Agenda Setting During Election Campaigning;
One other key area of civil society engagement before the 2019 elections was in the area of agenda setting. Several civil society organisations (CSOs), organised activities and intervention programs to engage with political parties and their candidates on a number of issues across the board with respect to the prospective governance agenda of the parties and their candidates. These engagements occurred at national and sub-national levels, across the federation.
For instance as it had done towards the 2015 general elections, the Center for Democracy and Development [CDD] , had in 2018, and as part of its engagement with the 2019 elections, organised a series of debates among major political parties on various issues of national concern, in the course of its project, “The Nigeria Political Parties Discussion Series.”
At the FCT level, in February 2019, just a little over a week to the conduct of the 2019 general elections, a youth based CSO – HipCity Innovation Center , had organised a stakeholder session with political parties and their candidates seeking to represent The FCT in the NASS as well as in the various area councils of the FCT. The stakeholders had been engaged with the Charter Of Community Demands developed by Mabushi community, located in the Abuja Municipal Area Council [AMAC] of the FCT. Hip City Innovation Center had spent several weeks working with the community to identify their needs, build capacity for political engagement, and develop the charter of demands.
Similarly, HEDA Resource Center, a Lagos based CSO, with programs across many states of the federation, had in January 2019 in conjunction with partners in the Voices For Food Security network, and Association of Small-Scale Agro-producers In Nigeria [ASSAPIN] also organised stakeholder engagement forums in Lagos and Nasarawa states to present the Farmers’ Manifesto to political parties and their candidates towards getting their endorsement for the demands of small-scale farmers.
Prior to these, on 15th of August 2018, in Abuja, the Centre for Social Justice [CSJ] had organised a stakeholders forum on “Mainstreaming Health into governance and political discourse”, while on the 26th of September 2018, in Lagos, Order Paper Advocacy Initiative had organised a National Development Dialogue Series [NDDS] focused on the Oil And Gas Sector.
Both programs had been organised specifically for the purpose of getting a range of actors and citizens to interact with presidential aspirants and their political parties towards setting agenda for the 2019 elections.
Civil Society Engagement During The Elections
Primarily, the nature of civil society engagement with the 2019 general elections during the period of the conduct of the elections itself is basically around Election Observation, as well as in the continuous analysis of the various developments on the election days, and during collation and announcement of results. Again, as noted with engagement activities before the elections, the activities of civil society organisations during the conduct of elections take place at both National and Sub national levels.
Towards the 2019 general elections, INEC had accredited 144 Observer groups, including 116 domestic, and 28 international observer groups for the purpose of election observation of the 2019 general elections.
The two major civil society election observation networks with nationwide electoral coverage during elections are The Civil Society Situation Room and the Transition Monitoring Group [TMG], both of which carried out election observation activities at national and sub national levels and deployed trained and accredited election observers across the country.
In addition to these two, and also operating at national and sub national levels, is the Women Situation Room Nigeria [WSRN], a network of gender based and focused CSOs, established with the support of UN Women prior to the 2015 general elections.
Towards the 2019 general elections it announced the setting up of the WSR in Abuja, with operational basis in 13 states spread across the federation . The group is made up of over 40 gender focused organisations and its basic mandate is to observe the elections from a gender perspective, make recommendations and develop intervention programs to address observed challenges. A few other Nationally operative CSOs also set up election observation centres deploying teams of trained election observers across the country, and constituting teams of experts to analyse, interpret reports from the field and make official pronouncements on the results of the analysed reports.
The CDD:
CDD, launched and operated an Election Analysis Center, with the primary mandate to observe the elections across the country, analyse reports from its observers deployed across the country to combat fake news with the primary purpose to offer a credible source of information on the conduct and progress of the elections as well as to combat and counter false news and information being propagated about the elections.
The essence of the center was to infuse confidence in the elections and to counter fake news, disinformation and to provide live telecast.
This platform had contributed to enabling the media and the general citizenry to have access to credible information regarding the elections .
CLEEN Foundation:
Similarly, the CLEEN Foundation had established and operated an Election Security Support Center. This center was launched on the 15th of February 2019 and remained operational until the end of the 2019 general elections.
“In the build-up to the 2019 General Elections, CLEEN conducted three security threat assessments regionally and across the 36 states of the federation in April, December 2018 and January 2019 respectively. The objective of the surveys were to map electoral risk factors, identify actors and actions that could cause violence and make recommendations to the relevant actors to mitigate identified threats. Vote buying and hate speech were among the leading electoral risk factors likely to course electoral violence in these surveys. For the 2019 general elections, CLEEN Foundation also trained law enforcement officers of the Nigeria Police Force and the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps on Electoral Security Management. The series of training was conducted across the six geo-political zones while trained officers also conducted step-down training for officers in their divisions who were not part in the training.”
The Centre was composed of technical experts in politics, policing, elections management, gender, communication including data analysis. Information from our observers were to be fact-checked before releasing same to the public while doubtful information that cannot be verified were discarded. This effort was aimed at countering fake news and misinformation that could trigger election violence. For the 2019 general elections, CLEEN had trained and deployed 1,620 election observers to monitor the conduct of security agents during the elections across the 774 Local Governments in the 36 states of the federation and in Abuja.
Yiaga Watching The Vote [Wtv]
YIAGA Africa’s Watching The Vote [WTV] project had been established to provide Nigerian citizens, political parties, their candidates, civil society, INEC and other stakeholders with independent information to confirm the veracity of official results for the February 23rd 2019 Presidential elections in Nigeria. It is a platform driven by data, and involved the deployment of 3,906 observers throughout Nigeria, including 3,030 Parallel Vote Tabulation [PVT] observers deployed in pairs, to randomly selected, representative sample of 1,515 polling units across the country, where they remained throughout the election day.
The credibility of the PVT methodology in its ability to verify official results have been demonstrated very clearly in the correlation between the projections from the PVT method and the official results as announced.
For instance,” YIAGA AFRICA’s findings show that for the presidential election the All Progressive Congress (APC) should receive between 50.0% and 55.8% of the vote; and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) should receive between 41.2% and 47.0% of the vote. These figures are consistent with the official results as just announced by INEC. For both APC [55.6%] and PDP [41.2%] the official results fall within the PVT estimated ranges.”
With respect to turnout rate for the presidential elections, YIAGA Africa PVT method had estimated a turnout rate of 37.5% with a margin of error of + or – 1.6% [that is between 35.9% and 39.1%]. Official figures announced by INEC had put turnout rate at 35.7%. Similarly, YIAGA Africa’s estimate for rejected ballots using the PVT methodology was 4.0% with a margin of error of + or – 0.6% [that is between 3.4% and 4.6%], while the official figures released by INEC put rejected ballots at 4.5%.
The implication of these is that the official results announced are largely consistent with the results as independently collated at various sample collation centres by the PVT observers.
The deployment of observers and varying array of credible and independent methodologies, aiming at providing prompt fact checked information on conduct and progress of elections; on security threats; and especially also on independent verification of official results are also essential ingredients in dousing tension, combating fake news and disinformation, and in infusing confidence in the elections.
Civil Society Engagement After The Elections
After the conduct of elections, civil society engagement revolves basically around presenting their observation reports, making recommendations on observed lapses, and initiating a new cycle of engagement with the electoral process towards the implementation of recommendations from the observed lapses in order to improve the process and make it fairer, more credible, more acceptable, safer and more secure, and hopefully less rancorous.
Virtually all the observation teams , domestic and foreign were unanimous in the central aspects of their findings around: Late opening of voting on election days; challenges with logistics; the resort to voting without the use of smart card readers as a result of their malfunction in a few voting centres contrary to INEC guidelines; Continuing challenges with insecurity resulting in disruption of voting in a few places like Lagos, Imo, Rivers etc; Electoral violence flared up in a number of voting centres in a number of states including Lagos, Ebonyi, Imo, Rivers, Osun, Oyo, Delta, Kogi, and Akwa Ibom among others.
Many observers also noted the widespread occurrence of the phenomenon of vote buying and selling; just as they expressed grave concerns about high incidence of promotion of fake news; while expressing dismay at the behaviour of the political class.
All observers have been unanimous in calling for immediate steps to be taken to ensure the conduct of an urgent and comprehensive audit and review of the 2019 general elections. This should be followed by the early commencement, as soon as possible, of a comprehensive electoral reform process to address the challenges noted.
Outcomes Of Civil Society Engagement
The results of civil society engagement with the electoral process in general, and with the 2019 general elections in particular, have been mixed. On the one hand we can see some levels of positive outcomes with respect to voter registration and age limit reduction which taken together could have potentially broadened access and deepened participation for hitherto constrained groups of the population.
On the other hand, however we can also see some lack of progress, with for instance the disappointing turnout level for the election, as well as with women and youth representation and participation. If we were to look at the voter registration exercise and the final voters’ register for the 2019 general elections, Of the 84 million registered voters, 44.4 million [52.86%] are males, while 39.6 million [47.14%] are females. Furthermore, youths from 18 to 35 years constitute 51.11% of the registered voters; with the middle aged [36 to 50] constituting 29.97%; Elderly [aged 51 to 70 years] – 15.22%; and Old [over 70 years old] – 3.69%.
From these figures, it is clear that young persons aged 18 to 35 constitute more than half of the voter’s register; and that of this figure, nearly 40% of these are students. Furthermore, Nigerians 50 years and below actually constitute a total of 81.08% of the registered voters. Significantly, women also constitute over 47% of the registered voters.
The figures for women and youth participation in the elections as candidates of political parties also show mixed results. For the Presidential election, there were 144 Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates, of which only 28 were women [that is 91.7% male & 8.3% female for presidential candidates; and 69.4% male and 30.6% female for VP position].
Similarly, for the National Assembly elections, there were 1,904 candidates for 109 seats [87.7% male & 12.3% female]; while for the House Of Reps [HoR], there were 4,680 candidates for 360 seats [88.4% male & 11.6% female].
With respect to youth representation, according to analysis done by YIAGA, the figures were thus: Of the 1,904 candidates for the Senate, 253 [13.5%; compared to 10% in 2015] were youths; while for the HoR, of the 4,680 candidates, 1,262 were youths [27.4%, compared to 18% in 2015].
Furthermore, Female youth candidacy for senate was 17% in 2015, dropping to 16% in 2019; while for HoR it was 15% in 2015, dropping to 13.4% in 2019.
From the foregoing it can be seen that inspite of improvement in legislation, female representation dropped in 2019 compared to 2015.
The resultant outlook at the conclusion of the elections was even more discouraging for women participation and representation.
According to figures released by INEC, only 62 women out of the 2,970 women who contested for various offices in the 2019 general elections were elected The implication of this is that only a paltry 2.09% of those who ran for office were successful.
Of these 62 women who were elected, 4 women were elected as Deputy Governors, 40 [4.04% of total number of legislators in the SHAs] were elected into the 36 state Houses of Assembly where there were 991 seats available.
Furthermore, 7 women were elected into the senate out of 109 members [6.4%], while 11 women were elected into the House Of Representatives [HoR] out of 360 members [3.06%].
Overall there was a general decline in percentage of women elected into various offices across the country from 5.65% in 2015 to 4.17% in 2019.
If we take another area of civil society engagement, that of election security, again, the outcome is mixed. According to the INEC Chairman in a meeting with the Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security on Monday, 1st July 2019, on post-election audit , “From our assessment, insecurity as a result of violent disruption of processes was the major reason why a number of elections had to be declared inconclusive. There is therefore an organic link between security and the conduct of peaceful elections.”
And on the issue of the need for adequate security response to such incidences, the INEC Chair went further to add, “At the same time, we must cast our nets wide. I am happy to note that the Nigeria Police Force made several arrests of alleged electoral offenders during the general elections. We have since requested the police to avail us of the case files so that we can initiate immediate prosecution.”
It is thus obvious that security challenges were a major factor that plagued the conduct of the 2019 general elections.
Conclusion:
To conclude and given the foregoing, if there is one lesson to be drawn from the fate which befell the electoral act amendment bill 2018; as well as the fact of continuing low citizen interest in the electoral process with respect to voter registration, PVC collection, and election turnout; that lesson will be the need to commence engagement with the electoral reform process early enough; and to deepen the robustness and intensity of this engagement.
Robust, and comprehensive civic and citizenship education will also be required such that citizens can understand and appreciate their role as voters, while also gaining confidence in the system to allay their fears and help them overcome their cynicism.
One reform that could potentially substantially expand participation and inclusiveness, will be to work towards the realisation of a situation where for instance with respect to enhancing the participation of women, it becomes part of INEC’s legally binding Guidelines for political parties’ participation in elections to include a criteria that frames a range of not less than 40% and not more than 60% representation for each of the two genders of male and female for any party’s candidate list for any election. Similar minimum percentage component of candidate list can also be determined for youth representation and the representation of PLWDs.
And with respect to Youths and PWDs, similar legislation and or legally binding guidelines should also make it mandatory that for a political party’s candidate list post party primaries, no less than 30% of their candidates should be Youths, within the defined age bracket of youth recognised by National policies. And for PLWDs, a minimum percentage requirement of not less than 10% representation of PWLDs on the final political party candidate list should also be enforced.
The gender requirement should also apply to the Youth and PLWDs representation within a political party’s candidate list.
Additionally, there will need to be put in place an institution like an Equal Opportunities Commission to monitor compliance and enforce the mandatory requirements.
A Person should be able to register to vote and vote where they are resident. The other side of this however is that such persons should also be eligible to be voted for where they are resident. The implication of this is that we would need to implement reforms that can enforce universal citizenship on the basis of residency.
Additionally there would also be a need to focus the electoral reform light on the nature and character of political parties, so that we can evolve membership based political parties organised to aggregate interests, and are able to play the role of crucibles for debating policy options that can impact positively on governance.
With respect to election security, it is important that attention will need to be focused on strengthening the institutional and operational capacity of internal security forces, primarily the Nigeria Police, as the lead agency for internal security, in order to ensure that they are prepared to handle and tackle election security challenges effectively.
It is proposed that the Nigeria Police and the National Security and Civil Defence Corps in particular, should establish Election Security Operational Divisions, as special security vehicles to coordinate and the preparation and operational deployment of the respective law enforcement agencies for election security operations and duties.
Furthermore, it is by building the capacity of the Police and the Civil Defence that we would be able to tackle and correct the anomaly of the present situation, where the Military is deployed for routine internal security operations, in a manner that it now seems like the military is the main internal security agency, with the police and civil defence appearing to be their auxiliaries.
If we continue the practice of routinely deploying the military on internal security operations, rather than build the capacity of the Police and civil defence for internal security, then it would be near impossible not to have the military play roles during elections. The most effective way to remove the military from the election security equation is to strengthen the police and build their capacity to play their role as lead internal security agency, while also strengthening the capacity of other internal security agencies like the civil defence to play this role and complement the police. (Concluded).
This article is the first part of a paper presented at a special rountable of the conference on the review of the 2019 elections in Nigeria, organised by the program on Ethnic and Federal Studies, University of Ibadan.
