The announcement by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), that it has extended the deadline for registered voters to collect their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) to Sunday, February 8, 2015 sounds like a good warning to compel citizens’ participation, but this belated extension seems to be a case of the cure becoming the disease. To ensure their full participation in the February 2015 general elections, in the overall interest of the nation, Nigerians are advised to heed the INEC warning; hence all registered voters should collect their cards before the expiration of the new deadline that supersedes the earlier deadline of Saturday, January 31, 2015; which was an extension from an earlier December 31, 2014 deadline.
Although INEC reaffirmed its determination to make the 2015 elections free, fair and credible; urging stakeholders to spare no effort in working towards the same objective, the Commission left no one in doubt that any voter without a PVC would be disenfranchised. This latest extension comes amidst disturbing allegations by the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) that it had uncovered more facts on the alleged connivance of some officials of INEC and the main opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) to deny non-indigenes in APC controlled states of their PVCs for the general elections. PDP National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh said in a statement that the development was a crime against the electoral process, adding that the party has received overwhelming evidence from citizens in APC states following its earlier alarm that non-indigenes who form the bulk of PDP supporters in Lagos were being denied their PVCs. The PDP said apart from Lagos, the same scandalous practice is being perpetrated in other APC-controlled states including Kano.
The importance of a PVC cannot be overemphasized. It is the license with which Nigerians can exercise their rights to choose those to preside over their affairs at all levels. In essence, it would amount to a self-imposed violation of democratic right not to have a voter’s card. After all, as far as democracy, a path Nigeria is supposedly threading, is concerned, the right to vote and be voted for is sacrosanct. And democracy cannot thrive without an electoral process that has integrity and full participation.
It should be noted that among the core democratic indices, the focus is on the electoral process. How far appointment into legislative and governmental office is determined by popular election, on the basis of open competition, universal suffrage and secret ballot is one of these indices. How independent of government and party control the process of voter registration, and how free from intimidation and bribery is the process of election itself constitute another.
The effectiveness of the electoral system to allow fair and equal access for all parties and candidates to the media and other means of communication are also cardinal indices. The fact that all votes are equal and every citizen has the same opportunity to stand for public office, regardless of which social group a person belongs to also matter. The proportion of the electorate that actually votes and how closely the composition of parliament and the program of government reflect the choices actually made by the electorate conclude these cardinal points with which a good electoral process is judged.
These indices, by extrapolation should propel INEC towards the path of edification of the electoral process and ensuring its integrity in all facets, which in turn will lead to the consolidation of democracy itself. Against this background, the current distribution of PVCs is known to have been highly flawed and many people have not been able to collect their cards. All efforts must be made to rectify this. The time-bound nature of the process is also negative. Voter registration should be a continuous exercise, not only to be executed on an ad hoc and haphazard manner. The voter’s card is itself an identification asset with its biometric component such that it can be used for other purposes of identification. It is, however, important that civic education is intensified and that voters be allowed to collect the PVCs at their assigned polling stations and vote instantly, in the interest of fair play.
The plan to deny the right to vote to voters without PVCs raises a couple of questions. Given Nigeria’s electoral history, to be registered and yet denied the right to vote because of lack of PVC may appear on the surface a discretionary measure to prevent abuse and distortion of the electoral process. It, however, harbors some booby traps for die-hard electoral manipulators who with access to the electoral register would attempt to clone cards of those registered and without PVCs to manipulate the electoral process and outcome. This eventuality could undermine the integrity of the electoral process and vindicate the calls from certain quarters to postpone the elections.
Therefore, it is important that INEC devise methods to ensure that those who are duly registered have their PVCs to vote in elections. This may involve increasing the number of personnel and an adjustment of time-frame in the meantime, while a more enduring solution lies in making registration a fool-proof, continuous exercise all-year round so that people reaching voting age simply enlisted automatically wherever they are domiciled. Same-day voter registration and voting should be the ultimate target. Nigerians, of course, should know and take seriously the fact that their future lies in their ability to vote and the power to change Nigeria is in their hands; they better not trade that for anything.
