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The National
Assembly doesn’t seem to be able to decide whether to make even more of
a hash of the Uwais Panel’s electoral reform recommendations than the
deadly combination of the White Paper Committee, the Aondoakaa-led
White Paper Review committee and the Council of State with its coterie
of self-serving governors.

This is
understandable: like governors and presidents, most legislators know
that they didn’t get where they are by transparently free, fair or
credible elections. But they also know that to become their party’s
candidates they survived a cutthroat process over which we had better
draw the veil of political discretion and spare ‘honourable’ and
‘distinguished’ blushes. They don’t want to go through that again,
especially if they’ve fallen out with whichever political godfather it
was who secured their nomination. So they exhibit conflicting desires
for elections that are free, but fixed in such a way that they will win.

Still, with their
refusal to sanction queue voting, and early reports that the two-party
system had been rejected, one began to hope that even if they wouldn’t
improve the electoral system, legislators would at least avoid doing
major damage to what is already in place.

But reports can be
misleading. For example, although a lot of nonsense was written about
‘Option A4’ being rejected, all the House of Representatives in fact
did was maintain the existing ‘Open Secret’ system. There will be no
queue voting for the public in national, state or local government
elections. Of course, political parties are free to stipulate whatever
candidate selection method they like, but for the general public, the
secrecy of the ballot to which Nigeria is committed by both local and
international undertakings, remains intact.

Despite the
romantic haze through which so many look back at queue voting, the
election that the same people insist was “the freest and fairest in
Nigeria’s history”, the presidential election of June 12th 1993,
actually used the Open Secret system of voting; with ballot boxes and
ballot papers: Not queue voting. However much former governors may
obfuscate about the “Open Ballot system”, with queue voting there is no
ballot. (Since only 14 million Nigerians voted in that election, which
is now almost 17 years behind us, the sad reality is that many of those
pontificating about the beauties of queue voting probably didn’t
actually vote on June 12th and quite frankly haven’t the faintest idea
what they are talking about.) Now, because the Humphrey Nwosu-led
National Electoral Commission of the 1992/1993 Babangida Transition was
better at logistics than the Maurice Iwu-led Independent National
Electoral Commission (and because Nwosu was operating under a military
dictatorship and had only two parties to contend with) we should hope
that the incoming INEC will learn from Nwosu rather than Iwu. The
decision to require all voters to be present at the same time across
the country and cast their votes within the space of the same hour
nationwide may have been born of necessity (after the illegality of
queue voting had been pointed out) but it was a stroke of genius.

Iwu was not the
only electoral chief to reject the June 12th method of Open Secret
voting and it has not been used since. But for now, the National
Assembly has left the decision about how Open Secret voting should be
organised where it properly belongs. With INEC.

Although the House
avoided another blunder by refusing to limit the number of political
parties to just two, it is a gross delusion to imagine that the
self-serving vote, fixing a limit of five, preserves political
pluralism. One recognises that our ideology-free legislators may have
difficulty grasping this concept, but perhaps they should imagine
limiting religious expression in this way, and dictating that everybody
should be able to find a faith to suit them in one of five
state-sanctioned religions.

It’s always amusing
to hear those who already occupy it complaining that the political
terrain is “too crowded” or that the number of parties is unwieldy.
That theory may wash in one-party dictatorships, but no other country
that claims to be a democracy imposes such restrictions, which risk
delivering the political space, bound hand and foot to moneybags and
incumbents. Unfortunately, like queue voting, the bitter experience of
intra-party dictatorship under Babangida’s two-party regime is
forgotten, remembered through a romantic haze, or simply unknown.

To quote another
dictator, China’s Chairman Mao said: Let a thousand flowers bloom! The
United States has 25 national parties ranging from the American
Conservative Party through the Pansexual Peace Party to the U.S.
Taxpayers Party, with hundreds more at local level.

Leaving aside the
nightmare of implementation for this and independent candidates (as the
House seems to have done, since the Political Parties Commission
recommended by Uwais has already been rejected), Deputy Senate
President Ike Ekweremadu correctly observed that limiting the number of
parties conflicts with the Constitution’s guarantees of freedom of
association and its liberal party registration system.

So it can only take
effect if the Constitution is amended, concerning which, perhaps our
lawmakers should take advice from Britain’s Monster Raving Loony Party
(one of that country’s 25 parties). Britain itself doesn’t have a
written constitution, but item 3 on the MRLP manifesto proposes that
the European [read ‘Nigerian’] Constitution “will be sorted out by
going for a long Walk. As everyone knows that walking is good for the
Constitution.” But what if ‘We the People’ decide that it is costly,
unproductive and uninformed lawmakers who need reforming? Maybe we will
be the ones telling them to … take a hike.