President Goodluck Jonathan and Gen. Muhammadu Buhari spoke during the session. Both called for action on the loopholes in the electoral system.
President Jonathan noted that three major factors fuel electoral violence. They include provocative statements from politicians, religious and ethnic incitement.
He admitted he had also made provocative statements.
He said: “We make statements that are so provocative. When we are making these statements, the younger ones are listening. Your followers who call themselves your fans are listening to you. We threaten our opponents too.
“If you threaten somebody that he will go to jail if you take over government, that person will like to fight to defend himself from going to jail. I am not talking of presidential candidates; I am talking of our followers.
“My conviction is that we must avoid provocative statements and issuing threats to ourselves.
“One thing that we need to rethink is the issue of clearing candidates by intelligence agencies.
“When we came on board in 1999, candidates were cleared by the SSS and if you are linked to any kind of violent behaviour or cultism, you cannot be cleared. But the National Assembly changed this, saying that it is the parties that will screen and clear candidates.”
“I belong to the ruling party. Even in PDP, we do not have the capacity to screen our candidates at that level. The only competent body that can do that is the intelligence agencies. Since then, all kinds of character contest elections.”
The President added: “For example, if a cultist takes the ticket to contest the chairmanship of a local government, you cannot stop him because there is no structure to do so. But before this time, they were stopped.”
He also noted that religious leaders preached hate to instigate their followers to be confrontational and label some people or candidates as the enemies of their faith.
The third factor, Jonathan said, is the provocative pronouncement by ethnic or tribal leaders.
“Some of them make provocative statements that are very inflammatory as if they want to divide the country,” he said.
On the way forward, the President said: “Then, we must do certain things to stop it. We must stop these hate preaching, instigating crises, threatening others, provocative and inflammatory statements by people, whether they are traditional or religious leaders, or ethnic nationalities leaders. We must stop this. We can practise politics without bitterness.”
“We must accept that the struggle to rule is not struggle to conquer. Whenever you win election, you will rule the whole country and not only your political party members so that at the end of the election, everybody must be your friends and followers.”
To Jonathan, there are two things concerning INEC that are worrisome.
He said “Firstly, people are complaining that they don’t have the Permanent Voter Cards or PVCs. If some people do not have their PVCs, the conclusion is that from the beginning, INEC wants to rig the election and there is the tendency for this to lead to violence.”
“I have told INEC they must make sure that every eligible Nigerian is able to vote. This is a recipe for violence.”
“The second thing is that in 2011, INEC was able to conduct the election with the temporary voters card and every one appreciated the election that it was credible. But INEC wants to go further by deploying technology this time around. Now the technology is being misunderstood by some people.
“They say people have capacity to manipulate or hack or cloned and so on. So INEC must tell Nigerians in very clear terms so that Nigerians will believe in the result of the election. They must show that the methods adopted are very safe. What I am saying is that there is this apprehension, this fear, people believe that their votes may not be reflected. We will be in trouble. INEC must in a very clear terms tell Nigerians that the system they are deploying is safe. All of them who are qualified to vote will vote, that nobody will manipulate the PVCs to his own party’s advantage. This will give people hope and the tendency to accept the results will be higher while the tendency for violence will be reduced. That is for the immediate.”
On the way forward, he called for the review of laws, as he noted that the present system of winner takes all is causing problems.
He said: “We need to rejig our laws that will not encourage violence.
“That is why in some kind of democracy they vote first and share the seat-based on the performance of the parties. So the party that is not popular can get something. But based on the winner-takes-all, the party that scored 49% will have nothing in that state. They will not go and sleep but continue to create problems in that state. So the National Assembly will need to revisit the issues of winner-takes-all in terms of parliamentary election.”
At the executive level, he said, “we should come up with a system that will ensure that when a party wins the Governorship or the presidential at the national level, in forming cabinet, the parties that did very well will also by right, by law and not by privilege or discretion of Mr Governor or Mr. President, be meant to have a share of appointments in that government.”
“If this is done, they will be mindful of their conducts and utterances. Some countries say 50+1 votes. In Nigeria, they say you must get majority of the votes in 25% of the 2/3 of the states, but in some it is 51+1 and the other party with 49% is completely out of the government. They cannot just go and sleep. So I believe that there must be a way out of these violence even if we made them unique to Nigeria,” Jonathan said.
Gen. Buhari reflected on the conduct of the last elections and the insincerity of the electoral umpires in ensuring a transparent election, pointing out however that he believed that nobody can cage Nigerians.
Gen. Buhari said: “Some of the speeches so far are based on hope. Some of these hopes are in the files because of our nasty experiences. What happened in 2003, 2007 and 2011 when we contested the general elections and ended up in the Supreme Court.
“The three Supreme Court judgements are available with the government printers for all those who are really serious to know what is happening in our political development.
“When the military eventually surrendered to the multi polarity democratic system 16 years ago, we hoped that we should have learnt from the developed countries that went through the painful processes of stabilising their system rather than insisting on making the same mistakes.
“I will give a few examples, which I am sure most of you will recall.
Some of you know by name Retired Justice Salami who was heading the presidential election panel.
“We made a presentation that in a number of states, the election was not conducted in accordance with the Electoral Act and the states were mentioned. We demanded that the register be brought to prove our case and the panel said there was nothing wrong with that and INEC was asked to comply. It was not produced.
“Justice Salami was redeployed and another Judge was brought who reversed that decision. That has become history. The impression that has been created by those who have intellectually followed elections in Nigeria is that of hope and I accept their hope.
“But when you look at the constitution as amended, especially as it concerns INEC, it requires that they register political association into political parties and to make sure that every person from the councillor to the president come through a political party.
“It was proceeded that before every election, there must be an Electoral Act. There was one in 2002 for the 2003 election, there was one in 2006 for the 2007 election, there was one in 2010 for the 2011 election. Up to December 31, 2014, I was waiting for the amended Electoral Act for this year’s election and I am yet to see one.
“So, on paper, you can’t cage Nigerians. You can only cage Nigerians on the field. In terms of practical documentation, go to any ministry or parastatal, you will get instruction on how the place should be managed from the cleaner to the permanent secretary and even the minister when he comes.
“You will also get financial instruction on how to spend the money. I am afraid because of my personal experiences having gone through the system. All these credible, tested intellectual instruction have been thrown into the waste basket.
“I am very impressed about the contributions made so far and the fact that we have all seen how Nigeria is so competent on paper and I hope that the elite will help us to make 2015 elections credible”
