POLITICS-NIGERIA: Low Turn Out Marks State Assembly Polls

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

LAGOS, May 5 2003 (IPS) - -Unlike the National Assembly elections and the Gubernatorial and Presidential elections held on April 12 and April 19 respectively, Saturday’s polls to elect representatives at the various state houses of assembly were marked by a low turn-out of voters.

Officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which is overseeing the elections, security officers and electoral materials arrived most polling centres at seven in the morning and an hour later when voting was scheduled to commence voters only started trickling in.

Two hours after the commencement of voting, only 91 persons had cast their votes at one of the centres here. According to an INEC official, ”by this time during the last two elections, more than 200 voters had cast their votes. I think people are not interested in today’s election”. At another centre, only 79 voters had exercised their franchise two hours into voting.

Despite the heavy rains during the last two elections, Nigerians turned out in their large numbers to cast their votes. But with a clear sky Saturday, many prospective voters stayed indoors most of them glued to their television sets as surprisingly the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) did not take implement a power cut.

Youth turned the streets into football pitches setting up their goal posts with disused tyres. The women were not left out of the football matches hastily organised on the streets as IPS noticed some girls also playing football bare-footed on the paved streets.

Vehicles were also off the roads except for ambulances, police patrol vans and vehicles belonging to INEC officials and journalists.While a few motor bikes, popularly known as Okada, ferried some party agents around. The government had banned vehicle usage from eight in the morning to six in the evening for the purposes of the election.

”We had to start going to their (voters) houses to call them out to vote unlike during the last one when they all queued before eight to vote. People seem not to be interested in this election which they think is not important. But it is as important as the national and state governors elections as the state legislators are responsible for passing laws that affect the people in the state,” says Ajibola Fajobi, a political agent of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) at one of the centres.

Fajobi says that the mobilisation that preceded the two previous elections were virtually absent in the state assembly polls. ”Our campaigns were not as vigorous as the ones before the Senate, the House of Representatives as well as the state governor and presidential elections”.

According to him, the AD embarked on a house to house programme to call voters out to cast their votes because the party wanted to ensure that it also won the majority in the state house of assembly so that the re-elected governor Bola Tinubu would not have problems working with the legislative arm.

Of the six AD controlled states in South-western Nigeria, only Lagos State was not taken over by the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the National Assembly as well as the governor and presidential elections held in April. However, the contest between incumbent governor Tinubu and the PDP candidate Funsho Williams was so close that Williams is alleging fraud and plans to go to the electoral tribunal for redress. Tinubu go 911,613 votes to Williams 740,506 votes in the polls.

According to political analysts here, based on this, it became necessary for the AD to do all it could including going from house to house to appeal to voters to go out and cast their votes before the close of voting at three o’clock, to win the majority of seats in Saturday’s election to avoid being impeached should the PDP enjoy a majority seat.

The AD had alleged on Thursday that there was a plan by the PDP chieftains in the state to add Lagos State to the list of their captured states to complete their conquest in the South-west geo-political zone.

Many governors-elect are savouring their victory cautiously, given the fact that their victory can only be sealed when their parties win the majority of votes in the State Assembly elections.

Analysts are worried about the low turn out which they describe as being bad for democracy.

Lai Osho, a political scientist and lecturer blamed the low turn-out on lack of campaigning and the fact that the leadership of the parties believe since they won, or did not win, in the last elections the pattern is likely to continue this time.

"In the last one week, there were no campaigns. Everybody at the party level thinks once Nigerians have come out to vote for the parties and not individuals, the trend will continue, so they relaxed. The voters also believe that the legislators have not done anything for them in the last four years, why must we go out and vote for them again or elect other ones?" Lai said.

He noted that apart from the low mobilisation for the state assembly elections, Nigerians have in the last four years focused attention on the National Assembly, the President and the governors. "This is bad because all the tiers are important, the legislators are even more important than the governors because they make the laws that affect the citizens."

Remi Bukola, a housewife attributed the low turn-out to the large numbers of political parties. "People are not going out to vote because there are so many parties and we do not know them. We also do not know the candidates that are being presented to us. Why then do we waste our time going out to vote for someone we do not know?" she asked IPS.

But some analysts believe the change in the pattern of polls in which elections start with the lesser positions and graduate to the most important which is the presidential election, rubbed off on Saturday’s turn-out at polling centres.

"If we have started with local government elections to the state assemblies, the governorship, the national assembly and the presidential elections as was the case before, people would have been interested to the last day," one analyst said.

He asked: "Do you think if today was to be presidential election people will not come out? No, they would have been out under any weather condition because of the importance, but they believe the elections have been lost and won, voting in the state assembly elections will not change anything."

According to him, the change in the pattern of elections which began with the Presidential down to the local government, was a deliberate arrangement by the out-going PDP-led National Assembly to ensure that the ruling party won the importance elections first and other elections would follow the same pattern.

IPS noticed that voting had stopped in most centres visited here at noon, some three hours before the official closing time for voting while polling officials, security officers and party agents sat idle waiting for the votes to be counted.(ENDS/IPS/AF/WA/IP/TO/SM/O3) = 05050817 ORP006 NNNN