Ratifying ‘monkey-counting’ party primaries? By Tonnie Iredia

During the military government led by President Ibrahim Babangida, one citizen, Professor Jerry Gana stood out eloquently while canvassing the expedience of value re-orientation of every Nigerian. We all remember Gana’s sermon: If you are a cleaner, you clean well; if you are a teacher, you teach well etc urging everyone to be diligent in what he does. I wonder how Gana must have felt watching some recent party primaries which featured ‘monkey-counting’…. 1, 2, 30, 31, 604 etc. Through this special mode of counting which appeared to have been overlooked by officials, some aspirants got hundreds of thousands of votes in locations where the entire voters on a queue were less than 150,000.

Different groups of Nigerians in parts of the country were probably amused while some just described the trend as politics. But then, many of the scheduled party primaries have since ended with some of those elected as flagbearers announced. What has perhaps remained unclear is whether or not the ridiculous figures attained from the monkey-counting strategy have been officially ratified. There are many reasons why some people suspect that the figures may have been quietly adopted. First, there is not much time to repeat the exercises. Second, those in government may have since integrated the aggrieved into some official posts with a promise for more goodies hereafter.

Third, some of the aggrieved may have been intimidated or threatened with huge reprisals. Fourth, local emotional pressures such as appeals to families and friends of recalcitrant members may have since been perfected.  Unfortunately, none of these steps can help improve Nigeria’s political culture. The nation is likely to continue to have failed elections whether primary or general because the relevant population that is active in the nation’s politics and elections remains the same – a class which believes more in the efficacy of electoral malpractices.   Indeed, over the years, research studies into Nigerian elections have continued to harp on the major finding that the average citizen is ever willing to help others rig elections.

Surprisingly, whenever the government of the day is searching for those who have an inclination to damage Nigeria’s image, its first and perhaps only direction is usually the media. This is understandable because the media can easily check their illegal acquisition of material gains as mandated by Section 22 of the Constitution. In order to stop this, many politicians usually blackmail the media and use the police to sustain false anti-government plots against some media professionals. To the average office holder, the Nigerian media is unpatriotic because it is made up of people who are allegedly fond of washing ‘our dirty linen’ in the public space.  But why are our leaders increasingly soiling our linen?

If patriotism means helping to hide bad publicity, who told the rest of the world that ‘monkey-counting’ has just happened in some type of election in Nigeria? Anyone who thinks it is the media to blame certainly lives in the stone age. Technology has since reduced the world into a global village. What people see, hear and read these days do not necessarily come through the media. We have since entered a new media stage where everyone is now a type of journalist. As a result, by virtue of the internet, the rest of the world last week saw live transmission of monkey-counting by officials of Nigeria’s political parties engaged in the fraudulent practice of miscounting votes to enable the wrong person to be imposed on others as the one elected by his party members. The act clearly presents Nigeria to the world at large, as a fraudulent nation.

Based on what has been established here, how does it sound like when one of those responsible for monkey-counting becomes our next information minister/commissioner who will then be admonishing us all on patriotism, balance reporting and cross-checking of facts before publishing etc.? Rather than ensuring a huge focus on good governance, officials spend so much energy first, on blaming opposition parties and criminalizing political dissent. Then, they get agencies and party members to engage in discordant tunes while responding to criticisms. Indeed, not much time is invested in educating the public on what government does that can bridge the gap between government and the people thereby sustaining the perception that Nigeria has remained stunted.

There is therefore no better time than now for the government of the day to aggressively penalize those involved in last week’s primaries who engaged in monkey-counting. To start with, it is important to discourage the development especially at that early stage of the electoral process otherwise some people may be misled into thinking that there are no repercussions. Second, considering that monkey-counting is a fraud, it is not a party misconduct that can be redressed internally. Third, because a ruling party is usually known for impunity in Nigeria, President Tinubu should ensure that his members who were part of last week’s infamous monkey-counting are sanctioned.

After all, if the president was able to have a rather clean presidential primary exercise throughout the entire country, why can’t everyone in the same party with smaller constituencies be compelled to do same? Beyond the potential damage to the electoral system is the harm to the nation’s image. For putting Nigeria to shame in allowing other parts of the world to watch real time transmission of monkey-counting, all the actors involved should be prosecuted for fraud. What they did was simply obtaining gains by false means which is not different from what the ‘yahoo boys’ are currently facing from the anti-corruption agencies especially the EFCC. If Nigerian politicians continue to soil our linen and nothing happens to them despite the fact that they brazenly do so on social media platforms, we will have too many dirty linens as a country

There is however the argument that last week’s monkey-counting primaries cannot happen during a general election. It is argued that it happened only because it was an internal party matter. That is a weak point because electoral malpractices are not restricted to a particular segment, they happen at every stage. The actors are many, but the principal perpetrator is the politician who often acts directly by himself while using other agents in other segments. Monkey-counting on a queue happens during primaries which is usually done through the open ballot system. In the general election, the same type of voice counting is not in vogue. Instead, havoc is done during collation of votes at local government areas in the night which is why there is the demand for real time electronic transmission of votes.

In simple terms therefore, law makers were engaged in heated controversy over real time electronic transmission during electoral bill debate last year because they knew that to win election through manipulation of votes will be hard to achieve if votes are transmitted electronically. What this suggests is that the monkey-counting style can be introduced to any segment of election at any stage. The greatest evidence we have is the number of officials in INEC who are known to be card carrying political party members. We can thus say with certainty that such persons were sent to the electoral body with the illegal plot to protect one type of monkey-counting or the other in favour of their parties.  Yet, their membership of INEC is constitutionally disallowed.

Patriots must therefore raise their voices against those who perpetuate different types of monkey-counting of election results in Nigeria. If we don’t, many reputable politicians will as usual, vigorously argue that the results were fake which will further puncture INEC’s fragile credibility. That will not be all.  Those who lost will again assemble at foreign embassies among other platforms to in chorus tell the rest of the world that Nigeria is incapable of holding a free and fair election. Amidst these self-condemnations, should other nations respect us? The answer is in the negative and we have no real point in feeling bad when requests for visas by our citizens to travel to other countries are rejected or when we are singled out from immigration queues in other countries to be searched like common criminals whenever we are on a visit to any other part of the world.

Elections are the channels for selecting leaders who can turn around the fortunes of our nation.  If we toy with it, we may never get the type of visionary leadership that Nigeria desires. It is therefore time for civil society groups to begin to design messages that can enable the poor to make good decisions irrespective of material gains provided by fake leaders. The present template by which a person wins an election only because he was dictated and supported by a governor, president or billionaire shows just one thing: we are all morally cheap if we can accept an imposition that was made using our collective treasury.   

The post Ratifying ‘monkey-counting’ party primaries? By Tonnie Iredia appeared first on Vanguard News.