April 2011 - Centre for Civil Society - University of KwaZulu-Natal

of not just securing free elections but also offering a real alternative to
the different robber bands currently dominating Nigeria. Tragically this has
not been done and working people, the poor and the critics of the system
have no party to represent them at these 2011 elections.
According to the timetable already rolled out by Independent National
Electoral Commission (INEC), elections into the legislative and executive
arms of government have been scheduled to take place in April 2011. If
successfully completed, this would be the fourth time that elections will
be taking place uninterruptedly in Nigeria’s 50 years of post-independence
history, during which the military have ruled for almost 30 years. To the
superficial capitalist analysts, this fact again may be used to give the
impression that democracy, and or democratic ethos, are finally gaining
root in Nigeria. On the contrary however, when all the key technical and
political issues surrounding the forthcoming election are scientifically
analyzed, the distasteful but an unavoidable conclusion points towards the
elongation/continuation of the rule by the locusts: that is a continuation
of the rule of the capitalist, thieving elites that have been holding down
Nigeria and its long suffering people.
Voters registration exercise
Every serious political analyst agrees that a properly compiled voter’s
register constitutes a very important link in a chain of processes needed to
achieve truly free and fair elections. This is why there exists almost
unanimous clamour for a new voter’s register to be compiled by INEC
under its new chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega. The voters register used to
conduct the 2007 general elections is generally regarded by all shades of
political opinion as unreliable, over-bloated and in fact contained a lot of
fictitious names. For this purpose, the Jega-led INEC has gotten a
whooping sum of N88.5b approved for the Commission by the National
Assembly. As we write, the Commission has again requested an additional
sum of N6.6b from the National Assembly.
Unfortunately however, notwithstanding the huge sum of money that has
been invested, so far, the ongoing voter’s registration exercise has once
again underline the fact that the neo-colonial capitalist ruling elites
governing Nigeria will forever remain incapable of putting in place a
genuinely democratic process any more than its legendary and perennial
failure over other socio-economic matters. Despite Prof. Jega’s radical
pedigree and his repeated pledges to organize a truly free and fair
elections come 2011, the ongoing voter’s registration exercise has
revealed the same uncanny pattern that bedevilled all the previous
exercises conducted by the bourgeois elites. Originally, the exercise which
was to end on January 29 has now been extended by 7 days. As in previous
exercises, INEC’s preparations and conducts has been extremely chaotic,
slow and in some cases, totally absent. The Sunday Independent of January
30, 2011 in its Cover Choice article titled: "Troubled Voter Registration
exercise" captured the situation in this unflattering report:
"Complaints from all parts of the country since it started have, in the views
of enlightened Nigerians, shown that INEC did not adequately prepare for
the exercise. The exercise has been rife with a cocktail of technical
hitches, which brought about serious setback in the process of getting
eligible voters registered by the registration officers. There were several
cases of fingerprint rejections, breakdown and absence of the Direct Data
Capture (DDC) machines in most of the registration centres, which resulted
in delay and waste of time of Nigerians who came out en masses with great
enthusiasm to participate in the exercise.
"Former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Senate President, David Mark,