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The biggest challenge facing Nigerians this year
will no doubt be the April elections, at which new state and federal
legislators, new governors (in the majority of states), and a new
president will be elected. In effect, the ‘story’ of the next four
years will be written in the coming months.

The question on the minds of many Nigerians is
this: will the 2011 elections be more credible than the 2007 elections,
which were roundly condemned by local and international observers?

Signs abound that the kind of change Nigerians can
believe in is nowhere in sight. The delegates’ congresses of the ruling
PDP have been attended by protests and violence in several states. Last
week, the Oyo State congress degenerated into a gunfight that claimed
the lives of at least three persons.

A major test of INEC’s readiness to conduct
credible elections will be the voters’ registration exercise, scheduled
to commence on January 15. Direct Data Capture machines are already
being distributed across the country. It is vital that Nigerians keep
an eye on the registration, knowing that there can be no credible
elections without a credible register of eligible voters.

We expect INEC at the end of the registration
period, to formally release a list of all ‘captured’ voters, in time
for errors to be corrected and amendments made well before the
elections. A May 2007 statement released by the Academic Staff Union of
Universities, which observed the 2007 elections, noted that during the
now heavily discredited elections, “[t]here was widespread and
deliberate manipulation of the Voters’ Registers (sic) lists. Not only
were there no display of the Voters Registers (sic) lists in most wards
and local governments; where there was a display, a lot of names were
omitted.” INEC should ensure that there is no room for manipulation
this time around. We need to point out that the electoral commission
should not make the mistake of assuming that electronic data capture
will prevent manipulation – in most cases technology remains
subservient to human will, and the most sophisticated systems are
always at the mercy of manipulation by determined human intelligence.

The theft, a few weeks ago, of a number of these
machines, from a storage facility at the Murtala Mohammed International
Airport, is evidence that electoral manipulators remain as interested
as ever in the electoral process.

Nigerians should remember that in the months
leading to the elections, candidates will hop off their high horses in
a bid to woo the electorate. Governments will back down on
controversial policies, in a bid to avoid alienating voters; and
long-withheld salaries and pensions will be hurriedly paid. Communities
will be flooded with boreholes and culverts and free textbooks and all
manner of heaven-on-earth promises.

At times like this, there is nothing more vital
than a healthy sense of skepticism on the part of the electorate. The
redrawing of electoral maps in the recent past – from the PDP’s loss of
three states in a Southwest it once controlled, to the ACN’s loss, a
week ago, of the Ikorodu Constituency II seat to the PDP – is evidence
that the votes of Nigerian citizens actually count, despite evidence to
the contrary.

The world’s attention will increasingly focus on
Nigeria as April approaches. Nigeria’s population and resource wealth
means that every time we go to the polls, the world will be watching
with bated breath. The fact that the most recent elections in Kenya,
Ghana, Zimbabwe and Cote d’Ivoire all ended in stalemate (with
bloodshed in some cases) will not be helping matters.

When 2010 kicked off, the biggest challenge facing
Nigerians was finding out where their elected president was, and what
the state of his health was. In the absence of leadership, the country
entered the New Year ravaged by fuel scarcity. This year, thankfully,
we have been spared that. On several other fronts however, nothing has
changed. We are still generating less than 4,000MW of electricity,
despite all the ‘reform’ noise of the current administration.

On Christmas Eve, President Jonathan, in a
Facebook message to Nigerians, boasted: “While there was tension in
some parts of the North last Christmas, this Christmas those tensions
have eased.” That same day, a series of bomb blasts tore through Jos,
claiming tens of victims. Since then the senseless violence has erupted
in Maiduguri as well, and the entire country lies in the grip of a
general air of insecurity.

As we wish Nigerians a happy and prosperous New
Year, we’d like to send out a reminder that the happiness and
prosperity of this year, and of the next couple of years, are directly
linked to the kind of leaders we will be electing into office come
April.