Since the introduction of universal suffrage by e-voting in 2016, the elections of the
Too Big to be Left Alone: The 2020 Elections of the Nige rian
Seyi is a Lawyer, practicing somewhere in North-
Determined this time to rectify this matter and ensure he was able to participate in the vote, Seyi sent a message to the
Ugo, another Lawyer in another Branch of the NBA, found that the final voters register released by the ECNBA contained three different entries for him. In effect, he was registered to vote three times as the same person. Embarrassed but conscientious, he wrote to the ECNBA at the end of June to bring this to their attention. Over one week later, they had still not acknowledged him.
Delegates System of Voting
The experiences of Seyi and Ugo, are routine among the thousands of Lawyers seeking to participate in the forthcoming elections to the leadership of the NBA. The Association, which prides itself as the largest body of Lawyers in
Restoration of Universal Suffrage
The clamour to reform this system, was irresistible. In 2016, then NBA President, Augustine Alegeh, a
As with most things Nigerian, however, the current figures for
Achieving this, however, required data management disciplines and capabilities that were not historically very Nigerian. The NBA's records, were historically poor. The Roll of Lawyers was kept with the Supreme Court, not the NBA, which is, in actuality, a mere non-governmental organisation (NGO). Data synergy has never existed between the NBA and the Supreme Court, nor has it ever been achieved. The NBA instituted digital democracy solutions, before it had deployed the systems or processes to manage them credibly. These gaps were liable to be instrumentalised, by those who wanted to make sure that the NBA was defanged as a force for good in
Too Important to be Left Alone
With its numbers and its reach, the NBA is, potentially a powerful force for good. Indeed, until the Port Harcourt debacle, it used to be so.
That experience continues to shape the way in which government and vested interests in the country, see and engage with the NBA. Sometime around 2011, as the NBA prepared to elect yet another President in 2012, a Governor in the then ruling
The interests in the NBA elections, are not just political. There are also fiscal and economic interests. The Association is a billionaire in its own right, and generates even more billions from statutory and compliance transactions from its members. With a network of 125 branches spread all over the country, its membership and footprint is a veritable mine of data in an under-banked and under-recorded country.
In a contest in which every major candidate is interested in getting ahead rather than ensuring a credible and level playing field, the concert of systemic vulnerabilities, external interests and personal ambition in a country with a huge appetite for impunity, have conspired to remove from the NBA's ballot processes, the indeterminacy that should underpin a credible election. Now, leadership elections in the NBA are pre-determined, even before they take place not because there is no competition, but by a conspiracy of factors designed to compromise the legitimacy of any leadership, such that anyone who emerges leader of the Association, can only do so with the indelible stain of knowing that they were rigged into office.
A Crime that cannot be called by its name
In his infamous letter issued last month in
There are four vulnerabilities, which have been designed to guarantee rigging of the vote in the 2020 NBA election. These are voter rolls (register), portal integrity (or lack of it), voter verification opacity with prohibitive transaction cost, and lack of independence in the ECNBA. I will explain each of these briefly.
Second, the person must have paid their annual practicing fees, by 31 March. The collecting bank for this, is
Third, the voter must also have paid his or her Branch dues by 31 March. The NBA comprises 125 Branches. Each Branch manages its own processes, for collecting dues. These are not standardised. The list of eligible payees, is at the say so of the different Branch chairpersons.
Without access to the records of the bank or of the Branches, the register of voters lacks integrity and it shows. When the ECNBA issued the provisional register at the end of
A close reading of the list shows it contains multiple repetitions, omissions and even figments. By some estimates, the final list may have been padded by up to 25%. People who did not pay the practicing fees or Branch dues are there, while many who paid are not. Many Branches have no records of people, whom they claim as having paid Branch dues. There are credibly attested reports of chairpersons printing payment receipts, and back-dating fictional payments. One particular voter on the list goes by the incredible name of "Opening Balance". The joke is that this voter has a twin, also a Lawyer called "Closing". Their Dad, "Mr. Balance", must be proud.
In
Portal Integrity: In 2018, the voting portal for the NBA election was from a compromised provider. In 2020, it is not clear who the provider is. The portal appears to be managed by the NBA itself. It is not clear who has built it. There is neither transparency to its provenance, nor verifiability or falsifiability to its operations and computations. As such, its integrity can neither be investigated, nor guaranteed.
Putative voters are required to key in the e-mail addresses with which they intend to vote, but there is no confirmation that the address they provide is actively cross-matched to and stored against their names. This is important. In 2018, three domains, Airmail, Firemail and Openmailbox, hosted at least 657 unregistered e-mail addresses used to record votes in favour of the candidate ultimately declared winner, in a ballot in which the margin of "victory" was a mere 89 votes. Unquestionably, the lack of portal integrity then made all the difference to the outcomes.
It should not be too difficult to engage external monitors for the purpose of ensuring platform integrity, or invite the leading campaigns to designate back-end agents to monitor and verify the integrity of the operations. The campaigns should demand this, and the ECNBA has a duty to invite or accede to it.
Verification Opacity and Prohibitive Transaction Cost: By meeting the three conditions for getting on the voters register, a potential voter does not earn the right to vote as such. She only qualifies for the privilege of verification. To do this, the voter is required to go to the portal and upload their details, including their qualifying certificate and an e-mail address, to which a password can be sent to them. The uploading can take up to three to four days. Many voters find this frustrating, and opt out. Passwords are generated by the portal and changed by it at will, without the agency of the voter.
The voting register does not contain the e-mail address of the voter, so it is impossible to verify in any forensic process whether an e-mail corresponds to any particular voter. On their part, the ECNBA and the NBA can put forward data-protection concerns for circumspection, with publishing of the e-mail addresses. In response, surely, that cannot be cited to justify creating deliberate balloting vulnerabilities. The opacity guarantees inflation of actual voting. In 2018, this was precisely the vulnerability that allowed for clusters of voting to happen using fake Firemail addresses, for instance, generated from one source. That is almost guaranteed to occur in 2020. The prohibitive transaction cost is engineered for targeted disenfranchisement of voting conurbations, seen as favourably disposed to unfavoured candidates.
Lack of Independence in ECNBA: Appointed to supervise the NBA election, the ECNBA lacks independent appropriations and operations. It has to function through the NBA Secretariat under the direction of the NBA President. Despite the existence of an ECNBA, aspirants and candidates continue(d) to receive letters from the NBA Secretariat and the NBA continues to be involved in directing essential aspects of the election value chain. The absence of institutional and process independence, could become a dent on the personal integrity of members of the ECNBA.
All this happened in 2016 and 2018. The litigation commenced in 2016 against the rigging of the NBA Presidency, was only concluded at the end of the tenure of the beneficiary in 2018. After the 2018 election, the
The ECNBA has an opportunity even less than three weeks to the ballot, to avoid a repeat. It can easily infuse greater transparency into its operations, invite independent monitors to certify the integrity of its operations and accredit the campaigns for access to its records and back-end. These are not expensive steps. The campaigns should demand these. The only reason none may happen, is because the elections are not likely to be credible. I will be happy to be proved wrong, and to eat humble pie. I am also unable to understand how candidates willingly subscribe to a ballot with so many obvious vulnerabilities, that are clearly designed to compromise its integrity.
This, then, is the architecture of rigging that almost assuredly guarantees that
Dr
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