Electoral reforms are work in progress — Jega
Under the auspices of The Institute of Economic Affairs, the Immediate past Electoral Commissioner of Nigeria, Prof. Attahiru Jega was in the country to deliver two public lectures towards free and fair elections in Africa.
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During his lectures in Accra and Kumasi, he shed light on the recent general election in Nigeria and factors that ensured the credibility of the electoral process. The rationale for Prof. Jega’s visit was for Ghana and other African countries to draw valuable lessons from his experience and insights.
As Ghana prepares for election next year and there is the need to promote good governance and credible elections, the Political Editor of the Daily Graphic, Mr Kobby Asmah, caught up with the celebrated professor and discussed broad range of issues including the use of and funding of vice chancellors during elections, registration and voting by minors, the voters register and difficulties associated with election management in Africa.
Below are excerpts of the question and answer session that took place.
Kobby Asmah (KA): You are being celebrated globally as playing a pivotal role in ensuring credible and peaceful election in Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria.
Your successful steering of affairs during the recent election in 2015 ensured and guaranteed stability in the sub-region. Indeed, you have become one of the most sought-after figures in Africa and have to date received several awards, including the 2015 Charles Manatt Democracy Award in Washington DC. How do you feel and why are you in Ghana?
Prof. Attahiru Jega (PAJ): Pleased to know that and I feel very humbled. I am here in Ghana basically to convey solidarity and best wishes of Nigeria to all Ghanaians. Nigeria and Ghana are regional leaders in the continent and we are both working hard to deepen democracy in our countries as well as ensure free, fair and credible elections. My visit is to help share Nigeria’s experience now regarded as credible. Hopefully, from this, Ghana will find it important to add value to next year’s election. I also believe, both Nigerians and Ghanaians recognise that to have good democratic governance with popularly elected leaders through free and fair elections, we need to do quite a lot to keep improving on our electoral process and fortunes.
KA: As Ghana prepares for election next year, from the Nigerian perspective, what do you think Ghana can do to enhance its electoral process, fortunes and integrity?
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PAJ: First and foremost, all stakeholders, including political parties, civil society, media, security, traditional and religious as well as community leaders, need to be committed to have a peaceful and credible election and they need to join hands in partnership with the Electoral Commission (EC) to ensure that this happens. So regular engagement, partnership and collaboration among all key stakeholders are very important for a successful election. On the part of the EC, as our own experience in Nigeria shows, a commitment to professionalism, impartiality and non-partisanship is a major requirement.
Secondly, we found in Nigeria that early preparation and procurement of election materials contributed significantly to having successful elections.
Equally important is that integrity of the voters register is correlated with the integrity of election. So a lot of attention needs to be paid to having good register for elections.
Finally, we in Nigeria have found the use of technology in elections to be very beneficial in improving the integrity of the electoral process. However, in using technology, stakeholders need to be carried along and their concerns addressed to eliminate suspicions about negative use of technology. Technology has to be appropriate and adaptable. It is very important to recognise that technology is good only if it is appropriately utilised.
More importantly, we also need to share experiences and learn from one another what we can do to improve integrity.
Indeed, there is need to share experiences more often.
KA: I reckon conducting elections globally come with its own challenges. Can you share some of the key challenges you encountered in Nigeria during the 2015 general election?
PAJ: One of the biggest relates to logistics, including procuring materials and deploying them in good time to ensure early commencement of voting. But there are also challenges associated with attitudes of politicians who want to win elections by hook and crook for whom elections are a matter of do or die. So to be able to handle these challenges, an Electoral Commissioner needs to be professional, impartial and non-partisan, and they also need to be seen to be doing all these. Because sometimes negative perception damages credibility and integrity of elections, we decided to use students, lecturers, professors and vice chancellors as temporary election workers.
These categories of staff for elections were very beneficial in terms of integrity of elections because they insulated the commission’s permanent staff from accusations of partisanship or fraudulent declaration of results.
So we decided that the commission’s permanent staff should rather focus attention on preparing for and conducting elections and in retrieval of materials after elections while other people of credibility were brought in to collate results and serve as returning officers. We believe this is an innovation worthy of consideration in many African countries.
KA: How did you vouch for the integrity of the temporary electoral staff - students, professors and vice chancellors - used in the election management processes?
PAJ: In using this category of staff, we used a system for ensuring that only those whose credibility was not in doubt were used. We engaged and collaborated with the Directorate of the National Youth Service Secretariat (NYSS) in selecting the youth corps and with the Committee of Vice Chancellors and the Association of Academic Staff Union of Universities in selecting persons with credibility for election duties. So we selected people carefully in order to ensure that only those whose integrity could be ascertained were recruited for the assignment. I must also say that what we paid for as transport and honorarium is in no way adequate compensation for the national assignment they carried out. And the good thing is that many of them were not doing it for the money but contributing to our country’s democratic development.
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KA: What was the staff strength?
PAJ: Because Nigeria is a large country, in the 2015 Election, we used 750,000 temporal workers consisting of the youth corp members, tertiary level students, vice chancellors, professors and other academic staff. So it was a mix for different responsibilities.
KA: The attitude of do or die in politics undermines our quest for credible elections and democratic consolidation. What can we do to contain this mentality of politicians?
PAJ: Our politicians have to change the mindset of do or die and we can help them by ensuring that there are effective laws in place and mechanisms of ensuring compliance and sanctions of those who violate these because in most cases politicians think they can do things and get away with it, which strengthens their mindset of do or die politics.
They (politicians) need to change their attitude. However, if we rely solely on them to change they will not do so. Hence through adequate sanctions we hopefully can remove this impunity from our politics.
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KA: Challenges with registration and voting by minors in Ghana’s electoral process is phenomenal. I believe the case is similar in Nigeria and for that matter Africa. How do you propose we deal with this canker in election administration?
PAJ: Yes, I do agree with you that the problem of minors in elections cuts across. It is a challenge in Nigeria and we are working closely with the security agencies to ensure that the problem is minimised if not totally eliminated. The challenge of voting by minors is often sanctioned by politicians and condoned by local communities. So we have to work very hard through sensitisation as well as effective sanctions to deal with this phenomenon.
KA: You were able to declare the 2015 Nigerian election results on time. How did you do that?
PAJ: We continously looked at ways and means of improving efficiency of results collation and results transmissions and we were able to ensure that in general all election results including presidential were declared within 48 hours after polls had ended.
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We did not use electronic transmission of results but we used technology such as Excel Spreadsheet and a dedicated email for receipt of scanned copies of originals of . However, we think that in the near future Nigeria will move in the direction of electronic transmission of results.
There are usually concerns and suspicions about negative use of technology in transmission of results. So in Nigerian contest we have been very carefully in introducing it until we can satisfy stakeholders.
That we have taken every measure to ensure the robustness of the technology to be used
KA: Giving the opportunity to run Nigeria’s next election, what will you do differently?
PAJ: Electoral reforms are work in progress and there is always scope for improvement. So certainly, there were a lot of good things which we did in 2015 that could be retained, a few things which could be refined and many more things that could be introduced to improve integrity of future elections. As election management bodies, we have it a duty to continue working to improve the integrity of future elections.