The register of voters anywhere in the world is perhaps the most important document in the process leading up to elections. In our country, right from the colonial days getting a clean register of voters has always proved to be a tough task, if not impossible. Like our census numbers, our voters register is not the best of data. And there are many reasons for this situation. Chief among which is simply for political superiority permutations. The more numbers you have (in your strong holds) the easier it will be to manipulate electoral outcomes.
The voters register is central in the calculation of election riggers. If a politician or political party is able to connive with the national electoral body, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC officials, to swing data in the register to their side, the opponents, no matter how poised they are to win, are woefully doomed. With the register, politicians and conniving electoral officers inflate and deflate the number of votes recorded and with this to a large extent determines who wins or loses in spite of the genuine number of votes cast.
INEC, which has the sole constitutional right to compile the voters register, when it suits its conniving officials or serves the purpose of those, well-placed enough to influence the commission, can inundate the register with ineligible aliens, the under-aged and turn a blind eye as they vote. The sordid affair we witnessed during the recent council election in Kano, paints a damning picture. All the same, it is gratifying that INEC chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, has seen the need to take another look at the country’s voters’ register and has further taken a decision to implement a nationwide probe if only to re-establish its integrity.
If this is meticulously done, we may not have a repeat of what happened in previous elections where the number of votes cast bizarrely tallied with the number of voters recorded during voters’ registration exercise that was concluded much earlier. Such a curious tally leaves one to conclude that no one among those who registered to vote in such states died within the two years space, relocated, was indisposed or refrained from voting. It will be deceitful to say that all these would have happened in the affirmative, unless voters in those states were either extra-humans or immune from human frailties.
Nigerians hope that the proposed INEC’s interrogation of the country’s voters’ register will assuage the anxiety raised by the distasteful images of seeming under-aged voters in the recent Kano State council poll. It is also reassuring that the chairman of the national electoral commission has additionally proposed to institute a probe team into the allegation. The commission’s drive in this direction is made more compelling by the fact that it was its voter’s register for the 2015 general election that the local electoral commission in Kano State obtained and used for the council election.
In carrying out the probe, the commission may find useful the report of two independent monitors in the Kano election: Centre for Information Technology and Development, CITAD and Action Aid International Nigeria, which in their reports, corroborated the allegation of underage voting in the Kano council election. A statement issued by CITAD clearly noted that underage voting was witnessed in the election in which INEC has confirmed that the voters were drawn from its voters register. Given that the INEC chairman has publicly disclosed that he was perturbed by the allegation and the indicting images of under-age voters, it would be helpful if the proposed INEC’s investigation team works in sync with the mentioned independent monitors of the Kano election in determining the integrity or otherwise of the commission’s register.
Nigerians by any means do not expect a picture-perfect election delivery in 2019, however, we should see signs of improvements in the process or actions towards positive change. Of course, bare-faced inflation of figures, underage registration and voting must no longer be tolerated. That is why we commend the National Assembly for passing aspects of the electoral act that has made electronic voting mandatory. This will help check some of these electoral infractions. The Kano or any other state’s underage voters must be expunged from the register. Adults and security agents must show integrity by stopping kids and their sponsors who advance this kind of disgrace.
