THE FOLLOWING ADDRESS BY ATIKU WAS DELIVERED BY HIS RUNNING MATE IN THE 2007 ELECTION SENATOR BEN OBI,TODAY THURSDAY AT THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY.

SUBMISSION BY ATIKU ABUBAKAR, GCON, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA, AT THE PUBLIC HEARING ON ALTERING OF SOME PROVISIONS OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA, 1999 HELD BY THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON THE REVIEW OF THE 1999 CONSTITUTION, AT ABUJA

THURSDAY 15 OCTOBER, 2009.

(Protocol)

I am happy to be here for this public hearing on constitution amendment.  It is, however, regrettable that it has taken this long for this Committee to get to this stage in the process given the urgency of the matter at hand. Nevertheless, it is important that you are holding this hearing on this very important matter.  It is, after all, your responsibility, as law-makers, to make the necessary changes to our grand norm, the Constitution. 

Many proposals for the amendment of our constitution, covering a number of issues, have been made and have been on the table for a long time.  And from the programme of events for this public hearing which was sent to me, this hearing is supposed to cover a number of those issues.  While most of these items are important and need to be addressed, it would appear unreasonable, at this late hour, to attempt to take all of them at once, considering that a number of them are quite contentious.

The way for you to really help avert disaster in this country is to move quickly and focus on what is most urgent at this time, that is, the reform of our electoral system.  We must make votes to count in this country thereby respecting the will of the electorate and making it possible for voters to hold those they elect to account. And it must start from the next election cycle.  Without genuine electoral reform, no amount of constitutional amendment or other legislative changes will move this country from the dire straits in which it is at this moment.

Consequently, I will be restricting myself, in this presentation, to issues bordering on electoral reform not only because it is the most urgent, but also because it is the only issue, as far as I know, on which all Nigerians are agreed, including the President of the Federal Republic. I will, at the appropriate time, make my views known on other important areas of the Constitution that need amending.

While some reforms of our electoral system, such as the reconstitution of the current leadership of the Independent National Electoral Commission, do not require changes to our laws, others do and you must act urgently to effect them now. There is little time to waste; we are virtually running behind schedule. As you know, your work and that of the whole Senate is only part of the process of amending the Constitution.  Any proposed constitutional amendment will have to pass enough state Houses of Assembly in order to have the force of law. That will take time.  SO YOU MUST ACT NOW.

My dear friends, only the wilfully blind will fail to see what will hasten this process: the government and the ruling party.  If the government and the ruling Peoples Democratic Party are committed to this effort, if they are sincere about desiring electoral reform as the overwhelming majority of Nigerians and friends of Nigeria are, then this process can be accomplished very quickly: if the Federal and State governments have the political will, the PDP has the numbers to do it. It is as easy as that. Nigerians know who to hold accountable if this process fails.

Mr Chairman, Distinguished Senators, over the last few months I have had the privilege to express my views on the urgent need for electoral reforms, including the critical elements that must be included if the exercise is to be meaningful. In July this year, I participated in a conference intended to build national consensus on electoral reforms in order to help make the process move forward quickly. 

In August, I made a presentation to the House of Representatives Committee on Electoral Reforms. Thus, my views on this matter are fairly well known. I will share them with you and this Committee in order to assist you in this important work.

Distinguished Senators, I sincerely hope that we are not embarking on another process of deceiving ourselves and our friends.  If we are not, then the reform of Nigeria's electoral process must, in broad terms, be in line with the recommendations of the Electoral Reform Committee headed by Honourable Justice Mohammed Lawal Uwais.  That Committee painstakingly gathered the opinions of Nigerians from across this country, from all works of life, and from across the political spectrum.  So far, the government has shown little enthusiasm towards implementing the recommendations of that Committee.  This is obviously contrary to what was promised Nigerians and the world at the inauguration of this administration.  It is also contrary to what we were promised at the inauguration of the Electoral Reform Committee (ERC). That ERC report must be implemented if we are to have genuine elections where the votes of our people actually count.

Meaningful electoral reform for this country must contain the following among other important elements.

1.      It must guarantee the independence and impartiality of the electoral umpire, the INEC.  Therefore:

(a)               the appointment of the Chairman and Members of INEC must be insulated from the government of the day;

(b)               funding for the INEC must be a first line charge on the Consolidated Revenue Fund.

We have heard arguments that the appointment of Chairman and Members of INEC is an executive function. This argument is not only childish but is also, quite clearly, self-serving. It sounds like the argument of a child trying to cling to its lollipop. If this argument were true, Justice Uwais, whose Committee made the recommendation would, most certainly, know. He was the Chief Justice of Nigeria and a Justice of the Supreme Court. And he has debunked that argument before this Committee. The truth of the matter is that there is nothing inherently executive about the appointment of the Chairman and Members of INEC. If anything, it runs against the grain of natural justice that a party to an election would appoint the umpire to preside over the same election. This does not happen even in recreationary games where the stakes are not nearly as high.

Nigerians can and must be allowed to decide how they want the leadership of INEC appointed and no one must be allowed to stand in the way. We must put back the Independence in the Independent National Electoral Commission otherwise this whole exercise will be a huge joke. In the same vein, the practice of INEC waiting for a President to  release money for its activities or to direct the security agencies to assist it in protecting voters and the ballot is not the mark of an independent agency.

A truly independent INEC should be able to directly seek the assistance of security agencies on election matters, the same way that citizens in genuine democracy can seek the lawful assistance and protection of security agencies.

2.      I welcome the ERC's recommendation that the INEC be unbundled into three separate entities.  However, the appointment of the heads of those three agencies should be in line with the recommendations of the ERC report regarding the appointment of the Chairman and Members of INEC. 

In the future we should explore further improvements of our electoral system. This would include transforming the INEC into a purely regulatory agency so that States Independent Electoral Commissions and their equivalents at the local government level, when properly reformed, should handle all elections.

I believe that efforts at making INEC independent should be extended to the State Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECs) so as to improve their performance. To abolish the State Independent Electoral Commissions and to centralize the conduct of all elections, as the ERC Report and Government White Paper recommend, would not only amount to an erosion of our federal structure but would also make it easier for a ruling party to coordinate electoral malpractice across the country.  

3.      We must stop making a mockery of elections by ensuring that disputes arising from the elections are resolved before the eventual winner takes office.  This will help put an end to impunity. How can we continue to allow individuals whose elections are being contested at the tribunals and courts to assume office and use public resources to fight off the challenges for nearly as long as they want? And to make matters worse the challenger is left out in the cold, paying all his or her legal fees.  This is unfair and unjust and it must stop.

Recently a disputed election to a US Senate seat was finally resolved eight months after the election took place.  Only then was Al Franken, the eventual winner, allowed to seat in the US Senate beside his Democratic Party colleagues.  You may recall that the electoral dispute between Mr. George W. Bush and Mr. Al Gore was resolved before George Bush assumed office as the President.  You may recall also that the electoral dispute between Alhaji Shehu Shagari and Chief Obafemi Awolowo was resolved by the courts before Shagari was sworn in as President.  That was the requirement of the law in the Second Republic. If we are honest and serious about genuine reform, we must bring this law back.

The courts and tribunals, in this respect, have a critical role to play by resisting corruption and pressure from politicians and by imposing discipline on all parties to election petitions to ensure that the petitions are resolved within the prescribed time-frames. How can one justify the fact that, as we speak, there are still election petitions outstanding before the tribunals two and a half years after the elections themselves took place?

4.      One way of expediting election disputes before the tribunals is to reassign the burden of proof as recommended in the ERC report. If a party to an election challenges the outcome of that election, INEC must be made to prove that it has conducted the election according to the rules.  And it must be made to tender the authentic results. INEC has been known, especially under its current leadership, to have announced a winner in an election only to go back to its offices to manufacture the results. That was what happened in the 2007 presidential election and it must not be allowed to happen again.  We must curtail this flagrant propensity by our electoral officials to abuse our electoral process and then hide under the cover of our laws. We must hold them accountable for their actions, otherwise such people will continue to pop up, again and again, to put our electoral regime under undue stress, threaten our democracy and tarnish our reputation around the world.  Mr. Chairman, distinguished Senators, I regret to say that the INEC, under its current leadership, has become the de facto rigging machine.

5.      Genuine electoral reform must ensure the independence of the security forces, especially the police, in election matters. Thus we must change the manner of the appointment and discipline of the Inspector-General of Police and bring it in line with that of the INEC leadership as recommended in the ERC Report. The INEC, the Police and the Judiciary are the most important umpires in our democracy. They must be insulated from undue political interference and influence if our democracy is to survive and thrive.

6.       My Chairman, Distinguished Senators, let me emphasize that these reforms must be implemented before the 2011 elections. They cannot be put off for a future date; they are needed now.  The ERC recommended that the Presidential and Governorship elections take place at least six months prior to the assumption of office of the eventual winners.  This is to enable the tribunals and courts to dispense with cases involving electoral disputes. The implication is that the next general elections should take place latest by November 2010.  Ladies and gentlemen, it means that the reforms must take place now.  We must also have a very clear time table to ensure that the steps that need to be taken are taken so that the next elections can take place by November 2010.

AMENDMENT OF THE ELECTORAL ACT 2006 AS AN INTERIM OPTION

As a people, we must seek renewal and redemption by doing the right things now rather than suspending good in order to live with evil for a little while longer. So if, in the unlikely event, it proves impossible for you to alter the Constitution in good time to accommodate these reforms, you must, at the barest minimum, amend the Electoral Act 2006. Otherwise you would have proved to Nigerians what they have always suspected, that the hype about reforming our electoral system was only meant to buy time. In that case we, as committed democrats, will be forced to fight to secure their democratic rights.

Here are a few examples of the critical amendments that you must make in that regard.

(a)   The amendments must ensure that voters are duly registered and the voters list prominently displayed for a stipulated period of time for voters to verify and make representations in case corrections are needed.  There must also be a legislated mechanism for citizens, including civic leaders, political parties and civil society organizations to certify that the registration and display of voters register have been duly carried out.

(b)   The amendment must include legislation which not only specifies what a valid ballot paper is but invalidates an election in which the specification is not wholly met.

(c)    The amendment must also ensure that votes are counted, the tallies entered and announced at the polling stations, and certified copies of the results given to party, security and civil society agents on the spot. Certainly it would be more difficult to write false results and engage in fraudulent collation if all participating political parties/candidates, security and civil society agents have the results from each polling station.

(d)   You must specify severe penalties for electoral officials, including the highest leadership of the INEC, who fails to turn up to conduct elections or fails to provide election materials for same at the specified times.  

7. My dear friends, let me also say, as I conclude my presentation, that carpet crossing has crept back into our political system through the back door. Governors and legislators have brazenly changed parties using a loophole in the law, which provides for a quarrel before a legislator can abandon his or her party for another.  This is weak and must be amended.  Any elected office holder who abandons the platform on which he or she came to that office, as long as he or she is not forced out, must go back to the people if he or she changes party.  Our political system must not reward those who betray the electorate. It has become common for politicians these days to shamelessly say that there is no morality in politics or better still victory first, morality later. But politics without morality is in fact an absurdity of contradictions.  It can only lead to political opportunism, and shameless and brazen abuse of office.

Distinguished Senators, part of the electoral reform Bills sent to the National Assembly by the President of the Federal Republic includes provisions that outlaw such post-election political prostitution or carpet crossing.  Is it not proper then to ask the President to desist from encouraging and receiving carpet crossers in whatever form or manner they may appear, in his party?  The President should be the one spearheading the effort to restore morality in politics, since he is supposed to be the moral conscience of the nation.

Distinguished senators, let me remind us that the struggle for these electoral reforms is not about any one individual or group whether or not they have aspired to or are aspiring for elective office.  It transcends our individual ambitions and interests.  It is about our country, its present and future, and it is about how we are viewed by the rest of the world.  If we do the right things now, the durable institutions and processes that would result from these reforms will outlive all of us whatever our political leanings, ambitions and interests.  Putting in place genuine electoral reform will enable us and future generations to freely choose those who would govern us and, therefore, make our leaders accountable to us.  These reforms will help to make our elections meet regional and international standards, earn us international respect and enable us to take our rightful place among civilized nations.

It is, therefore, self-serving and unfortunate indeed for the Government to reject the recommendations of the ERC. We have tolerated flawed elections for too long and the INEC under its paymasters has only reinforced the country's perpetual bad habit of organizing elections which have no integrity whatsoever. The President and the National Assembly do not need to be cajoled into showing leadership in order to reverse this embarrassing legacy when countries like Ghana and Sierra-Leone are already showing the way. You must act not as politicians but as statesmen and you must place the long-term interest of our nation over and above your own. You must give Nigerians what they want and nothing short of genuine electoral reform will do.

Let me caution us all that Nigerians may be a very patient people, able to tolerate injustice for a long time.  But historically no group of people in the world has had an inelastic capacity to endure. We should not take our people's apparent docility for granted.  As people elsewhere in the world have demonstrated repeatedly, patience and endurance have limits.  And when those limits are breached the unfolding events are often beyond anyone's control.  We must act now to save this country from that fate. 

Mr. Chairman, Distinguished Senators, this is my submission before you. Thank you for your kind attention and may God give you the courage to do the right thing for this country. And may God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.