Professor Risqua Araba Shehu is the immediate past Resident Electoral Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission in Kano State. Five years ago, he succeeded the Late Alhaji Mukaila Abdullahi, who died in a fire incident.
In this interview with DESMOND MGBOH, Risqua, a former Vice Chancellor of Usman Dan fodio University, Sokoto shares his fears and worries on the job. He also speaks on highly controversial Kano’s inconclusive 2019 gubernatorial elections that saw Abdullahi Umar Umar Ganduje of the APC overtake Abba Kabir Yusuf of the PDP in the second round of the elections. He also lauds the new Electoral Act, saying the changes it introduced will certainly improve the credibility of elections in Nigeria.
How do you feel about your reassignment today from INEC?
First of all, I feel very happy and I remain very grateful to Almighty God for sparing my life and to make me pass through the good, the challenging and sometimes the rough times in the last five years. I feel also very happy because it is a rare opportunity, because out of 200 million Nigerians, to be appointed as one of the 37 Resident Electoral Commissioners in the country is indeed a great honour. So I consider myself very privileged to have served in that capacity and when I reflect back, I can’t but continue to thank the Almighty. It is a job that took away the lives of some people in the past, particularly in Kano and it is a job that not everybody is lucky to scale through and finish. We started with some Resident Electoral Commissioners, but they were not fortunate to have lived to the end of their tenure. So I remain very grateful. Before coming to INEC, I had my job at the Usman Danfodio Sokoto University.
You were previously a Vice Chancellor and then a resident electoral commissioner. How do these experiences differ and how do they meet to shape your contributions to INEC?
Well, the job of a Vice Chancellor is a lot easier because it is a job that deals with university environment only and other related agencies that you have to work with. It is not a job that is unpredictable. The difficult part of the job is that there are a number of uncertainties and a number of things beyond the control of the resident electoral commissioner, which you have to deal with. More often than not, is the issue of attitudinal challenges we have as a country. The university community is an enlightened community. They are people who know the rules and regulations, people who know the rules of engagement and in most cases, are very much conscious of the fact that they must obey the rules. It is totally a different ball game when you come to the issue of dealing with the wider society, the political class in particular. You have to deal with civil societies and organisations and all other interest groups and everybody looks up to you to be ideal, but will ignore his own part of not being ideal and you have to strike a balance and keep moving to make sure you satisfy everybody within the provisions of the law. That is the difference.
You actually took over from someone who could not make it, someone who lost his life in a mystery fire incident that put a lot of fear into people?
Well, I was prepared for death. As a Muslim, you must always be ready to die. I was never bothered that I could get killed. It was the supreme price you have to pay for your country and destiny is something you cannot avoid. So I wasn’t worried. I really didn’t care and I never bothered about it. All I knew is that every job has its own hazard and if you are afraid of hazards, then you cannot do anything and the risks of life are enormous. Even sitting doing nothing is a risk. For me, it was not an issue. All I knew was that I would die when it is my time.
Kano is one of the most populated states. What was it like managing elections in a huge and complex place as Kano?
It was a good experience. It was all a question of being organised and remaining focused and being able to harness the capacity of those you work with in terms of ensuring that things are done in good time and are done properly. The commission is blessed with a lot of good hands and a lot of brilliance, a lot of talents yet untapped. As a leader, I was just one among equals who was with the responsibility of coordinating and ensuring that we work as expected by the commission. We have guidelines; we have timelines for each activity to be carried out and what should be carried out. Mine was simply to coordinate and it is not the first time for me to coordinate activities. Internal workings of the commission and logistics are challenges that you would get used to, except that portion that is beyond your control
You mean the political pressure, the complexity and the people, the fight among contestants?
Yes. The pressure is not unexpected because every politician wants to be declared the winner whether he deserves it or not. It is normal among the politicians. I think we are concerned about the processes and procedures. I think that no matter what you do, somebody will feel that you have not satisfied his expectations. And that is why it is anticipated that there could be crisis. And when there is crisis, what do you do? You fall back to the rules to resolve the crisis. What is beyond you has to be resolved by the court of law. For me I did everything I did sincerely and without any fear or favour. I made sure I ensured that the rules and regulations governing elections were followed and the outcome is what resulted into various forms of perceptions and interpretations. So rightly or wrongly, people have the right to give their interpretations. But when people do things out of ignorance, you can only pity them. When people behave as if something is done against the law, you can only pity them.
Let’s talk about Kano inconclusive election of 2019. People still wonder how a candidate that was second with a difference of over 20,000 votes suddenly became the first in the second elections.
Well, I think you need to understand the processes of result collation to appreciate the magnitude of wrong misrepresentations that were out there. The guidelines for declaring elections are very clear and prior to the elections, we made sure that each political party and other stakeholders got the guidelines on how results were to be collated. I was not the collation officer. My job was to make sure that all the necessary arrangements for the conduct of the elections were done properly and materials got to the polling units accordingly. After that, the job of the resident electoral commissioner (REC) is simple. Just to observe. Except where you see violation of the guidelines, then you draw the attention of the collation and returning officers. A lot of people are ignorant of this. But as the head of the commission in Kano, I have to take the blame. Secondly, the guidelines are clear about over-voting. People who vote and expect their votes to count would not expect that if five people were accredited, to see the votes of ten people being counted and the commission is very clear, where you have one votes above the number of the accredited voters, it means that there is malpractice, you cancel the votes and everybody loses. The same thing also applies to where people refuse to use the smart card readers at that time. The commission says that because of safety, as a staff you keep quiet. But when you get a report from any presiding officer that people refuse to allow the use of the card reader, in that case, you cannot confirm the actual number of accredited voters. You score zero for everybody.
The third one where elections were disrupted because of violence, because of violence of any form that led to people running away for their lives including our Ad- hoc staff. Now when results were collated and a presiding officer reports that, look, where I was sent to conduct elections, we couldn’t conduct it because of violence, we cancel the votes. Where somebody reports that when we were collating, we found some votes higher than the actual number of accredited voters, the officer assigned there would automatically say that this over voting and would cancel it.
Now at the state level, the aggregation of all those votes that were cancelled as a result of violence or over-voting were brought forward. The case of Gama ward was a special case because we all saw what happened – and the details of that will be in my book, God willing, including a video clip that would be shared on the social media soon for people to have a better understanding of some of the things that took place and the way we investigated the issue, and up to the stage where we had to take the decision. The petition written by PDP and the reply I gave to PDP would all be part of the things I will share with the people.
In a nutshell where you have votes cancelled as a result of violence or over voting, you aggregate the number of votes, using the number the number of registered voters in that particular polling unit. And to declare a winner, the guideline was very clear, that the margin of lead between the front runner and the second runner must be higher than the total number of votes cancelled. The first runner in that election was leading 26,500 votes. Over 128,000 votes were cancelled as a result of one reason or the other. There was no way we could declare the first runner as the winner.
The simple logic is that if those votes cancelled were added to the second runner, he would have won. That was the basis of the decision not to declare. Now what happened in the second election in terms of the kind of intimidation being reported and a number of stories of violence were not issues designed or promoted by the commission. They were issues that could best answered by those who in charge of the security operations. And I don’t think it would be fair to blame the commission for what happened. But when the results were brought, and clearly we had no reason to say we heard stories of violence, therefore cancel this. Because it was not the responsibility of the collation office at the state level. But when the presiding officer at the polling unit would say no, it cannot be cancelled. That is why you send people and assign responsibility and they must answer for their responsibility. I cannot be commissioner and answer for what a presiding officer did in the field.
What you are saying is that when there are reported cases of intimidation, it is not the responsibility of INEC, but the security?
What the commission is guided by is where you anticipate a natural disaster, you have the right to postpone elections. Now, security challenge, natural disaster or any unforeseen disaster that could lead to disruption, you can postpone if you have such. But we were assured of peaceful conduct, we were assured of security as a commission, on what basis would I say that those who are experts in telling us to conduct election, that we cannot?
What are your views on the new Electoral Act and its performance in the 2023 elections?
I think it is the greatest thing that has happened to the country. We should be very grateful. The legacy that we would be leaving behind in terms of the improvement in managing elections is this particular Act. Don’t forget what the commission does after every election is to review, interact with all stakeholders starting with the internal staff, learning from the past experiences and document all the major areas of concerns. And one of the major areas of concern was the loopholes in the 2010 Electoral Act and I am happy that they have been taken care of.
The use of technology is now very clear and well placed, which gives INEC an advantage of reducing the human factor. Secondly, result management has been adequately addressed in the sense that now, the kind of gaps that we used to see when you cancelled votes that would lead to wide gap and would lead to inconclusive elections would not be seen again, in the sense that we are using now the number of accredited voters, number of people who have collected their PVCs in managing results. In a situation where out of 10,000, only 2000 collected cards, what is your business with those who have no cards? Even if you are going to do a second election, they cannot participate because they have no cards. It is more reasonable to consider the number of PVCs collected in managing decision.
It is the same thing with people who have not been accredited. What place do they have in making a decision of an election that has taken place? These are some of the changes. And I think that more importantly is the powers given to the commission to review results in a situation where there are suspicions of any form of irregularity or compulsion of officers to declare results under duress. A number of things that were learnt from the 2019 elections have been looked at and the amendments have taken care of them, which means that by God grace, we would continue to see improvement. And clearly the recent elections in Osun and Ekiti States have shown Nigerians that on the part of the commission, the major goal is to ensure improvement and credibility in the conduct of elections in this country. But it is an on-going work. Even the new Electoral Act is being looked at and lessons that would be learnt from the 2023 elections would help in preparing for the next elections. It is a continuous process.
Litigations have been a challenge to the commission. May we know how that has affected you?
The most interesting thing that people hardly look at is that INEC conducts elections, but the real cases against INEC in terms of shortcomings are very few. Most of the cases you see are cases that have more to do with lack of respect for internal democracy. People that are expected to value credibility, transparency and inclusivity of elections are the same people that cannot do that, even within their own houses. Political parties, how many of them are credible enough to say that they respect their internal democracy and provisions? They have their constitutions, which clearly state how they should conduct their elections, but to manage their own elections is a problem. And you see 80 per cent of the court cases are coming from them. But the interesting thing is that the commission remains focused and I am happy that the little contributions we were able to make have added value. And so I am quitting with great happiness and a lot of gratitude to God.