Sunday, October 17, 2010

USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria: Call for Fair Elections



CO-ORDINATION PLANNING FOR CIVIL SOCIETY ROLE IN NIGERIA'S ELECTIONS 2011
 
Introduction and Background
The announcement of INEC's calendar for the 2011 elections has triggered frantic activities from most stakeholders, including the political parties, security agencies, politicians and their supporters, the media, the civil service, and the international community in Nigeria. In this, civil society has been quite slow on the uptake. Much of any planning that has taken place has been dictated by donor commitments and has been devoid of co-ordination among the various civil society actors across the country.
 
There are several reasons for this. First, the footprint of active civil society organizations interested in the 2011elections is nation-wide. There is a fear that seeking co-ordination of these groups would be time consuming and expensive. Secondly, there are several substantial civil society coalitions around electoral activities, such as the Transition Monitoring Group (TMG); Electoral Reform Network (ERN); and the Alliance for Credible Elections (ERN), with interlocking memberships competing somewhat for the available donor resources. This sense of competition for donor resources acts as a dis-incentive to co-ordination. Together, thirdly, the above factors induce an agency paralysis with most groups unprepared to exercise initiative in convening a process of co-ordination for fear of being dragged into a messy dog-fight between the various groups. Fourthly, there is donor-funding available for many election-related activities but not for co-ordination and many groups fear that getting involved in this could be an unfunded mandate.
 
Yet, there are many advantages to co-ordination and many reasons why it should happen. To begin with, the electoral calendar is both frantic and backbreaking and no civil society organization is capable covering the country. The activities comprised in the electoral calendar require the pooling of the skills and resources of all civil society organizations. Given all these, effective burden sharing is essential if civil society is not to sacrifice its rightful role in elections 2011.
 
The challenges & Issues
There are several issues that require combined civil society attention and co-ordinated action towards the 2011 elections. Seven of them are highlighted below:
 
(a)  Date of 2011 Elections: The most pressing perhaps is the question of the date of the elections. It is becoming increasingly evident that the January date set by the new constitutional amendment is likely to be untenable. INEC is in an awkward position to advocate directly for a change in the dates. Articulate civil society action could help to persuade the National Assembly and the political leadership of the country to take action on this when the NASS resumes in the third week of October.
 
(b)  Monitoring the Electoral Calendar: The activities leading up to the elections require rapid-fire deployment and monitoring of different phases of electoral build-up all over the country. Activities that will need to be monitored include:
 
·         party primaries;
·         voter registration;
·         INEC's preparations;
·         conduct of law enforcement agents;
·         the vote, collation and counting; and
·         electoral dispute resolution
 
Each of these activities is important to the overall credibility of the poll. All the groups involved as well as INEC will be well served by knowing what occurs in each of these. Burdens will have to be shared with respect to how these are undertaken and delivered.
 
(c)   Liaison with INEC: For both civil society and INEC, the transaction costs involved running atomized relations with each CSO on one-on-one bases will be prohibitive. It could be more cost effective to have liaison arrangements negotiated between civil society and INEC under a properly negotiated co-ordination arrangement built into the proposed MoU. The co-ordination arrangement will have mechanisms for ensuring the diverse interests of groups across the country are well represented in its delivery.

 
(d)  Maintaining complementary communications corridor & infrastructure: The success of Elections 2011 will depend in large part on complementary services provided by new media and communications providers, including, especially, the GSM companies and internet service providers. If these companies decided to side with election rigging and procured blackout of the underlying infrastructure on the day of elections or collation, the consequences on the credibility of the elections could be quite prohibitive. Conversely, if they were to buy into the project of credible elections, they could make a big difference. CSOs will need to deploy resources to advocate with and manage relations with the ICTs companies and providers in order to benefit the wider project of electoral participation and credibility.
 
(e)  Police and security agencies: The co-operation of the police and other security agencies is central to credible elections. So far, very little is happening in this regard and the appointment of a new IGP and Director-General of SSS presents a good opportunity for establishing mechanisms of CSO co-ordination and advocacy with these agencies.
 
(f)    International advocacy: Some of these issues - such as security agencies and ISPs roles - are quite amenable to international advocacy and the partnerships required for this need to be built in very short order
 
(g)  CSO Elections 2011 Situation Room: It would be necessary, given the time pressures, to consider establishing a Situation Room for 2011 elections which could be serviced with staffing complement contributed by a pool of groups over the period that the electoral calendar will unfold.
 
(h)  Resourcing co-ordination: If co-ordination is to take place, it will need to be effectively resourced with human skills and finances in a way that does not compete with the participating groups or deprive them of access to the resources that they require to deliver their own discrete programmes. This will be based on a proper budget with agreed budget lines.
 
Convening a Co-ordination Process
It is proposed that steps be taken to convene a CSOs election 2011 co-ordination process post-haste. The co-ordination process should unfold in two stages. The first should be a half-day planning meeting to take place in Abuja not later than 18 September 2010. Participation in the meeting should extend to a core of the main CSOs with significant footprint in different parts of Nigeria such as:
1.     Nigerian Bar Association, NBA
2.     Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN
3.     Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, NSCIA
4.     Alliance for Credible Elections, ACE
5.     Centre for Democratic Development, CDD
6.     Transition Monitoring Group, TMG
7.     Federation of Muslim Women Associations of Nigeria, FoMWAN
8.     Nigerian Labour Congress, NLC & the Trades Union Congress (TUC)
9.     Nigerian Union of Journalists, NUJ
10.  Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU
11.  Nigerian Union of Teachers, NUT & the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE)
12.  Electoral Reform Network, ERN
13.  Justice Development and Peace Commission, JDPC
14.  International Federation of Women Lawyers, FIDA
 
This meeting is to discuss mechanisms for calling and broad proposals to be tables before a much more representative national co-ordination meeting to take place not later than 25 September 2011. The Open Society Institute (OSI) entities in Nigeria (OSIWA and the Open Society Justice Initiative) would offer to host the initial meeting and to participate in seeking how best to ensure that co-ordination is established and effective with the understanding that the national groups would emerge from this process with ownership of the co-ordination process.
 
 
Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, Ph.D.
--  
Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station
Austin, TX 78712-0220
USA
512 475 7224
512 475 7222  (fax)
http://www.toyinfalola.com/
www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa
http://groups.google.com/group/yorubaaffairs
http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue

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