Kenyan judiciary handles cases of electoral offences with zeal

INEC boss, Attahiru Jega

The Resident Electoral Commissioner of Cross River State, Mr. Mike Igini, was part of a team which  monitored Kenya’s presidential election. In this interview with MUDIAGA AFFE, he speaks on his experiences and sundry issues. Excerpts:

You were part of a team that went to monitor the just concluded Kenyan presidential election. What was your experience?

I would say that it was an interesting experience, being the first post conflict election; one observed the collective will and determination of a nation to avoid a repeat of the tragedy of the 2007 elections. That crisis led to the death of over 1,200 people, like the post-election violence in Nigeria after the 2011 elections. There are still 600,000 displaced people yet to be rehabilitated five years after the 2007 election in Kenya.

But for the Mobasa separatist pre-election violence that led to the death of policemen and civilians, the general impression one got from the Kenyan people was a determination to put such ugly electoral history behind them. On election procedure, there were efforts to speed up the process by using electronic accreditation with standby manual registers of same data as well as electronic transmission of already counted results from polling stations. However, because there were some glitches, the Independent Electoral and Boundary Commission of Kenya  had to revert to the manual processes and all results were brought in from the collation centres to be counted centrally. A significant difference between the system and ours was the expeditious zeal with which the judicial system handles electoral offences.

For instance, a supporter of a Member of Parliament was found trying to induce voters with money neatly packaged in envelope during elections on Monday, March 4, and by the next day,  Tuesday, March 5, while the electoral process was still ongoing the culprit was arraigned before a magistrate court, convicted and sentenced to three years imprisonment, with no option of fine. One significant lesson on the use of electronic voting process is that it requires robust systems with early warning feedback loops that allow instant remediation of glitches because election processes are highly sensitive issues which cannot allow for prevarications. Also, there is a need to always have a manual back-up as we did here in Nigeria because dispensing with the manual system could be costly if very serious challenges develop.

Would you say their electoral system is better managed than that of Nigeria?

An electoral system has many contextual peculiarities so it is often best to talk in relative terms when comparing. However, there are significant parallels and differences between our system and theirs. As you may already know the electoral system relies on many factors from the general country context, the legislative framework, and the attitude of stakeholders and the rule of law.  ln general, my impression is that the same historical background of colonialism with voters aggregating around primordial ethnic comfort zones rather than policy issues, obtains in Kenya as it does in Nigeria. This is a problem that the Ghanaians had significantly overcome although there were some remnants of the problems; hence voter awareness was still a significant problem as with Nigeria. But the Kenyan electoral system has acknowledged this by introducing the presidential debate that was focused on issues of development that really matter to the people and thus educate voters on policy benefits. Another significant difference in my view is the issue I mentioned earlier relating to the expeditious consequences for electoral fraud, in the Kenyan ambiance the judiciary clearly was not ready to brook such threat to their democratic progress, whereas here we would find judicial officials vacillating on the same issue which is an existential threat to our democracy. I say this with all seriousness because until 2010, it is on record that our judiciary had not done much on conviction of electoral offenders, and even when INEC made strenuous efforts to push for such consequences, we met with significant structural resistance to maintain the status quo ante, except for just one conviction we secured here in Cross River. This is bad for our progress.

You have been in the forefront canvassing against corruption in Nigeria, could that be the reason for the failure in virtually all spheres of government?

Any society that accepts corruption as an article of faith will never attain its full potential. As I have just related in regard to electoral offences, a significant stumbling block to corruption of all kinds in Nigeria is the sense of impunity built by the years of a lack of effective judicial consequences. No doubt there have been many convictions for crimes in Nigeria but regarding fraud, especially the type of fraud which threatens our economic growth and development in many dimensions, there is a significant deficit in consequences, and the judiciary should lead the way on that count, that is why we have separation of powers with the judicial arm and that is why democracy is always qualified with the mantra “and the rule of law” , for as St Augustine insisted, a country is nothing but a gang of rogues without the rule of law.

How can corruption be addressed?

The way we are going now with our value pyramid upside down; a society where money is everything, no sense of shame and nobody afraid of anything except death, we may have to go for death penalty. Those who do the wrong things that endanger our collective wellbeing are the very ones that would go to court and boast their influence and how they will stall trial through frivolous application upon application. Even in our churhes now, pastors would annouce during thanksgiving that members should take their personal effects when dancing to the altar because of stealing even in the house of God. This is how terrible our society has declined.  In addressing this problem, we should adopt these three approaches in addition to others. Firstly, and curatively, we should ensure that proven cases of corruption are met with maximum judicial consequences; second, preventatively, by ensuring that regulative and normative control measures in the private and public sectors are in place and effectual. Regulative controls involve the bureaucratic, financial, quality and other measures of control that are the organisational practices for decades and normative controls include the evolving codes of expected  good practices which are reviewed from time to time.

Is it apt that we celebrate 100 years of amalgamation at a time when the country is faced with issues of insecurity among other challenges?

It is an apt opportunity to ask ourselves why we abandoned the path of governace framework Sir Alhmadu Bello, Awolowo and Zik after series of conferences finally agreed on to promote rapid development? Why is it that we have refused to reconcile ourselves and build a country of equal opportunity for all? Our reality is that after these many years we have not arrived at a consensual agreement of who we are; what we want to be; and where we want to go. We are still grappling with the intricacies of nationhood. We have yet to be at peace with one another after almost 100 years. In other words, we have not realistically formulated a common acceptable shared vision that would generate common determination to achieve common goals. Every group in virtually all parts of the country are making demands on the nation because truely the Nigeria of the 21st century is quite different but strangely the idea of national discourse or dialoque has not been fully embraced.  We should confront our realities, accept our mistakes, correct them and move forward boldly. We can only do that by formulating an acceptable constitution which meets our consensual acceptance, then and only then can we truly be celebrating, if we do not have a realistic and nationally acceptable constitution we will be celebrating a delusion.