Nigeria has made an effort to clean up voter
registration for elections next February, but holding a credible poll is a
daunting prospect amid chaotic distribution of ballot cards and an Islamist
insurgency that could disenfranchise millions.
Reuters reports Nigeria's last presidential
poll in 2011 was deemed the cleanest to date in Africa's most populous nation,
but since previous elections had been characterized by ballot box snatching,
intimidation of voters by armed thugs and completely made up results, this was
a modest achievement.
The election will test whether Africa's biggest
economy can improve its patchy record on democracy.
"Looking at overt, simple forms of
election manipulation, in 2011, there was a decrease and we think ... that
trajectory is going to continue," Thomas Hansen of Control Risks says.
Yet questions remain over whether the coming
elections will actually continue that trajectory.
The race largely between President Goodluck
Jonathan and former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari on February 14, 2015 is
expected to be Nigeria's most closely fought since the end of military rule in
1999, which will encourage both to play dirty.
A violent Islamist Boko Haram insurgency that
has killed thousands will make voting almost impossible in swathes of the
northeast, possibly disenfranchising millions.
New technology, such as biometric I.D. card
readers, should make ballot box stuffing harder. But glitches have caused
hundreds of thousands of voters to be struck out.
TEST FOR NIGERIA
The election must be seen as credible to avoid
violence by the losing side. In 2011, 800 people were killed after Buhari lost
to Jonathan.
The growing polarization of Nigeria between the
largely Muslim north and majority Christian parts of the south, and ugly
rhetoric on both sides, send ominous signals.
"The demonization of the opponent, the
threats of violence, the accusations of plans to rig the election, the whipping
up of ethnic and religious sentiments. The clouds are indeed dark," wrote
Azuka Onwuka in The Punch daily this month.
When Jonathan ran in 2011, northern elites said
he scrapped an unwritten deal to rotate power between north and south every two
terms. Amid the heightened tension, parties could use minor irregularities as
an excuse to whip up violence.
Three states in the northeast under a state of
emergency will be too dangerous for most election observers.
There are more than a million Boko Haram
displaced who cannot vote unless the law changes to allow them to do so away
from home, a move Parliament is considering.
Borno electoral commissioner Tukur Saad said
the state had registered 11 camps for refugees, but many more were unregistered
in schools and mosques.
Since many displaced did not take their voting
cards when they fled, they may be unable to vote.
"Creating polling units in camps does not
mean people will not be disenfranchised," said Idayat Hassan of the
Abuja-based Centre for Democracy and Development. "How many will actually
have identification of any form with them?"
Insecurity will prevent voting in many places.
Most of Borno's 1.76 million voters won't be able to vote.
"It's a very tricky situation ... We may
only be able to hold the vote for ... 600,000 voters," Saad told Reuters.
TECHNICAL 'GLITCHES'
The electoral commission has culled duplicates
and fake names from the register in order to issue biometric voter cards, in a
bid to curb practices like ballot box stuffing.
But 11.5 million people were, in some cases
wrongly, struck off the list this year, electoral commission (INEC) spokesman
Kayode Idowu said, owing to data collection problems.
The total voter count fell to 58.9 million,
from 70.4 million at the end of 2013. Voters wrongfully removed will have to
queue up to re-register. Some won't bother.
The fact that many were in strongholds of the
opposition All Progressives Congress (APC), such as Lagos, rather than those of
the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP), angered the opposition.
"I am worried this is the beginning of a
plan to disenfranchise Lagosians," Lagos state governor Babatunde Fashola,
himself stuck off the list, said last month.
Another worry for election observers is whether
the card readers will be deployed in time and if they will work.
INEC says it anticipates the inevitable failure
of some readers so extras will be supplied. The readers will run on batteries
to escape frequent power cuts.
Idowu said that if a machine fails and a
replacement is unavailable, the election will be delayed in that area. That
would draw out an already fraught process.
In the Niger Delta, Jonathan's home region, a
history of political thuggery looks set to continue.
Two security sources say
large amounts of weapons are being imported into the region. In past polls,
militias carved out areas where they controlled voting. That could happen
again.
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