A Multi-Track Approach to Rethinking Peaceful Elections and Transition in Nigeria

1. A Multi-Track Approach to Rethinking Peaceful Elections and Transition in Nigeria Professor Isaac Olawale Albert Peace and Conflict Studies Programe Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan Nigeria

2. Opening Remarks • I like to start this presentation by reminding us why we are here. The meeting is aimed at bringing together major stakeholders including Election Management Experts within and outside Nigeria, political parties, security agents, academia, civil society organizations, development partners, ECOWAS, among others on the need to work collaboratively towards a peaceful election in Nigeria in 2015. • For achieving this objective, WANEP has recommended multi-track diplomacy framework as its tools of analysis. What this framework tells us is that the threats to the 2015 elections in Nigeria go beyond the government and the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) that everybody seems to be talking about now. • If INEC conducts itself the best professional way and the other stakeholders fail to do what is expected of them, the elections would fail and people are likely to end up calling for the heads of those managing the election. Our argument in this keynote address is that the other stakeholders need to be conscious of what they have to contribute to the process.

3. 2015 Elections and Nigeria’s Future • To many Nigerians, the 2015 elections are very critical. The fears of Nigerians about the elections is aptly captured by a former Head of State, Gen. AbdulsalamiAbubakar who observed in the Punch Newspaper of March 7 2014 that the conduct of the 2015 general elections will determine the unity of the country. He described the elections as “a watershed moment in the history of our dear country”. According to him, “The way we are able to handle this very important event will largely determine how successful we will be in our efforts at remaining a united, indivisible and stable country…Already, the fault lines are apparent and politicians are ready to exploit them to the fullest to achieve their sometimes not so noble objectives”. He sees a contradiction in the political system: the desire of the North to have power returned to it and the determination of President Goodluck Jonathan to run for the second term in office”. The ex-military leader warned that “the unfolding scenario may portend danger to our nation if Nigerians from all parts of the country do not close ranks and put the interest of the nation first”. I see the meeting we are starting today as a laudable response to this kind of call for peace.

4. Other risk factors • To AbdulsalamiAbubakar, the problem is the ambition of President Jonathan and the desire of the North to have power back. • But there are some other risk factors. The first of these problems is the fact that not too many Nigerians are committed to the unity of the Nigerian state. Nigeria’s centenary provides the opportunity for Nigerians to further question the legitimacy of the Nigerian state. • It would be recalled that from 1967 to 1970, the Igbo of the South east attempted to secede from the Nigerian state through a civil war. Since the war, the people have always been manifesting the behavior of a group being forced to be part of Nigeria. Though not popularly supported by the Igbo people, the insurgencies of the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) is a constant reminder of the fact that the Igbo imagine themselves as an endangered species in Nigeria and would want to exit from the Nigerian state if given the opportunity.

5. Other risk factors (ii) • Since the annulment of the June 12 1993 presidential election which Bashorun MKO Abiola was popularly believed to have won, the Oodua People’s Congress has always been pursuing the hope of the Yoruba establishing an Oduduwa State one day. The National Anthem of the group is instructive in this respect. It says: • Homeward journey • Homeward journey the sons of Oduduwa • If we don’t know where we are going • We should not lose consciousness of where the journey started from • Let us dispense with Ogbono soup that fails to draw • And give better attention to okro soup • Homeward journey • Homeward journey the sons of Oduduwa

6. Other risk factors (iii) • The Shariah crisis in the North from 2000 to 2002 is another form of attempt to exit from the Nigerian state. The affected states and communities were simply saying that Nigeria, as presently constituted, is not acceptable to them. The Movement for the Sovereignty of Ogoni People (MOSOP) was recently reported to have declared Ogoniland a sovereign state. Militants in the Bakassi peninsula did same thing. Both of them are merely responding to the frustrating environment within which they live. In the 1990s, the Nigerian state killed SaroWiwa and other Ogoni leaders on the account of their environmental activism but this has not stopped the degradation of the people’s communities by oil companies. The federal government has found it difficult to rehabilitate those displaced from Bakassi ten years after this part of Nigeria was ceded to Cameroon. • BayelsaState has already has already made a nation flag for itself as if it is going to secede from Nigeria. Osun state is moving in same direction. It now calls itself “The State of Osun” and not “Osun State”. There are several other states in which the people are still hiding their national flags awaiting the much expected dooms-day being manufactured by politicians.

7. Other risk factors (iv) • There are several other issues. In the past one year, some ex-militants from the Niger Delta have been threatening to make Nigeria ungovernable if President Goodluck Jonathan is denied the opportunity of making his second term in office come 2015. • On the other hand, some eminent northern Nigerian leaders, most especially Professor AngoAbduallahi has said the North is taking over power in 2015. • The leadership of the All Progressive Party (APC) too throws more pebble in the pool by saying in The Punch of August 8, 2013 that “Any party that fields Jonathan‘ll lose” in 2015. • Nigerians of various ethnic and religious dispositions add to Nigeria’s problems with their bellicose statements that dot the pages of Nigerian newspapers on daily basis.

8. BokoHaram crisis • The most threatening of the problems now faced by Nigeria is probably the ongoing BokoHaram crisis in the North eastern part of the country. In the September 3, 2012 edition of TheNews, AbuaQaqa the former spokesperson of BokoHaram sect in northern Nigeria said “The Nigerian state and Christians are our enemies and we will be launching attacks on the Nigerian state and its security apparatus as well as Churches until we achieve our goal of establishing an Islamic state in place of the present secular arrangement”. • But things have gotten worse since then. The sect now kills more Muslims than Christians and the disposition of the Nigerian security apparatuses towards the BokoHaram crisis is that of helplessness. • The sect compounded Nigeria’s problems recently by tagging “democracy” as its number one enemy thus making everybody now talking about elections to be within a firing range.

9. National conference? • What the foregoing suggests is that those who have grouses with Nigeria would be glad to see the 2015 elections fail. This would help them to attain their objectives of seeing Nigeria disintegrate. Africa would be in a deep trouble should anything happen to Nigeria. The world would be in a deep crisis. That is why all of us must support the government of Nigeria to ensure that the 2015 elections are free, fair and successful. • To prevent this dooms-day prediction about Nigeria, the federal government has put in place a national conference to discuss whatever is wrong with the country and map the way forward. The conference will take off on March 17, 2014 and run for three months. • Should this conference fail to produce results that would fit into the schemes of the different groups contesting the legitimacy of the Nigerian state, more pressure might be brought to bear on the 2015 elections. • The present situation is worsened by the deplorable history of elections in Nigeria. Most of the past elections in the country were flawed. • Those who went to courts to contest the results also the money spent of litigation. What all of these suggest to us is that those charged with the conduct of the 2015 have a lot of problems up their sleeves.

10. Multi-track Framework of Response • The meeting we are starting this morning is aimed at using multi-track diplomacy framework for illustrating the roles that each of us have to play at ensuring the success of the 2015 elections. This framework calls attention to the nine critical stakeholders involved in security challenges. These are (1) government, (2) professional conflict resolution, (3) business organizations, (4) private citizens, (5) research/training/education institutions, (6) activists, (7) religious formations, (8) funding organizations and (9) public opinion/communication.

11. Multi-track Diplomacy

12. Electoral Security Indicators • All the above tracks can be broken into three main categories for the assessment of the risk factors for the 2015 elections: • (i) state actors, namely Track 1 • (ii) non-state actors, namely Tracks 2, 3, 4 and 7 and • (iii) crossing cutting tracts, namely Tracks 5, 6, 8 and 9.

13. State Actors: Track 1 Diplomacy • As earlier observed, Track 1 has to do with the role of the state in ensuring the success of elections in our particular case here. This is the most important of the tracks. What existing studies have shown in Africa is that most election disputes in Africa are related to the disposition of regimes. Regimes that make for free and fair elections have peaceful outcomes but manipulative regimes obstruct smooth conduct of elections. In Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Zimbabwe and even Nigeria some past elections were manipulated in favour of the incumbents and this created huge problems. Note the following: • Executive and Parliament: existence of appropriate electoral laws; provision of adequate financial resources for the conduct of the elections; lack of official interference in how all relevant agencies do their business; existence of judicial and non-judicial mechanisms for addressing human rights violations; appropriate rules of engagement for security agencies. • Electoral justice system: existence of fair, capable, and transparent electoral dispute management mechanisms for processing civil challenges to the electoral process filed by voters and political contestants on matters relating to eligibility, disenfranchisement, campaign practices, irregularities, and other disputed outcomes among others. • Security agencies: professional and transparent conduct of security agencies in terms of capacity to protect election personnel, media representatives, observers and monitors as well as physical and material facilities. A major problem here is selective enforcement of regulations. • EMB: degree of EMB independence; transparent compliance with all relevant sections of electoral laws (registration of political parties, regulation of election financing, constituency delineation, registration of polling stations, political campaigns; election information security etc.); working relationship with security agencies. Public perception of EMB also matters.

14. Non-State Actors: Tracks 2, 3, 4 and 7 • While the state provides the legal framework for elections, it is non-state actors that actually organize at the grassroots level on who the candidates should be and how these people would organize for attaining the objectives of elections. In this respect we need to take note of the following: • Political party system: At the risk of oversimplification, political parties could be categorized as part of non-state actors. One is jumping to this kind of conclusion against the background of the labeling of state stakeholders as being “regulatory, security, political and public administrative in nature”. Though the activities of political parties are regulated by the state in terms of how they could be formed and managed, they have the right to determine what they want to do independent of official controls. However, this observation does not preclude the fact that in some developing democracies, some political parties most especially those in power could be state proxies to the extent that one finds it difficult to differentiate between the ruling party and the state. For our purpose here, one key point to be made is that political parties are regarded as the “weakest link” in the chain of democratic institution building in the context of how they rake up issues that further divide the society and incite violence. Where political parties are driven by national interests, they conduct themselves in manner that supports peaceful election but when the members are driven by selfish interests, problems are created for managers of EMBs. Political parties could support a peaceful electoral process through increased internal democracy in terms of legislating and enforcing organizational rules, compliance with code of conduct, reduction of political exclusion, financial transparent and accountability, transparent nomination of candidates for elections. • Social cleavages: In most multicultural and multi-religious societies around the world, ethnic, religious, and regional bodies intervenes in elections with a view to promoting representation of members in the government. This problem is more serious in a society that has not been able to find forge an inclusive political process but that is still operating on the principle of “winner-takes-all”. Social cleavages in our context would also include major demographic changes in the society such as youth bulge and risks associated with the presence of too many unemployed youths that could be mobilized for electoral violence.

15. Cross cutting stakeholders (i) • Cross cutting stakeholders as problematised here refer to those institutions and engagements that could be owned by both state and non-state actors. These are stakeholders that provide education on elections (Track 5), agents of activism such as a human rights organization (Track 6), and media houses and other agencies of public opinion dissemination (Track 9): • Research, Training and Education: Successful elections are usually knowledge-driven. By this is meant that people are provided with all the information they need to have as a strategy of making them to participate effectively, fairly and non-violently in the election. Without the provision of this knowledge, things could go wrong. For example, voters must be educated not only on how to vote but on the need for proper conduct of themselves so that chances of violence are minimized if not completely blocked. • Activism: The role of activists is to take all legal measures at ensuring that the election process is not marred by physical, psychological and structural violence. Activists also speak for the rights of the physically disabled, women, diaspora communities and other disempowered groups. There are several non-governmental human rights groups in Nigeria. The country also has a National Human Rights Commission.

16. Cross cutting stakeholders (ii) • Funding: Domestic and international financial support for election-related activities most especially reduction of violence. • Media and Public Opinion: The media covers all tracts but I like to include the elite here. What they say during elections have impact on political behavior of voters and the generality of the people. For reasons of religion, ethnicity and safety of some private interests, some elite in the society could choose to sabotage an electoral process or make hate speeches and peddle unhealthy rumours that could further heat up the polity and incite people to violence. There are also situations where the bellicose disposition of the elite is dictated by the way the ruling elite conduct themselves.

17. What more? • The point made above is that the success of any election requires a multi-track framework. There are things that the state must do and things that non-state actors must do. Where there is a lapse in one sector, it would be difficult for the centre to hold. We need to ask ourselves a number of questions at this point. How healthy is INEC at this moment in the history of Nigeria? How ready is the electoral body for a successful election in terms of having the needed resources and commitment to running a free and fair election? • How healthy are the political parties in the country? Events over the last number of years have highlighted the fact that none of the political parties in Nigeria has anything called internal democracy or any credible grievance procedures. This heats up the polity and makes the conduct of any election in the country to be very challenging. In a normal democracy, problems are supposed to be coming from the competition between political parties but in Nigeria we generate more problems within political parties. The issues usually revolve around nomination of candidates for offices. It leads to several court cases, decampment, assassination of opponents, and cabalism within the political parties. As long as this problem remains, it is difficult for us to have a free and fair election. • We have also noticed that the political parties do not address issues but personality. I have been watching with keen interest the ongoing debate on which region should produce the President in 2015. The arguments have been heated on television screens and pages of newspapers. But none of the gladiators have cared to address Nigerians on how to improve the conditions of the people. What each side says is “It is our turn to produce the next President”. • The other problem that has to be considered is the high level of corruption in the Nigerian judiciary. This makes many to doubt the sincerity of the judgments of past election-related litigations. It was in this context that General MuhammaduBuhari (retired), a former Nigerian head of state who went to court several times to challenge his supposed loss of the 1999, 2003, 2007, and 2011 presidential election in Nigeria had this to say about the 2015 elections: “God willing, by 2015, something will happen. They either conduct a free and fair election or they go a very disgraceful way. If what happened in 2011 (alleged rigging) should again happen in 2015, by the grace of God, the dog and the baboon would all be soaked in blood’’ (David Attah and UzomaUbabukoh, “Shocker for Jonathan: Northern govs defend Buhari”, The Punch, May 18, 2012). The best solution to avert this dooms-day prediction is for the tribunals and courts in the country to become more transparent in dealing with the petitions before them.