By
Biko Agozino
INEC
officials erred in law and in fact by declaring that the Anambra State
Governorship election was inconclusive. According to the Returning Officer,
Professor James Epoke, the Vice Chancellor of my beloved Alma Mater, University
of Calabar, there will be a supplementary election in areas with cancelled
votes because the number of cancelled votes were more than the difference
between the winning party, APGA, and the runner up party, PDP. Fa-fa-fa foul,
as Chief Zeburudaya would say.
The
relevant sections of the constitution cited by the eminent Professor of
Microbiology do not say anything about such an arbitrary ruling by INEC based
on the margin of victory compared to invalid or cancelled votes. What the
constitution demands is that the winner must secure 25% or more of the valid
votes in at least 2/3 of the local governments, along with the highest number
of the valid votes cast. On legal grounds, INEC erred by trying to legislate
about the difference between cancelled votes and the winning margin. That
requirement is not in the constitution.
According
to Section 179 of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution, for any Candidate to be
declared winner of a Governorship Election in Nigeria, he/she must satisfy the
following requirements: Section 179 (1): The Candidate must score the highest
number of Valid Votes cast in the Election. Section 179 (2): The Candidate must
secure 25% or 1/4 (one quarter) of the Valid Votes cast in the Election in at
least 2/3 (two thirds) of the LGAs in the State (in the case of Anambra State,
two thirds is equivalent to 14 Local Government Areas out of 21).
Only
the APGA candidate, Willy Obiano, met these Constitutional requirements, having
won outright in 16 LGAs and having secured 25% or 1/4 (one quarter) of Valid
Votes cast in 18 out of 21 LGAs. The minority parties only come close when the
LGAs in which they scored 25% are combined to make 17 which is still less than
the total of APGA with 18: (PDP – 9), (APC – 7) and (LP – 1). Supplementary
elections are not likely to alter the margin of the APGA victory significantly.
Out
of a total of 413,005 valid votes cast, APGA secured 174,710; PDP got 94,956;
APC won 92,300 and LP managed 37,446. If the minority parties had combined
their votes, they could have won the highest number of valid votes but APGA
would still beat them in the number of LGAs in which its candidate secured 25%
or more of the valid votes (see the analysis by Ghana News).
On
factual grounds, INEC erred because statisticians routinely do not include what
is known as ‘missing values’ when calculating the measures of central tendency
and measures of dispersion. If you conduct a survey, there are questions that
some respondents may leave unanswered. If you record zero as an answer for
them, the computer will assume that the zero will be included in determining
the average answer to that question.
This
will obviously distort the mean or average and for this reason, statisticians
will code non-responses as ‘missing values’ to allow the calculation of the
mean and the standard deviation to be based on the number of valid answers. If
1000 people completed the questionnaire but 100 people did not answer a
particular question, the average and standard deviation for the answers to that
question will be based on the 900 valid responses and not on the 1000 sample of
respondents.
What
the INEC officials decided is unreasonable in law and in fact because, for
example, if there is a football match between Nigeria and Mexico at the World
Cup and Nigeria is leading by 10 goals to 5, no reasonable umpire will rule
that the result is inconclusive and call for extra time just because six goals
were disallowed during the match. As everyone knows, disallowed goals are in
fact and under football rules considered to be no goals. The same applies to
votes cancelled or deemed invalid in an election: they do not count and the
constitution made that clear by underscoring that what counts are valid votes.
INEC
officials may have made the cautious announcement of inconclusiveness due to
intimidation, from a patriotic desire to maintain law and order, or from a
human error occasioned by a sleepless night evident in the announcement by
Professor Epoke at the unofficial hour of 6:30 AM.
Now
that the runners up candidates have had time to reflect on the results, it is
time for them to concede gracefully to the winning candidate even if INEC
continues to dither. The winning party should reciprocate by including members
of the minority parties in the transition team and in the eventual government
on the basis of individual merit and expertise.
Inclusiveness
will help to counter the dangerous insinuations that some parties are seen as
representing religious sects or ethnic blocs whereas all the citizens deserve
to be given the opportunity to serve the public to the best of their abilities
irrespective of initial party affiliations or lack of such and places of
origin, not withstanding.
However,
the large number of cancelled votes and invalid votes is a cause for concern.
If someone tried to stuff the ballot boxes with invalid ballots, this should be
investigated in line with the on-going investigation into suspicions that some
INEC staff attempted to sabotage the election but criminal investigations
should not be the excuse for delaying the announcement of the clear winner.
Justice delayed is justice denied, a situation that might even provoke the
public disorder or ridicule that INEC officials may have been trying to avoid
with their timid announcement of inclusiveness.
I
commend the people of the state for avoiding mass violence during the election
despite the unfortunate tragedy at Uke that some candidates tried to
politicize. I commend the presumed winning party for remaining calm even while
INEC delays announcing the obvious victory. I also commend the runners up for
running a good race that came close to unseating the incumbent party if only
they had combined their votes in an alliance from the outset. Finally, I
commend INEC for appointing respected scholars as the electoral officers to
help increase transparency in the electoral process.
The
chaos that we witnessed during the election is not entirely due to the
ineffectiveness of INEC’s planning or incompetence in implementation. It is
part of what has been theorized as African Fractals – the fact that Africans,
due to the experience of having been hunted as prey for hundreds of years,
devised complex non-lineal geometrical styles of social organization to make it
more difficult for any invaders to capture them, conquer them or enslave them.
The
democratic element of recursive self-organization in African Fractals may also
have been evident in Anambra State where the minority parties may have combined
to outspend the winning incumbent party and yet the people themselves clearly
indicated that the fish at hand was worth more than two in the river Niger.
Also
worrying is the fact that only about one third of the electorate came out to
vote while some registered voters could not find their names on the voting
list. To improve on this turn-out record, the Electoral Act should be amended
to enable INEC to allow provisional ballots to be cast in advance by people who
may be too old or too sick to vote on the election day and also allow Diaspora
citizens to vote at Nigerian embassies.
Furthermore,
the budget of INEC should include millions of naira to be awarded to lucky winners
whose voting numbers are drawn in a lottery from valid voters as a way of
improving participation in elections. We know what is in it for the politicians
fighting for office but a chance to win a lump sum could be something for the
voters themselves too. There is no reason why this cannot be done by INEC from
the billions of naira that the elections cost each time, the legislature only
needs to add this provision to the Electoral Act.
Agozino is a
professor o sociology and African Studies, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA
Source: www.
massliteracy.blogspot.ca
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