 Okay. Thank you, David. I'm Jennifer Cook. I direct the Africa program here at CSIS. And we're here today to talk about the Nigerian elections that took place on March 28. These were truly historic elections, the most closely contested in Nigeria's history, an incumbent party which really faced a coalition that held together. And the first time that there was really a real competition in which the sitting president risked losing. It was an acrimonious campaign, rumors, accusations, conspiracy theories, a really deep polarization along regional and alarmingly, in some cases along religious lines, I think left many people fearful about the outcome of these elections. Elections have always been messy affairs in Nigeria. Last election in 2011 was a real step change in terms of the integrity and the credibility of their process. But still, despite having kind of a fairly clear-cut winner, those elections saw 800 Nigerians lose their lives in the aftermath, including several of the Young Youth Service Corp. members who are dedicated young university graduates who played such an important role and dedicated role in those elections and these elections as well. I think many here in Washington and many in Nigeria feared that this would be a much, because it was so much closer, overlaid with insecurity in the northeast and this deep national polarization, an amnesty in the oil-producing Niger Delta that was coming to an end. I think many people feared that these elections would be even more violent than the last ones. A major cloud of cynicism, I think, hung over Nigeria. Many in Nigeria but also here in Washington and the Western press really portrayed a government as utterly without merit leader who would cling to power at all costs. A postponement of the original date from February 14 was seen as a cynical ploy to manipulate the polls to ensure victory. And I think there was just a great deal of suspicion around the process and the eventual outcome. Instead, as results came in and a victory by the opposition seemed clear, we saw President Goodluck Jonathan call his opponent, General Mohamedu Buhari, to offer a very gracious congratulations and a public concession speech in which he declared to his followers to take their grievances to the court, but to be proud of being part of the party it was not a loss for the party but rather a sign of maturation and democratic consolidation. I think Nigerians and the world gave a collective sigh of relief that the worst fears were not realized, but also a celebration, I think, of parties on both sides, not necessarily for who won and lost, but really for what this meant in terms of Nigeria's political maturation and democratic consolidation. So this is a hugely important precedent in Nigeria's democratic trajectory. It raises the bar of expectations for future leaders within Nigeria and, I think, across Africa, given Nigeria's profound influence across the continent. I'm going to turn to our panel. All three are leading lights on support for African democracies and who have played instrumental roles in the U.S. support for these elections, working with civil society, with the Electoral Commission. We have Chris Vomunio, who I think everyone knows most of the people on this panel. Chris Vomunio, who is senior associate and regional director for Central and West Africa at the National Democratic Institute. Gretchen Burkle, who is regional director for Africa at the International Republican Institute. And Richard Klein, who is advisor for electoral processes at National Democratic Institute. I'm going to turn to them in a moment. I just wanted to make a few, a couple of few additional points if I might. And a couple of things that I, just some of the themes I think that, to my mind, made these elections very different. First was the change in expectations among the Nigerian electorate. And I think we saw the strong appetite for democracy. I had the welcome experience of being an observer with NDI. Polls opened late. There were logistic problems. It was hot in some places, pouring rain in others. You saw voters waiting patiently for polls to open for this fairly lengthy two-step accreditation and voting process for the card readers to work. You saw people sticking it out for sometimes up to 12 hours to cast their vote. Hugely patient, determined to vote. And, you know, you can't help but be inspired by that determination. Civil society, I think, had a critical role in raising those expectations of what the process could offer them in terms of voters knowing the process and knowing their rights in terms of peacefully waiting in terms of understanding the process. And as I think Richard will explain in adding confidence to the eventual results that were tallied up. Technology also played an important role in these elections, both by civil society. And again, Richard's going to talk a little bit to that, but also for independent electoral commission and many of the civil society efforts prior to the election in reaching out to an electorate on voter education, on non-violence messaging, and so forth. And finally, I do think institutions matter, but individuals also matter. You know, first and foremost, some of the leading lights in Nigerian civil society, both the well-known and I think at the local level among voters and so forth. The electoral commissioner, Atahir Ujjega, inspired a certain confidence in the electoral commission, I think that has been critical in 2011 and this election as well, in inspiring confidence in the institution and creating a culture within the institution of integrity. He is unflappable. He is not defensive. And he takes on board the issues and criticisms that throughout this fairly contentious election year. And finally, I do want to say a word for President Goodluck Jonathan, who I think, you know, defied many people's expectations on this. And I think in that one phone call, he has cemented a certain legacy in Nigeria, in and all of Africa, that for whatever his detractors will say, I think he deserves a great deal of credit for. He was no doubt under tremendous pressure to hang on or look for openings. And I think we have to say that to his credit, he didn't do that. These, you know, these are really positive elections. I have to say I almost got choked up when the concessions speech, when I heard of the concession telephone call. On the other hand, it shouldn't obscure some of the many challenges that happened with these elections that were going into the gubernatorial elections, which risk, in some cases, some of the same problems, and of Nigeria as a whole. And we saw these rifts within Nigeria that for now, the tension has been diffused, but those tensions, political, social, regional, still remain. And that's, we don't want to obscure that today, but I think the success of these elections helps inspire and kind of motivate Nigerians and I think Nigeria's partners to work even harder on those rifts and tackling those challenges. So that's enough for me. I'll turn over to the real experts. What we thought we'd do is kind of take in two rounds of questions. So I'd like to turn to Chris and then Gretchen and then Richard to talk about, kind of from your perspective and from NDI and the IRI, what were some of the major concerns going into these elections? What did you and your partners kind of prioritize in terms of doing to mitigate some of those risks? And how did those concerns play out within the elections? And then in a second round we'll look a little bit forward to the gubernatorial and beyond. So Chris, why don't we turn to you first and thank you so much for joining us. Thank you very much, Jennifer. And I must say, first of all, how much we appreciate, I mean, we as Nigeria watchers and friends of Nigeria appreciate the work that you and your colleagues here at CSIS have done through all of 2014, providing a platform for very open, very informative discussions about the situation in Nigeria. I think we are very thankful and I must say that a lot of those conversations did help inform public opinion, especially here in Washington on ongoing developments in Nigeria. I must also say that Nigeria did very well for itself and for the continent and I think many of us are now left explaining to the rest of the world why the narrative on Nigeria needs to change, not necessarily who was wrong and who was right in the predictions in 2014, but more so what these selections mean for Nigeria and for Africa as a whole. And I think it's fair to say that we collectively probably need to revisit what has happened and how that should impact how we see democratic trains across the continent. In January, when I had the opportunity to testify before the Africa subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives, I quoted a very high level, well respected religious leader in Nigeria who told Greshan and me when we visited with him in January of 2015. And I quote he said, we Nigerians have perfected the act of dancing on the brink, but it is a very uncomfortable spot to be in. And I did say during that testimony that I believe that Nigeria didn't have to dance on the brink forever or in perpetuity and that I was optimistic that Nigeria would pull itself back from the brink. I think this was a very close call, but Nigeria did pull itself back from the brink. Going into these selections, I had three things that I really worried about. My colleagues and I at NDI worried about the most. The first one was the Boko Haram phenomenon, insurgency in the northeast part of Nigeria, especially because by the end of 2014, Boko Haram seemed to be at its peak. Also, Boko Haram, which so far hadn't openly declared its hostility to the electoral process, was beginning to make pronouncements indicating that it would disrupt the elections of February 14. We were also worried that the Boko Haram phenomenon, especially in the northeast part of the country, would affect populations in the three states of Bono, Yobi, and Adamawa, and that that could lead to huge disenfranchisement of Nigerians and that that could become a political issue if those states were seen as the political base of one of the candidates and who could, if he lost in a close race, claim that the voters or voting had been suppressed in his areas of support and therefore meant be unwilling to accept defeat. That is why we also put a lot of emphasis at the time on the possibility of internally displaced populations to vote because at the time the speculation was that internally displaced persons in Nigeria counted in the millions. There were some statistics going from 300,000 to well over a million people and we thought that was a significant number of people who did not have to be excluded from the electoral process. The second thing that we worried about at NDI was the whole question of political violence. Violence motivated by competitive politics independently of the issue of Boko Haram and other concerns of insecurity because Nigeria has a past history of violence around elections and because everyone described the 2015 elections as very competitive that this could also spark violence especially because the competitiveness was exacerbating pre-existing cleavages in Nigeria along regional lines, religious lines. We know that the incumbent is a Christian from the south and his main opposition was led by a Muslim from the north that this regional and religious differences were being exacerbated by some of the rhetoric that was coming out of Nigeria in the lead up to the elections. Thirdly, we also worried about the acceptance, the possibility of the acceptance of election results. We know that both the PDP and the APC had a lot of international consultants working on their campaigns. They had a lot of internal polls for the candidates and when we met with the candidates each camp had a sense of how well they were doing the elections and we worried that if that was the message that each candidate or their campaign organization was communicating to their supporters it would become extremely difficult for their supporters to accept a different outcome especially in a close race. And I think this was a short list of the issues that concerned us at NEI and that kind of influenced how we designed our support to the Nigerian electoral process, a two-pronged approach which one focused on helping shine the spotlight on these issues by fielding international missions first in January when we with IRI had a joint pre-election mission to Nigeria that highlighted some of these issues, pressed the Nigerian stakeholders on addressing these issues prior to the elections. And then further in March when in early March NDI issued a statement that was co-signed by 14 world leaders including Madeleine Albright, the chair of our government, a number of former African heads of states were respected, former president of Botswana, former president of Mauritius and former president of Calvary, the former Canadian prime minister and other world leaders who had been on NDI delegations in the past at a time when we feared that the elections may not hold even by March 28th because there was a lot of speculation that some of the reasons that may have motivated the postponement in February would be reactivated to postpone the elections a second time and we felt that the Nigerian electorate didn't have the stomach or the appetite for another postponement and it was important that international voices be brought to bear in that process. We also had a second prone approach which my colleague Richard Klein would talk about which really zeroed in on building the technical capacity or providing technical assistance to our Nigerian domestic organizations, Nigerian partner organizations to help them or help reinforce their contribution to the country organizing peaceful and credible elections. I probably would leave that to give an opportunity for my colleagues to also chime into the conversation. Thank you Jennifer. Thank you very much and I do appreciate you bringing us together today to talk. I think it's important that we're having this conversation before Saturday's elections as well because we need to keep the focus on events still to come. There's still a lot of variables that could impact Saturday and I think we'll talk about that later as well. This was my first time observing elections in Nigeria and I have to say on election day I was very taken aback with, as Jennifer noted, some of the late starts and some of the problems with elections, the voting and accreditation process actually starting, but I was so surprised and so pleasantly surprised to see Nigerian self-organize themselves and remain patient throughout what was a very long day and often hot and things were a little bit tense at moments, but it was incredible to see and I've observed elections around the world, many, many elections, but I have not seen such resilience in voters waiting in lines and really their commitment to the political process to really see this through to the very end and so I think that is a real highlight for the people of Nigeria and I was very happy to be witness to that. It was very exceptional. As Chris mentioned, there were a few issues that I or I looked at going into these elections but also throughout the course of our work over the past several years in Nigeria. We did conduct a pre-election assessment in January and that really, I think, crystallized some of the main issues for us and that was confidence building measures that the INEC and the political stakeholders had to undertake to ensure a smooth running process and also the main issue of possibilities of violence and important messaging around peace and as we look back through the work that I or I has done over the past year or two in advance of these elections, I think everything crystallized at that point and we saw some very positive results and Jennifer, you wanted maybe a few examples of the kinds of activities that were undertaken around these efforts and I'm happy to offer some of those. In terms of confidence building measures, I or I and many, many NGOs who are operating in Nigeria including a lot of activities that NDI undertook were very active in building support of civil society around the elections. I or I was able to do something called manifesto hour which was a radio show that aired for 13 weeks in advance of the elections that allowed political parties the opportunity to really talk about their platforms and messages which is the first time really that parties were able to get out in front and do some of this and that is a factor that underscores I think what we saw with political parties and really in this closely, most closely contested election in Nigeria's history, we saw a real development I think in the growth of political parties and we're very happy to see that and some of their activities that they undertook. I would also hearken back to the political party code of conduct and the inter-party advisory committee IPAC which is something that I or I began working on way back in 2007 UNDP more recently has worked with it but it became a point of communication between INEC and political parties and I think that was a very important factor to ensure that political stakeholders were all on board with important messaging as well. And finally there's the issue of political party agent training I or I was able to train more than 15,000 political party poll watchers something that was highlighted in the 2011 elections as a necessary step to ensure that political parties and political party activists really felt that there would be transparent and accountable elections and we were very happy to see those large numbers come out as well. Around the important the really the key issue here I think was the concern about violence and ways to prevent that and non-violence measures and there are some real highlights to point to. First is of course the Abuja Accord signed on January 14 between 12 of the 14 presidential candidates and that was something exceptional and I think something that really helped to dampen any potential outbreaks of violence. The germination of the Abuja Accords is something that we were able to point to in work that we had done on gubernatorial races as far back as 2011 when we worked with the presidential special advisor on inter and inter-party affairs and throughout this whole series of gubernatorial elections we saw since the 2011 elections we were really able to see some efforts at the state level to bring parties together and start talking about these issues and I think that's a very important example of some frameworks that were in place even before we got to the March 28 elections and so I wanted to highlight that. There were also some extraordinary efforts around peace messaging around civil society that both NDI and IRI undertook and one example is Dreams for Niger, a civil society campaign which really got out front on talking about the need for peaceful participation and nonviolent participation and both of us had worked with an organization for example called Young Stars Foundation as well. Jennifer, you mentioned the National Youth Service Corps and their efforts were remarkable and I think a big takeaway from this election is the importance of A, involving youth as early as possible in terms of getting out the vote and participating and B, finding productive things for them to do around elections and the work of the National Youth Service Corps was exemplary. You had young people in their 20s who basically were running the elections so it wasn't older party poll, it wasn't older commissioners running elections actually on election day you had the National Youth Service Corps were the ones manning the polling box, counting the ballots, running the accreditation process, using the card readers and that's something really exceptional to see and I've never seen that anywhere else that these elections were run by young people and it's an extraordinary example of the power of youth and the importance of keeping youth involved and considering the stakes with marginalization and the tragic issues in the north, the absolute necessity of keeping youth active and engaged in a positive effort is essential and we really saw this play out on election day. Yeah not so much a power point as a few slides to illustrate some of the data coming out of these elections and Jennifer with your permission I'm going to use a little bit more time now and a little less time later. I feel that that's fine. Jennifer knows I enjoy the sound of my own voice and so we do have a timing consistency problem here that the approach I'm going to take is a little bit different. I'm here speaking really on behalf of a coalition of over 400 civic groups in Nigeria called the transition monitoring group that has monitored every election in Nigeria since 1998-99 and the elections that brought an end to military rule in Nigeria. For the 2015 presidential elections as they had done in 2011 and for the off-cycle gubernatorial elections, TMG conducted a quick count also known as a parallel vote tabulation. Very simply that involves deploying observers to a representative random sample of polling units. What that allows you to do is two things and having them report back using coded text messages in near real time. What that allows you to do is two things. One is to provide the most accurate and timely information on the quality of the process. So on election day they were getting reports from every single geopolitical zone, every single state and in fact every single one of the 774 local government areas to think counties in the United States. Which dwarfed the data if you will from any other observer mission. The second thing is it allows you to do is because they are at a representative random sample of polling stations you can add the results together from those polling stations and estimate what the official turnout should be. The two should be consistent. If they are consistent then people should have confidence in the official results. If they are not consistent then one should have empirical data to show how the results were manipulated. So the quick count or PVT takes a narrower focus than Jennifer or Gretchen were talking about and so I'm going to talk about three issues in particular that TMG was concerned about on election day. One was logistics. Logistics have mired Nigerian elections from well before Professor Jegas ten year. As people remember from 2011 the first time they tried to have the National Assembly elections those were canceled at noon and they had to try it again a week later. That for some of the off-cycle gubernatorial elections the logistics had been good such as most recently ocean and equity but in some of them they had been abysmal such as a Nombra where in two LGA's they were not able to conduct elections everywhere and had to reconduct the elections a week later. The second issue was the introduction of the card reader and I would say more broadly the introduction of the permanent voter register voter voters card and the new continuous voter registration process. For those of you who think the word continuous means all the time it does not continuous means periodic voter registration right just to be clear on that but this was the if you will the major innovation on the part of INEC's in terms of changing the procedures for the elections. I should have also said on the logistics front INEC had set up these super centers in each of the wards to try to help with the logistics to overcome some of the challenges that they had experienced in the past. The third was that in Nigeria as in many transitional societies there is a real question about do the votes do the results as announced reflect the votes cast at polling units. This is fundamentally a question about the coalition process. In most countries the election has three steps in Nigeria there are four so first there is accreditation as Jennifer alluded to which was in the morning though most places it wasn't will come to that followed by voting followed by counting those are parts of the process that people can observe directly. The part of the process that often in many African countries and in fact most transitional societies around the world that people are most concerned about is the coalition process. This is the process by which the results are added together from all the polling units to determine the national result. Even if you put observers in the coalition centers you cannot actually confirm that the correct numbers are being used. It is a very opaque process and unlike manipulation at a polling unit which would take the involvement of thousands of people you can manipulate the results during the coalition process by only one or two people being involved. Since one of the goals of manipulating the results is to make sure that no one knows obviously having fewer people involved makes more sense. Let me very quickly try to look at those three questions which is why I am going to indulge using a little bit of my time now. The first is Jennifer alluded to is this event started much more on time than elections did in Nigeria. TMG observers reported that it is 7.30 in the morning which is when polling officials were supposed to arrive at their polling unit with their materials that only 43% of polling units nationally had the polling officials and the materials arrived on time. By 11.30 in the morning only 68% of polling units had opened. That was two and a half hours after the designated start time. So logistics were again a serious problem for INEC. The second issue is about the card readers. I am going to talk about that in two parts. First was there were real challenges. First the card readers did get out. Only 1% of polling units did not have the card reader. However the card reader is a two step process. The first part is that they put the permanent voter card into the card reader and it needs to be able to read the card. Secondly the voter is supposed to put a finger or thumb on the card reader so that it can read their fingerprint and verify that that is the actual owner of the card. Using biometric information. There is also a photo on the card so there are other means of trying to verify that the person who is the owner of the card. At 24% of polling units across the country that second feature did not systematically work. At some polling units it never worked. At other polling units it worked intermittently. In some places it worked the vast majority of time. But at 24% of polling units at some point they were unable on that second phase for the card reader to work. In addition there were only 75% of the card readers worked at all points throughout the accreditation process. At many polling units card readers had to be replaced. At some point they had to be somehow repaired whatever that meant. There were challenges with the card reader though not as extreme as many people had thought. However, the TMG's findings suggest that overall while the process was delayed and while there were problems with the card reader that set up accreditation voting and counting as suggested by Jennifer, Chris and Gretchen largely followed the procedures and were credible. In about 5% of polling units across the country they were unable to complete the process but the overwhelming and those 5% were disproportionately not in northeast as people were concerned but were disproportionately in the south south which I'll return to in a moment. But that overwhelmingly people were given the Nigerians had an opportunity to participate in the process. Then the question comes about the accuracy of the results. Are the numbers that were announced by INEC did they actually reflect the ballots cast? As I said up through counting we had a process that was while having challenges in terms of delays and the functioning of the card reader was generally credible. So the numbers that came out of the oh and sorry just I want to give a shout out to Phil Brondike who is in the audience and he's going to be offended by the current slide but Phil worked very hard with TMG to help them on their data visualizations. This slide is not from Phil. There's one other slide that is not from Phil. You will immediately know which one that is. All the others were produced by Phil who's in the audience as well as the TMG staff working together. So this beautiful slide and you can immediately see that I think Phil is very upset. The other font is not Helvetica. I'm sorry. So what we saw was that in Nigeria one innovation that was done sort of on election night was the decision of INEC to announce results state by state. This had not been the plan. In the past they have announced all the results at one go. There is a debate in the elections community whether it is better to release results all at once or little by little. Different countries do it differently. Zambia, those of you who followed the elections in January, they release results constituency by constituency. Other countries announce them all at once. Certainly my own personal position is transparency is a good thing getting those numbers out as quickly as possible is create confidence and it allows us to detect problems immediately. On Tuesday they announced 19 of the 36 states plus FCT results that what TMG was able to do with the quick count data was state by state see what was being announced consistent with the PVT or quick count data. I'm sure I'm way over my time. That even though for an individual state the margins of error are quite large for 18 of the first 19 states that were announced the numbers matched. However as you will see a QI bomb which is at the bottom, this is in reverse alphabetical order it took me hours to figure that out that a QI bomb was the second to last state and at that point TMG had a lot of confidence in the results that were coming out from INEC and then a QI bomb was announced around midnight on Tuesday and as you can see these are turnout figures. The bar on the bottom shows the turnout according to the quick count and the figure on the top is INEC's official number there is a mass discrepancy between the two someone has put their finger on the scale and dramatically increase the turnout for a QI bomb. This is particularly worrying because the south-south voted over 95% for PDP so increasing turnout will not affect the relative percentage of the parties but it will dramatically increase the vote total for PDP from south-south which then will have an effect on the overall national total so this gave TMG considerable concern at that point about the coalition process. At this point there were meetings between TMG and INEC and other state holders to bring this issue to people's attention. Over the course of the next day all the other states matched in terms of the PVT data and the INEC officials except for four states all in south-south so for Edo and for Cross River as you can see the figures match but in four states the turnout was dramatically increased and because all of those states voted overwhelmingly over 95% for PDP that dramatically increased the overall national vote total for PDP and so what you see at the end of the day is that the results in theory there is the the lower bars are the quick count figures and the dotted lines around them show the margin of error the true result should have fallen within that box because the PVT data the quick count data comes from the end of the counting process and the TMG's data shows that up through the counting process it was by and large a good process despite the delays and the challenges with the card reader the official results do not match that they do not match that not because the official results are correct but because they have been manipulated during the coalition phase by increasing the turnout in south-south in four states in south-south however what is important is that this did not change the overall outcome of the election I'll return to this point when we have our second question I'd like to say one last thing about the effect of the card readers did the card readers have their intended effect that in 2011 turnout was suspiciously high not only in south-south but also in southeast if you look turnout is dramatically higher in south-south in the sixties and southeast than the rest of the country turnout is low in southwest if you have seen me speak before I'll use the same joke there's no candidate who eats amala so people in southwest the urabas don't vote until there's a candidate who eats amala that turnout figure is going to be low the staple food of the uraba people for those of you who don't find that funny so if we look then at this election there was a dramatic decrease in the turnout in southeast right the green bars our turnout from 2011 the darker color our official numbers the lighter color our pbt or quick count figures so turnout collapsed in southeast they were people were unable to put their finger on the scale in 2015 unlike 2011 and I'll come to why that was in the second round of questions however in south-south they were able to put their finger on the scale right but only in four states so essentially there were not enough states in 2015 where the results could be manipulated to flip the outcome but what this also means in terms of the card reader and I'm really going to finish Jennifer that is in 2011 the pbt figures and the official figures match what that means is that the manipulation in 2011 in south-south and southeast did not occur during the coalition process it happened during the voting and counting process in 2011 in 2015 the manipulation in southeast did not occur at all and in south-south it did not occur during the voting and counting processes it occurred during the coalition process what that means is for all the challenges of the card reader the pvc and the continuous voter registration process which became a huge political football in Nigeria that that innovation moved manipulation it didn't stop people from wanting to manipulate elections I come from Illinois people have heard this joke before the last five governors are in jail we like to manipulate our elections so it's not that it stops people from wanting to move to manipulate the elections but the card reader forced people to move where the manipulation occurred from the accreditation voting and counting process to the coalition process where it was exposed by the quick count that was much too long but hopefully useful to the audience maybe one question when you say manipulation during the coalition it's literally a question of changing the number on the forms because one of the accreditation one of the benefits of the accreditation voter process was that in any any unit where the vote count was higher than those people that were accredited by noon the results would be canceled so eventually INEC would discover this presumably on its own it's promised to post results down to the polling level unit so I mean quick count found it out earlier but eventually would this have been caught within the system itself you're stealing some of my thunder from the second part maybe it would be easiest to answer that as we look forward and what this means for INEC for the state elections I think but that's an excellent question well let's look a little bit forward and I've asked to think short term we've got the gubernatorial elections coming up to Nigeria more broadly Tahira Jega is not going to be there forever in fact he said he will be stepping down this year and then perhaps reflect a little bit on what these mean and what lessons does this election the new technologies and innovations civil society hold for Africa more broadly so Chris do you want to say a little on kind of immediate recommendations and then the longer term issues thanks Jennifer I think one of the benefits working on Nigeria while the INEC is being chaired by Professor Jega is that he's a very open chairman he's one of those rare chairman on the continent who is very open to recommendations in 2011 he took to heart many of the recommendations that were made by both domestic and international observer delegations and in 2015 has promised to also take a look at the recommendations that have been made thus far I realize that Professor Jega's tenure ends in June of this year but that's also the possibility of that tenure being renewed if I had a recommendation to make to the incoming government it would be that Jega's tenure be renewed so that he can see through some of the reforms that he's begun to institutionalize in the electoral process in Nigeria we all too familiar with sometimes the decision making in Nigeria which sometimes is not the most rational in a way you don't want an election chairman to come in and start dismantling everything that Jega has done in order to have his own fingerprints or imprint on the electoral process in Nigeria that would be one recommendation that could really help because I think all of the innovation that Jega has put in place in the last four years needs to be consolidated such that by the time Nigeria goes through some of the state elections that would happen after 2015 because now there are about 12 states that would have staggered state elections gubernatorial races between now and 2019 that would not be voting on April 11th that by the time to go through all of those state elections everyone in Nigeria would have become so familiar with the new technology around elections that by the time they come up to 2019 it would be an easy flow both for the poll workers as well as for the voters secondly, I think that the work that was done by TMG really zeroed in the focus on the problematic states in Nigeria River state is on that list, it's not by mistake it's one of the states that has experienced the most violence through the selection cycle I think the gubernatorial race in river state is going to be extremely competitive and it will be helpful for the domestic groups and international observers to zero in on the states that have been identified as having shortcomings and the last thing I would say is just the youth, how does Nigeria leverage all of these young people who have participated in the political process we were very gratified to know that Professor Jega was calling back some of the youth corpus work on the 2011 elections they are in the hundreds of thousands close to 200,000 now there is a calendar of young Nigerians who have participated in helping build credible elections in their country, it will be important to see how the government invest in those young people going forward great, we will come back to you for broader African implications since you are going to be looking at a lot more elections in this coming year Gretchen do you want to talk a little bit Sure, absolutely I did want to just briefly highlight some of the innovations and progress that INEC has made that Chris alluded to because there were some very important steps taken separate from the innovation with the card readers and the PVCs but for example a new communications policy that really saw a more active INEC outreach effort and even when during our election assessment mission NDI and IRI highlighted this to INEC even between January and March they really upped that effort as well so they have been extraordinarily responsive to input from stakeholders within Nigeria and from outside Nigeria as well and I also wanted to highlight their new gender policy which I think is exceptional for INEC to have and that was really I think a big step forward for gender participation around the election so we hope to see those innovations more fully implemented in the forthcoming gubernatorial process as well an issue that we need to now look forward to is how will all this play out in the judicial system President Jonathan and PDP and others have said that they want to see any complaints and processes go through a judicial adjudication process through the courts and that's fantastic and now we have to really see if that is going to hold over the coming months as well just most immediately for Saturday there is simmering tension in river state there have been issues there ongoing and so that's I think where we need to keep our eye on for Saturday and of course the race the gubernatorial race and Lagos is going to be fascinating and I think it's going to be as tested as the presidential race was and so I just wanted to highlight those two states as areas I think that will be interesting for us to watch for Saturday. I think I have already used all my time but let me start with a point that you and Chris made and then I will answer your question directly. Obviously the issue about the Farijan is stepping down as the chair of the Ghanayan election commission just as Mamalima has already stepped down as the chair of the Zambian election commission. Those are all countries that have had very good elections and the question and Jennifer you alluded to this the question is it yet about institutions in Africa or is it still about individuals? Eric Postel, the deputy Sade wrote I thought a very good blog post about this issue and that's what I think we will be seeing in the next round of elections that many countries in Africa have dramatically improved the conduct of their elections. I would say and TMG would say these were much better elections than 2011 despite all of their flaws. But the question becomes how much was that due to the choices made by individuals and how much are those choices institutionalized that regardless of who is at the top of those institutions that the same kinds of choices would be made. And that's what I think has to be watched over the coming years. That as we go forward a question on this election that you asked is that all of this data was shared with INEC on Tuesday night before all of the PBT quick count data on here only a QIBOM was certified at that point. So INEC was aware of the discrepancy in a QIBOM. You could actually hear people chuckle in the ICC when they announced a QIBOM. It was not a plausible figure given the turn out of the states that had come before that including they had already announced 3 or possibly 4 states from southeast at that point. The calculated risk that INEC took was that given the incredibly polarized situation in Nigeria is it better to call out these states or to make the judgment that there aren't enough votes that are going to be manipulated to change the outcome. And even though it is going to narrow and reduce Buhari's margin of victory he should have won by at least 15%. And so while we all talk about the most contested election in Nigeria and it's a hugely important election and the Afrobarometer and for clarity's sake I was Mike Bratton's student so anything I say about the Afrobarometer you have to take with a grain of salt but the Afrobarometer called it a toss up Buhari won anyone massively right? That they made a calculated risk. Part of that and this is why I talk about it has to do with the federal nature of Nigeria but also the federal nature of INEC itself. The SCIACs the State Independent Election Commissions are not involved in these elections but the state structures even within INEC itself continue to have remarkable autonomy. It is very difficult in the Nigerian system in sharp contrast to say Ghana or Zambia that I just mentioned for Jega to refuse to accept the results from a state. And so while they did send a delegation to Rivers to investigate in those numbers because I don't think INEC trusts themselves or Jega didn't. I should be very clear Jega and the people at the center of INEC didn't that their ability to do anything about it was extremely limited as opposed to other countries. And so that again becomes a real issue of reform going forward. Two things about Saturday's elections one I would expect the logistics to be dramatically better than they were a week and a half ago I guess now. One if you look at 2011 the pattern of delay in 2015 was almost identical to the pattern of delay in 2011. So south south and southeast were the last to open in 2015. They were the last to open in 2011 as well. In 2011 there was a dramatic increase improvement in logistics each weekend. Secondly I think people would have followed that Professor Jega talked about a problem with the trade union in terms of the delivery of the material. Certainly my view now not speaking on behalf of NDI but it is certainly shared by TMG was that was due to political interference with the trade union to delay the delivery of those materials and there will not be that issue going forward. What I am worried about is what the TMG data shows is that while the accreditation voting and counting processes have gone much better that the coalition process is certainly open to manipulation. There will be different political dynamics at play on Saturday about trying to influence those outcomes. From our standpoint we remain very concerned about the ability of people who fear that they are going to lose an election because the states matter the governorships matter. I think the final question and I am sure Chris and Gretchen and Jennifer will all touch on this but I am afraid Jennifer won't let me speak again is that the question will be are we moving from a one party dominant system dominated by PDP to a one party dominant system dominated by APC and that PDP is wiped out on Saturday and through defections following like Zambia so UNIP no longer exists MMD now no longer exists they got fewer votes in January than spoiled votes that will that be the case in Nigeria or will the power centers that the governorships create allow PDP to hang on in some ways because it's not very good for Nigeria to simply move from one party dominant system with party A at the head and to a system with party B at the head as opposed to being able to develop some sort of meaningful multi-party system. Thank you. Thanks Richard and thanks the audience for being patient. We want to open up to you we'll take a few questions at a time since we've gone over a little bit we'll go with Tony Deodra and then in the back yes Hi Tony Carroll I'm a senior associate here at CSIS in the AFRA program I have a question about the role of the media not much comment about the role of the media we were there were a lot of concerns about bought media as we've had in other panels here over the course of the last year what was the play out with the media. Deodra Lupin University of Pennsylvania not very much has been said about the peace committee although that backed up the Abuja Accord I wondered if anyone on the panel would like to comment on the role it played and also perhaps in this connection if there is a back story to the concession telephone call that Jonathan made there Lawrence Freeman director of the Africa Desk at the ER magazine I do like Jennifer was emotionally overwhelmed having followed Nigeria for 25 years to see this outcome and I think a lot of credit goes to Nigerian people and also Professor Jega I mean spending 48 hours to read each state out every TV and every hotel in Nigeria and every home was watching that vote for two days I think the question though that goes a little bit beyond what has been presented so far in terms of the future of Nigeria is the massive conditions of economic under development I didn't stay at the Nikon Noga I stayed at a friend's house and the electricity goes off several times a day only 2500 megawatts delivered massive unemployment massive under-employment mis-employment of able-bodied young people in Nigeria and when I had a chance to meet with the president elect before I left he's very much aware that the expectations are very high and my suggestion is something like a Roosevelt 100 days program in infrastructure and development I don't see this coming from the United States I see this more coming from China and the BRIC countries which are setting up banks for infrastructure development I think this is something the US has to take up if it wants to help Nigeria is this economic deficit in the country that will very much be on people's minds and I think was one of the reasons that Jonathan was defeated that the frustration of just living each day is very great in Nigeria and that has to change and I wanted to know if people on the panel thought that we could get a change for economic development in Nigeria Great, shall we start with those on the media on the media Yeah, on the on the media I think one of the issues we both IRI and NDI raised in January was the fact that the media was accused as being very biased and partisan and wasn't really helping contribute to a civil debate around issues and I think that played itself out by the difficulties that the media community at large had trying to organize presidential debates that there was one initiative being led by the Nigerian television authority NTA which the opposition party didn't want to speak with because they thought the NTA was very biased and as public media spend most of its time covering Jonathan but we had one of our observers who joked about the fact that if you came into Abuja and just watched NTA you would think that was a referendum you wouldn't think there was another candidate in the race on the other hand there was another initiative being led by Channel's TV which the PDP didn't want to be associated with because they thought Channel was covering the opposition most of the time and certainly towards the end in large part because of the Abuja Accord and all the calls for peace the media towards the end played a very positive role for example the Friday before election day was declared National Peace Day and all of the media outlets in Nigeria devoted airtime to talk about peace messaging it had a very calming effect on the overall environment with regards to NTA's question on the NPC, the National Nigerian Peace Council I did touch on that in my opening remarks they played an incredibly powerful role they're considered to have been the brains behind the Abuja Accords that were signed in January working in tandem with the former Secretary General of the Commonwealth Emeka Anyaku and this National Peace Committee is led by very credible Nigerians very well respected Nigerians co-led by from ahead of state who is still very well respected by both sides as well as Commodore Akimu who was Vice President in the IBB who served as Vice President under the military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida it also has people in there such as Senator Obi who was a personal senior advisor to the President and therefore had a direct channel to President Jonathan it's been stated in many circles that as the returns were coming in that the NPC was holding meetings and speaking to both sides and that once it became clear that the incumbent would lose that they went to the villa and had conversations with him as well just giving the statue of people in the NPC because it also had the highest religious leaders from both the Muslim community as well as the Christian community that it carried a lot of weight and was being respected by the Nigerian people themselves so I think this is also one example of something that could be replicated in other countries to create a buffer a neutral platform where respected citizens or nationals of the country would go in and speak to both sides and carry some very powerful messages and other questions to my colleagues Just to add on the media front as Chris mentioned Tony we had both NDI and I had hoped to do a series of debates and really felt like the environment wasn't going to be balanced enough and so we really didn't move forward on that which was a disappointment I think from the programmatic side of things and then just simply on the National Peace Committee it is my understanding too that they are going to continue to be very active really moving forward around the gubernatorial elections the forthcoming elections as well and so that was just really an exceptional effort and as Chris mentioned really I think a best lesson a best practice that could be used in the Marriott of elections that are forthcoming on the continent over the next two years and at the polling unit that I was at where they count at the end of the ADP people would say continuity, continuity and when an APC ballot came up changed, changed I think they are going to need a little bit of both in fact I think the Buhari APC has not come out with a concrete implementation program on what it means by change what it means by generating employment and so forth I think to give the Jonathan Foundation credit they have had a pretty savvy financial team there that have done some important things in unbundling the power sector in transportation in the financial system in agriculture in some of the distorting import subsidies there that I don't think the new administration will want to throw out entirely people I have spoken to the most the big developmental program approach perhaps less friendly to the private sector I think a big key will be who he surrounds himself with and who is advising him and from what I hear he is fairly open to that as well I think you are going to need a balance I think some of the things that the Jonathan administration has done on infrastructure and these reforms they are not the kind of thing that immediately pays off to the average citizen in terms of seeing immediate benefits but some of them if they are continued and implemented more fully do kind of set the stage for broader based growth private sector investment you have to have power for investment to come in industrialization so I think that has got to be one priority kind of maintaining that while at the same time accelerating some of that the other thing I would like to see is greater linkages between the dynamism of the economy in the south and the northern economy where agriculture and manufacturing have essentially collapsed made worse by insecurity in the northeast and if there are ways to link the gas sector the oil sector and there are some promising things in fertilizer and so forth that can make the two regions if not love each other at least depend on each other economically and I think that's the big challenge for the next administration is both economic revitalization is one getting over the regional polarization that has deepened so much in the last year and that the campaign even though it ended well really fomented some of that and getting back to that national consensus that Professor Ibrahim Gambari talked about when he was here that really is at the core of democracy and we talk a lot about the competitive nature of democracy but at its core there's this consensus that's needed I know we're getting close to time if there's just a couple more questions yes Philippe if you can thank you for that great panel it's a great pleasure group just I guess a quick question that Richard alluded to which is the future of the PDP which nobody knows for sure but assuming let's say if they do lose their majority of the state houses too we're looking at a fairly weakened opposition here and as you say a prospect of some day trading one party democracy for another but we're not there just yet what do you expect from the PDP or what its agenda might be going forward Sarah Eldridge with the State Department I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the voter turnout and particularly how it was significant it was lower than 2011 and what influenced that and whether it was just wrong numbers from 2011 or if there was noticeably lower turnout this time thank you I'm Saad Abdul-Mumin I work for Evidence for Action here in Connecticut Avenue my question goes how do we improve I mean making sure that that manipulation does not happen at the coalition once we are making forward with making sure that manipulation does not happen during the other processes of the election electoral process and then secondly how do we make it much easier for the electorate during the electoral process that they don't spend so much time spending 12 hours 13 hours I had a message from a friend that voted at 1 a.m. from UB state and that potentiates or exposes the electorate to potential attacks from the insurgents so just is there a thought on how best we can collapse the processes and shorten the time of the election and making it much easier for the electorate thank you thank 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