NEVR Final Report on Nigeria’S April 2011 National Elections
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NIGERIA ELECTORAL VIOLENCE REPORT (NEVR) PROJECT FINAL REPORT SUBAWARD NUMBER: P. O. No. S – 10 – 129 PROJECT PERIOD: SEPTEMBER 6, 2010 – JULY 6, 2011 Project executed by the National Association for Peaceful Elections in Nigeria (NAPEN) with support from the International Foundation For Electoral Systems (IFES)/USAID NEVR REPORT – NAPEN Table of contents Executive Summary………………………………………………………………………………………………………….3 Full Report………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………23 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….23 Background…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….25 The NEVR Visibility, Accessibility and Publicity features………………………………………………….26 Activities………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….30 Voter Registration Exercise……………………………………………………………………………………………..33 Step – Down training for NEVR Monitors…………………………………………………………………………33 Hub Activities……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………34 North East……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..34 North Central………………………………………………………………………………………………..........56 North West……………………………………………………………………………………………………………69 South East……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..79 South West…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….85 South South………………………………………………………………………………………………………….104 Summary of report Diagrams………………………………………………………………………………………….144 NEVR Website………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….148 Appreciation…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….149 Appendix – Newspaper Tracking………………………………………………………………………………………150 Glossary……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………156 2 | P a g e NEVR REPORT – NAPEN Executive Summary Of NEVR Final report on Nigeria’s April 2011 National Elections Project justification, objectives and strategy The concept, design and implementation of the Nigeria Election Violence Report (NEVR) project is a follow up to the Electoral Violence Education and Resolution (EVER) 1 project (implemented from December 2006 through June 2007) which was designed and implemented in response to the challenges facing free and credible conduct of elections in Nigeria. The preceding election of 2003 witnessed immense fraud coupled with electoral violence that called the credibility of the election into question. Human Rights Watch, for example, had reported that the scale of the violence and intimidation, much of which went unreported, called into question the credibility of these elections. In response to this and in pursuit of USAID’s goal of ensuring credible and violence free elections in the 2007 elections, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) Nigeria supported the EVER1 project with USAID funding. IFES through the umbrella organization, the National Association for Peaceful Elections (NAPE) under the EVER 1project monitored and reported incidents of electoral violence across Nigeria and the results showed an overwhelming spread of different kinds of electoral violence across the country. Team of monitors reported incidents of politically motivated attacks, killings, destruction of property, violent clashes between rival political parties, and threats and intimidation of political candidates and supporters. The reports 3 | P a g e NEVR REPORT – NAPEN published by IFES have become a reference point for other organizations working on electoral violence in Nigeria. In the build up to the 2011 general elections, the National Association for Peaceful Elections in Nigeria (NAPEN), a metamorphosis of NAPE, and IFES partnered in the NEVR Project to create a mechanism for monitoring, reporting, analyzing and mitigating current and potential incidents of election- related violence. The core objectives of the NEVR project were: i. To increase public knowledge and awareness of the dangers of electoral violence before, during and after elections ii. To increase the participation and involvement of election stakeholders in the mitigation and prevention of electoral violence iii. To increase the capacity of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and electorates to monitor and prevent electoral violence Activities for the project began with the tracking of violence in the media in the fourth quarter of 2010. This responsibility was undertaken by the NEVR Project Coordinator resident in the head office of NAPEN, housed at the IFES head office. The reports have been published in the NAPEN official Newsletter published every two months and the NEVR website. NEVR Project took advantage of the opportunities presented by new social media technologies to reduce the cost and improve the speed of violence monitoring. It designed the NEVR website through which it collected basic information about incidents of violence and peaceful political events via SMS and also mapped the data using Google Earth. 4 | P a g e NEVR REPORT – NAPEN In order to have the necessary impact on the need for a violence-free general election in April 2011, violence hotspot states in the six geopolitical zones were targeted for advocacy and consultation activities between December 2010 and January 2011, The aim of the consultation was to build up a working relationship between NAPEN and identified stakeholders, while the advocacy was to intimate stakeholders on the project and to solicit their support in its implementation. In all the zones, officials of NAPEN met with diverse stakeholders including, but not limited to, the police, the SSS, the NSCDC, NOA, INEC, political parties, community/religious leaders and other NGO’s/CSO’s involved in Election observation. NAPEN commissioned a consultancy group to undertake an election violence situation analysis of the country. The report received in January is available on the NEVR website. The report informed the selection of states to be covered and the strategy to be adopted. In January 2011, IFES undertook the training of programme officers and master trainers from all the zones at the Grange hill Hotel, Abuja. This was followed by the official launching of the NEVR project during which a broad spectrum of stakeholders was in attendance. Between January 25 and 30, the zones concluded the training of NEVR monitors. All in all, 72 monitors (12 for each zone) were trained. Since monitors had not been trained before January, monitoring began with the voter registration exercise from the last week of January and the first week of February 2011. Why election violence has become an issue in Nigeria’s current democracy: Globally, electoral violence is associated with non-transparent, rigged or manipulated elections, and it is also generally associated with transition, fledgling or pseudo-democracies. In Nigeria, election violence has acquired more dangerous dimensions wherein other traditional fault-lines 5 | P a g e NEVR REPORT – NAPEN like ethnic animosity, religious dichotomy and social discontent find convenient violent expression during elections that are characterized by the desperation of politicians to win at all cost. With the seeming introduction of bombings, terrorist-style politically-motivated violence and other violent forms of political conflicts (including the infamous Boko Haram) in the last two years, it appears electoral violence is not just a mere symptom of a disease in the Nigerian electoral system but has become a mass weapon of destruction with the ominous capacity to truncate the country’s fledgling democracy. The partnership of IFES and NAPEN aims at eradicating violence Since 2006, IFES and NAPEN have forged a partnership to examine, monitor, report and advocate against the seemingly increasing spade of election violence. The method adopted deliberately emphasized public enlightenment, voter/civic education towards understanding of the entire ramifications and implications of electoral violence towards the future of democracy and stability in Nigeria. Although the project had resource limitations, the partnerships in the 2007 and 2011 elections have been reckoned with by INEC and civil society partners as a very critical window from which to audit and rate Nigeria’s elections. The findings and recommendations are expected to contribute to the reduction and eventual elimination of electoral violence in Nigeria’s body polity as a major barometer of the maturity of electoral democracy in the country. The larger challenge of credibility of elections and legitimacy of governments in Nigeria The frequency and intensity of electoral violence erodes the credibility of any election, and logically questions the legitimacy of the government that emerges from such an election. It was for this same reason that the late President Yar’adua was honorable enough to acknowledge that the 2007 Presidential and other national elections were less than credible, hence his immediate commencement of the 1999 Constitution and the 2006 Electoral Act amendments. Indeed, the lack of transparent elections in Nigeria over the years is generally said to be a major reason that has rendered its democracy fragile and also made the subject of ridicule. This 6 | P a g e NEVR REPORT – NAPEN is one of the reasons some skeptics have gone to the extreme of calling for military take-over of government during some of the periods of violence. The pre-election transition environment: - Electoral reforms In response to popular demand, the late President Umaru Musa Yar’adua appointed a carefully-assembled Electoral Reform Committee chaired by a former Chief justice of Nigeria, Justice Muhammadu Uwais. The committee made far-reaching recommendations for Electoral Act and constitutional amendments to eliminate electoral fraud reduce violence