Free and fair elections
The chief remedy is not the stringency of the laws on bribery and corruption but the reaction of the general public to their commission by the candidates, their agents, voters and election officials alike. Because of the, at least, superficial abhorrence of the average Western society to them, the cruder forms of outright ‘giving and taking’ of bribes are somewhat rare, rarer than in the developing countries where the crime is rampant and the populace sometimes regard it as normal, giving it such apparently innocuous names as ‘dash’, ‘greasing of the palm’, ‘tip’, ‘reception’, ‘contributions’ or ‘donations to the upliftment or improvement of a particular community’, etc. No laws can eradicate bribery and corruption presented in this form. But since virtually all contestants at elections, by and large engage in the pastime, the effects seem to cancel each other. CHAPTER 15 Electoral Reforms Attempts to reform or improve particular electoral systems began almost with the introduction or adoption of such systems by a polity or a ruling group. From the days of the direct democracy of the ancient Greek City States type to the present day mass but indirect democracy, reform movements had been launched by political activists with a view to enhancing the participation of the people’ in the election or selection of their rulers. The movements, which met with varying degrees of success, aimed, generally, but not exclusively, at the widening of the franchise which was restricted to serve particular interest groups. The restriction of the right to vote or be voted for had been on the bases of some criteria such as birth (nobility), property holding, sex, tax payment, literacy; caste, colour, creed, or an individual’s calling, etc. The reform movements, especially of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, were directed at dismantling barriers erected on the basis of these or other criteria specially contrived to limit the franchise. The agitators for reform also attacked other weaknesses of electoral systems such as constituency delimitation or districting, voter registration, bribery and corruption, the system of election itself, as well as the manner and mechanics of casting the ballot.
Advocacy or implementation of electoral reform was, more often than not, stoutly resisted and opposed with vehemence and passion by those who regarded such reforms as undermining their entrenched position in the scheme of things. Even as mild a piece of reform as the Reform Act of 1832 whereby ‘rotten boroughs’ were abolished and franchise extended from about 250,000 to 720,000 out of Britain’s total adult population of ten million, evoked from the Duke of Wellington the horrified comment: ‘The barriers of the constitution are broken down; the waters of destruction have burst the gate of the temple’.
The tortuous history of the struggle which women of England and elsewhere had to wage to secure the right to vote is widely known. Political thinkers were unwilling to concede that women can, at all, possess a capacity for independent and judicious thinking. When at last the Representation of the People Act, 1918, was passed, franchise was conferred on women of the age of thirty years and above compared with twenty-one years and above for men. It was only in 1928 that women were granted equal status with men. Even the ballot box caused in England something of a minor revolt. Stanley Hyland in his book, Curiosities from Parliament, has observed: ‘From the very beginning, and for almost two centuries, the ballot was an obnoxious and repugnant, un-English practice ... It was also, at various times, cowardly and mean, poisonous, petty, loathsome, unmanly, dastardly, womanly, exotic American and base.’ The ballot, observed Sir Thomas Elphinstone, ‘is a sneaking measure which Englishmen should set their faces against and which is only practised in countries inhabited by slaves’. ‘God forbid,’ prayed the Honourable George Lamb, ‘that the time should ever arrive when a British voter would be obliged to sneak off into a corner to vote’.
‘It puts a mask on an honest face’, said O’Connor. ‘The mendacity box,’ Sydney Smith called it. Although organized opposition to the ballot box emanated from certain vested interests, the opponents included some outstanding political thinkers of the time also, like John Stuart Mill who argued: ‘Secrecy snaps a citizen’s courage, promotes evasion, tempts downright lying. Remove publicity and its checks, then all the mean motives of mankind (their malice, petty rivalries, pique, the prejudices that men would be ashamed to put into words even to themselves) skulk to polling booth under a disguising cloak’.
But in 1872, the ballot came to England (in U.S.A. and Australia it had arrived even earlier- in 1856 in Australia). Today it has been universally accepted and few, if any, would plead for elimination of the ballot box, so indisputably imperative it has proved for a healthy electoral arrangement. The electoral system initiated, nurtured and developed elsewhere (mainly in Europe and U.S.A.) were exported and transplanted in the rest of the world where Europeans once ruled. In Nigeria, for example, we swallowed, hook, line and sinker, the British model of electoral system, the simple plurality system or the ‘first past the post’ relative majority system under which a contestant wins an election by scoring only one vote over and above any other candidate, and the total votes cast for the winner may represent only a minority of the total votes cast at the election. The simple plurality system was used during all previous elections held in Nigeria from 1951 through to 1979. The iniquities of such system have been demonstrated time and again by political scientists in almost every country where the system is used. Must Nigeria continue to use such system without adaptation simply because the British, its ‘originators’, the U.S.A., Canada, New Zealand, the first generation copiers of the system, cling to it despite criticism of it election after election? Even Australia, one of the earlier adopters of the system, has begun to change its attitude. The system was initially used in Australia but it has been gradually replaced by the preferential system which ensures that a candidate must have an absolute majority to get elected. Some European countries like France, Sweden, West Germany, etc., use the proportional representation system which takes many forms. Nigeria should initiate electoral reforms of its own, based on the experience gained during the elections held in the country since 1951.
The problem of electoral reform should be viewed in its overall contextual reality bearing in mind the peculiar features of the electoral system under consideration, its goals and its relevance to the conditions of the country using it. In particular the relationship of the electoral system to the stability and survival of the political system through orderly change brought about by the reform. The features of the electoral system impinge on the political system and political situation in a country for, after all, the electoral system is neither the final cause nor the panacea for all the political ills of a country.
The essential features of the Nigerian elector system as seen through the spectrum of the 1959 and 1979 general elections’, particularly the latter, include the following:
1. compilation of an electoral roll at registration centres or through house to house enumeration of voters a few months prior to the conduct of the election;
2. single-member constituency plurality system whereby one representative is elected from each territorial constituency and winning election is on the basis of valid votes polled and according to the ‘first past the post’ principle;
3. contemporaneous elections to the national and State legislative houses as well as for Presidential and Gubernatorial positions, to be held every four years with a provision for by-elections between one general election and another;
4. use of paper ballot and ballot box, i.e. manual voting as opposed to use· of voting ·machines;
5. open candidacy: __ no legally laid down procedure for the selection of candidates by political parties or groups which are thus free to devise their own procedure, though the selection or nomination is subject to scrutiny or screening by FEDECO in 1979;
6. universal adult suffrage for all persons ages 18 years or over in 1979 and twenty-one years and over in 1959 when the franchise was restricted to males in the Northern Region;
7. optional registration of voters and voluntary voting; 8. excessive cost of electioneering. The list of features is not exhaustive but is sufficient for the purpose of appraisal of the need or otherwise for electoral reform, a subject that should have been canvassed not only by election managers but by Nigerian politicians and academics as well. Unfortunately, some among the last two groups that should have taken the lead in the campaign for electoral reforms concerned themselves more with wild allegations of election rigging and condemnation of any measures that the Electoral Commission proposed to introduce in the interest of free and fair election and minimization of costs of running the elections. The Commission, in the Report on the Operations Federal Electoral Commission (published in September 1979 immediately after the conduct of the elections) put up certain proposals for the improvement of election machinery and the proposals that follow here are complementary to FEDECO proposals.
The processes, practices and procedures usually associated with election administration begin with the enumeration of voters and terminate with the disposal of election petitions. From the discussion of what took place at these and intermediate stages of the election process during the 1959 and 1979 general elections, the following areas have been identified as those requiring reform. Enumeration of voters The compilation of the electoral roll should be a continuous activity to be carried out by local registrars of births, deaths, and marriages where these exist and/or by local electoral officials. The register should be compiled in such a way as to permit correct identification of the elector on the day of the poll. The elector should, on being registered, be given an identity card with his photograph thereon which should be presented to the electoral official at the polling station on the day of the poll. If an identity card o(this kind cannot be introduced because of cost, the voter’s registration card without the voter’s photograph may suffice, but the card must be produced in duplicate, each copy with a voter’s thumbprint on it. The original should be given to the voter while the duplicate or counterfoil is retained by the Electoral Commission for the purpose of matching the two on the day of the poll. The identity or voter’s registration card is required to check impersonation of voters on polling day. A continually revised register ensures inclusion of almost all eligible voters until the ‘qualifying date’ which should be the date of the issuance of writs for the conduct of election. Registration of voters should, like registration of births and deaths, be compulsory and the two activities should be carried out by one authority or agency, using the house to house enumeration technique or by establishing registration centres at which all eligible electors must register or both methods.