By Bolanle Bolawole
The supposedly Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has ended the registration of (new) voters despite the fact that there were hundreds and thousands of would-be or intending voters milling around voter registration centres or points all over the country. We saw pictures of agitated Nigerians struggling to get registered.
*INEC Chair, Yakubu
Many slept at the registration centres. Others got there very early in the morning and left late in the night, doing that day-in day-out; yet, they failed to get their names on the voters’ register. I experienced the INEC shenanigans at its Agege office in Lagos where prospective voters were directed to come as early as 4am to register and then return by 8pm to start the waiting, pushing and shoving battle! And no matter how early one got there, there were close to 50 names already on the make-shift register! And only 70 names, out of the hundreds milling around, were entertained per day!
As in many things Nigerian, officials as well as
a mixture of urchins and politicians cashed in on the situation to make brisk
business. Monkey business, man-know-man, which also translates into
man-pass-man, became rampant at many of the registration centres. Before my
very eyes at the INEC Agege office, registration machines were carted away in
an SUV to an unknown destination. Feeble protests by the “suffering and
smiling” hapless citizens meant nothing to the officials who must be protecting
their jobs as well as feathering their nests. Party faithful assigned to the
centres that I visited contested territory with INEC officials and the
roughnecks who must be placated with concessions or else…
Getting registered as a voter or moving one’s
voting centre from one location to the other or, still, correcting one anomaly
or the other in one’s Permanent Voter’s Card data became even more tedious than
the biblical camel going through the eye of the needle. In Lagos where I live
and work, you knew you were within the vicinity of an INEC registration centre
when you encountered a long and riotous queue akin to those that were the order
of the day at petrol filling stations whenever there was fuel scarcity. People
wore long faces; brisk business by petty traders surfaced and people had to
settle for whatever was available as breakfast, lunch and dinner. Of course,
prices were hiked, further leaving gaping holes in the pockets of already
traumatised citizens.
If you were lucky, you got registered but that
in itself is no guarantee that your PVC will be out in time, or out at all,
before the 2023 election – in the event there is one! For many of those that
thronged the registration centres, voting was the last thing on their mind.
They were registering to fulfil all righteousness because they did not know
what trap the government could in future decide to set for anyone who fails to
produce evidence of registration! Note that some places of worship had already
started turning back anyone without a Permanent Voter’s Card! So the
pressure – and blackmail – was much; but in the midst of all of that, INEC made
a simple process of getting onto the Voters register look like rocket science;
something so routine and ordinary in other parts of the world.
For those who genuinely wanted to enrol so they
could perform their civic duty as responsible and patriotic citizens, the
hassle they went through must have puzzled them. Why should the government not
be interested in its citizens being responsible and patriotic? Why the
I-don’t-care-attitude, even scantily-concealed hostility, to voter
registration? When the ruling party at the Centre needed the same INEC to shift
its announced sacred timetable for the party presidential primaries, didn’t
INEC shift the date? There must be something, then, that those in authority
know about voter registration that is hidden from the ordinary folks! Note that
INEC had originally wanted to stop the voter registration a month earlier but
for protests and legal action by an NGO that forced its hands. Nothing suggests
that INEC could still not have allowed voter registration beyond the new July
3st, 2022 deadline.
Voter registration should be done on a daily
basis. As someone comes of age, he or she should freely walk into an INEC
office to get registered – or even do that online – and have his or her PVC
printed and delivered to him by post in a jiffy, as they say; not the present
practice of waiting a few months before an election before embarking on the
typical Nigerian fire brigade approach of rushing to register millions of
people in a few days. My suspicion is that the present awkward and perverted
system serves some ulterior motives. It oils the wheel of corruption as
hundreds of billions of Naira are voted for elections and voter registration is
one of the justifications for these humongous sums.
Now that INEC has succeeded in shutting the door
in the face of would-be voters, who are the gainers and why are the critical
stakeholders not complaining? Why are the political parties and politicians not
kicking? Why is the government not insisting that citizens willing to perform
their civic duty be allowed to do so without let or hindrance? And why are the
citizens themselves protesting against their disenfranchisement by INEC? As it
is said, their PVC is their power; being denied their PVC is tantamount to
their being denied the constitutionally- guaranteed right to decide who rules
over them.
In their definition of disfranchisement or
disenfranchisement, political scientists agree that it means the explicit or
implicit revocation or denial of, or failure to grant the right to vote to a
person or group of persons who are otherwise qualified to vote. INEC acts
arbitrarily when it takes that right from citizens who are otherwise qualified
to vote. There is no law that takes that right from citizens. INEC, in
consideration of its own administrative conveniences – which it lazily does and
with uncommon impunity – is the one that denies citizens that all-important
right. What INEC is promoting, inadvertently, is voter apathy. When the process
of registration to vote becomes cumbersome and herculean as INEC has
deliberately made it, the interest to participate in the political process will
wane. What results is voter apathy.
Voter apathy is dangerous, especially so in a
democracy or representative government. Voter apathy is generally defined by
political scientists as a lack of interest among voters (and would-be voters?)
in the political process, usually resulting in low turnout during elections. It
means a dangerously lesser number of citizens takes interest in or participates
in the political process. Where this is the case, such disinterested citizens
cannot be expected to support the government by paying their taxes, obeying
laws and being generally patriotic in the defence of their country. “My
country, right or wrong” does not operate in an atmosphere where political
apathy is rife.
Voter turnout is the barometer that political
scientists use to measure the health of a political system. Where voter turnout
is impressive, it means the people have an abiding interest in the political
system and are more likely to be keenly interested in the activities of the
government than where voter participation is low. And how can they become
voters if INEC slams the door, as it has just done, in their face? So, INEC, by
its action, is not helping our democracy to grow. It is an aberration that an
organization saddled with the very important assignment of nurturing democracy
is the very organisation that is destructive of that end.
*Bolawole is a commentator on
public issues
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