Figures do not lie
The attempt, last Wednesday, by Professor Attahiru Jega, National Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to explain away the inherent incongruity in allocating Polling Units, PUs, to states of the federation with less probability of having more voting population, an exercise that should have been carried out relying on field data, only served to further pour cold water on the Chairman of Nigeria’s election management body.
This report will show that based on figures exclusively gotten from the Commission, the less-than-academic explanation of why INEC did what it did falls flat in the face of common sense and reality.
Rather than persist on this voyage of embarrassment as the Commission first did regarding the issue of delimitation, a fool’s errand of attempting to carry out the exercise so close to next year’s elections but had to suspend, Jega’s insistence on going ahead with the lopsided allocation of PUs to favour the North is nothing more than a recipe for disaster and another attempt at consolidating on the error of Nigeria’s colonial masters and the military that enthroned the warped demographic logic of claiming that more people live in the desert.
Professor Attahiru Jega’s production line of excuses and rationalization for an agenda that went awry may soon suffer a fatal breakdown. His present challenge is how to explain to Nigerians the logic and workability of putting a cart before a tired horse.
Ordinarily, on the matter of Polling Units, PUs, INEC’s decision to create new ones appeared very necessary and potentially beneficial to the electoral process.
However, on closer scrutiny, the devil is in the details.
When Sunday Vanguard commenced the crusade on the dangers to the credibility of the electoral process occasioned by the seemingly manipulative mentality inherent in creating PUs before meeting some conditions precedent, INEC chose to, at best, ignore the damning observations and, at worst, pooh-pooh the publications.
But because the real dangers and illogicality of INEC’s decision on the matter were not immediately manifest, Nigerians were not quick to observe the not-so-innocent as well as less than altruistic reasons behind PU saga.
PUNCTURING INEC’s LOGIC
The questions to, therefore, ask are: How did INEC arrive at its proportions while it was still collecting data in the field regarding actual figures of voters in each jurisdiction? Was it done without reference to actual reality from field data?
The emerging result from the Continuous Voter Registration, CVR, is bringing day light into INEC’s magic.
The first phase of the CVR started on May 28, 2014 and ended on June 3, 2014.
The second phase commenced on June 20 – 25, 2014. INEC’s explanation is that those who had issues with their registration and were expected to return for another round of registration during the CVR accounted for its basis for allocating PUs the way it did. But looking at the table of the result of Phases 1 and 2 of the CVR, the number of those who actually re-presented themselves for the CVR exercise is no where up to 20% in almost all the states and, therefore, knocks the bottom off Jega’s explanation. (See table titled PHASE 1 and check the sub-head, CVR Figures; and check table titled PHASE 2 and check sub-head, TOTAL).
An outcome that should inform voter logistics, one of which is the number of polling units required for each jurisdiction, is being conducted in a maliciously whimsical manner.
As the emergent figures from INEC’s authentication of eligible voters and the continuous registration of voters in different jurisdictions show below, INEC created 1,200 additional polling units in Abuja, and 1,167 new polling units for the whole of the South-east zone, whereas extant data, and now emergent data from INEC’s own field reports, demonstrate again that not only does just four states in the South-east far exceeds the voting strength in Abuja, the number of newly registered voters in the zone is 919,097, while the FCT has just 37,235 times or about 25 times more.
From the emerging data above, even though the full national figures have not emerged, the following clear deductions can be made to restate that INEC’s decision-makers who created the new Pus, which gave 21,000 PUs to the North and a little over 8,000 PUs to the South, were only playing what looks like a regional card instead of doing a professional electoral management job.
Even if the final data results in a double voter strength between the North-west and the South-east, for instance, which is unlikely given the estimated voting population of the states yet to be accounted for in both zones from the data above, it cannot justify the 8 to 1 disparity in the allocation of new PUs to both zones.
WHY THE HASTE?
Emerging data shows that the difference in the number of newly registered voters from the CVR for the four states of the South-east above and the four states in the North-west is not significantly different, even when the data from large voter areas from the South, such as Lagos, Port Harcourt, Ibadan and so forth, have not been taken into account; yet the allocation of new Pus, which should largely be informed by voter increases, has been skewed to appear as if a wide margin of difference in CVR exists between the North and the South.
Emergent field data from INEC shows that four states (not the full five states) in the South-east have 25 times more newly registered voters than FCT, Abuja; yet, Abuja was allocated more new PUs than the entire South-east zone.
Take, for instance, a state like Zamfara that has almost the same number of new eligible voters and almost the same extant voters as Enugu, but which got about 1,000 new polling units, almost the same as the entire South-east got.
INEC could not possibly know ahead of actual field figures the number of people who will register as eligible voters in any jurisdiction from the pool of eligible citizens. A comparison of intra-zonal CVR figures, for instance, shows that Zamfara, with an extant voter figure of 1,133,245, had more new registrants namely, 433,452, than a state with more extant eligible voters like Jigawa with 1,510,258, which had only 72,416.
Similarly, an inter-zonal comparison of Enugu and Kebbi will show a similar phenomenon. This kills off any arguments for a resort to population/demographic assumptions without actual field figures, as was put forward by Jega during his press conference.
In other words, as many have cautioned, INEC ought to have waited for actual field data before creating new PUs, rather than creating PUs to fit an assumed framework, as others have said before.
In doing so, INEC was climbing the tree from the top or working with pre-determined answers, which is proof that those who did the allocations in INEC had preconceived reasons for their allocations.
This is a very sad development for electoral management because it distorts the numbers required for better local planning and offsets the election for local contests such as states and national legislature as well as state gubernatorial elections.
PERTINENT ISSUES
On the day of election in a presidential system, the outcome depends on the number of voters who show up and are authenticated. The only significant effect on interstate elections is with the presidential election, and this only becomes significant where there is a major contest between two candidates and a simple majority is needed by one candidate to break other parameters if they are tied. This is why the suspicion of a regional agenda is clearly at play, as this can only be the motivation for this peculiar mess.
Jega’s press conference did not effectively address the following issues:
Which of the Register of data was used for the PUs creation: post Automated Finger Identification System, AFIS, or post Business Rule, BR? We know it is post-AFIS!
Why use post-AFIS register when post-BR is being used to produce Permanent Voter Card, PVC, and for the Register used for Ekiti, Osun and the same would be used for the 2015 elections?
What is the total number of those in the post-AFIS and who actually re-presented themselves in the 1st phase of CVR carried out in 10 states and the 2nd phase with 12 states and how many do INEC project would turn up in the 3rd and final phase involving 12 states ? There would be no figure to give because processing of recently registered voters is still ongoing.
The final question, therefore, would be, would it not have been better and tidier for all the activities that are still ongoing to be completed and actual figures known before creating PUs?
The consolation, however, is that Jega is both intelligent and wise.
As was the case when Sunday Vanguard raised the alarm about the administrative hocus-pocus being engendered at the Commission under Jega and which appears to have been addressed (even if not fully but partly), there is the expectation that Jega would do the wise thing so that all his efforts at bequeathing a clean voter register would not be slaughtered on the altar of North/South dichotomy. It remains his call.
Source: Vanguard
