Violators of campaign ban to be punished
Politicians jumping the gun to campaign ahead of the 2015 elections will face trial, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman Attahiru Jega warned yesterday.
Besides, he explained why the commission is seeking an amendment to Section 31, which will empower it to reject nominees for elections.
He also said in spite of security challenges, INEC is hopeful that the 2015 elections will hold in all parts of the country.
For the umpteenth time, Jega reassured the electorate that the 2015 poll timetable will not lead to a bandwagon effect.
He insisted that all elections will not hold in one day next year.
Jega, who made the clarifications while replying to questions at a session with reporters on “2015 elections in Nigeria: Preparations and Challenges”, said INEC would not shield those breaching the Electoral Act 2010(as amended) on campaign.
He said: “There are clear breaches; we have started documenting those breaches. Those ones, we will try and see whether we can commence prosecution with all the challenges and difficulties.
“But then we will provide additional guidelines that can help provide clarity in terms of what constitute campaign breaches.
“We are now being accused by some parties. For example, some parties will hold rallies and they will say they are receiving people who have decamped.
“Technically, so long as they do not use the platform to say vote for me, they are not violating the law. But people are accusing us that people are moving round; why can’t you penalise them.
“There is really need for that clarity. And we have taken it upon and I am hoping in the next few weeks, we will be able to come up very clearly with new guidelines.
“Still, virtually, all the parties you can find at the highest level who are breaching this. Sometimes, they make an argument when we raise this issue at parties meeting. They said it is our adversaries or our sympathisers who are doing it. They said our adversaries will go and print posters.
“Again, they are just being clever by half because you have various responsibility because if someone puts those pictures, you should not allow it.”
To Jega, it has been difficult to allege violation of campaign laws against politicians because “they are skillful”.
“If someone comes out and puts a poster or a billboard that says ‘elect me as governor or president or senator in 2015, that is an outright breach of the law and we have evidence of people who have done that.
“But if people come out and say “An achiever, carry on,” “Continuity assured,” or “Two terms,” you know what they mean but they are very skilful. What we have agreed with the politicians is that as at now the guidelines are not very clear.”
In the INEC chief’s view, the security challenges facing the nation may not affect the 2015 poll because elections can be conducted under an emergency.
He added: “Security challenges are enormous, I do not want to waste a lot of time on this. Whether it is Boko Haram, or kidnapping armed robbery; they are security challenges.
“And elections can be conducted under situation of emergency; there are countries that have conducted election under situation of emergency.
“All we are saying is that if you want free, fair and credible elections, they are better conducted when there are minimal security challenges.
Jega explained why INEC is pushing for an amendment to Section 31 of the Electoral Act – to be able to reject nomination of candidates by parties.
He said INEC is not seeking arbitrary powers to disqualify candidates as being insinuated.
“All we are asking the National Assembly to do is to amend Section 31 and to remove the phrase at the end of it which says for any reason for whatsoever”, he said, adding:
“We do not think it is proper, particularly given the fact that Section 87 has already said that candidates should emerge from democratic party primaries, then there is no need to say INEC should not reject nomination for any reason whatsoever.
“If the reason is that the candidate did not emerge from democratic primaries, INEC should be able to reject that candidate. That is all we are asking as regards to that. But, unfortunately in this kind of discussion, people were saying that INEC is demanding more powers. And that is not the issue.
“I will give you an example, if you leave that section, you know what happened in the past, like the Shugaba Abdulrahman’s kind of case. The constitution says only Nigerians can stand for an election. If we are not careful, if that provision stands, the way our parties are going, they may put foreigners on the ballot and INEC cannot reject it for any reason whatsoever, which is ridiculous.
“All we are saying is that there should be sanity and consistency. Section 87 is beautiful. We want to democratize; we want to deepen democracy; we want internal party democracy. So, it is good that Section 87 said candidates should emerge from democratic party primaries. So, why throw that away with the provision that says INEC cannot reject candidates for any reason whatsoever.
“And we have seen (as I have said) how parties before the 2011 elections were sending us names of people who did not participate in primaries or who had participated and lost or who were unqualified. Again, even the constitution has given qualifications for candidature. All we are being told is that it(nomination) is an internal party affair; ‘if you allow INEC to do that, you are restraining parties from the right to choose who will represent them’.
“But INEC itself is a regulatory body; we are supposed to regulate the process, using the Electoral Act. So, if there are inconsistencies in the Electoral Act, they should be corrected.”
Responding to a question Jega maintained that the 2015 poll timetable was not designed to favour any candidate or party.
He also ruled out the likelihood of conducting elections in one day.
He said: “There are countries that are doing all elections on a single day. In Nigeria, at this point in time, as I speak with you, we are hesitant to do elections on a single day in 2015. We may be able to confidently do it in the future.
“But in 2015, given all the logistical challenges, given the fact that we have been improving incrementally, we do not want to introduce something that can go the other way and we will have total negative reversals.
“The logistics of organizing all elections in one day are huge. From the large number of ballot papers we have to use; the large movement of materials and personnel that we have to move; and the challenges of lack of proper voter education in a country with a high percentage of illiteracy; all these complicate matters.
“What will happen is that on election day, you will give all the voters about five different ballot papers to put in five different ballot boxes. Already, there is complaint about how our voters are not sufficiently educated and they are wasting their votes. A lot of tension will occur. People will put ballot papers in different boxes; they will be confused in terms of which papers belong to what; then other people may now come in to guide them and you will have chaos and confusion in the electoral process.
“It is something we can hope for and we can work towards but we in INEC do not believe that it will be good to attempt to do it in 2015. But that is why we are improving.”
He gave insight into how INEC arrived at the poll order for 2015.
He said: “ In 2011, we did elections on three different days. We said ‘okay, we cannot do all elections in one day’; we said, ‘okay, let us see if we can reduce the number of days’. That is why we said in 2015, we want to do the elections in two days.
“In 2011, we did National Assembly Elections first; then we did presidential election and governorship and State House of Assembly elections.
“Nobody complained about the sequence; nobody said at that time that governorship election should come first and presidential election should come last. That was how we did it.
“Now that we decided to do two-day elections instead of three. All we did is to use common sense and logic. We said the three elections we did before, the one you did first and the one you did second should be on the first day in 2015 and the one we did third in 2011 should be on the second day. That is the logic we applied.”
Jega insisted that INEC was not acting any script ahead of the 2015 poll.
He said: “When you hear people talking, they said we changed the sequence and we did not change any sequence. They said there was going to be bandwagon effect. When we did it in 2011, was there a bandwagon effect? The President was elected under PDP, many PDP governors lost election. Where was the bandwagon effect? Now, people are talking about possible
“So, we did not design the timetable to favour anybody or to disadvantage anybody. We did not alter the sequence of the elections. We are consistent in terms of what we did in 2011 with regards to the sequence and we believe it is the best thing to do under the circumstances. Asking us to do all elections in one day is going to create massive challenges
“Really, we should not bite more than we can chew. We have been improving on what we did in 2011. If we do much better than we did in 2011, we will be prepared to do all elections in one day later.
“I think we are being railroaded by partisan politicians who are becoming jittery about their own participation in politics. All these talks about changing of sequence, bandwagon effect; do elections in one day; they are all outcome of fears or psychological mentality who believe they cannot win elections until these things are done the way they want it. If it is going to be bandwagon; it can go either direction.”
