CASADE

Why Credible Census Matters in African States

Editorial Commentary.
Knowing how many residents in a country who are properly invested with civil responsibilities that accompany citizenship matters. There are strong reasons of late to agree that such civil exercise is more relevant in African states than elsewhere. One such important reason is the need to know who legitimately participated in plebicites of crucial national interest. The presence of ghost voters, illegal immigrant voters, and invented voters in Nigeria’s last presidential election is a phenomenon that continues to caste long shadows of doubt and legitimacy on election outcomes, and the process of internal resource allocation amongst various ethnic and social groups. The much touted beneficent attributes of modern technology to rectify known problems are only as useful as the humans who deploy them. In the case of Ethiopia’s census taking, the Economist is as lucid as it is helpful in making one of Africa’s enduring problems an issue to be taken seriously.

The Economist:
IN ETHIOPIA, Africa’s second most populous country, it is often difficult to distinguish politics from demography. On March 18th the government announced that the national census, due to begin one and a half years behind schedule on April 7th, would be postponed for a third time. It said that security concerns, especially in the south and west, made holding one almost impossible.

The count, which comes ahead of national elections scheduled for next year, was meant to be a showpiece of digital innovation, with census officials capturing data on touch tablets and transmitting it over mobile phone networks. Instead the delay has confirmed the toxic power of demography and numbers in Ethiopian politics.

When it finally happens, this will be only the fourth census in Ethiopia’s history. And every one of them has been contentious. The first, in 1984, could not be conducted in large parts of the country because of a civil war that was taking place at the time. The second, in 1994, came shortly before the introduction of ethnic federalism, by which Ethiopia was divided into regions that ostensibly followed ethnic boundaries. In the census all were made to choose an ethnicity, even though many Ethiopians are of mixed heritage.

The third, in 2007, was delayed because of unrest following disputed national elections two years earlier. The results of that count were questioned by leaders among the Amharas, the second largest ethnic group, who claimed that their people were undercounted by as many as 3m of about 20m.

The reason that counting people is so important to Ethiopia’s various ethnic groups is because it influences how much power and money they get. The formula calculating federal subsidies to the regions, for instance, takes population into account. So does the allocation of seats in Ethiopia’s upper parliamentary chamber, as well as the “political weight” that each group has in demanding ministries and posts in the federal government, notes Zemelak Ayele of Ethiopia’s Centre for Federal Studies. Some now argue that it should also influence representation in the politburo of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the multi-ethnic coalition that has ruled since it took power in 1991. Currently its four ethnically-based parties enjoy an equal voting share, regardless of large differences in their respective population size.

Questions over numbers are particularly sensitive given a shift in power within the EPRDF, which had long been dominated by Tigrayans, who make up only about 6% of the population. Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister, was swept to power a year ago on the back of rising discontent among members of the Oromo ethnicity, which makes up between one-third and, according to some Oromo activists, one-half of the population.

On the basis of demographics, Abiy’s Oromo faction boosted its representation across the federal government. For the first time in Ethiopian history Oromos now dominate the organs of state. Large numbers of Tigrayan officials have been purged, including from their former strongholds in the army and national intelligence agency.

Ethnic politics are also turning violent, at times. Activists from the Sidama tribe who are demanding the establishment of their own region forced some 2,500 people of other ethnicities from their homes in Hawassa last June. In Oromia almost 1m ethnic Gedeos were chased from their homes last year. This act of ethnic cleansing was fuelled in part by a belief among Oromos that Gedeos had become the largest ethnic group in the area and planned to annex it from Oromia. Meanwhile the regions of Amhara and Tigray battle over disputed territories along their shared border. “At root these are all conflicts over demographic representation,” says Kjetil Tronvoll of Bjorknes University College in Norway. “A census could directly contribute to ethnic cleansing.”

Some observers argue that, given the tensions, it makes sense to postpone the count. Unlike an election, which in theory could be conducted incrementally starting in more peaceful regions, the census must be carried out at once for it to be valid.

The results will be disputed regardless. “There is no trust in institutions,” notes Christophe Van der Beken, a professor at Addis Ababa University. In Amhara, where activists have campaigned against the census for months, rumours abound that the government is forcibly sterilising local women to suppress the number of Amhara people. “We believe numerical genocide will happen again,” says Dessalegn Chanie, the head of the National Movement of Amhara, a new opposition party. Meanwhile in the capital, Addis Ababa, many fear that the Oromo-led administration plans to alter the city’s demographics in favour of the Oromo. In a recent speech Lemma Mergersa, the regional president, said his government had resettled more than half a million Oromos around the city. “Politics in urban areas means ‘demography’,” he said.

Many see the delayed count as an early sign that next year’s election will be postponed too. Though it would be technically possible to hold an election without the results of the census beforehand, it would undermine the poll’s credibility. Ethiopia’s constituency map has not been redrawn since 1995, in which time the population has more than doubled. More to the point, many of the problems that plague the census will also bedevil the election. “If a government can’t deliver a census how can it deliver an election?” asks one local academic.

*Courtesy of The Economist.

by CASADE

In flawless form Nigeria confirms once again its international reputation

John O. Ifediora*

At 2:30AM on February 16 few hours before polling stations were scheduled to open, Mr. Mahmood Yakubu, chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC), announced to Nigerians reasonably expected to be asleep at that hour that the presidential election they had expended time, effort and unrecoverable resources on had been postponed. The reasons he adduced, ‘logistical and operational concerns,’ were no more convincing to him than the millions who woke up to the news that morning. By this singular act the chairman remained faithful to Nigeria’s international reputation, and its electoral antecedents that include postponed elections in 2007, 2011, and 2015.

Nigeria’s electoral commission and its chairman had over three years to prepare for, and execute a reasonably credible election. It had unrestrained access to budgeted resources to accomplish its goals but chose instead to sustain a historical precedent of postponed or cancelled elections that overtly informed Nigerians that their civil right to determine who governs their affairs in an ostensibly democratic nation-state does not matter. Such pattern of official misbehavior has salient and grave consequences to the psyche of the governed and their shared presumptive belief of ownership rights to their nation; it also disabuses them of the notion that Nigerians, as a polity, have a common future where no religious groups, ethnic groups or individuals may claim superior rights over others. But all these beg the question of why Nigerians should be continuously subjected to unscripted comedy of errors and absurdities that are clearly anachronistic to present realities of democratic principles of governance. The answer is uniquely Nigerian.

Since the late 1980s when the Nigerian military was convinced to remain in their barracks, succeeding civilian administrations have used their wits and borrowed ones to hold on to power as long as their limited abilities and marginal performance would allow them. A popular means to this end is rigged elections executed through fraudulent ballots, intimidation of voters at the polls, changing election results, and voter suppression. But as Nigerians became more sensitized to the empowering nature of casting votes, further enhanced by increasing contingents of foreign election observers, and advances in technology that minimized electoral fraud and voter suppression, postponement of elections became fashionable. It afforded the incumbent administration a certain flexibility to perfect a ‘winning strategy’ calculated to frustrate and minimize the number of foreign election observers, suppress voter turnout by imposing higher opportunity cost on voters who must return to their place of registration in order to vote, and generally induce voter apathy.

This act of official recklessness is simple enough, but yet an open secret with dire consequences if taken to its logical conclusion. For one, the opposition candidate and his supporters are not as uninformed as the incumbent administration usually assumes. If the incumbent succeeds in ‘winning’ the election after a postponement, it would be virtually impossible to convince an already suspicious electorate, and an informed opposition candidate that the election was free and fair. In this unfortunate outcome, the country would be subjected to a myriad of unpleasant possibilities that would make it impossible for the incumbent to govern. If, however, the opposition candidate wins, the assumption of a rigged election against him would no longer matter; it may actually make him more appealing to the electorate as a conquering hero.

Given the sour mood of the electorate each time a postponement occurs, coupled with the strength and determination of a well-financed opposition candidate, the incumbent invariably loses regardless of the outcome. If he ‘wins’ he loses by not being able to govern, if he loses the election he goes home, and the country moves on. The default outcome in this case is the election of the opposition candidate. The 2015 postponement under President Goodluck Jonathan was calculated to defeat the then opposition candidate, Mr. Buhari. The tense atmosphere that enveloped the nation before the election convinced the incumbent that an expeditious concession after the election would not only be the right thing to do but the only thing to do if the nation was to be spared further agony. He made a peaceful exit. This is democracy in action, albeit the Nigerian way; it is also self-defeating.

*Director, and Editor-in-Chief, CASADE.

by CASADE

As Nigerians prepare to elect a new president Islamic State militants now control hundreds of square miles of land mass

Joe Parkinson and Drew Hinshaw.*
YOLA, Nigeria—The battle began with two small drones buzzing over a base where more than 500 Nigerian troops guarded the shores of Lake Chad. Then came the clatter of gunfire from a column of armored cars, artillery units and tanks that also blasted jihadist battle songs from mounted speakers. Within hours, elite forces from one of Africa’s most powerful militaries had abandoned their base and its cache of heavy weapons, routed by an insurgent army fighting under the familiar black and white flag of Islamic State.

“We were sitting ducks,” said Bitrus Madu, a Nigerian sergeant who fled the base in the town of Baga in December and walked through forests for three days to reach safety. “The terrorists control the whole region now.”
In recent months, as Islamic State has seen its self-described caliphate in Iraq and Syria radically shrink, a Nigeria-born group calling itself the Islamic State West Africa Province, or ISWAP, has taken control of hundreds of square miles of territory, according to Nigerian and Western officials.

The group’s rapid rise, largely away from public view, foreshadows the next chapter for Islamic State. Its local allies are expanding in a flurry of far-flung states, battling local armies and carving fundamentalist enclaves in Afghanistan, Mali, the Philippines and Somalia. Islamic State’s threat to regional governments and the West is likely to continue, U.S. intelligence chiefs said in a formal risk assessment last week.

The ISWAP faction, established in 2016 after a violent split within Nigeria’s Boko Haram insurgency is entrenching itself in the borderland communities around Lake Chad, forging state structures. It controls trade routes, taxes the local fish industry, regulates agriculture and imposes its extremist brand of Islamic justice.
The picture that emerges—based on interviews with soldiers, refugees, intelligence officers, arms smugglers and diplomats in Nigeria and Niger, as well as to people who participated in talks with the faction—is of a well armed and motivated insurgent group that expects to establish a state out of strategic geography where the U.S. is dialing back its military presence. There is no sign the group seeks to attack Western targets beyond its homeland.
In contrast to Boko Haram and its infliction of carnage on civilians, ISWAP’s estimated 5,000 men focus their attacks on security forces and nongovernmental organizations, following tactical advice sent from Syria to spare the war-weary population.
Seasoned fighters from West Africa who once traveled to Libya and the Middle East have returned to augment ISWAP ranks. ISIS theologians have sent written instructions, viewed by The Wall Street Journal, to cease attacking schools and markets and stop preaching that the Earth is flat.
The group has overrun and looted a dozen military bases, leaving hundreds of soldiers dead and seizing huge stockpiles of weapons, weeks before Nigeria, Africa’s largest democracy, holds a presidential election. Nigerian security officials call it a far bigger threat than Boko Haram, given its sophistication and popular support.

“The weapons are being smuggled from Islamic State in Libya to their factions in Nigeria and Mali,” said an arms smuggler in Niger named Yusuf as he flicked through images of Dushka machine guns and other weapons he claimed to have ferried across the desert. “These groups want to create a big domain. They want their own country.”

Many Nigerian officials no longer talk about defeating the insurgency, merely containing it. “On security, the point must be made that we are not where we expected to be. We must admit that,” said Festus Keyamo, a spokesman for the re-election campaign of Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari. “However, we have made some progress” since taking over in 2015, he said.

Nigeria’s military hasn’t provided a death toll of the struggle against ISWAP, and it has sought to muzzle reporting. Armed soldiers in January simultaneously raided two offices of Daily Trust, the newspaper of record for Nigeria’s north. Asked about the raids, an army spokesman said the newspaper undermined national security.

It wasn’t possible to reach the group. Its internal news channels on the encrypted app Telegram—including one called al-Hakik, or “the credible”—give a sense of how it wishes to be seen. The news channel operates in part as a kind of jihadist Instagram, with fighters sharing photos of themselves enjoying sunsets over Lake Chad or dressed for battle. News items announce sumptuous harvests from farmers, including displaced people who have been invited back to the area to farm.

Led by a reclusive young commander called Abu Musab al-Barnawi, the faction now holds an enclave across Nigeria, Niger and Chad, according to unpublished U.S. military maps. It has dug wells, handed out seeds and fertilizer and provided safe pasture for herders, according to traders and herders who move between the region ISWAP controls and refugee camps in the Nigerian city of Maiduguri.

“If we obey their rules, they let us trade. They let us farm,” said Garba, a trader. Aid agencies report that some of the 1.5 million Nigerians who have spent much of the past decade in the refugee camps are returning to areas where the jihadists hold sway.
Much about ISWAP remains a mystery. Analysts are divided over whether it is centralized around Mr. Barnawi’s authority or scattered across autonomous brigades. The group hasn’t declared a caliphate, making it hard to assess its territorial control across a vast region where fighters blend with villagers.

Dialogue between the faction and Islamic State commanders in Libya and beyond is regular, according to African, U.S. and European intelligence officials. When Islamic State was at its height in Syria, it sent money and orders to the Nigerian franchise, dictating matters ranging from promotions to hostage-negotiation techniques to strategy, say people who have dealt with the group.

It is in this context that one of the world’s largest exercises in democracy will take place Feb. 16. Mr. Buhari, once a military dictator but an elected president since 2015, is running for a second term by touting progress he has made tackling Boko Haram.

He pushed that group out of land it controlled and now describes it as “technically defeated,” but has struggled against the Islamic State group. His military is stretched, deployed against pirates and oil thieves in the south and having to police religiously tinged battles over farmland in central regions. Governors and security analysts say ISWAP’s offensive could frustrate efforts to hold elections in parts of northeastern Nigeria.

Islamic State formally entered Nigeria’s conflict in 2015, less than a year after Boko Haram shot to global infamy by kidnapping 276 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok. In March 2015, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau pledged allegiance to Islamic State caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Islamic State was near the peak of its power at the time, controlling territory in Syria and Iraq and welcoming thousands of foreign fighters each month.

Islamic State sent money and training to improve the quality of Boko Haram’s propaganda videos. Boko Haram asked Islamic State for advice on issues its members argued over. Among them: Is it a sin to hold a government ID? Should we attack schools? Is the Earth flat?
In a tract titled “Nigerian Questions,” a senior Islamic State theologian from Saudi Arabia weighed in: Carrying a government ID could be permissible, depending on the circumstances. Boko Haram should now focus attacks on military and security forces.
“For your information,” he wrote, “the Earth is spherical.”

Mr. Shekau found himself on the losing side of those arguments. Mr. Barnawi’s competing faction wrote to Islamic State accusing Mr. Shekau of “twisting the scripture” to create “a Caliphate of Bloodshed.” Islamic State spotted an opportunity to sponsor a coup and hew Nigeria’s jihad closer to its vision, intelligence and other officials say.

In August 2016, Islamic State announced Mr. Barnawi as the new governor, or “wali,” of its West African franchise. The move prompted vicious fighting between the factions across Nigeria’s northeast, with hundreds of militants killed.Nigeria’s counterterrorism strategists continued to focus on Mr. Shekau, the boogeyman who had taken the Chibok girls and deployed children as suicide bombers. Mr. Shekau released more than 100 of the Chibok girls in two exchanges in October 2016 and May the next year in return for five imprisoned fighters and a 3 million euro ransom.

Mr. Barnawi meanwhile, kept a lower profile, training fighters and bringing in weapons. He dispatched emissaries to Islamic State’s branch in Libya, which was growing as the group lost ground in Iraq and Syria.By 2017, ISWAP was regularly hitting military targets in the northern Nigerian states around Lake Chad. Nigerian soldiers, accustomed to fighting the Shekau faction, noticed new tactics and well-trained fighters.

Nigerian soldiers say that increasingly they and ISWAP have the same equipment, but their army often has less ammunition.
“They became much stronger, with much more firepower. We have to break contact and retreat when they engage us,” said Haruna Anwar, a soldier from 157 battalion that was ejected from its base in the town of Metele in November.

Last summer, new videos showed ISWAP using lethal weaponry such as armor-plated, vehicle-borne bombs. They showed a weapons factory and evidence of technology transfer.
ISWAP has sent drones to spy on Nigeria’s army. Its fighters sometimes ride horseback to avoid detection by the surveillance planes and satellite photos tracking them. Learning from ISIS’s defeats in Syria, the group avoided holding population centers, giving warplanes fewer targets to strike.

On December 26, Islamic State launched its most ambitious assault, on the heavily fortified Nigerian military base in the town of Baga and a nearby Naval base on Lake Chad. The compounds contained hundreds of soldiers and some of the most sophisticated weaponry held by Nigeria and its partners from Chad, Cameroon and Niger.

ISWAP trumpeted its rout of the base in videos that interspersed gory images of dead soldiers and torched patrol boats supplied by Germany, with well-stocked markets in areas it controls, exhorting Muslims abroad to come join the fight.
“The rise of Islamic State’s West Africa Province,” read a headline in the January edition of Islamic State’s al-Naba newspaper. “And the decline of the Nigerian Army.”

As the group gathered strength, a veteran Barnawi strategist considered a moderate, Mamman Nur, held informal peace talks with the Nigerian government. The talks, mediated by the Swiss government, became public after Mr. Nur, to show good faith, ordered the return of 104 schoolgirls his fighters had abducted.

Underlings who had wanted to ransom the women felt betrayed, mediators said. In September they put Mr. Nur under house arrest and killed him, according to government negotiators and intelligence agents. The peace initiative collapsed. Soon after, ISWAP killed two Red Cross workers it had taken hostage.

By the later months of 2018, ISWAP’s military offensive had gathered a dizzying momentum. Its fighters were regularly defeating some of Nigeria’s best-equipped units across the heavily fortified northeast of the country. The insurgents started sending Nigerian commanders taunting warnings of when they would attack. Army morale worsened, and more soldiers began to desert.

*Courtesy of Wall Street Journal, published February 4, 2019.

by CASADE

Senegal: Testing for democracy in Nigeria and Senegal in 2019

Melvin Foote*.
Without question Africa is a continent that is very much on the move towards democratic governance.

Africa has made incredible progress in the past two decades with many of its 54 countries now being described as democratic, holding peaceful and credible elections, enjoying a free press, and governments that are generally accountable to their people. A driving force behind the democratic reform on the continent is Africa’s youthful population that is now coming of age. More than 50% of the population of Africa is under 30 years of age and increasingly educated and connected to the internet, and thus knowledgeable about what is going on elsewhere in Africa and elsewhere around the world. Things have changed dramatically over the past two decades! Sure many daunting problem countries remain, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Togo, Somalia and Sudan, but the tide has turned and without a doubt Africa is moving forward.

We have already seen the faulty election that took place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and are anxiously awaiting the surely problematic results. Next month, two more important presidential elections are scheduled to take place that will also be closely watched in Africa and internationally -- Nigeria and in Senegal.

In Nigeria, after a very lack-luster first term, President Muhammadu Buhari (76 years old), is running for a second term as the candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC), against politician and business tycoon Atiku Abubakar (72 years) under the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), who served as the Vice-President of Nigeria under Olusegun Obasanjo. Largely because of his absence from the country on medical leave, very little was accomplished in President Buhari’s first term on the primary issues, which he ran on, anti-corruption and economic development and prosperity. Nigeria, despite it’s great oil wealth, is now on track to becoming one of the poorest countries in the world in the next 25 years if some drastic measures are not taken right away to stem corruption and to establish good governance in the country.

Senegal’s election, also taking place in February, has president Macky Sall (57 years old) seeking to extend his presidency for a second term. Senegal made history recently with the opening of the “awe-inspiring” Museum of Black Civilizations in Dakar, positioning the country as one the intellectual and cultural capital of the black world.

With a population of 15 million people, in recent years Senegal has had a 6% annual economic growth in 2015, 6.2% in 2016 and a continued growth up to 7.2% in 2017. The 2021 anticipated oil and gas extraction is very likely to give the economy an additional upward boost.
Senegal is widely seen as a beacon of stability and democracy in the West Africa region, never experienced any coup d’état, an image reinforced by a peaceful and well organized 2012 presidential poll when the country faced its first test as previous president, Abdoulaye Wade, ran for a third term and was defeated by Macky Sall.

As a strong United State’s partner, last month Michael R. Pompeo the Secretary of State, reiterated the United States’ commitment to Senegal with the signing of Senegal’s second $600 million Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact and to maintaining Senegal’s democratic traditions in the upcoming February 2019 election.

With a presidential election in less than two months, concerns are growing that democracy in Senegal, long an example for West Africa, is being subverted. Two important situations are creating political tensions.
First, a new election law approved by the Senegal Parliament in April, requiring 53,000 signatures to qualify to run for presidency caused protests with critics accusing the Macky Sall’s government of a plot to block minor candidates for contesting.

Second, leaders from the two historical political parties, Karim Wade (50 years old), the son of the former President Abdoulaye Wade (Senegalese Democratic Party) and popular former Dakar Mayor Khalifa Sall of Socialist Party( 63 years old) met that requirements but see their candidacies at stake because of criminal charges against them. Some political players in Senegal believe those trials are politically motivated.

Despite his condemnation, the fiercest opponent, Khalifa Sall, is still contesting while going through the appeals process. He is actually running his campaign from his jail cell! The Senegal Supreme Court dismissed his appeal on Thursday, January 3. Khalifa Sall’s supporters believe that the Macky Sall’s government is targeting him because of his potential strong candidacy!

In a report last year, Amnesty International criticized the Senegalese government for cracking down on peaceful demonstrations and said the judiciary handling Khalifa’s case “showed a lack of independence”.

Senegalese inside the country and in the Diaspora are mobilized to bring the international community’s attention to the situation they characterize as “democracy in danger” and are calling all stakeholders to help sustain Senegal’s democracy by ensuring the independence of the justice system, allowing all political candidates to contest and by conducting a transparent, free and fair elections.

Even though Senegal has made significant economic and political progress, President Macky Sall’s eventual victory could leave a bitter taste in the mouths of many citizens, should the other two main historical political parties not be allowed to contest freely. All Senegalese-followers will be focused on January 21, the date the Constitutional Council will release the final list of approved presidential candidates.

Both elections in Nigeria and Senegal promise to be noisy and hotly contested in many ways! That’s why West Africa’s regional bloc ECOWAS has also recently urged Nigeria and Senegal to ensure peaceful, free and transparent elections. It is our hope that personal ambitions will not supersede the will of the people,and may democracy win!

*Melvin Foote is the CEO of Constituency For Africa, a think-tank in Washington, DC.

by CASADE