Mrs. Idayat Hassan, Director Centre for Democracy and Development, in this interview on Arise TV speaks about the flaws in the Gubernatorial and State Houses of Assembly elections, why there is need to unbundle the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), among other issues. JOY ANIGBOGU brings the excerpts: 

What can you say about the violence witnessed across the country during the gubernatorial and House of assembly elections? 

The security agencies have not done very well in the instances of intimidation of observers, and attacks on journalists. There are instances where the security personnel look the other way such as have been committed across the country. The main fact that their deployment is inadequate meant that law and order could not be maintained in several parts of the country. The worst part of it is that violence now defines the elections and this violence is not confined to one part of the country. While we have been talking about the challenges of voter suppression, voter suppression is not just in Lagos we experienced the same in Delta. We saw the same in Edo, Bayelsa and across the country. The slogan of if you are not voting for us, stay home was all over the country. In terms of voter oppression we saw a lot of infractions. This election is now defined by violence, which is really unfortunate.

I took a list of electoral violence since 1964 till date. If you consider what happened in 2007, 2011 when about 300 people died unfortunately due to election violence, how much progress have we made, and with the observations that you just made, does it cast a big question mark, not just in the process of the governorship election, and whatever the outcome may be? 

I think it casts a very big doubt on the outcome itself and our report on Monday will be shading light on that, and that is not just about votes but violence and integrity. When you look at it historically you will find out that violence is a feature of sub national elections. The question is how to frame the violence and we know that it has always been the feature and once you have the presidential election there is always violence but not as violence as the sub national election where they say that politics is local. The actors that will fan the violence are too closely connected to the local politicians and the political party that they are supporting. Also the outcome of the 25th presidential election contributed to it where people now know that the best way with the BVAS is to disrupt opposition stronghold, use voter suppression to circumvent the process as the new way of rigging, especially now that you know that it is much difficult to rig with this new technology. So, the fewer people that you get to vote, the lower the turnout and you use the online and the offline to prevent people from participating in the election, the better your chances of winning.

We have seen viral videos of known individuals threatening people and we have also seen people threatening voters with dogs, to prevent them from going to cast their votes. You said that people use different strategies to suppress voters, have the police or the security agencies done anything to control this? 

There are few instances of people being arrested, political hugs, but not that it was like wide spread. We will look at the data and the number will be crunching. It looks as if this went unpunished. Look at Rivers State, look at Sokoto, in a polling unit, where cubicles were destroyed, materials were destroyed, and people were deprived from voting. The first six hours that we came across a foray of intimidation videos, like the dogs that you were talking about, the purported “oro” which happened. We also know that some of the videos were fabricated so that in the minds of the people they will be afraid and not go to the polling units to vote. The failure of the security agencies in this election, it is not even the vote buying which featured prominently in this election compared to the February 25th election. Votes sold for as low as N1,000 aside from other food and materials that were shared.

Apart from the pictures that you painted about the different strategies to scare people away, do Nigerians understand that when they don’t go to the ballot, you are actually making it easy for those who you don’t want to emerge, who should be educating people? 

People are educating themselves. The Civil society Organisations (CSOs) are educating them. Voter apathy is influenced by different things in this election. The normal thing that we talk about is violence, the fact that INEC’s poor performance in the past makes them feel that their votes will not count or the failure of democracy to deliver development. We have already projected that in this election it will be a mixed bag. In some parts of the country you will see a huge turnout and in other parts you will see low turnout. It is significant when incumbents are on the ballot and they are in a tight race, we saw increased voter turnout. In other places like Kano, Kaduna , Katsina, it is still visible, we saw figures like 180 or 130 people already turned out to vote whereas in some places even in a 10 people polling unit only one person turns out to vote according to the data. But these challenges are drawn by different reasons. In our preliminary statement, for instance, sighted that in the South-South the general sense of discouragement was due to the event of the presidential election and people thought that there was actually no need in coming out to vote.

You painted a picture of the event of February 25, which said will definitely affect some people, how does it come across to you and your team looking at what the IGP and his team said that they were prepared for this election, but so far listening to some of the people in parts of Rivers State, or Edo State where people have been attacked? 

In fact this attack is widespread, and by tomorrow we will be coming with concrete figures to tell you the numbers, but the violence that we are seeing is across the board. We have seen Ebonyi, we have seen Anambra, we have seen unlikely places that you will think of, we have seen Bauchi. We have seen the tense situation in Kano State. We have seen every part of the country. The deployment is actually a big issue. There is also a kind of complicity which we cannot take away.

Is it a fight against an electronic device that will ultimately record people’s votes which is why we have seen this wide spread violence. Do you think that it is a fight against BVAS? 

That is actually why the strategy changed. So, it is a fight against BVAS and IReV which means that with BVAs if you upload the result and you transmit it, it will be difficult for you to actually change the result. So, it means the strategy of rigging will have to change and the strategy is to use violence to disrupt an opposition stronghold. It is to ensure that people do not turnout to vote except they are going to vote on your side. It is to desensitize people. We saw places in Bauchi, which were displayed by a certain Commissioner. We saw a lot of incentives. Party agents and intra party squabbles during the primary elections which made many of the actors to leave the main party and go to vie in other parties, so that lead to a diffusion of violence. You had a situation where four of them were in one party before, now four of them have gone to four different parties with equal chances of winning seats, which has led to the diffusion of violence. You will see party agents across the board, fighting openly. They are one of the sources of disruptions in these elections..

Let us come to INEC, people are talking about unbundling INEC, It is one of the issues that need to be addressed. Unbundle INEC in such a way that state electoral umpires can actually handle the elections, whether presidential or even the state elections. What do we make of democracy, are we really making progress as far as his is concerned? 

Federalism, even though it is positive, also presents challenges to us as a country. These REC are supposed to be under the control of INEC, if truly they are under the control of INEC, we do not know because today they hold sway. Abuja is coordinating and everything actually works. But unbundling INEC is important particularly if you look at this level of violence and the role money plays in politics. Who monitors campaign financing, who ensures that all the people violating the laws are immediately brought to book lie electoral offences commission bill that is presently pending and INEC will not be burdened with prosecuting it. The issue of appointment of who actually comes into INEC. I think for long we have not been able to get that right. In this era of diabolic politics which is this BVAS revolution that is happening. It means that you will have to do think of a lot, you will not only think of improving the system because as you are improving the system, the bad actors are planning of how to break the system