May cause confusion for INEC, electorate – Analysts
The Independent National Electoral Commission, penultimate week, announced through its National Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, that 79 political parties out of the registered 91 had submitted names of their presidential candidates for the February 16, 2019 presidential elections.
Though INEC said it would release the full list of the candidates soon but stated that the particulars of the presidential candidates had been pasted on a board at the INEC headquarters.
With the high number of candidates, which has never been witnessed in any given election, the attention of the world will be on Nigeria and Nigerians on how they will handle this litmus test
On the list are President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress and Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo. Others include Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party and running mate, Peter Obi; Obadiah Mailafia, presidential candidate of African Democratic Congress and Tanimowo Nasiru, his running mate.
Also on the list is Donald Duke for the Social Democratic Party and Junaid Mohammad, his running mate. Oby Ezekwesili, presidential candidate of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria is also on the list.
INEC also stated that a total of 6,352 candidates had also been nominated for the country’s bicameral legislature.
Looking at the implication of these high numbers of presidential candidates for the February 2019 election , political analysts and watchers of political events in the country who spoke with The Point said the situation, if not well taken care of, may lead to confusion as they pray that it would not truncate the transition programme to another civilian rule.
I think it is only the issue of ballot paper that will be too long and may create logistic problem for the INEC and the electorate. But for the issue of too many party agents at the polling station, I don’t see that as problem. Most of the presidential candidates will step down before the election
The concerns raised stemmed from the financial increment in the cost of the election which, though might have been taken care of by the INEC budget, they believe the budget might go beyond what INEC had envisaged.
They also talked about the handling of logistics by the electoral umpire. They further raised the concern of provision of security at polling stations as they maintained that such high number as 79 candidates in a presidential election has not been witnessed anywhere in the world.
To them the number is unwieldy and it might lead to chaos.
“With the high number of candidates which has never been witnessed in any given election, the attention of the world will be on Nigeria and Nigerians on how they will handle this litmus test”, Uche Uchechukwu, a public commentator told The Point in Abuja.
INEC Chairman, Prof. Yakubu, had also, while defending the INEC election budget with members of the Senate Committee on Electoral Matters, informed that the budget for the next year’s election is N69bn higher than the entire expenditure for the 2015 elections. He said there was an increase of about 58 per cent and that the increase was necessitated by a number of factors, including additional political parties, increased number of registered voters among others
“I wish to draw the attention of this committee to a very important thing. Compared to N120bn that the 2015 elections cost, we are now proposing N189.2bn. For 2015, we had 70 million voters. But now, we have 82m registered voters. Second, the number of political parties then was 40 but now we have 91. The size of the ballot papers would increase and the quality and won’t be the same,” the INEC Chairman said.
The 79 candidates means INEC will have to produce ballot paper for the presidential election that will display 79 political parties and logo. This will definitely increase the unit cost of production of the ballot papers. Not only that, the ballot boxes in use during the past elections may not be able to contain the ballot papers of the registered voters at each polling booth as the size of ballot paper will definitely be bigger than in the past.
If the election umpire takes care of the above mentioned issue through the adjustment of its budget , the issue of crowd maintenance at various polling stations may be a difficult task. Assuming each of the candidates has an agent, that means 79 polling agents will be present at each polling booth. How will the security agents be able to control the crowd of agents and also forestalling the evils of vote buying which has been highly witnessed at the recent governorship elections in Osun and Ekiti and had attracted wide condemnation by both local and international election observers. That looks a herculean task for the INEC and the security agents on election day.
For the electorate in the country , 60 per cent of whom are illiterates, voting will be difficult as they will have to be looking for the candidate and party of their choice on a sheet that contains 79 political parties. This may lead to wrong voting and voided votes may be on the high side . Thus political parties will have to educate their supporters thoroughly so as to be painstakingly checking the logo of parties and vote accurately.
The procedure for voting automatically will be very slow and election may go late into the night on February 16, the day set aside for the presidential election.
It will also be another hectic battle for the sorting of votes and counting of votes as INEC will have its hands full while with sorting of votes before counting. If all the candidates remain in the election, INEC will have to sort votes into 79 boxes before counting.
However, while many analysts shared the apprehension by those analysts who spoke with The Point that the high number of candidates in the election is a wrong signal for our electoral system, some eminent Nigerians disagreed.
A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mr. Mike Ozekhome, said the announcement of 79 presidential candidates for the 2019 election is a welcome development.
“It is good for democracy. My take however is that most of the candidates exist only in name. There are only two major political parties, the APC and the PDP,” Ozekhome said.
This view was corroborated by the presidential candidate of the Abundant Renewal Nigeria Party, Mr. Tope Fasua. Fasua said most of the candidates are not serious about the race and that though they submitted themselves for the election, they are actually working for other candidates.
“ May be out of the 79 candidates INEC is talking of , only 15 or so are serious and are keen to participate in the election, others are just there by names. I am on the same Whatsapp Group with many of the presidential candidates and most of them are already adopting a certain candidate,” Fasua said.
The National Publicity Secretary of the Pan-Yoruba socio-cultural group, Afenifere, Mr Yinka Odumakin, said he agreed that there will be the problem of ballot paper being too cumbersome to handle by the electorate, especially the majority illiterates. He however dismissed the issue of too many agents at the polling booths, saying most of the candidates would withdraw before the
election.
“ I think it is only the issue of ballot paper that will be too long and may create logistic problem for the INEC and the electorate. But for the issue of too many party agents at the polling station, I don’t see that as problem. Most of the presidential candidates will step down before the election. I am sure of that,” Odumakin said.
