lopsidedness made by his colleagues from the South, in furtherance of the long term political interest of the North they seek to protect.”
The NGO then followed with another full page advert on August 26 which was essentially a rehash of the first. Then after several INEC officials defended its decision in the media, the NGO published a third full page advert on September 1 and dismissed all its explanations as untenable.
Since EIN’s first advert, the barrage of media attacks on Jega has only increased in their virulence. Two of these stand out for the level of their virulence. The first was by another little known NGO, Middle-Belt Justice Forum for a Stable United Nigeria (MBJFSUN). In a full page advert signed by one Timothy Gomwalk, as its president, the NGO accused Jega and INEC of using a divide and rule tactic to pitch the Middle-Belt against the South in the two region’s newfangled solidarity.
“It must be stated categorically”, MBJFSUN said, that the Middle Belt people, “while welcoming an increase in the number of polling units which may reduce the inconveniences of our people on Election Day, completely distances and dissociates itself from any such plot…” to impose a “Fulani” hegemony of Nigeria. Obviously the NGO wanted to eat its cake and still have it.
“The Middle-Belt comprising most Northern minority ethnic groups who are more in number than the Fulani and their collaborators”, the advert claimed, “are predominantly Christians and animists and cannot find common cause (with)…religious fundamentalists and so-called ‘cattle-breeders’.”
Virulent as this attack was on Jega and INEC, it hardly compares in its vehemence with the statement published in several newspapers on September 11 by leaders of the Southern Nigeria Peoples Assembly. INEC’s “voodoo and arbitrary allocation” of its PUs, the advert signed by Chief Edwin Clark for the Southsouth, Dr Alex Ekwueme for the Southeast and Senator Femi Okurounmu for the Southwest, said, was “shocking and indefensible.” The allocation, it further said, was “a script perfectly crafted for Prof. Jega to implement, in continuation of the well-known hegemonic agenda by the enemies of our hard won democracy.”
The three elderly gentlemen didn’t say who crafted the script. Instead they seemed to have changed their mind about Jega being a puppet towards the end of their statement when they claimed that Jega himself was the puppeteer. He, they said, “deliberately crafted a ploy to serve his primordial interest”.
Jega’s motive, the advert said, was “callous, insensitive, desperate, oppressive and in consonant decision to give the North a clear political advantage over the South contrary to the reality on the ground.” Jega, as such, “has lost the trust, confidence and respect of Nigerians” and based on what was clearly a presumptuous conclusion, Clark and Co. demanded that the INEC chairman must resign or be summarily sacked and INEC itself re-organised by the President, conveniently ignoring the fact that the President has no such powers under our Constitution.
The three Southern leaders did not explain what their “reality on the ground” was, but it was clear that what they meant was the article of faith among most Southerners that their region has always been more populous than the North, contrary to every census since our colonial days under Britain. This much is obvious from Dr. Babajide’s similar advert on September 1 in which he said, “In Nigeria, any argument where the respondent hides under our census figures must be viewed from onset with suspicion.” This much is also obvious from the Gomwalk advert I’ve referred to in which he claimed, rather implausibly, that the ethnic minorities of the North are mostly Christian and animist and they are more than “Fulanis and their collaborators”, the collaborators meaning, of course, anyone who is a Muslim in the region.
I say implausibly, because except for Benue and Plateau states, the Northcentral is more Muslim than Christian, which is why many Christian politicians in the region have long tried to redefine Northcentral not by geography but by religion.
So far, no less than five of the country’s leading newspapers have written editorials on the controversy, namely, The Nation (September 3), Thisday (September 7), Vanguard (September 8), Daily Trust (September 14) and The Punch (September 19). All, except Trust have called on INEC, directly or by inference, to reconsider its decision. Vanguard and The Punch actually called on INEC to shelve its decision.
For Vanguard, this is because the decision was, first, incongruent with the reduction of voters following the subjection of the voter register to Automated Fingerprint Identification System after the last general elections in 2011. Second, it says, the distribution “disproportionately” favoured one part of the country and, third, it would impose additional costs on all stakeholders.
For Punch the bottom line was that “the criteria used in proposing the new polling platforms lack logic” and therefore the commission “should cancel the jumbled figures and keep to the existing polling units.”
So far, none of those opposed to INEC’s decision have denied that there has been disproportionately more polling units in the South than in the North since 1996 when the existing ones were first created. Punch says INEC’s attempt at correcting this imbalance lacks logic. How using the simple arithmetic of dividing the country’s voters by 500 for each polling unit per state is illogical when the numbers of voters per state have not been in dispute, the newspaper did not say.Clark and Co. say that INEC has no basis for even creating additional polling units because AFIS reduced the country’s voting population from roughly 73.5 million in 2011 to 57. Clearly this is a figment of their own imagination. The figure came down alright, but it was down to 70.3 million, a far cry from their 57.
Clearly the bottom line of all this hoopla over INEC’s decision is the thought that it is a sanctification of the population distribution of this country. After the controversial identity card registration of 2003 which President Olusegun Obasanjo had initially insisted upon as condition for voting in that year’s general election on the vehement demand of some Southern politicians had clearly established the numerical superiority of the North over the South, one would have thought that it was time those who believed the region was peopled by cattle and sheep re-examined their beliefs.
Obviously this looks like asking too much of those like Clark and Co. who are clearly unprepared to allow the facts get in the way of their cherished beliefs.
If Jega wants to go down in history as someone who was not prepared to let blind prejudice get in the way of doing his job diligently, he should stick to his commission’s decision.
