What the recent elections in Nigeria can tell us about the relationship between voter registration, biometrics and a credible legal identity

Recently Nigeria held federal elections to elect a new president. The elections were finally held on 23 February after some last-minute delays caused the original date of 16 February 2019 to be abandoned.

I focus on the elections in Nigeria because they provide an insight into the wider issues of how to achieve a credible legal identity and adequate identity documentation for all.  Would an improved voter ID system in Nigeria lead to the creation of credible legal identity for Nigerians? Or should we seek the answer elsewhere?

In this blog, I argue that Nigeria should focus away from voter eligibility as a long-term barometer for a credible legal identity.  Rather it should invest in a long-term solution and continue efforts to improve birth registration.

  

Does the system work?

The delay in holding the Nigerian elections was caused by several issues. Some states could not undertake them due to violence or logistical problems ¹, electronic scanners intended for use in verifying voter’s ID cards had to be reprogrammed first ², and there were problems with the delivery of ballot papers ³.

For the system to work, voters must have their voting card and that voting card must correspond to their legal identity.  The voting card will be read on polling day by exactly those scanners which were in part to blame for the delayed elections.

But even before we get to the stage where scanners can read the voting cards, media outlets were reporting issues with the distribution of voter cards themselves.  In many places, people had to wait several hours to collect their voting card.  Another issue raised is that the voting register itself does not contain clean and up to date data.  For example, there are allegations of more than one million dead voters on the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) register ⁴.

 

The importance of ID systems for Nigeria

Strengthened ID systems are identified by the World Bank’s ID4D programme as improving delivery of key services, including electoral voting ⁵.  The World Bank describes Nigeria as operating a “fragmented identity landscape” with more than 13 different identity programs run by government agencies to somehow try to cover nearly 174 million people.

According to the World Bank project, as of May 2015, The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has enrolled 6.1 million citizens and issued 418,000 national identity cards out of approximately 174 million people in Nigeria.  To get to this number it has set up more than 404 enrolment centres (in physical locations) with 2,500 enrolment stations operational.

 

Does Nigeria need a single ID card to successfully handle voter registration and electoral access?

A registration programme run by the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) has been given the task of creating, maintaining and updating a national voter registry.  Between 2011 and 2015, and ahead of the 2015 federal elections, INEC carried out the biometric registrations at various locations.  It was able to improve and cleanse the national voter registry, retaining some 69 million unique records in 2015.

The capacity of states to implement a national ID program in a way that does not cause disenfranchisement is essential ⁶.  The main problem is that, in order to obtain one definitive ID card, a number of documents will be needed from each individual to prove his or her identity.

Nigeria’s Electoral Act requires those wishing to register to vote to prove their identity using one of the following documents: a passport, an ID card, a driver’s license, or a birth certificate.  If those are not available, then any document which shows age, nationality and identity of the registrant may be accepted ⁷.

However, Carter Centre research found that actual practice varies.  It is often community members who have the final say in terms of eligibility ⁸.  Where registration is successful, the voter is issued with a voting card which he or she must present in order to vote.  According to the BBC, some 73 million people have voting cards ⁹.

 

Beyond elections – what it means to have a credible legal identity

Nigeria’s reliance on biometrics and better registration for votes is a positive.  However, the push to achieve this and a more secure and certain legal identity for its citizens via its 13 different programmes may mask the real underlying problem which needs to be solved: better birth registration as the rights starting point for a secure and certain legal identity.

Instead of tackling this issue, the focus seems to be on improving the clarity and certainty of electoral results in order to stop opposition (or occasionally incumbent losing parties and candidates) from contesting elections ¹⁰.  The problem is that it rarely works.  Improved voter biometrics are used as a way to exclude potentially eligible voters from voting.   Alternatively, the infrastructure is not available to make the most of the certainty biometric information offers to prevent fraud.

Writing for the Washington Post, Giulia Piccolino, a post-doctoral research fellow at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies, gives several examples of where biometrics actually create more problems than solved pre-existing ones.  For example, in Cote d’Ivoire the issue of citizenship, nationality and voting rights became entangled, but did not prevent the incumbent president from contesting the election results.  In Ghana too, in 2012 the ID verification machine failures followed a suspicious pattern.  The election results were contested by the losing party ¹¹.

 

Start right, start at birth

One scheme of the 13 ongoing identity schemes in Nigeria has a partial focus on birth registration ¹².  The National Population Commission’s scheme seeks to increase birth registrations, with 4000 civil registration centres across the country to register key life events.  The Commission works with some major hospitals and seeks to empower midwives to collect birth registration data.  Despite these efforts, and despite the fact that birth registration is mandatory under the Births and Deaths (Compulsory Registration) Act, only up to 42% of births are registered in Nigeria ¹³.

The 42% of birth registrations in Nigeria are part of a larger trend.  Sub-Saharan Africa has as many as 55% unregistered births.  Even where births are registered, birth certificates can be difficult to access due to poor record-keeping and lack of mobility of the parents to collect those certificates.

I have written previously about birth registration and its importance here.  In brief, and as the multitude of Nigerian schemes (and the many documents Kenyans hold) demonstrate, there is usually no one single document that serves as the legal identity for a person.  But birth registration and the issue of a birth certificate is an essential start to building a consistent and unique legal identity for an individual.  It is the first document which sets out a date of birth, age, familial relationships and the place of birth of the individual.

 

A long road to success

Have the right identity document and being able to prove one’s legal identity at times of great significance for a country, such as during elections, is very important.  There is no doubt about that.  Nigeria is working hard to ensure that all those eligible, and only those eligible, can and should vote.  As Africa’s most populous country, achieving this is no mean feat and its efforts should be applauded.

But, if it wants to be sure that its citizens have a full and indisputable legal identity it should not wait to capture the biometrics of its adult citizens.  It is too late by then.  With each new adult initiative, it will miss out on a new generation which has to wait until adulthood to benefit from a legal identity.  Nigeria’s National Population Commission is all too aware of the problem, decrying that 30 Million children risk losing their identity because of Nigeria’s poor record of birth registration ¹⁴.

It is a long road and a big project, and the pay-off may not come in time for the next elections, but to succeed, Nigeria’s primary focus should be at the start of life not at the voting booth.