INEC Polling Units And The Future Of Elections

By Reuben Abati

Some of the major challenges bedevilling the electoral process
in Nigeria, and thus abbreviating the integrity of democracy in the
country include over the years: lack of access to polling units,
the location of polling units in problematic parts, overcrowding,
conflict, violence, the designation of places like shrines,
mosques, churches and private residences as polling units which
grant the owners of such premises unassigned powers of control over
the voting process. There is also the general climate of fear,
opaqueness, insecurity and manipulation during every election
season. Last week, the Independent National Electoral Commission
(INEC) made notable progress in addressing these challenges when it
announced the completion of its delineation of new polling units
for the country.

The last time new polling units were defined in Nigeria was 25
years ago by the defunct National Electoral Commission of Nigeria
(NECON), as INEC was then known. At the time the country had on the
voters’ register, 50 million voters. Over the years, it worked with
an estimate of 120,000 polling units across the country but an
eventual census put the exact figure at 119, 973 polling units.

As the number of voters nationwide increased, the number of
polling units remained static. Section 22 of the Electoral Act says
each polling unit is not supposed to have more than 500 registered
voters. But as more persons attained the age of franchise (18 in
Nigeria), the polling units became congested, with many of them
serving up to 2,000 to 3,000 voters. As new communities also
emerged, especially in urban centres, voters had to travel long
distances to get to the next available Polling Unit (PU). Many did
not even bother, because of the stress involved, and so voter
turn-out in every election was not a true reflection of the
people’s commitment. Analysts often explained this away
superficially as voter apathy whereas there were underlying
constraints that needed to be addressed.

In 2007, the predecessor of the current INEC Chairman, namely
Professor Attahiru Jega tried to update the polling units in the
country to reflect the changing voter statistics and demographics.
The exercise ran into troubled waters on the grounds of ethnicity
and religion. Jega’s INEC was accused of trying to give advantage
to the North. He tried again in 2014. The exercise was, after a
pattern, sabotaged by the politics of suspicion and motive-reading.
In 2019, Jega’s successor, Professor Mahmoud Yakubu also tried to
bring the polling units in line with realities. He also failed.
What is common to all those earlier efforts is that the exercises
were proposed very close to the elections in 2007, 2015, and 2019,
and hence, in a country where there is mutual suspicion and angst,
and doubts about the integrity of electoral umpires, the populace
was sceptical. So, what has Mahmoud Yakubu done this time that is
different? It has been a week since the new polling units were
announced: a total of 56,872 new polling units have been added,
bringing the country’s total number of polling units up to 176,846.
Despite the fact that the 19 states of the North and the FCT got
additional 31,196 polling units, and the 17 Southern states an
additional 25,676 polling units, there has been no usual outcry
about ethnicity and imbalance or complaints about any surreptitious
attempt to manipulate the figures. The expected reaction may be
delayed, especially as INEC has promised to publish the entire list
of polling units in 37 volumes ahead of the commencement of the
Continuous Voters’ Registration Exercise on June 28.

What is different however, is that INEC has conducted this
exercise far ahead of the 2023 General elections. The new polling
units have been created out of voting points and voting point
settlements which the electoral body introduced during the 2019
general elections to enhance access and the sovereignty of the
voter. When the process of reviewing what was done in 1996 began,
the Joint Senate and House of Representatives Committee on INEC
received over 10,000 requests from 26 states of the Federation for
new polling units to be created in their areas. In the end, INEC
has arrived at an addition of 56,872 polling units. It also
consulted not just the National Assembly but groups in civil
society, including the political parties and development partners.
The inclusiveness of the process must have helped but INEC must now
go a step further and publish the entire volumes of the designated
polling units. Transparency is crucial. That should provide
opportunities for scrutiny, review and amendments where
necessary.

INEC’s efforts in solving a 25-year electoral riddle is
commendable. With the expansion of polling units, voter access and
representation will be enhanced. The average voter would not have
to travel across kilometres to get to the nearest polling station.
The problem of congestion has also been addressed. Room has also
been created for the test-running of the new structure long before
the 2023 General elections. These new polling units will first be
used beginning with the November 6, 2021 Gubernatorial election in
Anambra state, and subsequently in the Area Council elections in
the Federal Capital Territory, February 12,2022, Ekiti state
gubernatorial election on June 18,2022 and the one in Osun state
scheduled for July 16,2022.

What many Nigerians would even find more instructive is the
announcement by the INEC Chairman that 749 polling units have been
removed from inappropriate places: shrines, churches, mosques and
private residences. The figure that has been announced is probably
modest. The publication of the polling units must provide room for
the electorate to help identify more of such strange locations
where the integrity of the electoral process has been routinely
compromised. This may sound strange to the international community
or even to the uninitiated in the mores of Nigerian politics. But
it is true. Can you imagine anyone walking into an open, communal
shrine in a village, with the Chief Priest wearing INEC tags,
asking the voter to support a particular party? How much freedom of
choice can voters exercise under such circumstances? Every election
season, pastors and imams also become agents for candidates and
political parties as they struggle to support members of their own
faith, and clients. They help to rig elections and cheat in God’s
name. Nigerian clerics do not see anything sinful or criminal in
this regard. Their moral compass is dictated by the conviction that
“heaven indeed only helps those who help themselves.” There is so
much doubtful spirituality in Nigerian politics.

Traditional rulers are just as notorious. You can’t run for an
electoral office in Nigeria without visiting the traditional rulers
in your constituency. They are regarded as men of influence and
authority who can determine electoral outcomes by simply telling
their people what to do. Many of them are partisan politicians in
traditional garbs. When they tell you that a traditional ruler does
not promote any political party, or that he is everyone’s father,
believe that and deceive yourself. Even if a particular traditional
ruler would not support you and you know, you still must go to his
palace to pay homage and receive prayers and the blessing of
ancestors. Yes, those ancestors! Nigeria must be one of the very
few countries in the world where the dead also have a say in
elections: they are served kolanuts, bitter kola and exotic drinks!
During the 2019 elections, we visited a particular traditional
ruler, a few days to the election. When the king invited us to his
living room after a reception in the palace premises, the first
thing I noticed was a big box beside the king’s throne. It
contained voters’ cards! Someone had actually told us that every
election season, this particular king controls most of the polling
units in his domain, and no one would dare challenge his
directives. On election day, there were reports in other
communities as well, of traditional rulers similarly acting as
party contractors, and landlords threatening tenants with eviction
or increased rent.

It is therefore, precisely for this same reason that I think
good as the expansion and enhanced delineation of polling units by
INEC may be, certain other critical steps would still have to be
taken to safeguard the integrity of Nigerian elections. First on my
list is the legal framework for elections. In 2018, the proposed
amendment of the Electoral Act 2010 ran into troubled waters
because the President refused to give his assent to the Bill, the
Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2018, as passed by the National
Assembly. The excuse then was that the process was out of time,
given the closeness of the submitted Bill as amended, to the 2019
general elections. The President refused to give his assent on
three different occasions. The 9th National Assembly, upon its
inauguration in June 2019, promised to make the Electoral Act
Amendment Bill, a major priority to be treated expeditiously.
Public hearings on the Bill have been concluded since December
2020, there was even a retreat of lawmakers over it in January 2021
but the federal legislators have been crawling at snail speed over
this Bill and others, such as The Petroleum Industry Bill. They
have been playing deaf and dumb.

It is as if there is a deliberate attempt to frustrate demands
by the electorate and other stakeholders for a modernisation of the
electoral framework in Nigeria in line with observed realities and
omissions. The Senate President, Dr Ahmad Lawan even promised that
the Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2021 would be ready by May 2021.
One major concern is that in 2021, Nigeria should be able to have
an electronic voting system, INEC must have a national data base
through which results can be collated real-time with the aid of
technology in order to ensure the transparency of outcomes. Many
stakeholders have also called for a review of the cost of electoral
participation, access for persons living with disabilities, and
specific provisions to enhance women participation. There is
obviously no political will to reform the electoral system. Ahead
of the Continuous Voters Registration exercise beginning June 28,
INEC has now introduced an online Voter Enrolment Device to enable
voters register online. It should be possible for Nigerians to vote
online as well. A hybrid system can be experimented with, whereby
disadvantaged voters without access to technology can vote
physically at polling units while in the urban centres, technology
can be deployed. For this to work, INEC must have enough time to
test run the new reforms. As things stand, the extant Electoral Act
2010 makes no allowance for the use of technology. Without the
much-needed electoral reform, INEC’s innovations may be of no
serious consequence.

The reviews of the 2019 elections by INEC and the high volume of
litigations that followed the elections clearly indicated that the
politicians and the political parties are part of the problem, if
not the main problem, with elections in Nigeria. In the absence of
an Electoral Offences Tribunal and the lack of capacity to pursue
electoral offenders, big or small, to bring them to justice,
Nigerian politicians have learnt to operate like bandits. They
kidnap votes, disrupt the system, cheat, rig, promote violence with
the aid of able-bodied thugs, high on dangerous, mind-altering
drugs, and they get away with it. INEC Chairman Mahmoud Yakubu has
also been preaching to Nigerian politicians to ensure internal
democracy among their ranks, and to avoid a situation whereby
excessive litigations place electoral outcomes at the mercy of the
courts. Professor Yakubu’s admonitions sound like mere wishful
thinking. For the Nigerian politician, the end justifies the means.
He is groomed to win elections by any means possible, and those
means do not exclude the assassination of opponents, arson,
blackmail, and assault. The key strategy is this: win at all costs
and let the opponent go to court. When the matter gets to the
courts, another level of mischief is initiated. Nigerian judges are
not as neutral as they should be in election matters. From dubious
arithmetic to inverted judicial activism, Nigerian courts have
gifted elections in surprising manners without ever stating their
reasons. The INEC Chairman may preach as he wishes, but what powers
does he have to stop the Nigerian judiciary from jumping into the
arena of partisan politics?

Insecurity is another thing to worry about. In the last two
years alone, 42 INEC facilities have been attacked in 14 different
locations across the country. It got so bad INEC had to appeal to
the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency over INEC
units nationwide. The leadership of the electoral body also visited
the President to present a detailed report. They were told that the
government would ensure that those attacking INEC facilities will
soon have “the shock of their lives.” Nobody knows what that means.
What is known is that the biggest threat to future elections is the
general insecurity in the country. INEC has increased the number of
polling units. It does not have enough staff to man every polling
unit. Every election season, it recruits ad hoc staff, which means
from November 6, 2021 in Anambra, INEC would recruit more ad hoc
staff. But who will allow his or her daughter or relation to work
for INEC when there are threats that no election will be allowed in
the South East? With kidnappers and separatists running riot? It is
the same in the South West where promoters of the Oduduwa Nation
have warned politicians to stay away from the 2023 elections. Will
the Nigerian government provide security and protect the integrity
of future elections? Otherwise, INEC will be grossly
handicapped.

Matters have not been helped by the President’s contemptuous and
divisive rhetoric on the key issues agitating the minds of the
people. President Buhari says nobody will be allowed to restructure
Nigeria under his watch because there is nothing to restructure.
“No country will allow that”, he says. He is also opposed to the
idea of a completely new Constitution. He has declared that his
government will speak to those who want to dismember Nigeria in
“the language they will understand”. President Buhari at the
twilight moment of his tenure should be more concerned about his
legacy. The least he can do, is to leave behind a Nigeria that does
not tip over the edge of the precipice, after him.

By Reuben Abati

Some of the major challenges bedevilling the electoral process
in Nigeria, and thus abbreviating the integrity of democracy in the
country include over the years: lack of access to polling units,
the location of polling units in problematic parts, overcrowding,
conflict, violence, the designation of places like shrines,
mosques, churches and private residences as polling units which
grant the owners of such premises unassigned powers of control over
the voting process. There is also the general climate of fear,
opaqueness, insecurity and manipulation during every election
season. Last week, the Independent National Electoral Commission
(INEC) made notable progress in addressing these challenges when it
announced the completion of its delineation of new polling units
for the country.

The last time new polling units were defined in Nigeria was 25
years ago by the defunct National Electoral Commission of Nigeria
(NECON), as INEC was then known. At the time the country had on the
voters’ register, 50 million voters. Over the years, it worked with
an estimate of 120,000 polling units across the country but an
eventual census put the exact figure at 119, 973 polling units.

As the number of voters nationwide increased, the number of
polling units remained static. Section 22 of the Electoral Act says
each polling unit is not supposed to have more than 500 registered
voters. But as more persons attained the age of franchise (18 in
Nigeria), the polling units became congested, with many of them
serving up to 2,000 to 3,000 voters. As new communities also
emerged, especially in urban centres, voters had to travel long
distances to get to the next available Polling Unit (PU). Many did
not even bother, because of the stress involved, and so voter
turn-out in every election was not a true reflection of the
people’s commitment. Analysts often explained this away
superficially as voter apathy whereas there were underlying
constraints that needed to be addressed.

In 2007, the predecessor of the current INEC Chairman, namely
Professor Attahiru Jega tried to update the polling units in the
country to reflect the changing voter statistics and demographics.
The exercise ran into troubled waters on the grounds of ethnicity
and religion. Jega’s INEC was accused of trying to give advantage
to the North. He tried again in 2014. The exercise was, after a
pattern, sabotaged by the politics of suspicion and motive-reading.
In 2019, Jega’s successor, Professor Mahmoud Yakubu also tried to
bring the polling units in line with realities. He also failed.
What is common to all those earlier efforts is that the exercises
were proposed very close to the elections in 2007, 2015, and 2019,
and hence, in a country where there is mutual suspicion and angst,
and doubts about the integrity of electoral umpires, the populace
was sceptical. So, what has Mahmoud Yakubu done this time that is
different? It has been a week since the new polling units were
announced: a total of 56,872 new polling units have been added,
bringing the country’s total number of polling units up to 176,846.
Despite the fact that the 19 states of the North and the FCT got
additional 31,196 polling units, and the 17 Southern states an
additional 25,676 polling units, there has been no usual outcry
about ethnicity and imbalance or complaints about any surreptitious
attempt to manipulate the figures. The expected reaction may be
delayed, especially as INEC has promised to publish the entire list
of polling units in 37 volumes ahead of the commencement of the
Continuous Voters’ Registration Exercise on June 28.

What is different however, is that INEC has conducted this
exercise far ahead of the 2023 General elections. The new polling
units have been created out of voting points and voting point
settlements which the electoral body introduced during the 2019
general elections to enhance access and the sovereignty of the
voter. When the process of reviewing what was done in 1996 began,
the Joint Senate and House of Representatives Committee on INEC
received over 10,000 requests from 26 states of the Federation for
new polling units to be created in their areas. In the end, INEC
has arrived at an addition of 56,872 polling units. It also
consulted not just the National Assembly but groups in civil
society, including the political parties and development partners.
The inclusiveness of the process must have helped but INEC must now
go a step further and publish the entire volumes of the designated
polling units. Transparency is crucial. That should provide
opportunities for scrutiny, review and amendments where
necessary.

INEC’s efforts in solving a 25-year electoral riddle is
commendable. With the expansion of polling units, voter access and
representation will be enhanced. The average voter would not have
to travel across kilometres to get to the nearest polling station.
The problem of congestion has also been addressed. Room has also
been created for the test-running of the new structure long before
the 2023 General elections. These new polling units will first be
used beginning with the November 6, 2021 Gubernatorial election in
Anambra state, and subsequently in the Area Council elections in
the Federal Capital Territory, February 12,2022, Ekiti state
gubernatorial election on June 18,2022 and the one in Osun state
scheduled for July 16,2022.

What many Nigerians would even find more instructive is the
announcement by the INEC Chairman that 749 polling units have been
removed from inappropriate places: shrines, churches, mosques and
private residences. The figure that has been announced is probably
modest. The publication of the polling units must provide room for
the electorate to help identify more of such strange locations
where the integrity of the electoral process has been routinely
compromised. This may sound strange to the international community
or even to the uninitiated in the mores of Nigerian politics. But
it is true. Can you imagine anyone walking into an open, communal
shrine in a village, with the Chief Priest wearing INEC tags,
asking the voter to support a particular party? How much freedom of
choice can voters exercise under such circumstances? Every election
season, pastors and imams also become agents for candidates and
political parties as they struggle to support members of their own
faith, and clients. They help to rig elections and cheat in God’s
name. Nigerian clerics do not see anything sinful or criminal in
this regard. Their moral compass is dictated by the conviction that
“heaven indeed only helps those who help themselves.” There is so
much doubtful spirituality in Nigerian politics.

Traditional rulers are just as notorious. You can’t run for an
electoral office in Nigeria without visiting the traditional rulers
in your constituency. They are regarded as men of influence and
authority who can determine electoral outcomes by simply telling
their people what to do. Many of them are partisan politicians in
traditional garbs. When they tell you that a traditional ruler does
not promote any political party, or that he is everyone’s father,
believe that and deceive yourself. Even if a particular traditional
ruler would not support you and you know, you still must go to his
palace to pay homage and receive prayers and the blessing of
ancestors. Yes, those ancestors! Nigeria must be one of the very
few countries in the world where the dead also have a say in
elections: they are served kolanuts, bitter kola and exotic drinks!
During the 2019 elections, we visited a particular traditional
ruler, a few days to the election. When the king invited us to his
living room after a reception in the palace premises, the first
thing I noticed was a big box beside the king’s throne. It
contained voters’ cards! Someone had actually told us that every
election season, this particular king controls most of the polling
units in his domain, and no one would dare challenge his
directives. On election day, there were reports in other
communities as well, of traditional rulers similarly acting as
party contractors, and landlords threatening tenants with eviction
or increased rent.

It is therefore, precisely for this same reason that I think
good as the expansion and enhanced delineation of polling units by
INEC may be, certain other critical steps would still have to be
taken to safeguard the integrity of Nigerian elections. First on my
list is the legal framework for elections. In 2018, the proposed
amendment of the Electoral Act 2010 ran into troubled waters
because the President refused to give his assent to the Bill, the
Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2018, as passed by the National
Assembly. The excuse then was that the process was out of time,
given the closeness of the submitted Bill as amended, to the 2019
general elections. The President refused to give his assent on
three different occasions. The 9th National Assembly, upon its
inauguration in June 2019, promised to make the Electoral Act
Amendment Bill, a major priority to be treated expeditiously.
Public hearings on the Bill have been concluded since December
2020, there was even a retreat of lawmakers over it in January 2021
but the federal legislators have been crawling at snail speed over
this Bill and others, such as The Petroleum Industry Bill. They
have been playing deaf and dumb.

It is as if there is a deliberate attempt to frustrate demands
by the electorate and other stakeholders for a modernisation of the
electoral framework in Nigeria in line with observed realities and
omissions. The Senate President, Dr Ahmad Lawan even promised that
the Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2021 would be ready by May 2021.
One major concern is that in 2021, Nigeria should be able to have
an electronic voting system, INEC must have a national data base
through which results can be collated real-time with the aid of
technology in order to ensure the transparency of outcomes. Many
stakeholders have also called for a review of the cost of electoral
participation, access for persons living with disabilities, and
specific provisions to enhance women participation. There is
obviously no political will to reform the electoral system. Ahead
of the Continuous Voters Registration exercise beginning June 28,
INEC has now introduced an online Voter Enrolment Device to enable
voters register online. It should be possible for Nigerians to vote
online as well. A hybrid system can be experimented with, whereby
disadvantaged voters without access to technology can vote
physically at polling units while in the urban centres, technology
can be deployed. For this to work, INEC must have enough time to
test run the new reforms. As things stand, the extant Electoral Act
2010 makes no allowance for the use of technology. Without the
much-needed electoral reform, INEC’s innovations may be of no
serious consequence.

The reviews of the 2019 elections by INEC and the high volume of
litigations that followed the elections clearly indicated that the
politicians and the political parties are part of the problem, if
not the main problem, with elections in Nigeria. In the absence of
an Electoral Offences Tribunal and the lack of capacity to pursue
electoral offenders, big or small, to bring them to justice,
Nigerian politicians have learnt to operate like bandits. They
kidnap votes, disrupt the system, cheat, rig, promote violence with
the aid of able-bodied thugs, high on dangerous, mind-altering
drugs, and they get away with it. INEC Chairman Mahmoud Yakubu has
also been preaching to Nigerian politicians to ensure internal
democracy among their ranks, and to avoid a situation whereby
excessive litigations place electoral outcomes at the mercy of the
courts. Professor Yakubu’s admonitions sound like mere wishful
thinking. For the Nigerian politician, the end justifies the means.
He is groomed to win elections by any means possible, and those
means do not exclude the assassination of opponents, arson,
blackmail, and assault. The key strategy is this: win at all costs
and let the opponent go to court. When the matter gets to the
courts, another level of mischief is initiated. Nigerian judges are
not as neutral as they should be in election matters. From dubious
arithmetic to inverted judicial activism, Nigerian courts have
gifted elections in surprising manners without ever stating their
reasons. The INEC Chairman may preach as he wishes, but what powers
does he have to stop the Nigerian judiciary from jumping into the
arena of partisan politics?

Insecurity is another thing to worry about. In the last two
years alone, 42 INEC facilities have been attacked in 14 different
locations across the country. It got so bad INEC had to appeal to
the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency over INEC
units nationwide. The leadership of the electoral body also visited
the President to present a detailed report. They were told that the
government would ensure that those attacking INEC facilities will
soon have “the shock of their lives.” Nobody knows what that means.
What is known is that the biggest threat to future elections is the
general insecurity in the country. INEC has increased the number of
polling units. It does not have enough staff to man every polling
unit. Every election season, it recruits ad hoc staff, which means
from November 6, 2021 in Anambra, INEC would recruit more ad hoc
staff. But who will allow his or her daughter or relation to work
for INEC when there are threats that no election will be allowed in
the South East? With kidnappers and separatists running riot? It is
the same in the South West where promoters of the Oduduwa Nation
have warned politicians to stay away from the 2023 elections. Will
the Nigerian government provide security and protect the integrity
of future elections? Otherwise, INEC will be grossly
handicapped.

Matters have not been helped by the President’s contemptuous and
divisive rhetoric on the key issues agitating the minds of the
people. President Buhari says nobody will be allowed to restructure
Nigeria under his watch because there is nothing to restructure.
“No country will allow that”, he says. He is also opposed to the
idea of a completely new Constitution. He has declared that his
government will speak to those who want to dismember Nigeria in
“the language they will understand”. President Buhari at the
twilight moment of his tenure should be more concerned about his
legacy. The least he can do, is to leave behind a Nigeria that does
not tip over the edge of the precipice, after him.