“Nigeria: Elections Threatened by Violence and Abuse of Power”

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Emma Daly:
This is Emma Daly, the press director at Human Rights Watch, I am talking to Human Rights Watch’s Nigeria Researcher; Chris Albin-Lackey, who’s the co-author of a briefing paper on the forthcoming Nigerian elections.

Chris can you tell us what you find in your research ahead of the elections in April?

Chris Albin-Lackey:
Well these elections should be a landmark event for Nigeria; it will be the first time in the country’s history that power has been transferred from one civilian ruler to another. But unfortunately many of the same patterns of violence and corruption and outright rigging, that have undermined the credibility of the last two elections seemed to be rearing there head again.

Past Nigerian elections have been very violent affairs and it’s become routine practice for powerful politicians to arm and hire criminal gangs to help them intimidate their opponents and rig the elections on election day.

Nigeria’s police barely even make a pretense of investigating or prosecuting the politicians who engage in this sort of activity because many of them are very well connected. The money that goes to pay for these activities often comes from the proceeds of corruption as well as efforts to buy off the police and buy off election officials on and around election day, and otherwise temper with the results of the elections themselves.

Emma Daly:
So, what kind of effect does this have on voters?

Chris Albin-Lackey:
Well, voters on the one hand have to face the very real fear of violence at the polls, and if voters attempt to stand up and prevent politicians, or the gangs that they employ, from tempering with what goes on inside of the polling places they face again the very serious risk of violence.

There have already been at least seventy people killed in the run-up for these elections next month, and the situation seems to be getting worse. Voters can also expect that regardless of what decisions they make about how they will cast their vote, it may not count for very much at the end of the day. Many of the most credible opposition candidates in these elections have been kept off the ballot by the government for political reasons.

Emma Daly:
Do we also have to contend with outright fraud and ballot stuffing, that kind of election rigging?

Chris Albin-Lackey:
It was a big problem in 2003, yes, and it doesn’t appear that the government electoral commission has done much, if anything, to make that sort of thing harder to come about this time than it was last time. In 2003 in many parts of the country, especially in the rest of Niger-Delta area, elections weren’t held at all. Polling booths were padlocked, and nobody was able to turn out to vote in many areas and yet the government reported massive turnout, almost a hundred percent of the vote in favor of the ruling party.

Emma Daly:
What’s the situation in the Niger-Delta?

Chris Albin-Lackey:
Well, the Niger-Delta is the most insecure part of Nigeria, it's the main oil producing region of the country but also has historically been the most economically marginalized part of Nigeria and over the past several years in particular a number of very well armed self-style militant group have sprung up and these groups have carried out kidnappings of ex-patriot oil company employees and staged attacks on oil company infrastructure and in the occasionally have clashed with military forces as well.

And, overall, there presence has led to a steep decline in the security situation around the region for ordinary people.

Emma Daly:
Will there be international observers at these elections and will they have any effect do you think?

Chris Albin-Lackey:
There will be a fairly large contingent of observers, one problem which, the international observers, at least, is that they will not be observing the elections in the Niger-Delta which has in the past been the place where elections have been the most violent and the most blatantly rigged.

Nonetheless though, I think there will be enough observers in the country that there will be some very good information available about what goes wrong with these elections.
The more difficult question is whether, the foreign governments that sent these observer missions and claimed to respect the results of their work will actually respond in a forceful manner to any problems that the observers reveal.

Emma Daly:
Is Human Rights Watch asking the Nigerian government or other governments to do anything in particular and is there anybody or any institution that can actually influence the Nigerian government to ensure that these elections are better than in previous years?

Chris Albin-Lackey:
The elections are very close at hand now but there are two key things that the Nigerian government really has to do if there is to be any kind of credibility attached to this exercise. On the one hand, the government institutions and the police, in particular, must make a serious effort to go after politicians that are organizing gangs to wreak havoc around Election Day.

Secondly, there are about 40 candidates  around the country including the most credible opposition candidates for president, who have been barred from standing in the elections, and all of those candidates are challenging the matter in court and there is a very real possibility that they will win and that the government will be ordered to include them on the ballot; and yet the electoral commission has indicated that it might simply ignore any Supreme Court ruling that says something like that.

There are limits to the degree of leverage that the international community has over Nigeria, because the government, at least, is so wealthy because of the oil revenue that comes into its coffers. But nonetheless the US, the UK, the African Union, ECOWAS, all of Nigeria’s key international and regional partners do have an enormous amount of moral leverage, and do have a real power to shame the government into taking constructive action, if only that leverage would be exercised.

Emma Daly:
Well Chris I understand you’re going back to Nigeria to document what happens during the elections so good luck and we hope to speak to you again when you come back.