As the recent governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun states suggest, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has improved considerably by organising elections that were adjudged free and fair. The elections came in the wake of reforms introduced by the new Electoral Act 2022. But, next year’s general elections might be a different ball game. Correspondent NDIDI OKODILI examines the challenges ahead for the commission as it prepares for the general elections
For obvious reasons, the stakes for next year’s general elections are unprecedentedly high. The expectations are high and the challenges that could mar the contest are staring the country, citizens and the political parties in the face.
With the current political awareness sweeping through the country, especially among the youth generation, anything less than credible elections will likely meet with stiff resistance. The electoral umpire, the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) is aware of the enormous task ahead of it.
INEC has been empowered by a new Electoral Act that has addressed most of the pitfalls of previous elections and robust technology that has remarkably enhanced the integrity of the electoral process.
President Muhammadu Buhari’s lack of interference in the way INEC is run has buoyed the commission to play by the rules. This has resulted in the conduct of elections that showed a clear departure from the old order. For instance, the off-season elections conducted in Edo, Ondo, Anambra, Ekiti and Osun states in recent times recorded increasing improvements in each of them.
The introduction of the Bimodal Verification and Accreditation System (BVAS) has eliminated the issues of over-voting, voting by proxy and electoral crimes. With it, the commission appears to have succeeded in meeting the expectations of Nigerians, in terms of organising credible elections.
The Electoral Act 2022 also has built into it a legal framework designed to check identified lapses in the electoral process that were hitherto exploited by politicians.
The act, among other innovations, has made provisions for the electronic transmission of election results in real-time. This particular clause has in no small way improved the outcome of elections. Experiences in Ekiti and Osun states show that Nigerians monitored the election results as they were posted on the INEC portal in real-time.
Also for the first time since the return to civil rule in 1999, INEC appeared to be in control of the electoral process. Political parties were flogged into line with the provisions of the Electoral Act. Party primaries were conducted within the window provided by the commission and only candidates from viable primaries monitored by the electoral umpire were accepted.
This is unlike the practice in the past, where parties engaged in kangaroo primaries and sometimes outrightly handpick candidates without allowing for internal democracy.
For instance, even though the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) forwarded the names of the Senate President, Ahmed Lawan and former Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Godswill Akpabio as candidates for Yobe North and Akwa Ibom Northwest senatorial districts, the commission rejected the names because it did not monitor any primaries where they were said to have emerged.
This was unthinkable in the past; for the commission to dare a ruling party and the office of the Senate President, but the times have changed and so has the commission.
However, despite these bright showings, how ready is the commission to deliver in next year’s general elections. What are the likely impediments? Will there be surprises at the end of the day? Are there grey areas or areas that may have been overlooked? The answers will materialise in the fullness of time.
Meanwhile, the commission has promised to break all known records in next year’s general elections. INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, told delegations from the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) that next year’s polls will be the best to be conducted in the country.
His words: “As for the preparation for next year’s general elections, I want to assure you that we promised Nigerians that Ekiti was going to be good and Ekiti was a good election. We promised that Osun was going to be better, Osun was a better election. We are promising that the 2023 general elections will be our best election ever and we are committed to delivering the best election ever.
“We are encouraged by your kind words, but there is still a lot of work to do. We assure you that we will continue to work not only hard but even harder to deliver the 2023 general elections”.
But, despite the commission’s confidence and assurances, the election will certainly pose a hard nut to crack. The challenges are as high as the expectations. Even though INEC is deploying technology and a formidable legal framework, the election will surely be a test of how much the commission has evolved.
The commission confirmed in its Strategic Plan 2022-2026, which was unveiled by the chairman recently in Abuja, that the prevailing security threats to the electoral process were more than those of the last general elections.
Under the spiralling insecurity, no fewer than 42 of the commission’s facilities have been attacked in 14 states across the federation by hoodlums and separatist agitators.
According to INEC, “in the past several months, the security situation in the country has assumed worrying dimensions. The commission’s assets and facilities, being spread across all the 774 local government areas and state capitals in the country, have come under various forms of security threats, including vandalism and arson.
“In more specific terms, across the six geopolitical zones, the threat levels have gone far beyond what was obtained during the 2019 general elections. A total of 42 attacks across 14 states nationwide between 2019 now have suddenly raised serious security threats to the commission’s assets and personnel. While details of these attacks are presented in the figure below, the physical security of the commission’s offices, personnel and assets need now be taken as seriously as election security has been.”
Another obstacle that may whittle down the speed and efficiency of the commission is the large number of litigations instituted by aggrieved political players. So far, no fewer than 334 pre-election cases have been filed in different divisions of the Federal High Court, challenging the nomination of presidential and National Assembly candidates. This figure is expected to rise as the election draws closer.
The commission said it has been inundated by the numerous cases arising from the conduct of congresses and primaries by political parties. INEC chairman said: “Although these are purely intra-party issues, the commission has been joined in all these cases. With the publication tomorrow of the personal particulars of candidates for governorship, deputy governorship and state assembly elections, we expect the number of cases to rise even higher.
“Sadly, the issue of internal democracy in political parties remains a sore point in our electoral process in Nigeria. The commission will continue to engage with political parties while standing firm against any transgression by strictly enforcing the provisions of the law and extant regulations and guidelines.”
Managing the huge logistics that will be deployed for the 2023 general elections will also be a major challenge, especially as the Commission has halted the use of the facilities of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for storage after the apex bank’s governor, Godwin Emefiele, joined partisan politics.
Although the commission was able to seamlessly store both sensitive and non-sensitive materials for the Ekiti and Osun governorship at the state offices, this arrangement may not be suitable for the next general elections, as a result of the volume of logistics that will be needed for the polls.
Sometime in June, the INEC chairman said sensitive election materials would no longer be kept at the apex bank because the governor of the bank is a card-carrying member of the ruling party and this has compromised his neutrality in the matter.
But, INEC National Commissioner and Chairman of Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye said the commission would be in for a logistics nightmare if the issue of the CBN’s neutrality is not resolved to guarantee the storage of its election materials at the bank. He said the commission was going to have talks with the Central Bank to try and resolve the issue ahead of the election.
Okoye said: “It’s going to be a huge logistics nightmare. What do we intend to do since there are issues with keeping our materials with the CBN? We have not had enough opportunity to sit down with the Central Bank to review the entire issue surrounding moving our material with the Nigerian Air force. We are going to do that. If at the end of the day, we are not satisfied with the arrangement, then, we are going to look for a new logistics pathway for how to manage logistics during the 2023 elections. But no decision has been made yet.”
Okoye also insisted that in the recently concluded governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun, the storage measures for the two states would not be tenable, going into the general elections next year. He added: “You cannot use the Ekiti governorship election and Osun governorship election as a measure of what will happen in 2023. This is because, for instance, in the Ekiti governorship election, we had less than a million registered voters. In the Osun governorship election, we were shy of two million registered voters.
“These are stand-alone elections. For the Ekiti election, we utilized the service of the Nigerian Air force and they flew the materials into Akure airport. We did the same thing with the Osun election, and we moved the materials to our state offices.
“But, for the 2023 general election, we are going to have over 95 million ballot papers printed for the presidential election. Over 95 million will be printed for the senatorial election; over 95 million papers will be printed for the House of Representatives election. Then it goes down.”
Today, all hopes are now on the commission to deliver credible and acceptable elections next year. As rightly pointed out by President Buhari, the forthcoming general elections would affirm the institutional strength of the commission.