Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos state decried the sudden non-appearance of the names of over one million voters in Lagos State from the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC’s voters register. But responding to the discrepancy noticeable in the new voters register vis-a-vis that of 2011, the Resident Electoral Commissioner, REC, for Lagos State ascribed it to changes between the 2011 Post-AFIS voter register and the extant voters register after the Post-Business rule voter register criterion is applied.
This is strange because the Chairman of INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega, in trying to rob the South to pay the North with electoral advantage, defended the recent allocation of new polling units, by legitimating the Post-AFIS register of 2011 and refuting the Post-Business rule register. But the anxiety of Governor Fashola is just the beginning of the evidence of how the South West will be robbed electorally by Jega’s regional elements in INEC.
It is shocking how the present political elite of the South West have kept mute over the recent lopsided allocation of polling units by INEC using conjectures and arbitrary constructs that allotted to the North West 7,906; the North East 5,291 and the North Central 6,318, while it allotted to the South West 4,160; South-South 3,087 and South East 1,167 and the FCT 1,120.
Many geo-political allocations such as local government areas and wards were similarly constructed from arbitrary allotments by persons who found themselves in privileged positions, without any reference to credible and reliable procedures, yet they have remained the authoritative reference points for constituency delimitation for a long time to come. To give a very graphic illustration, the estimated population of Ibadan city is 3,565,108 and Ogbomosho, another big city in Oyo State, is 1.1 million; in comparison, one of the biggest cities in Yobe State is Potiskum.
In peace times its population was 86,002, but in creating new polling units, Yobe state got 790 new polling units while Oyo got 580 new polling units , even when on the paper which INEC used as reference point the total number of eligible voters in Oyo State is 2,487,132, while the total number of eligible voters in Yobe State is 1,203,324. But to worsen matters, states in the North which have equal or less number of eligible voters like Oyo, such as Niger State which has 2,427,081 got over 1000 new polling units. For instance, Niger State got 1,683 new polling units, about three times the number of new polling units allotted to Oyo. The reaction of political leaders in the South West to this anomalous disparity belies the political sophistication for which the South West is renowned, given the historical electoral consequences of such deliberate distortion of electoral systems.
The recent quietude by South West political leaders may be explained by their recent political alliances with political networks in the Northern oligarch. Such quiet can only be described as implied collusion, in which case they believe that electoral victory from this alliance will mean greater empowerment. But it is surprising that despite such alliances, they do not find it curious that even in seeking victory through electoral system manipulation, their Northern allies could not trust their South West allies with as much electoral leverage as they have allocated to themselves. The truth of this matter is that they, unlike their South West political allies, are not fooled by such temporary alliances of convenience. They recognise that, while alliances may be facile, electoral constituencies can be very difficult to change once embedded in the body politics. That is why a state like Osun with 1,318,120 eligible voters was allotted 121 new polling units whereas states with less number of eligible voters like Gombe with 1,208,927 voters got three times more, with 403 new polling units allocated to them compared to Osun’s 121.
So why would someone in Jega’s decision-making structure rob the South West of two polling units for every one it allocates to their electoral peers in the North, which translated means that they are creating on paper 1500 voters in the North for every 500 potential voters in the South West?
Why is this manipulation of the electoral system necessary? To answer this question, we need to understand electoral systems and how systemic electoral frauds are fomented institutionally. Electoral systems describe the proportional representation of constituencies in governance legislatures. In parliamentary systems, it is the life blood of political victories; in presidential systems it dictates who gets what, when and how through legislative policy making and oversight. By using arbitrary criteria cooked up by the chairman of operations Nuru Yakubu in INEC and his regional devotees instead of international benchmarks, starting with scientific delimitation of constituencies, INEC is trying to foist polling unit configurations that will make small constituencies in the North look like gigantic constituencies, and big constituencies in the South West look like comparative electoral dwarfs.
Since democracy is still taking root in Nigeria many stakeholders do not take important landmark events such as districting or constituency delimitation, which has consequences for the location and spread of polling units as seriously as they should. Hence they often pay scant attention when electoral bodies or political authorities take actions that may alter political constituencies, electoral maps and consequently polling units. The importance of such actions for the outcome of elections only become obvious when election results are released and voters come to find out that the game may have been actually programmed to be won even before the ballots are cast.
The question, therefore, should not only be to find out how the one million voters disappeared from the roll in Lagos, but a wholesome review of how INEC has conducted such cleaning or editing of the voters roll. This will also include a line by line examination of the scientific and political rigor by which INEC arrived at its current polling units allocation without any record of a delimitation exercise in which it notified and consulted with stakeholders from the bottom to the top. If such vigilance is not revived. Jega and his regional devotees will be smiling five years from now when they watch the South West bemoaning its large population towns squeezing themselves through narrow compartmentalised electoral corridors created at INEC.
Hence to give some deeper insight to the issue, stakeholders may be interested to know how the White political interests in the United States managed to keep Black Americans from using their numbers to impact elections in the Southern states of the USA.
To dis-enfranchise Blacks they used direct and indirect means; direct methods included the use of violence, such as the murder of 100 Black Americans in 1873 in Colfax, Louisiana who were trying to protect the votes for the Republican politician they were supporting. Other direct methods included ballot stuffing or the throwing out of votes cast by Black people or counting them as votes for the person they voted against. Because of such injustices, laws like the Enforcement Act of 1870 was introduced to protect blacks and poor white people who were often the victim of such disenfranchisement.
When such laws were introduced, the powerful white politicians in authority started to contrive indirect methods of disenfranchisement, such as the use of poll taxes, which required people to pay arrears of taxes which obviously most blacks could not afford as eligibility to vote, then they also used literacy tests, at some other places they used ballot system which will require effective reading skills for a person to vote correctly, to help illiterate whites escape these difficulties states like Oklahoma introduced something called an “understanding” or “Grandfather” clause , this was finally struck down by the voting Act of 1965 in the southern states and the federal voting Act in 1970.
But since then other clever methods such the clever manipulation of registration of voters rules and more recently, the cunning demarcation of districts such as the recent demarcation of districts in North Carolina to protect a predominantly Republican White district to hold a senatorial seat in Northwest Fayetteville area of North Carolina, all these show that the success of democracy requires constant vigilance, a pre-requisite that the political elites of the South West appear to have given up, for a mess of northern oligarchic porridge, if not how can such an important issue receive such tepid attention, until 1million voters went up in smoke?
The question therefore should not only be to find out how the 1 million voters disappeared from the role in Lagos, but a wholesome review of how INEC has conducted such cleaning or editing of the voters roll, and a line by line examination of the scientific and political rigor by which INEC arrived at its current polling units allocation without any record of a delimitation exercise in which it notified and consulted with stakeholders from the bottom to the top. If such vigilance is not revived..Jega and his regional devotees will be smiling five years from now when they watch the South West bemoaning its large population towns squeezing themselves through narrow compartmentalized electoral corridors created at INEC.
This is strange because the Chairman of INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega, in trying to rob the South to pay the North with electoral advantage, defended the recent allocation of new polling units, by legitimating the Post-AFIS register of 2011 and refuting the Post-Business rule register. But the anxiety of Governor Fashola is just the beginning of the evidence of how the South West will be robbed electorally by Jega’s regional elements in INEC.
It is shocking how the present political elite of the South West have kept mute over the recent lopsided allocation of polling units by INEC using conjectures and arbitrary constructs that allotted to the North West 7,906; the North East 5,291 and the North Central 6,318, while it allotted to the South West 4,160; South-South 3,087 and South East 1,167 and the FCT 1,120.
Many geo-political allocations such as local government areas and wards were similarly constructed from arbitrary allotments by persons who found themselves in privileged positions, without any reference to credible and reliable procedures, yet they have remained the authoritative reference points for constituency delimitation for a long time to come. To give a very graphic illustration, the estimated population of Ibadan city is 3,565,108 and Ogbomosho, another big city in Oyo State, is 1.1 million; in comparison, one of the biggest cities in Yobe State is Potiskum.
In peace times its population was 86,002, but in creating new polling units, Yobe state got 790 new polling units while Oyo got 580 new polling units , even when on the paper which INEC used as reference point the total number of eligible voters in Oyo State is 2,487,132, while the total number of eligible voters in Yobe State is 1,203,324. But to worsen matters, states in the North which have equal or less number of eligible voters like Oyo, such as Niger State which has 2,427,081 got over 1000 new polling units. For instance, Niger State got 1,683 new polling units, about three times the number of new polling units allotted to Oyo. The reaction of political leaders in the South West to this anomalous disparity belies the political sophistication for which the South West is renowned, given the historical electoral consequences of such deliberate distortion of electoral systems.
The recent quietude by South West political leaders may be explained by their recent political alliances with political networks in the Northern oligarch. Such quiet can only be described as implied collusion, in which case they believe that electoral victory from this alliance will mean greater empowerment. But it is surprising that despite such alliances, they do not find it curious that even in seeking victory through electoral system manipulation, their Northern allies could not trust their South West allies with as much electoral leverage as they have allocated to themselves. The truth of this matter is that they, unlike their South West political allies, are not fooled by such temporary alliances of convenience. They recognise that, while alliances may be facile, electoral constituencies can be very difficult to change once embedded in the body politics. That is why a state like Osun with 1,318,120 eligible voters was allotted 121 new polling units whereas states with less number of eligible voters like Gombe with 1,208,927 voters got three times more, with 403 new polling units allocated to them compared to Osun’s 121.
So why would someone in Jega’s decision-making structure rob the South West of two polling units for every one it allocates to their electoral peers in the North, which translated means that they are creating on paper 1500 voters in the North for every 500 potential voters in the South West?
Why is this manipulation of the electoral system necessary? To answer this question, we need to understand electoral systems and how systemic electoral frauds are fomented institutionally. Electoral systems describe the proportional representation of constituencies in governance legislatures. In parliamentary systems, it is the life blood of political victories; in presidential systems it dictates who gets what, when and how through legislative policy making and oversight. By using arbitrary criteria cooked up by the chairman of operations Nuru Yakubu in INEC and his regional devotees instead of international benchmarks, starting with scientific delimitation of constituencies, INEC is trying to foist polling unit configurations that will make small constituencies in the North look like gigantic constituencies, and big constituencies in the South West look like comparative electoral dwarfs.
Since democracy is still taking root in Nigeria many stakeholders do not take important landmark events such as districting or constituency delimitation, which has consequences for the location and spread of polling units as seriously as they should. Hence they often pay scant attention when electoral bodies or political authorities take actions that may alter political constituencies, electoral maps and consequently polling units. The importance of such actions for the outcome of elections only become obvious when election results are released and voters come to find out that the game may have been actually programmed to be won even before the ballots are cast.
The question, therefore, should not only be to find out how the one million voters disappeared from the roll in Lagos, but a wholesome review of how INEC has conducted such cleaning or editing of the voters roll. This will also include a line by line examination of the scientific and political rigor by which INEC arrived at its current polling units allocation without any record of a delimitation exercise in which it notified and consulted with stakeholders from the bottom to the top. If such vigilance is not revived. Jega and his regional devotees will be smiling five years from now when they watch the South West bemoaning its large population towns squeezing themselves through narrow compartmentalised electoral corridors created at INEC.
Hence to give some deeper insight to the issue, stakeholders may be interested to know how the White political interests in the United States managed to keep Black Americans from using their numbers to impact elections in the Southern states of the USA.
To dis-enfranchise Blacks they used direct and indirect means; direct methods included the use of violence, such as the murder of 100 Black Americans in 1873 in Colfax, Louisiana who were trying to protect the votes for the Republican politician they were supporting. Other direct methods included ballot stuffing or the throwing out of votes cast by Black people or counting them as votes for the person they voted against. Because of such injustices, laws like the Enforcement Act of 1870 was introduced to protect blacks and poor white people who were often the victim of such disenfranchisement.
When such laws were introduced, the powerful white politicians in authority started to contrive indirect methods of disenfranchisement, such as the use of poll taxes, which required people to pay arrears of taxes which obviously most blacks could not afford as eligibility to vote, then they also used literacy tests, at some other places they used ballot system which will require effective reading skills for a person to vote correctly, to help illiterate whites escape these difficulties states like Oklahoma introduced something called an “understanding” or “Grandfather” clause , this was finally struck down by the voting Act of 1965 in the southern states and the federal voting Act in 1970.
But since then other clever methods such the clever manipulation of registration of voters rules and more recently, the cunning demarcation of districts such as the recent demarcation of districts in North Carolina to protect a predominantly Republican White district to hold a senatorial seat in Northwest Fayetteville area of North Carolina, all these show that the success of democracy requires constant vigilance, a pre-requisite that the political elites of the South West appear to have given up, for a mess of northern oligarchic porridge, if not how can such an important issue receive such tepid attention, until 1million voters went up in smoke?
The question therefore should not only be to find out how the 1 million voters disappeared from the role in Lagos, but a wholesome review of how INEC has conducted such cleaning or editing of the voters roll, and a line by line examination of the scientific and political rigor by which INEC arrived at its current polling units allocation without any record of a delimitation exercise in which it notified and consulted with stakeholders from the bottom to the top. If such vigilance is not revived..Jega and his regional devotees will be smiling five years from now when they watch the South West bemoaning its large population towns squeezing themselves through narrow compartmentalized electoral corridors created at INEC.