ACE, NBA strategise on non-violent mandate defence
Samuel Odaudu

In view of the apparent prospect of the 2007 elections not reflecting the wishes of the majority of the people going by the shoddy handling of the voters’ registration exercise, the Nigerian Bar Association and the Alliance for Credible Elections are perfecting non-violent strategies of ensuring that the elections represent the wishes of the people. To this end, the Nigerian Bar Association in conjunction with the Alliance for Credible Elections (ACE-Nigeria) held three workshops in Abuja, Port Harcourt and Kaduna during the yuletide season. ACE-Nigeria also held another very revealing town hall meeting with the disabled in Kaduna a day before the one with the lawyers. The purpose of the town hall meetings is to develop the capacity of the NBA and religious groups to prepare their constituencies for non-violence of mandate.

The workshops which were tagged “The Rule of Law and Credible Elections” brought to fore the failure of the registration of voters exercise which the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) embarked upon since the 7th of October 2006. Participants lamented the failure of INEC to open up to the people especially in the face of shortage of machines and equipment for the registration; situations that led to rotation of the direct data capture machines. In many places, they observed, the machines were either breaking down and have to be cooled with ‘pure’ water or they were being sited in the homes of powerful individuals in the society, making access to the machines by the opposition near impossible. In yet other states, where the generating sets provided for charging of the machines failed or no provision for fuel was made by the electoral commission, persons who wanted to perform their civic duties by registering to vote were being charged fees to cover the cost of ‘registration’. The town hall meetings frowned at the developments and summed that the effect of these would be massive disenfranchisement of the generality of Nigerians who were old enough to register and made themselves available for registration.

The meetings also looked at the state of the nation with respect to the gale of impeachments across the country, the feud between the President and the Vice President, in all of which cases there were flagrant disregard for due process as laid down in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999. Some of the posters on display at the town hall meetings expressed it this way: “How can six legislators impeach a governor? Nigerians say no to animals in power” and “Have you ever seen someone raze his house to the ground to catch a thief? Yes to anticorruption; no to rape of Constitution”. They decried the apparent disillusionment that resulted from such actions. They stated that political parties must also observe internal democracy as ways of ensuring that the candidates that represent them symbolise the will of card-carrying members of the party.

Earlier, in a separate development, the Nigerian Bar Association had issued a press release condemning the violence that characterised the state primaries conducted by the ruling PDP saying: “We are worried as to what this portends to our democracy and development as a people. These happenings especially within the PDP are cause for concern. The danger is that there is the likelihood of duplication in other political parties and a transfer to the General Elections in 2007. Political parties that breach their constitutions and are incapable of conducting free and fair primaries can hardly be expected to abide by the rules in the forthcoming elections. There is a likelihood of resort to thuggery, rigging, vote buying and other unwholesome tactics in the quest to win at all costs as exemplified by the primaries. The Nigerian Bar Association calls on all political parties to respect the wish of the people by conducting free and fair primaries.”

Accoring to the Kaduna NBA Chairman, E.Y. Kurah, Esq, it is in the Bar Association’s considered judgement that people participation is a direct consequence of the actions and responsibilities of the key actors in the political stage, which include politicians and their supporters, political parties, the police, the Judiciary, the Legislature and the Executive, and INEC. Participants at the town hall meetings agree that The Rule of Law begins with the registration exercise, and The Rule of Law must be observed if democracy will work in Nigeria. They frowned at the blatant and selective disrespect of court orders, especially by the Federal Government, which ought to be the custodians of the Constitution. They contended that the absolute supremacy of regular law over arbitrary power is most desired, saying that every the Constitution is a consequence of the people’s rights and not the source of it.

In the end, the participants considered several ways of non-violently defending the mandate they have given in the event that any body or group tries to scuttle the wishes of the people. In papers presented by the General Secretary of the Alliance for Credible Elections, Mr Emma Ezeazu, ACE-Nigeria canvassed non-violent methods of mandate defence, such as civil disobedience. He discussed examples from other lands—the Phillipines, Ukraine, Georgia and South American countries where unarmed citizens enforced their will on sit-tight leaders. He also gave example of Kano, where the people insisted on protecting ballot boxes after they cast their votes, making sure that the correct results were declared. He said the Kano example was a clear proof of the workability of such methods within Nigeria. The lessons for Nigerian civil society are that they must build alliance; they must get the votes out through a campaign on voter registration and voter turnout; they must train the people on non-violent defence of their mandate. They have to monitor the election by setting a parallel agency; keep citizens around polling stations and follow the collation points, and deploy non-violent campaigners to the street.

Participants complained about the INEC National Chairman’s insistence on not allowing voters remain within the precincts of the polling stations after they cast their votes, on the pretext that it would constitute security threat to the process. They said Professor Maurice Iwu was being cunning about the process; that, if proper security measures were provided, nothing should stop unarmed voters from standing to witness the votes being declared as representing their will. In response, Mr Emma Ezeazu said the Alliance for Credible Elections had been in the forefront of canvassing this position, which has constantly drawn the ire of the INEC chairman, whose every action has been geared toward removing the electoral process from the reach of the masses and putting it in the claws of rich politicians.

In the end, the NBA and the Alliance for Credible Elections resolved that all civil society groups must team up to train the general public on non-violent defence of their mandate; sensitise the people on monitoring the elections at the various polling centres and ensure full and active participation of the NBA branches all over the country in the electoral processes.

Comrade Paul, one of the participants in the Kaduna meeting with the disabled who emphasised the need for unity: “Cobwebs united can hold a lion.”


The town hall meetings with the lawyers had

after this, step down training of other branches of the NBA and various religious groups would be undertaken by the Alliance for Credible Elections. The idea is to prevent a situation agent provocateurs would feed on the spontaneous anger of the people and use it to cause chaos

JB Daudu, SAN, quoting some relevant authors, said that the Rule of Law “acts as a constraint upon the exercise of all power. The scope of the Rule of Law is broad; it has managed to justify, albeit not always explicitly, a great deal of the specific content of judicial review, such as the requirements that laws enacted by parliament be faithfully executed by officials; that orders of courts should be obeyed; that individuals wishing to enforce the law should have reasonable access to courts; that no person should be condemned unheard, and that power should not be arbitrarily exercised. In addition, the Rule of Law embraces some internal qualities of all public law: that it should be certain, that is, ascertainable in advance so as to be predictable and not retrospective in its operation; and that it be applied equally, without unjustifiable differentiation.”

“Finally,” concluded the learned SAN, JB Daudu, “the bulk of responsibility in electoral matters rests on the people. The power of politics and democracy rests with the people and it is for them to determine who they will give their leadership mandate to. Those who ignore the people’s mandate or try to corrupt their will do at their own peril.”


The Port Harcourt NBA chairman Aguma lamented the disastrous election in 2003 and said that “in 2006, INEC is at it again. Against conventional wisdom which is very glaring, INEC is proceeding with a system of registration that guarantees that over 80% of eligible voters in Nigeria will not be registered and therefore will not participate in 2007 elections…We ask what is the real intention of INEC? We must shout out loud and clear like the Nobel Laureate Prof Wole Soyinka. We must remind Prof Iwu that what is at stake is not his being an effective lap poodle; it is history’s assessment of him.”