US embassy cable - 03ABUJA502

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ABUJA 000502 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
CAIRO FOR MAXSTADT 
 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/13/2013 
TAGS: PGOV, PREL, KDEM, PINR, NI 
SUBJECT: NIGERIA: INADEQUACIES OF THE INDEPENDENT NATIONAL 
ELECTORAL COMMISSION 
 
 
 Classified by Ambassador Howard F. Jeter.  Reason: 1.5(d). 
 
 
1. (SBU) SUMMARY: After three months delay, INEC published 
some voter lists week of March 3.  With national elections 
just six weeks away, INEC has missed a key legal deadline. 
Challenges are almost certain.  INEC,s performance remains 
erratic, and non-transparent.  INEC will have to work 
efficiently but swiftly to fill the gaps necessary for 
minimally adequate logistical preparations.  Given INEC,s 
history, this feat is unlikely.  Even if the Commission 
should succeed, its credibility is so badly damaged that many 
Nigerians would not believe it.   END SUMMARY. 
 
 
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IN A MIRE OF ITS OWN MAKING 
--------------------------- 
 
 
2. (C) Nigeria's Independent National Election Commission 
(INEC) remains unprepared to conduct elections in April. 
While the clock ticks and anxiety mounts, INEC dithers, 
equivocates and prevaricates.  Past and present logistical 
problems have combined with abominable communications and a 
perception of favoritism toward the ruling PDP to engender a 
massive credibility crisis for INEC and its chairman, Dr. 
Abel Guobadia. 
 
 
3. (C) The biggest grouse has been INEC,s handling of 
voters, registration.  Although INEC conducted the 
registration in September, it has been unable to provide a 
credible estimate of registered voters, let alone a final 
list.  Early on, Guobadia claimed 69 million people 
registered after the first round in September; this number 
was widely disputed.  On one hand, many Nigerians decried 
under-registration by as much as 50 percent while other 
Nigerians claimed that improper multiple registration had 
been rampant.  Meanwhile, computer glitches in both Lagos and 
Kano states, Nigeria,s two most populous states, might have 
affected the inclusion of several million people on the final 
voters list.  Under intense pressure, Guobadia is now 
claiming 67 million total registrants, though days after the 
most recently scheduled date for displaying the lists, names 
have been posted in only a tiny fraction of the registration 
centers.  In any event, the Electoral Act of 2002 (facing a 
legal challenge from the Presidency) stipulates that lists 
must be displayed not less than 60 days prior to the 
election.  With voting scheduled for April 12 and April 19, 
INEC has already missed a key deadline -- even if lists 
magically appear in all registration centers tomorrow. 
 
 
4. (SBU) INEC now plans to display the lists in Local 
Government Area headquarters.  Voters in large LGAs 
(primarily rural areas) will have to travel considerable 
distances to ensure that they are registered and protest any 
errors.  The original five-day process has been expanded to 
nine days, evidently to account for the delay in beginning 
the display.  There are reports sourced to INEC officials of 
review processes having gone very well in some areas that, 
according to Embassy contacts, never saw a list posted.  One 
opposition politician reported that the list displayed in his 
LGA in Borno contained names from the Jos area of Plateau 
State rather than those of inhabitants of his LGA.  The 
review process does not allow for adding names to the list, 
which could be a problem for many candidates, as it has been 
reported that some may not be registered voters themselves (a 
prerequisite for running for office).  In a March 10 meeting 
between officials of political parties and Mission officers, 
one candidate said he had no idea whether he was registered 
and wondered how many others in the room could say for 
certain that they were. 
 
 
5. (C) While INEC may have mishandled registration and other 
aspects of preparations for the April elections, it has been 
a stickler when measuring the compliance of candidates with 
its regulations.  INEC told the media recently that the vast 
majority of candidates at all levels could not be approved to 
contest the elections because of mistakes and omissions in 
their applications for candidacy.  INEC said it would extend 
the deadline for candidate submissions to March 11.  COMMENT: 
INEC's six screening committees will have less than a week to 
review candidates' submissions.  If the screeners apply 
INEC's rules very strictly, complaints will be legion, 
especially if most of the disqualified are from opposition 
parties (likely, since there are 29 opposition parties set 
against the ruling PDP).  If the screeners are too lenient, 
post-election challenges could result in ballot-box winners 
being divested of the fruits of victory.  END COMMENT. 
 
 
6.  (C) In addition to troubles with the registration, INEC 
is also confronted with difficulties in arranging election 
logistics.  No sample ballot has been provided for 
examination or for training poll workers and observers, 
though we have been given a general description.  The 
presidential ballot will have 19 political party logos 
running down the center of the page, each with the acronym of 
the party, but no party or candidate names.  Voters are to 
place a thumbprint next to the party symbol of the preferred 
candidate.  This is a bit tricky as the thumbprint space for 
each party will alternate sides between the left and right 
margins from the top to the bottom of the page (a "butterfly 
ballot" of sorts).  For all other elections, the ballots will 
look the same, except with 30 party logos and acronyms, 
whether or not the party has a candidate in the particular 
local, state of National Assembly election.  COMMENT: 
Opposition parties (other than the ANPP) complain that this 
approach makes it difficult for voters to grasp the import of 
their votes.  Voters need not know the name of their 
preferred candidate for an office, but they must know his/her 
party affiliation.  Illiterates will have to be able to link 
a preferred candidate to a symbol (umbrella for the PDP, ear 
of maize for the ANPP, etc.).  Those who can read will have 
to take great care, since most parties have three-letter 
acronyms, a number of which (PDP, PRP, PSP) are not readily 
distinguished one from the other, especially when a butterfly 
ballot is being used.  The fact that numerous candidates have 
switched parties in recent months will add to the confusion. 
END COMMENT. 
 
 
7. (U) INEC,s reassignment of key staff will present other 
problems.  First, the Director of Operations (described by 
IFES as the Commission's &most effective staff member8) has 
been reassigned to a non-operational position.  Two hundred 
fifty INEC staff were suspended for allegedly selling 
registration cards or accepting bribes.  INEC has not 
indicated when these officers will be replaced.  Many 
regional elections officers were transferred to another state 
recently, and numerous other reassignments throughout the 
Commission took place during the last month.  Guobadia stated 
that there would be about 500,000 INEC poll workers at 
120,000 polling stations, but no logistical plan for moving 
personnel or materials throughout the country has been 
formulated, to say nothing of funded. 
 
 
8. (C) According to the Chairman, INEC will supply each 
polling station with exactly 500 ballots, for a total of 60 
million (seven million fewer than his own estimate of the 
number of voters).  This also raises the obvious question of 
where to place each booth.  If they use the same locations as 
during registration, there will be numerous complaints.  A 
major complaint in the registration exercise was that booths 
in some (mostly rural) areas had excess material, while in 
other areas the booths were grossly under-equipped.  INEC 
seems to be on course to replicate this error on the election 
days.  INEC could create new polling stations, but that would 
entail even more unfunded costs.  The brother of INEC 
Secretary Hakeem Baba-Ahmed reported that many Commissioners 
 
SIPDIS 
are in a quandary:  They do not want to give more materials 
to one station than another, yet they lack the resources to 
fulfill existing requirements, to say nothing of providing 
one polling station for each 500 voters (reportedly a 
requirement laid down by "politicians").  But if a 
registration site had 1000 bone fide registrants how will the 
extra 500, whose names will appear on lists at other sites, 
know where to go and which site will be theirs? 
 
 
------------------------------------ 
CODE OF CONDUCT ) WAITING TO BE BORN 
------------------------------------ 
 
 
9. (C) A code of conduct for the political parties is still 
in the works.  A draft has been in existence for several 
months.  On February 28, Guobadia made reference to a code of 
conduct prepared by the Commission that had been delivered to 
the parties.  He stated the code would be binding on the 
parties and urged each of them to sign it.  As of now, none 
of the 30 parties has signed the code.  COMMENT:  Party 
leaders argue that their respective constitutions contain 
codes of conduct and that they should abide by these.  Most 
opposition parties do not trust INEC to administer a code of 
conduct fairly, fearing that the Commission will favor the 
ruling PDP.  END COMMENT. 
 
 
10. (C) INEC has added to its woes by inserting itself into 
intra-party squabbles.  In Jigawa, INEC was involved in an 
ANPP showdown as two different factions submitted their 
respective candidates for governor.  Lack of credibility on 
INEC's part meant INEC's decision was not final, and the case 
went to court, with a decision finally emerging on March 3. 
Internecine conflict over the ANPP nomination for the Kano 
gubernatorial race continues.  In Adamawa, INEC has managed 
to announce two "official" ANPP gubernatorial candidates, 
although neither is the original candidate submitted by the 
ANPP.  Meanwhile, INEC Secretary Hakeem Baba-Ahmed reportedly 
told ANPP figures that that some INEC Commissioners have 
complained that Guobadia meets with President Obasanjo &too 
regularly.8  True or not, the allegation further weakens the 
organization,s claim of impartiality and independence. 
 
 
11. (C) COMMENT:  With elections approximately one month 
away, INEC's poor performance to date suggests two critical 
problems.  First, the Commission likely will no longer be 
capable of putting in place the logistics required to carry 
out its election day mandate.  Thus far, INEC's response to 
its own shortcomings has been a mixture of equivocation, 
evasion and prevarication.  While one can fudge the display 
of voter lists (at least until the failure to display them as 
required by law leads to a court injunction), the failure to 
establish and resource the 120,000-plus polling places 
required on April 12 and April 19 will be much harder to 
finesse.  Second, the Commission's poor performance to date, 
especially its failure to communicate effectively with the 
parties, suggests that vast swathes of Nigeria's elite will 
not believe anything Commissioners and INEC staff say in the 
future -- even in the unlikely eventuality that INEC proves 
able to meet the huge logistical challenges it faces. 
Opposition politicians score INEC low on across the board and 
routinely portray the Commission as a tool of the ruling 
party.  Even some PDP adherents privately criticize INEC, 
arguing that its lack of credibility will call into question 
an election that President Obasanjo can handily win 
legitimately. 
 
 
12.  (C) In short, it may not matter much what INEC does 
between now and the elections, the Commission's "negatives" 
are too high for it to regain broad public confidence.  Talk 
of postponing the elections and/or establishing some sort of 
interim government to administer them grows daily.  Several 
of the larger opposition parties have now sought a delay, and 
the NDP reportedly has filed suit, contending that INEC's 
failure to "display the authentic voter registration list" 60 
days before the election means the elections cannot legally 
take place.  Pressing from the other direction is the 
constitutional requirement that voting for President must be 
complete 30 days before the current Administration's term of 
office ends on May 28, 2003.  Were the Commission itself a 
candidate for office, it would be time to pull out of the 
race in favor of someone with a chance of winning. 
Unfortunately for Nigeria, there is no constitutional 
alternative to INEC. 
JETER 
JETER