WHY SIMULTANEOUS ACCREDITATION AND VOTING IS CRITICAL FOR THE 2019 NIGERIAN GENERAL ELECTIONS

On Monday 14^th January 2019, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) released its Guidelines for the conduct of the 2019 Nigerian Elections. However there have been some controversies surrounding the ‘Guidelines’ with some political parties insisting that certain adjustments need to be made to the document to permit the document to be used for the conduct of the forthcoming elections. It should be noted that INEC has taken into consideration most of the observations made by the various stakeholders (including the political parties). However one of the major areas of concern for the aggrieved political parties is INEC’s insistence to continue with Simultaneous Accreditation and Voting system (SAVs) for Election Day conduct.

Election Monitor has prepared this article to shed more light on why it is germane that INEC apply the Simultaneous Accreditation and Voting system for the 2019 Nigerian General Elections.

To begin with the Simultaneous Accreditation and Voting system was first used (with the smart card reader) in the Bayelsa State Governorship Rerun Election of 9^th January 2016. This was done as a result of the violence which occurred in the 5^th December 2015 Bayelsa Governorship Election. There were 157,490 registered voters who were affected by cancellations and Southern Ijaw LGA was unable to hold elections in its entirety.

The rerun was slated for the 9^th January 2016. However, the date of expiration of the serving governor’s first term was 14^th February 2016 meaning that the last date that INEC could conduct elections in Bayelsa was 14^th January 2016. Since the rerun was on the 9^th January 2016, it left INEC with very little room if violence repeated itself again during the rerun (since the last date for election conduct was on the 14^th January 2016). It therefore became very necessary to devise a more efficient way to conduct the election to ensure that activities were conducted more efficiently and during the day because of the security implications and the riverine nature of most of the 4 LGAs, 16 RAs/Wards and 160 polling units (with 120 polling units in Southern Ijaw LGA alone) which were cancelled and lead to the rerun.  INEC in its wisdom and with recommendations from stakeholders decided to pilot the Simultaneous Accreditation and Voting system in the Bayelsa Governorship Re-run Election 2016. The pilot was a huge success and this lead to INEC formally making the Simultaneous Accreditation and Voting system a part of its guidelines for the conduct of elections. This was made known to the public via many media engagements as well as in the Commission’s regular meetings with political parties, civil society, the media and other stakeholders. The INEC bulletin dated 26^th April 2016 Volume 1, No. 840 clearly shows the Commission’s intention to deploy Simultaneous Accreditation and Voting system in subsequent elections.  

INDEPENDENT NATIONAL ELECTORAL COMMISSION

DAILY

BULLETIN

 VOLUME:     1         N0.:      840                          DATE: 27 / 04 / 2016

INEC RELEASES SUPPLEMENTARY GUIDELINES AND REGULATIONS FOR CONDUCT OF ELECTIONS

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has released additional guidelines to the existing 2015 Guidelines and Regulations for the conduct of elections in the country.  

Having approved the pilot of the Continuous Accreditation and Voting Procedure at elections, for the time being, the Commission has decided that the following shall constitute a supplement to the existing guidelines and regulations at elections.

The Commission stressed that: “all procedures specified in the Guidelines and Regulations for the Conduct of the 2015 General Elections remain in effect with the following exceptions:

a)   Voting shall be by the Continuous Accreditation and Voting System;

b)   The accreditation process shall comprise authentication and verification of voters using the Smart Card Reader (SCR), checking of the Register of Voters, and inking of the cuticle of the specified finger;

c)   The ballot paper shall be issued in the prescribed manner by the Presiding Officer of a Polling Unit/Voting Point (Settlement) of the FCT, and the Assistant Presiding Officer, APO (VP), in the case of a Voting Point (VP).

d)   Accreditation and Voting shall commence at 8.00 am and close at 2.00 p.m. provided that any voters already in the queue shall be granted access to Accreditation and Voting in the prescribed manner.

e)   The Polling Unit layout shall require the Presiding Officer to sit next to the APO II;

f)     The Presiding Officer shall act as the Overseer.

It is important to ask why a procedure which has been in place since 2016 is just been challenged in 2019 just under a month to the first set of elections. It is also instructive to note that this procedure has been used to conduct elections in 6 off-cycle governorship elections as well as over 180 constituency elections since 2015. A plethora of political parties have been involved in these elections and at no time was there any suggestion that this procedure was in any way adverse to the conduct of free, fair and credible elections. Therefore INEC cannot be blamed for going ahead with this procedure going into the 2019 Nigerian General Elections.

However there are some pertinent reasons why Election Monitor is of the opinion that the Simultaneous Accreditation and Voting procedure as provided by INEC in its 2019 General Elections Guidelines is in order. It should be noted that all these points were obtained as a result of Election Monitor’s observation of a plethora of elections in which this procedure was used. The remainder of this article will focus on the improvements that the Simultaneous Accreditation and Voting system has brought to the Nigerian electoral process. 

To start with, it’s important to note that since the introduction of Simultaneous Accreditation and Voting, elections have experienced much faster closing times. The table below shows the observed (by Election Monitor Accredited Election Observer Group) closing times in some recent governorship elections in Nigeria where this procedure was utilized. 

State Governorship Elections	Percentage of polling units which closed by the stated times
Ondo 2016	98.5% polling units by 3pm
Anambra 2017	91.8% polling units by 3pm
Ekiti 2018	81.3% polling units by 3pm
Osun 2018	89.7% polling units by 4pm

Clearly it can be seen that since the adoption of the Simultaneous Accreditation and Voting system that elections are closing much earlier. This is certainly a far cry from elections in 2015 and earlier where sometimes voting gets concluded in the early evening or in some cases even at night.

The second major issue relates to the difference between the total number of accredited voters and total votes cast in elections. The chart below shows that on average 93% of voters returned to vote after accreditation during the 2015 Nigerian General Elections. This is not encouraging in any way because it means 7% of accredited voters (i.e. 2,222,254 people) did not come back to vote after they were accredited. Considering that the difference between the runner up and winner of the presidential election was 2,571,759, this number of people if they had voted could have had a significant effect on the election. There was clearly apathy amongst voters in some locations who may have not bothered to return back to vote especially in places where voting went on into the night. It is therefore very important that this gap is reduced as much as possible going forward. A simultaneous accreditation and voting procedure would certainly significantly contribute towards ensuring more voter inclusive elections since many more citizens would actually vote.  

Chart showing voters who returned to vote after accreditation during the 2015 Nigerian General Elections

Thirdly, it is also important to state that the INEC Smart Card Reader shows the number of accreditations at any point in time. The implication of this is that political parties via their agents could confirm the number of voters accredited from the smart card reader display. As a result party agents could track the accreditation themselves and raise alarm when there are any observed discrepancies. Having this understanding would clearly show that there is no need to separate accreditation and voting. As a result of this, the political parties do not need to entertain any fear about total number of accredited voters, as long as they have functional and competent party agents in each polling unit.

INEC Smart Card Reader display (this snapshot was taken during the 2016 Edo State Governorship Election)

Another important issue is the citizen perception of the Simultaneous Accreditation and Voting system which should be considered above every other stakeholder. It is important to note that democracy is first to serve the people and for this reason the will of the people is paramount. If voters are saying that a procedure is more convenient for them then it behooves all stakeholders to consider the will of the people above that of any other stakeholder. Below are charts showing the results of surveys conducted by Election Monitor observers in recently concluded governorship elections (Ondo 2016, Anambra 2017, Ekiti 2018 and Osun 2018). The focus of the surveys was to discover whether the citizens prefer the Simultaneous Accreditation and Voting system or the old system where there was a dichotomy of both activities. Clearly from these charts Nigerian citizens are in significant support of this procedure and it is only appropriate that INEC deploy this system in the 2019 General elections in line with the will of the voters.

Ondo 2016

Anambra 2017

Ekiti 2018

Osun 2017

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has also recently begun the deployment of the enhanced smart card reader. The most significant impact of this is the drastic reduction of finger print rejection rates seen in elections where these card readers have been used. For example Election Monitor accredited election observation group observed some polling units with a very high finger print rejection rate during the 2016 Edo State Governorship Election (some over 30%). However fast-forward to Ekiti and Osun Governorship elections of 2018, EM observers didn’t find any polling unit with a finger rejection rate of upto 3%. Clearly the enhanced smart card readers are contributing to voter inclusion and more effective and transparent conduct of elections.

There have also been some claims that overvoting would be more difficult to track using the Simultaneous Accreditation and Voting system. However the facts don’t support this. In fact overvoting has become very easy to identify which has lead to many election riggers abandoning the idea. For example looking at the 2017 Anambra Governorship Election there were 113,682 voters who were affected by cancellations. Because the elections were very peaceful most of these cancellations related to overvoting and other non-violent election malpractices. This clearly shows that every attempt at overvoting would be nullified and have no effect on the election. Consequently no political party would need to entertain any fear about overvoting being more pervasive using the Simultaneous Accreditation and Voting system because this system actually ensures that overvoting is always detected and therefore has no way of influencing the election outcome. Perhaps this may have also contributed to the significantly reduced number of cancellations in the Ekiti and Osun 2018 governorship elections. In fact the Osun 2018 Governorship election was reported to have only one case of overvoting out of 3010 polling units where elections were conducted. From all of these it is clear that incidences of overvoting would not increase as a result of the implementation of Simultaneous Accreditation and Voting system in the 2019 Nigerian General Elections.

It’s also important to state that the views of all political parties need to be considered not just a large number of the political parties. This is because there may be coalitions within the political parties which have a particular political leaning. While these may be numerically large they may not represent the spread of other political parties which have smaller coalitions or even no coalition at all. So INEC would be expected to have taken into consideration the spread of opinion and not just the number of political parties who have an opinion. Clearly INEC’s final released guidelines for the 2019 General Elections has taken into consideration the broad opinions of most of the political parties while considering other stakeholders and the ultimate impact on the entire electoral process.  

In summary it is Election Monitor’s considered opinion that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has not erred by maintaining Simultaneous Accreditation and Voting system in its Guidelines for the 2019 General Elections in Nigeria. Election Monitor actually expects this procedure to actually make the upcoming elections much more credible and efficient.