North/South division tears INEC apart.

North/South division tears INEC apart

october 19, 2014.
30,000 PUs: Jega, commissioners’ stormy meetings
By Jide Ajani


If there were doubts as to he real intentions
behind the determination of Professor Attahiru
Jega, National Chairman of the Independent
National Electoral Commission, INEC, to foist
on Nigeria an electoral process that gives
unparalleled advantage to his northern part of
the country through the instrumentality of a
lopsided allocation of some 21,000 Polling
Units, PUs, as against slightly over 8,000 PUs
for the states of the South, the doubts
disappeared at his ast week’s meeting with
Resident Electoral Commissioners, RECs.
At that meeting, like a “pulpit bully”, and
against convention where decisions at INEC
are reached through consensus, Jega insisted
that RECs should be involved in the admittedly
primitive mode of open voting on a matter that
was as controversial as PUs allocation.
This report presents Jega’s systematic
approach to see through his scheme, starting
with his attempt at power mongering.
MEETING WITH RECs
Driven by a messianic desire to confer
electoral advantage on northern Nigeria
against states in the South, the Chairman of
the Independent National Electoral
Commission, INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega,
upped the ante last week at a meeting with
Resident Electoral Commissioners, RECs.
The meeting took place at the INEC
Headquarters in the Federal Capital Territory,
FCT, Abuja.
It was a stormy meeting, held Wednesday,
October 15, 2014.
Inside sources at the meeting expressed
shock at what was described as the “pulpit
bully” attitude of the INEC Chairman.
Sunday Vanguard gathered that what was
meant to be a meeting of minds, where the
main focus would be the now controversial
lopsided allocation of Polling Units, PUs,
turned out to be a farcical engagement, with
Jega, practically “coercing the commissioners”
There were 30 RECs in attendance.
What was strange, however, was that the
RECs did not know that they were being led
into an ambush by Jega, whose proclivity for
maximum control of INEC had, sometime last
year, seen him write to the Attorney General of
the Federation, seeking clarification about the
powers of his office (details are provided
below).
CONCERN RAISED BY RECs IGNORED
REC after REC, most of those in attendance
expressed concern on the PUs controversy
and “actually counseled that the idea be
shelved until after the 2015 general elections.
“The meeting, which also reviewed the
ongoing Continuous Voter Registration (CVR)
and the distribution of the Permanent Voter
Card (PVC), witnessed several expressions of
concerns by State Electoral Commissioners
whose appraisal of the PVC distribution
process was mostly unsatisfactory,’’ a source
at the meeting said.
“They insisted that the Commission was
moving too slowly and that the limited time
barely three months left for the election may
be insufficient for the exercise if things were
not fast-tracked”.
THE DICTATOR CHARGES
The source further disclosed that Jega waxed
dictatorial:
“Jega insisted on conflating the time pressure
by pressing forward with the much criticized
allocation of new Polling Units.
This came against sound advice by some
commissioners who warned that given the
prevailing public perception regarding the
Polling Units allocation, it may raise
unnecessary ethnic tensions’’.
“Even when he was reminded of the letter from
the Senate Committee on INEC”, the source
continued, he was said to have reacted angrily
that the letter was not a decision of the whole
Senate and has no effect.
Similarly, he was said to have been reminded
of the fact that some groups of Nigerians and
even a political party have gone to court over
the matter and there was need to suspend the
exercise, but he bluntly responded that,
except there was a court order, the Polling
Units must be created.
He may be right on that score: only a court
order, in the strictest sense, can stop him,
especially based on the seeming messianic
inclination.
But more was to come.
For a Chairman who treats some of the
commissioners as his staff, Sunday Vanguard
learnt that even the letter from the Senate
Committee calling for the suspension of the
allocation was read on the pages of
newspapers like most Nigerians.
The letter has not been discussed at any
formal meeting apart from the tangential
mention it got last week.
Jega, it was gathered, had also been sent a
security advisory given the dangerous
dimension the lopsided PUs had taken; but
this was ignored.
Even then, it was gathered that RECs from the
South-West, South-South, South-East and,
interestingly, North-Central, verbally cautioned
Jega.
Sensing that the tide was turning against his
desperation, the INEC Chairman, the source
went on, called for voting which was agreed
to.
PRIMITIVE OPEN VOTING
But he ambushed the commissioners by
directing that the voting process should be
open.
“In the end”, the source went on, “voting was
conducted – in which three, RECs who had
previously advised against the policy and still
maintained their objections, abstained from
participating in the voting because they were
angry and disappointed that, despite the clear
voices of the majority who advised against it,
the Chairman surprisingly called for vote
thereby allowing the matter to degenerate and
brought to a clear-cut sectional dichotomy.
“After the voting, Jega got 13 votes for his
lopsided PUs, and 13 votes against.”
But this was a stalemate. Althou it would have
been 14 for him but one vote was voided
because the administrative secretary who
represented the REC from Benue State had his
vote voided.
Now, had the three abstaining RECs been
counted and the votes of six who did not
attend as well as some Administrative
Secretaries who did not vote, because they
erroneously thought the voting was for
commissioners only were taken to account, it
was clear even to Jega that he was swimming
against the tide of internal and external
stakeholder opinion.
Despite this, less than 24 hours after the
stalemate, the INEC Chairman directed a
Director, one Musa H. Adamu, through a letter
dated, Thursday, October 16, 2014, to all
RECs, to submit report on the implementation
of the PUs in their respective states on or
before Thursday, October 30, 2014.
Nuru Yakubu, who is seen as the architect of
the allocation, Musa Adamu and Jega himself
are all from the North and appear to be
pushing an agenda that places undue
advantage in the hands of the North against
the states of the South.
This was the same way the northern
dominated military regimes created for Nigeria
the lopsided 774 local governments with the
North preponderantly favoured against states
of the South; just as state creation has left the
South-East geo-political zone with just five
states whereas the North-West has seven
states.
Meanwhile, the lopsided local governments
creation engenders a regime of unequal
resource allocation in a nation of clashing
socio-political and economic interests.
It is under this same condition that Jega had
sought extra-legal platform to capture all
available powers in INEC, part of a grand
scheme to ride rough shod over his
colleagues.
JEGA SEEKS MORE POWERS
To get the legal backing to his enormous
power-grab, Jega had written a letter dated
June 19, 2013, to Mohammed Adoke,
Attorney General and Minister of Justice,
asking for clarification on who should be the
accounting officer of the body.
He noted: “Since our assumption of office as a
new Commission in July 2010, having regard
to the fact that neither the Constitution nor the
Electoral Act defined the role of the Secretary
to the Commission as the Accounting Officer, I
have considered myself as such, relying upon
provisions of the Procurement Act, particularly
Sections 18, 19 and 20 of the Act and
Regulations issued by the Bureau of Public
Procurement to the effect that in an MDA/
Corporate procuring entity, the Chief Executive
is the Accounting Officer.
“I have also done this, given the weighty
personal liability which the Procurement Act
places on the shoulders of the Accounting
Officer.
The tradition in INEC had been that a
Permanent Secretary was posted as the
Secretary, until 2008, when INEC, having
regard to the provisions of the Constitution
and Electoral Act appointed its Secretary. The
functions/roles of the Secretary as specified
did not say or imply that he is the Accounting
Officer”.
Jega told Adoke that the clarification was
necessary in the light of the restructuring and
reorganisation going on in the commission as
it prepares for what he described as “better,
effective and efficient service delivery towards
2015 and beyond”.
He insisted that it was “pertinent to seek this
clarification for the avoidance of doubt and in
order to put lingering matters to rest.”
The “lingering matters” Jega spoke about, it
was learnt, might not be unconnected with
what a source described as the frosty
relationship between the Chairman and other
commissioners over the chairman’s powers.
ADOKE CLARIFIES LIMITS OF CHAIRMAN’S
POWERS
In a July 26, 2013 reply to Jega’s request,
Adoke declared categorically that the
Chairman is not the accounting officer of
INEC.
Adoke said: “I have examined relevant
provisions of the law particularly, the
Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,
1999, the Electoral Act, the Public
Procurement Act and extant Financial
Regulations in order to determine whether the
law has expressly provided for the position of
either the ‘Chief Executive Officer’ or
‘Accounting Officer’ of the Independent
National Electoral Commission (INEC).
“Regrettably, it would appear that no such
terminology was used in the statutes
examined. Item 14(1)(a) of Part 1 to the Third
Schedule of the Constitution only provides that
the Chairman shall be the Chief Electoral
Commissioner.
The provision does not state that the ‘Chief
Electoral Commissioner’ is the ‘Chief
Executive Officer.
“I have similarly examined the functions and
powers of the Commission as provided for in
item 15 of Part 1 of the Third Schedule to the
Constitution and sections 2, 3, 4 and 5 of the
Electoral Act and wish to observe that these
are functions and powers that can only be
exercised by the Commission and not by the
Chairman or any individual Commissioner
except as may be delegated by the
Commission under Section 152 of the
Electoral Act or item 15(h) of Part 1 to the
Third Schedule to the Constitution.”
“Consequently, in the absence of any clear
donation of the powers of a Chief Executive
Officer or Accounting Officer by the relevant
statutes, and in the absence of any evidence
to indicate that these functions and powers of
the Commission have been delegated to the
Chairman, I am unable to come to the
reasoned conclusion that the law
contemplates that the Chairman of INEC shall
be the Chief Executive Officer or Accounting
Officer of the Commission,” Adoke explained.
He added that the Electoral Act confers on the
Secretary enormous administrative powers
akin to those of Directors-General, who are
“statutorily the Accounting Officers and Chief
Executive Officers of their various
Commissions”.
Adoke pointed out that this is what obtains in
similar commissions, such as Police Service
Commission, National Population Commission
and Federal Judicial Service Commission.