NIGERIA: INADEQUACIES OF THE INDEPENDENT NATIONAL

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ABUJA 000502

SIPDIS


CAIRO FOR MAXSTADT


E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/13/2013
TAGS: PGOV PREL KDEM PINR NI
SUBJECT: NIGERIA: INADEQUACIES OF THE INDEPENDENT NATIONAL
ELECTORAL COMMISSION


Classified by Ambassador Howard F. Jeter. Reason: 1.5(d).



1. (SBU) SUMMARY: After three months delay, INEC published
some voter lists week of March 3. With national elections
just six weeks away, INEC has missed a key legal deadline.
Challenges are almost certain. INEC,s performance remains
erratic, and non-transparent. INEC will have to work
efficiently but swiftly to fill the gaps necessary for
minimally adequate logistical preparations. Given INEC,s
history, this feat is unlikely. Even if the Commission
should succeed, its credibility is so badly damaged that many
Nigerians would not believe it. END SUMMARY.


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IN A MIRE OF ITS OWN MAKING
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2. (C) Nigeria's Independent National Election Commission
(INEC) remains unprepared to conduct elections in April.
While the clock ticks and anxiety mounts, INEC dithers,
equivocates and prevaricates. Past and present logistical
problems have combined with abominable communications and a
perception of favoritism toward the ruling PDP to engender a
massive credibility crisis for INEC and its chairman, Dr.
Abel Guobadia.



3. (C) The biggest grouse has been INEC,s handling of
voters, registration. Although INEC conducted the
registration in September, it has been unable to provide a
credible estimate of registered voters, let alone a final
list. Early on, Guobadia claimed 69 million people
registered after the first round in September; this number
was widely disputed. On one hand, many Nigerians decried
under-registration by as much as 50 percent while other
Nigerians claimed that improper multiple registration had
been rampant. Meanwhile, computer glitches in both Lagos and
Kano states, Nigeria,s two most populous states, might have
affected the inclusion of several million people on the final
voters list. Under intense pressure, Guobadia is now
claiming 67 million total registrants, though days after the
most recently scheduled date for displaying the lists, names
have been posted in only a tiny fraction of the registration
centers. In any event, the Electoral Act of 2002 (facing a
legal challenge from the Presidency) stipulates that lists
must be displayed not less than 60 days prior to the
election. With voting scheduled for April 12 and April 19,
INEC has already missed a key deadline -- even if lists
magically appear in all registration centers tomorrow.



4. (SBU) INEC now plans to display the lists in Local
Government Area headquarters. Voters in large LGAs
(primarily rural areas) will have to travel considerable
distances to ensure that they are registered and protest any
errors. The original five-day process has been expanded to
nine days, evidently to account for the delay in beginning
the display. There are reports sourced to INEC officials of
review processes having gone very well in some areas that,
according to Embassy contacts, never saw a list posted. One
opposition politician reported that the list displayed in his
LGA in Borno contained names from the Jos area of Plateau
State rather than those of inhabitants of his LGA. The
review process does not allow for adding names to the list,
which could be a problem for many candidates, as it has been
reported that some may not be registered voters themselves (a
prerequisite for running for office). In a March 10 meeting
between officials of political parties and Mission officers,
one candidate said he had no idea whether he was registered
and wondered how many others in the room could say for
certain that they were.



5. (C) While INEC may have mishandled registration and other
aspects of preparations for the April elections, it has been
a stickler when measuring the compliance of candidates with
its regulations. INEC told the media recently that the vast
majority of candidates at all levels could not be approved to
contest the elections because of mistakes and omissions in
their applications for candidacy. INEC said it would extend
the deadline for candidate submissions to March 11. COMMENT:
INEC's six screening committees will have less than a week to
review candidates' submissions. If the screeners apply
INEC's rules very strictly, complaints will be legion,
especially if most of the disqualified are from opposition
parties (likely, since there are 29 opposition parties set
against the ruling PDP). If the screeners are too lenient,
post-election challenges could result in ballot-box winners
being divested of the fruits of victory. END COMMENT.



6. (C) In addition to troubles with the registration, INEC
is also confronted with difficulties in arranging election
logistics. No sample ballot has been provided for
examination or for training poll workers and observers,
though we have been given a general description. The
presidential ballot will have 19 political party logos
running down the center of the page, each with the acronym of
the party, but no party or candidate names. Voters are to
place a thumbprint next to the party symbol of the preferred
candidate. This is a bit tricky as the thumbprint space for
each party will alternate sides between the left and right
margins from the top to the bottom of the page (a "butterfly
ballot" of sorts). For all other elections, the ballots will
look the same, except with 30 party logos and acronyms,
whether or not the party has a candidate in the particular
local, state of National Assembly election. COMMENT:
Opposition parties (other than the ANPP) complain that this
approach makes it difficult for voters to grasp the import of
their votes. Voters need not know the name of their
preferred candidate for an office, but they must know his/her
party affiliation. Illiterates will have to be able to link
a preferred candidate to a symbol (umbrella for the PDP, ear
of maize for the ANPP, etc.). Those who can read will have
to take great care, since most parties have three-letter
acronyms, a number of which (PDP, PRP, PSP) are not readily
distinguished one from the other, especially when a butterfly
ballot is being used. The fact that numerous candidates have
switched parties in recent months will add to the confusion.
END COMMENT.



7. (U) INEC,s reassignment of key staff will present other
problems. First, the Director of Operations (described by
IFES as the Commission's &most effective staff member8) has
been reassigned to a non-operational position. Two hundred
fifty INEC staff were suspended for allegedly selling
registration cards or accepting bribes. INEC has not
indicated when these officers will be replaced. Many
regional elections officers were transferred to another state
recently, and numerous other reassignments throughout the
Commission took place during the last month. Guobadia stated
that there would be about 500,000 INEC poll workers at
120,000 polling stations, but no logistical plan for moving
personnel or materials throughout the country has been
formulated, to say nothing of funded.



8. (C) According to the Chairman, INEC will supply each
polling station with exactly 500 ballots, for a total of 60
million (seven million fewer than his own estimate of the
number of voters). This also raises the obvious question of
where to place each booth. If they use the same locations as
during registration, there will be numerous complaints. A
major complaint in the registration exercise was that booths
in some (mostly rural) areas had excess material, while in
other areas the booths were grossly under-equipped. INEC
seems to be on course to replicate this error on the election
days. INEC could create new polling stations, but that would
entail even more unfunded costs. The brother of INEC
Secretary Hakeem Baba-Ahmed reported that many Commissioners

SIPDIS
are in a quandary: They do not want to give more materials
to one station than another, yet they lack the resources to
fulfill existing requirements, to say nothing of providing
one polling station for each 500 voters (reportedly a
requirement laid down by "politicians"). But if a
registration site had 1000 bone fide registrants how will the
extra 500, whose names will appear on lists at other sites,
know where to go and which site will be theirs?


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CODE OF CONDUCT ) WAITING TO BE BORN
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9. (C) A code of conduct for the political parties is still
in the works. A draft has been in existence for several
months. On February 28, Guobadia made reference to a code of
conduct prepared by the Commission that had been delivered to
the parties. He stated the code would be binding on the
parties and urged each of them to sign it. As of now, none
of the 30 parties has signed the code. COMMENT: Party
leaders argue that their respective constitutions contain
codes of conduct and that they should abide by these. Most
opposition parties do not trust INEC to administer a code of
conduct fairly, fearing that the Commission will favor the
ruling PDP. END COMMENT.



10. (C) INEC has added to its woes by inserting itself into
intra-party squabbles. In Jigawa, INEC was involved in an
ANPP showdown as two different factions submitted their
respective candidates for governor. Lack of credibility on
INEC's part meant INEC's decision was not final, and the case
went to court, with a decision finally emerging on March 3.
Internecine conflict over the ANPP nomination for the Kano
gubernatorial race continues. In Adamawa, INEC has managed
to announce two "official" ANPP gubernatorial candidates,
although neither is the original candidate submitted by the
ANPP. Meanwhile, INEC Secretary Hakeem Baba-Ahmed reportedly
told ANPP figures that that some INEC Commissioners have
complained that Guobadia meets with President Obasanjo &too
regularly.8 True or not, the allegation further weakens the
organization,s claim of impartiality and independence.



11. (C) COMMENT: With elections approximately one month
away, INEC's poor performance to date suggests two critical
problems. First, the Commission likely will no longer be
capable of putting in place the logistics required to carry
out its election day mandate. Thus far, INEC's response to
its own shortcomings has been a mixture of equivocation,
evasion and prevarication. While one can fudge the display
of voter lists (at least until the failure to display them as
required by law leads to a court injunction),the failure to
establish and resource the 120,000-plus polling places
required on April 12 and April 19 will be much harder to
finesse. Second, the Commission's poor performance to date,
especially its failure to communicate effectively with the
parties, suggests that vast swathes of Nigeria's elite will
not believe anything Commissioners and INEC staff say in the
future -- even in the unlikely eventuality that INEC proves
able to meet the huge logistical challenges it faces.
Opposition politicians score INEC low on across the board and
routinely portray the Commission as a tool of the ruling
party. Even some PDP adherents privately criticize INEC,
arguing that its lack of credibility will call into question
an election that President Obasanjo can handily win
legitimately.



12. (C) In short, it may not matter much what INEC does
between now and the elections, the Commission's "negatives"
are too high for it to regain broad public confidence. Talk
of postponing the elections and/or establishing some sort of
interim government to administer them grows daily. Several
of the larger opposition parties have now sought a delay, and
the NDP reportedly has filed suit, contending that INEC's
failure to "display the authentic voter registration list" 60
days before the election means the elections cannot legally
take place. Pressing from the other direction is the
constitutional requirement that voting for President must be
complete 30 days before the current Administration's term of
office ends on May 28, 2003. Were the Commission itself a
candidate for office, it would be time to pull out of the
race in favor of someone with a chance of winning.
Unfortunately for Nigeria, there is no constitutional
alternative to INEC.
JETER
JETER