 |
The governorship and State Assembly polls in Rivers State were marred by violence and disruption with over 470,000 out of 2,537,520 (19 per cent) registered voters denied the chance to vote due to official cancellations. Many more stayed away from the polls due to well-justified fears of violence.
Violence had a serious impact on voters, election officials, and party supporters. The All Progressives Congress (APC) alleged that 19 persons were killed on Election Day with election observers able to confirm several of the most prominent deaths, notably, killings in Asari Toru and the assassination of APC leader Clever Orukwowo.
The inflation of announced votes in many local government areas made it impossible to know how many voters turned out for the polls but in six of the more closely contested council areas, (including Port Harcourt), official turnout ranged between 14-25 per cent of registered voters. From what we observed, that seemed a more plausible turnout.
Some results seemed to defy any effort to acknowledge reality. In Buguma town, Asari Toru Local Government Area, where security forces finally ended with shooting and clashes mid-morning on the Election Day, when one gang leader was beheaded, official results later recorded turnouts of 84-90 per cent in the town (87 per cent for the whole local government area).
In Gokana, where five wards were cancelled due to clashes and theft of election materials, the remainder of the local government area recorded an official turnout of 94 per cent. It was one of three local government areas with ‘turnouts’ between 93-95 per cent. The others are Akuku Toru and Khana local government areas, despite repeated reports of disruptions.
Significant efforts by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the police to improve security and election processes were simply overwhelmed by the breadth of violence and intimidation. Election officials were assaulted and abducted in incidents across the state and they often faced intolerable pressures from political actors.
INEC’s efforts were further complicated by a breakdown in relations with the APC, whose protests delayed and disrupted polls in many parts of the state.
Parts of the state that were more closely observed like Port Harcourt Local Government Area saw noticeable improvement in conduct. The Smart Card Readers (SCRs) were used with minor problems. Voting seemed normal and there was reasonable collation. However, these areas were swamped by those who returned massive official results that were both implausible and extraordinarily one sided.
The elections are unlikely to be widely accepted as credible. In local government areas seen across the state as competitive, official figures repeatedly gave the APC less than 2 per cent of the votes. Official turnouts at an local government areas and ward level, ranging as high as 95-99 per cent, stood in stark contrast to observations made on Election Day.
The failure to establish credible polls in Rivers State underlines the challenge that INEC faces in supporting free elections in states where political actors can use extraordinary amounts of cash to sponsor violence, intimidation of both voters and the manipulation of polls.
The outcome in Rivers demands that INEC swiftly releases all available data on the results of the poll, so that areas of most obvious abuse will not be rewarded with silence. It should follow up existing recommendations from the European Union (EU) and others to investigate the polls as a matter of urgency.
After repeated failures to rein in abuse in Rivers and other resource-rich states, INEC and the Federal Government need to consider extraordinary measures to address entrenched political practices that frustrate the prospect of meaningful elections.
Rivers’ election as the most extensively disrupted
The elections in Rivers State were almost certainly the most extensively disrupted in the country. Polls were cancelled in local government areas with a population of at least 458,089 voters – just under 20 per cent of the voting population in the state.
Violent incidents were reported throughout the day, the worst of which occurred in the morning of Saturday, April 11. These included several reported deaths and attacks on party representatives, journalists and election officials.
INEC rescheduled voting until the following day in areas where it retained election materials but no election had started on Saturday(April 11), but allowed voting to continue in many impacted areas. Low voter turnout of around 20-30 per cent was recorded in the majority of the wards observed. Only a few wards had visible turnout of around 50 per cent.
In an improvement from the presidential elections, majority of the locations visited where elections had been disrupted or failed completely, were recorded as either having voting cancelled or postponed.
A notable example of implausible exceptions to this was Ward 14 in Obio Akpor Local Government Area, which did not see materials released from the ward centre till close to 2pm yet still reported a 96 per cent voter turnout.
Overbearing control
of polling units
It is important to note that in all the local government areas visited by the SDN, some polling units were relatively calm and normal in their conduct (noting that all were starting late). That said, observers repeatedly encountered polling units where party officials and youths had overbearing and sometimes overtly violent control of polling units.
In one particular case, our observers witnessed a young woman having a bottle smashed on her head merely for the act of coming to accredit to vote. In other locations, such as Kpite (Tai Local Government Area), voting was relocated to halls controlled exclusively by a political party.
Ballot boxes, election
materials stolen
This was recorded across a number of local government areas. Among those that provided details election officials were assaulted in five separate wards in Ikwerre Local Government Area with a supervising presiding officer hospitalised. In neighbouring Etche Local Government Area, officials were abducted and others assaulted.
In at least two local government areas, there were clashes that resulted in confirmed deaths, while accounts of other incidents, suggest that final tallies of fatalities will be significantly higher. In Buguma (Asari Toru Local Government Area), one man was beheaded amidst heavy fighting and in Ogba/Ndoni (ONELGA), APC leader Clever Orukwowo was shot and killed by assailants on motorbikes.
The fighting in Buguma seems almost certain to produce a higher tally of deaths with shooting in the area commencing Friday (April 10) night, resuming the following morning. The fighters only ceased fire on the arrival of security reinforcements only to resume hostilities on Sunday (April 12).
Lack of confidence
The APC went into the governorship election vehemently expressing no confidence in the state leadership of INEC, having objected to the absence of results sheets at polling units during the presidential and National elections, which SDN was able to verify in some cases. Their distrust predated the polls but was reinforced by results from the first weekend which contradicted both observer and vote-tracking data. The APC had already proven disruptive in the first election where its members blocked voting in numerous units where results sheets were allegedly not present. During the governorship election, trust between APC and the state INEC office was virtually non-existent.
In the morning of the Election Day, APC agents and supporters had blocked the distribution of materials from ward centres (RACs) in a wide range of local government areas. Allegations ranged from results sheets being removed to a lack of key materials. Delays were noticed by our teams in Obio Akpor, Emohua, Ikwerre, Khana, Gokana local government areas, while reports from across the state underlined the extent of the problem.
Delays in some areas were severe. For instance, in Obio Akpor Wards 1,3 and 14, materials and officials remained trapped until about 2pm when police dispersed protesters with tear gas. In many other areas, these disputes were a contribution to accreditation not starting till 11am or later.
The protests over election materials led to several consequences. They were the main cause of rescheduling of elections in a number of wards across the state. Ironically, they also contributed to a breakdown in election procedures. At a number of locations visited by SDN observers, ad hoc staff were improvising to make up for lost time. This included allowing voters to accredit and then vote immediately and the use of manual accreditation rather than attempt to deal with issues affecting SCRs. Finally, in busy areas, it helped to push elections into the night, thus making it easier for results to be manipulated.
Governorship elections fell into two basic categories
In a number of Local Government Areas, there were units and local government areas’ results that were consistent with observation during the day – modest or low turnouts, – some competiveness in the split of vote and orderly collation was taking place in at least some cases.
These local government areas tended to be either urban or ones where there was a balance of influence between party agents, INEC officials and security services that kept conduct of the election within bounds of credibility.
In other areas, the results were either in direct contradiction of observations during the day, or had turnouts that ranged as high as 99 per cent of registered voters. Sometimes, this affected the whole council areas (such as Khana with a 93 per cent turnout) but often extreme numbers were buried within local government areas which had a mixture of low and extraordinarily high official turnouts.
The most extreme instance was recorded in Asari Toru Local Government Area, where there were was from Friday until mid-Saturday morning, with a number of deaths reported in the main town of Buguma. A volunteer observer described the town as a “ghost town” by midday on Saturday, yet wards within Buguma recorded voter official turnout as high as 89 per cent (with 87 per cent across the whole council area).
In Obio Akpor Local Government Area (Port Harcourt), international observers had visited a number of polling units in Ward 10 where officials gave accreditation numbers that were around 10 per cent with the exception of one unit reporting 62 per cent turnout. The ward later recorded an 83 per cent turnout in election results.
In Gokana Local Government Area, LGA there were no elections in five due to disruptions and theft of materials, yet in the remainder of the local government, a 95 per cent voter turnout was recorded with 97 per cent of the vote going to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Only half of the wards recorded any voided votes.
Votes for parties not on the ballot paper
In a number of council areas, parties that were not on the ballot paper appeared on the result sheets at the local government level. Though the votes recorded by these parties were small, the discrepancy was significant as there were only two possible explanations. It was either the officials at a low level were making extraordinarily compounded errors which allowed them to entre votes against parties not on the ballot, or, results were being written without reference to ballot papers. These errors were presumably perpetuated through at least three layers of collation between units, wards and council areas as they were still being reported in returns to the state office.
In Asari Toru Local Government Area, reported earlier for its 75 per cent voter turnout despite a raging conflict – two parties that were not on the ballot, featured (UDP, eight votes, NPP, 21 votes). Other local government areas where parties that were not on the ballot were recorded included Omuma Local Government Area (three parties not on ballot), Port Harcourt Local Government Area (two parties not on the ballot), Opobo/Nkoro Local Government Area, Akuku Toru, and Ogu Bolu LGAs.
In Obio Akpor Local Government Area (Port Harcourt) SDN tracked the case of three wards – Wards 1, 3, and 14 – where distribution of election materials were obstructed by APC protesters. The materials eventually left the ward centre around 130pm and elections were noted in a limited number of units after 2pm while others appeared to be absent. Official results for these wards recorded turnouts of 43 per cent (Ward 1), 83 per cent (Ward 3) and 96 per cent (Ward 14).
Preventing a recurrence
The governorship election appears set to be rated as highly unsatisfactory by almost all the actors – although for often contrasting reasons.
• More than 500,000 people in the state would have had no chance to participate in the election (475,166 of whom faced official cancellation of their polls), while turnouts as low as 15 per cent across a number of local government areas suggested many more were intimidated into staying away from the polls;
• INEC ad hoc and permanent staff faced assaults, intimidation and abductions across the state. While there were credible accounts of collusion in the manipulation of results, both permanent and temporary election officials also faced brutal pressures and assaults;
• The PDP would feel it could have won the election in a free and fair contest but the disruption from APC and the apparent manipulation of results has virtually eliminated any chance of this being widely accepted;
• Opposition parties can point to results from the election which defy all logic and to breakdowns in election procedures that left results wide open to fraud.
Under existing law, opposition parties will face an uphill struggle obtaining a cancellation of the Rivers poll. In fact, current laws provide perverse incentives in favour of rigging turnouts as high as possible as the onus is on the plaintiff to discredit votes one by one.
INEC is again placed in a difficult position where current tradition will have it defending the detail of results produced in Rivers regardless of the poor credibility of some of the official numbers.
The outcome in Rivers state (along with reports from Akwa Ibom) underline the difficulty of holding free elections in high stake states where extraordinary amounts of money are available to influence outcomes. The evidence appears clear that the technical and procedural changes from INEC that have made headway in other parts of the country are insufficient to make inroads on the challenges in these states.
In our view, there is a need to recognise the entrenched nature of challenges to free elections in such states and pursue a two-track solution.
The solutions are: that government should lead efforts to change the culture of political parties and their approach to elections – with an emphasis on limiting scope for fuelling political violence, bribery and intimidation; and that INEC must recognise that volatile parts of the country will require special measures to prevent fraud and extraordinary investment in election oversight until their situation is normalised.
No comments:
Post a Comment