VOIDED VOTES: 'INEC WILL INVOLVE STAKEHOLDERS IN FUTURE'

The Resident Electoral Commissioner in Ekiti State, Alhaji Huseini Pai, in this interview with journalists, speaks on the general elections among other issues. FEMI MAKINDE was there. Excerpt:

How did you feel when you were posted to Ekiti State?

As an INEC commissioner and with the previous happenings in the state, I was not comfortable. I was really jittery because coming to a volatile state compared to my previous assignment of secretary of education in the Federal Capital Territory made me uncomfortable. Many of my friends and relatives also were not comfortable with my posting to Ekiti State.

What did you put in place to ensure that the last elections were free and peaceful?

I came in barely one month before the election. I did not know anybody. We in INEC were only interested in providing a level playing field for all contestants. My colleagues and I were determined to provide an environment where every player would be treated equally.

Did politicians co-operate with the INEC?
We held meetings with the stakeholders and from our approach, the politicians had no choice than to play the game according to the rules of INEC. They may have had their misgivings but since we resolved to see all of them as one at INEC and treated them all equally, they had to abide by the rules.

How were you able to convince the NYSC to allow the corps members to participate in the conduct of the poll?

Normally in an election, people would want to adopt various strategies to make them win and we understood that certain candidates wanted to stop corps members from participating in the poll. Already, INEC had resolved to use the corps members because they are apolitical. Most of them are not indigenes of the state and they are new. We had to convince the corps members and the NYSC authorities that nobody would be allowed to hurt them. We also had assurances from the security agencies who worked hard to provide adequate security for everybody.

Largely, we were able to convince the NYSC and the corps members due to interactions and dialogues we had with them. We assured them to discard the threats and told them to refuse to take the blackmail from the politicians.

The number of voided ballots in the last elections was too high. Do you think the political parties are too many?

I am not speaking as the resident electoral commissioner now. But in my opinion, I believe that 63 political parties are too many for this country. This is my personal opinion and I am not speaking as an INEC official now. However, these parties satisfied the criteria for forming political parties and we had to register them. This problem of too many parties, in my opinion, has contributed to the high number of voided votes because the literacy level of an average voter is too low for that. They have to scan through the long list and find logos of the 63 parties and even the most developed countries in the world have two or at most four parties. I can say in my opinion that the long list of parties also contributed to the problem of high number of voided ballots.

I felt bad that the number was that high. In Ekiti State for example, not less than 20,000 ballots were voided in the three elections. That means that more than 20,000 people went to their polling units from morning and wasted their time and the resources. They went through all the rigour and their votes did not count at the end because they were voided. You remember that the election process this time was not just a one off thing. The electorate first went in the morning for accreditation and waited till afternoon when they cast their votes.

Some spent more than 10 hours at their units and it is sad that after that rigour, their votes did not count. It is regrettable. But we in INEC are coming up with enlightenment programmes and other strategies to ensure that the number of voided ballots is reduced in the subsequent elections. The responsibility is not only for INEC; political parties, the media, and non-governmental organisations are all supposed to be involved in the enlightenment.

How do you think electoral irregularities and violence can be stopped in Ido-Osi and other volatile areas in the country?

What we did and which actually paid off was that we identified some volatile areas in Ekiti State including Ido-Osi, Oye, and we focused our attention on these areas. We were able to reduce irregularities and violence with massive security and we also sent more experienced people to conduct the elections in these areas. That is why we had little incidents from these areas.

In which areas do you think INEC can improve?
One of the areas where we can improve is in the area of voided votes. What we have resolved to do is to go out on massive public enlightenment campaign. We are going to involve the media, political parties and NGOs, unions such as the National Union of Road Transport Workers and artisans to ensure that we do not have this high number of voided votes again.

Again, there is the problem of delineation. We have discovered that in some areas, the number of polling units is too many to handle. The management of those areas became a problem to us. And those are the areas where ballot snatching and violence were carried out. We want to identify them and ascertain clearly those polling units where we think we are going to have problem either because of the number of voters there or their location. I believe that before the next election, there must have been some delineation and redefinition of our polling units.

Also, we had problem with participants in the area of training. Some of the presiding officers were not as efficient as the others. This was so because there wasn't enough time to train them because of the rush. We must give them enough training to make the whole process better.

And next time by 8am, we will ensure that the election process starts in all the units no matter how far they may be from each of the state capitals.

Ballot papers were printed in China with so much money. Why can't we print here in Nigeria since it will save us cost?

We can print here in Nigeria. But in making things better you have to weigh your strategies. Do you want to patronise local printers at the expense of election credibility and security. INEC this time chose to print outside for credibility. And we are happy because both local and foreign observers as well as Nigerians have said that the just concluded elections were the most credible in the country.

Everything good has a price. That is the price, the cost. The ballot papers used for the elections were extremely difficult if not impossible to fake. Even these ones, we heard that some people, not in Ekiti attempted to print fake ones. You also recalled that we printed a different set of ballot papers from the ones used for the botched poll. The ones printed for the cancelled poll were discarded just to make the election credible. This cost money but the objective was to conduct a free, fair and credible poll and it was achieved.

You can imagine that in one of the polling units here, some people even attempted to smuggle the ballot paper used for the previous legislative poll with the hope that we would use the same ballots for the new election. But they were quickly spotted and discarded. It happened in Ilejemeje.

The objective of every Nigerian was to get a credible poll and we went all out for that. In doing so, we had to forgo some things. I am not indicting us but we all know how some Nigerians think. If the materials were printed locally, it is possible that somebody would just go to the printers and get the ballots printed.

Despite that the 2011 poll has been adjudged as being the most creditable in recent time, some candidates are challenging the poll results at the tribunal. How do you react to this?

We have done our best. And I want to refer to my leader, Prof. Attahiru Jega who said that we can't claim that we have conducted a 100 per cent credible poll. But we have done our best compared with the previous elections. That is the beauty of democracy, anyone who is not satisfied would go t the tribunal where judges who are neutral would review the cases and pass their judgment.

We have had only three petitions at tribunal in Ekiti State. It is not our wish to have even one petition but if you compared it to the past where there were 30 cases from a state at the tribunal you will discovered that we have done well.