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As we usher in the year 2011, our national resolve
is that this must be the turning point when we move from our long
history with electoral fraud to a brighter future based on credible
elections. The phrase that I have repeated the most over the past two
decades is that the majority of Nigerians are deeply committed to
democracy but the bulk of the political class is extremely competent in
the techniques of subverting democratic processes.

When we review our 89 year-old history with
elections, it is clear that the quality, integrity and credibility of
the voting process has been declining steadily and the reasons are
political rather than technical. Our elections started on a wrong
footing in 1922. In 1920, the educated elite in colonial Nigeria had
established the National Council of British West Africa to demand for
the introduction of the elective principle in selecting some members of
the Colonial Council.

The governor, Sir Hugh Clifford was livid with
anger at the idea. He declared that the group was “self-selected and
self-appointed (and were) trying to break out of their tribal
obligations and duties to their own natural rulers.” He added that they
were not representative of “the cannibals Mama hills, the determinedly
unsocial Mumuyes of Mubi Province or the equally naked warriors of the
inner Ibo country (see Coleman’s Nigeria: Background Nationalism, page
193).

Clifford, the English white conqueror, defined
himself as more representative of the people because he was on the side
of the “natural rulers” of the people. The elections of 1922 were
therefore limited to electing three representatives of the educated
elite in Lagos and one from Calabar to represent their “Europeanised”
colleagues in the Council.

This trend in electoral injustice was confirmed by
the Colonial Administration during the 1950-1951 elections in Northern
Nigeria when they taught the emerging political class how to subvert
the people’s mandate. Following the victory of radical NEPU candidates
in the first round of the elections in December 1950, the furious
British Administration changed the rules, injected a large dose of the
Native Administration into the Electoral College and eliminated all the
NEPU candidates who had won in the first round of the election. The
result was the creation of a conservative political class in Northern
Nigeria under the control of the Northern Peoples’ Congress and their
British friends.

Subsequently, except for the first round elections
in 1959, 1979, 1999 and maybe the 1993 June 12th elections, all other
elections were massively rigged. Nigeria then engaged upon the path of
elections suffering from the “progressive deterioration” trajectory as
seen in the 1959 to 1965 elections, 1979 to 1983 elections and the 1999
to 2007 elections. This demonstrates that the historical problem of
general elections is not the electoral system per se, but the will and
above all, the capacity of the political class to subvert it.

The most important aspect of our elections was the
transformation of the techniques of electoral fraud from the analogue
to digital technology of rigging. Analogue rigging involves ballot box
stuffing or stealing, under-age voting and multiple voting. It consists
of techniques to illegally increase the votes cast for a party.

Digital rigging was invented by the National Party
of Nigeria in the Ondo State 1983 elections. The party was determined
to take the state but the gap against their candidate, Akin Omoboriowo
was so massive that manipulation of numbers could not work. The
electoral body then known as FEDECO simply set aside the results and
invented completely new figures that declared Omoboriowo winner. The
people’s anger was so high that the NPN candidate barely escaped with
his life and the judiciary quickly stepped in to restore electoral
justice.

It was General Olusegun Obasanjo who perfected the
techniques of digital rigging during the 2003 and 2007 elections and
completely confiscated the franchise of the Nigerian people. The
People’s Democratic Party took over the reins of political power
without the mandate of the people. The courts were able to restore
electoral justice for some candidates but in most cases, injustice was
sustained by the judicial system.

The task for 2011 for Nigerian citizens is
therefore the restoration of electoral justice. This can happen if
civic consciousness is raised and citizens count, protect, escort and
protect their vote because their lives and livelihoods depend on it. It
is this citizens’ commitment to protecting their mandate that will
create the conditions for the Jega led INEC to reverse our long history
of electoral injustice. We know our political class will not give us
democracy. Let’s all make the New Year resolution of struggling for
electoral democracy in our country.