We Will De-register More Political Parties - Jega

Jega

Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Prof. Attahiru Jega at a News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) forum, explains the plan of the commission towards having credible elections in future and why the commission will de-register some of the existing 56 political parties. Excerpts:

We have about 56 political parties in this country today. People believe a lot of them are there because INEC is going to give them money. What’s your assessment of these political parties?

Well, obviously as you rightly pointed out we have about 56 political parties and we are still receiving quite a number of applications for registration of additional political parties but what we really need to do is to sanitise the process of registering political parties to ensure that only those that are most deserving in terms of their programmes, in terms of their constitution, in terms of their physical presence in states and in localities that are registered. The Constitution and the Electoral Act gave INEC the power to de-register political parties and we have commenced that process and it is ongoing. So, until there is a change in the legislation, obviously any political party that does not comply with the provisions of the Electoral Act we are obligated to de-register them. So it’s an ongoing process, it’s a continuous process and we will do it. I think there are very useful models of registration of political parties in other countries that we can learn from. So as we commence the process of constitutional amendment, we intend to partner with the National Assembly to make certain recommendations. You know it is good to be a multi-party system like we are, and it is possible to allow as many parties as possible to register, you know. But being a registered political party does not necessarily mean you can field candidates until you meet certain minimum requirements.

That is the kind of reform that we are looking forward to in which many parties can still exist but they have to meet certain requirement before they are allowed, for example, to field a governorship candidate or to field a presidential candidate. And I think if we do that, you will still allow parties to exist and to be mobilizing people and to continue to develop and to evolve into strong parties that would now be able to field candidates in national elections. So, we think perhaps, that’s the way to go rather than to limit the number of registered parties to just a few. I know too many people are saying we should either be two parties or five parties and so on. I think in principle it is good to remain a multi-party system, but we should introduce certain reform measures which can ensure that it will not be all the 56 political parties, many of which do not have physical presence and capacity in many of the states can still go ahead and field a presidential candidate for example which waste our ballot paper and create a lot of problem in the electoral process. As I speak with you now, I think there are about three fresh applications for registration as political parties which we are investigating.

Let’s look at the issue of delineation of constituencies and then the inadequacy of polling stations. Politicians are expressing fear on these two issues…

Our constitution says that constituencies should be delineated at least every 10 years, at least after every census exercise and it’s regrettable that the constituencies that we have now were actually created before the 1999 Constitution came into being and obviously the last census was conducted in 2006. To be fair, the previous Commission, our predecessor, they attempted to do fresh constituency delimitation (delineation) and got very far but unfortunately it was not finalised when the Commission was reconstituted.

And when we came in, we were too busy trying to prepare for the April 2011 elections that there was no time really to devote to constituency delimitation (delineation). Now, a major activity which we would do before the 2015 elections is constituency delimitation (delineation). We have already started the ground work and before the end of this year (2012) we will accelerate the commencement of the process and we would have sufficient time. We would take at least a year to two years to be able to do a very thorough, very professional and very credible job. As you are aware, constituency delimitation (delineation) is a politically charged issue. Sometimes, because of population movements it may be required that certain constituencies are either merged or are split, and you know politicians don’t want their constituencies to be split or to be merged. But there are rational ways of doing this, where you engage stakeholders where all the issues would be ironed out to the satisfaction of all stakeholders. And that is what we intend to do. God willing, before the 2015 election we would have been able to now have fresh constituency delimitation (delineation). We could still create additional polling units before the constituencies delimitation (delineation) . But since we do not have any major election until 2015 we felt that it is rational to wait until we do the constituencies delimitation (delineation) before we now embark upon on the creation of additional polling units.

How many election offenders have been successfully prosecuted and or convicted so far?

Let me start with a context. If you look at the records, between 1999 when we now embarked upon this transition to democracy in Nigeria, up until 2011 we have not found any evidence in the records of a single person prosecuted on an electoral offence.

So for more than 10 years, we’ve done election in 1999, we’ve done election in 2003, we’ve done election in 2007. There is no record of a single person being prosecuted for electoral offences. This INEC which I am privileged to chair has successfully prosecuted more than 200 electoral offenders. So, in comparative terms, that is progress.

There are many cases still in court which are pending but a successful prosecution is predicated on INEC prosecuting, but the Police doing the investigation and providing the necessary reports and the evidence, and thirdly, the courts hastening the process of prosecution. And there are tremendous delays on all sides. I think the most important point that I need to make is that although we can say that we have prosecuted more offenders than any other election management body in the history of Nigeria, it is still a drop in the ocean. The number of electoral offences committed is really profound.

For example, as I mentioned the last time I came here, even on voter registration alone there are about 870,000 offenders. So, it’s the level of the offence that you look at. The fact of the matter is that INEC does not have the capacity to do successful prosecution of this large magnitude of offences. So, that’s why we are very very pleased.

In fact we’ve been calling that the electoral offences tribunal should be established. We are very pleased when the government made announcement that the electoral offences tribunal will be established.

What would be your recommendations to a pattern where politicians lose at the primary election level and they defect to another party?

I think it is a moral issue. I think we all know that. I think that is unacceptable and luckily I think our recent amendment to either the constitution or electoral Act has addressed it. It is when somebody gets elected on the platform of one party and then after he has been elected and then he now defects to another party, but I think it is part of politics that members of a party will become aggrieved and when they are aggrieved sometimes they think the only option available to them is to actually leave that party and moved to another party. I think by the time our political party system reaches a certain level of development and maturity and where for example there is a lot of internal party democracy, and then I think we would see a reduced tendency of people exiting and moving to other parties.

There is a proposal by INEC that electronic voting system should be adopted in 2015. I don’t know whether it is still feasible?

Technically, there is no proposal by INEC that it should be adopted in 2015. What INEC has done is that we have recommended that the National Assembly should remove that provision of the constitution which prohibits electronic voting because it is a major hindrance right now. If we are to introduce electronic voting in this country, we have to do a lot of piloting. We have to do a lot of sampling of existing machines all over the world. Right now because of that prohibition we can’t even attempt do it, and the whole world is moving in the direction of increasing use of technology in order to have credible elections. So what INEC has recommended is that when the constitution is now being reviewed that provision about prohibition of electronic voting should be removed. (NAN)