From the worsening insecurity to the inconclusive Electoral Amendment (Amendment) Bill and poor funding, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is facing an uphill task ahead of next year’s general election. OKODILI NDIDI highlights some of the challenges
With a little over a year to the commencement of next year’s general election, the identified challenges do not seem to be abetting. The commission is torn between going ahead with plans for the elections based on the existing legal framework, or waiting on the promise by the executive and the legislature to the effect that the impasse over the amended Electoral Bill will be resolved.
In the face of the aforementioned obstacles, lies the issue of deployment of technology, with identified hitches that dogged recent elections. Another source of worry for both the electoral umpire and the general public, is the multiple attacks on the commission’s facilities across the country, even though most of the damaged properties have since been replaced.
Resulting from these attacks, the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) has been restricted to local government headquarters, making it difficult for many eligible Nigerians to get registered. Though the commission had assured several times that it was on top of the situation, it nonetheless agreed that there are serious and growing threats to the next general elections.
INEC National Commissioner and Chairman Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, while weighing in on the issues, affirmed that heightening insecurity across the country pose a serious threat to the conduct of the election. He said a situation where ad-hoc staff are nervous at being deployed to conflict areas, challenges the electoral process.
The commission, however, promised to find ways of navigating through the storm. It advised that the country must break the circle of impunity, with a view to making the elections as civil as possible. Okoye said: “There will be challenges for the 2023 election. There will be the challenge of heightened insecurity in most parts of the country and the commission must find ways and means of navigating through these challenges. These become difficult in situations where ad-hoc staffs are nervous at being deployed to conflict areas as they are not sure of their security.
“The country must also break the cycle of impunity accentuated by electoral violence and make our elections as civil as possible. The commission must also find ways and means of populating some of the newly created polling units. It will therefore accelerate voter education around the communities and also engage in the batch transfer of voters.
“There is also the challenge of trust and confidence in the electoral process. The commission has increasingly deepened democracy through the use of technology and those that are engaged in multiple voting and identity theft will have a hard time during the 2023 general election. There are different dimensions to the security challenges in the country. We have communal conflicts, we have farmers/ herders conflicts, we have insurgency, we have secessionist agitations, we have serious cases of banditry, we have breaches of territorial integrity of the country, we have cases of kidnapping and plain criminality in different parts of the country.
“The commission has offices in the 774 local government areas and we have information on the different problems and challenges in the country. The law gives the commission the power to do all that is possible to enable persons displaced by one challenge or the other to vote. We will remain confident and courageous and maintain robust consultation and engagement with the security agencies in degrading security challenges in the country.
“The commission has been conducting elections in difficult and challenging circumstances. Presently, we have 176,846 polling units in the country and these polling units must be serviced during elections.”
In the same vein, the INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu has offered perspectives on how best to protect the electoral process in 2023, against the backdrop of the prevailing security situation in the country. Speaking during a quarterly meeting with the Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security (ICCES), Yakubu said the commission will be focusing on the best means to secure the process, in the most professional manner.
He said: “We must also continue to prepare for the 2023 general election holding in 394 days. Securing the nation under current circumstances is challenging enough. It is more so in an election year. Beginning from this meeting, we shall focus mainly on the best way to secure the electoral process in the most professional manner. You may recall that at our meeting in June last year, we discussed the commencement of the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise. After extensive deliberations, you advised that we should commence the physical registration exercise in our State and Local Government offices nationwide.
“Thereafter, we shall review the security situation before devolving further in the effort to reach as many citizens in their communities as is practicable. The CVR exercise has now entered its third quarter. I want to assure Nigerians that we are aware of the constraints experienced by many citizens in reaching the 811 designated centres nationwide to register. Some of them are separated by a considerable distance from the places where citizens reside.
“We are looking forward to activating the additional 1,862 centres nationwide to make it easier for citizens to exercise their right to register as voters. At the same time, we are mindful of the imperative of securing the process, especially the lives of registrants and our personnel. We will not put the lives of Nigerians and our registration officials at risk. For this reason, this meeting will review the security situation with a view to achieving our ultimate goal of activating 2,673 registration centres nationwide.”
In spite of the assurances from the commission, politicians have voiced their fears for the 2023 polls, charging authorities to quickly do something to address the situation. Meanwhile, the Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC), the umbrella body of registered political parties, insists that the most serious and potent impediment to the successful conduct of the 2023 general elections is the lingering debacle between the executive and the legislature on the fate of the 2021 Electoral (Amendment) Bill.
The council also fingered poor funding of the commission as another major hiccup. IPAC Chairman, Yabagi Yusuf Sani noted that, while time is dangerously running out for the resolution of the disputes between the executive and legislature, “the IPAC is of the position that the controversy may have been contrived in the first instance, purely and clearly in the pursuits of narrow and self-centred political ambitions of some of the gladiators”.
Sani said: “There is no gainsaying the imperatives of active and honest support of all stakeholders in our democracy project to enable INEC to more efficiently deliver on its constitutional responsibilities to the nation. It is in the light of this fact that IPAC would want to once again, use this occasion to reiterate its repeated calls, especially to the executive and judicial arms of government, to take the issue of adequate appropriation and funding of INEC more seriously.
“We are making this appeal for more realistic funding of INEC against the backdrop of the humongous reduction in the budgetary allocation to the agency in the recently passed 2022 Appropriation Act which in our view, did not reflect the demands of robust and timely preparations for the 2023 general elections. Besides, the significance of ensuring the success of the newly introduced digital gadgets and reforms, the relevant authorities must take into cognisance the challenges posed by the prevailing and pervading atmosphere of insecurity in the country which may not significantly abate before the historic elections.”
On the Electoral Amendment Bill, Sani said: “We are using this occasion to once again make our strident call for the immediate resolution of the unnecessary impasse over the Electoral Amendment Bill in the superior and overriding national interest. The IPAC has persistently suggested at various forums that the first rational step in the circumstance is for the two apex legislative houses to immediately expunge from the bill, the provisions that make it mandatory for political parties to use the direct primary in the selection of their flag bearers in general elections.
“Going forward, we have also called on the president to thereafter assent to the bill without delay. Our concern in IPAC is that failure to reach a compromise in the short run may invariably translate into the death of the other very crucial provisions, such as the provisions on the electronic transmission of election results. As it is, the compromise and shifting of grounds in respect of the bill by the two arms of government incidentally controlled by the same political party, the APC, should not ideally be too cumbersome a task to accomplish.”
IPAC is, however, of the opinion that INEC has shown enough commitment to the electoral process, and so can deliver on the much-anticipated polls. The council added: “In our capacities as leaders of political parties, we are in good stead to bear testimony to the diligence and efficiency shown by INEC in the distribution of electoral materials and deployment of personnel in the conduct of the November 6, 2021, Anambra State governorship election. We as well saw the impact of the unprecedented application of among other technological devices, the Voter Enrollment Device and the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), which cumulatively resulted in the evident smooth conduct of that election and which, at the end of the day, was widely acclaimed by most stakeholders and observers as transparent, credible, free and fair.
“It is our fervent hope and prayers, that the new heights in the standards of performance by INEC will not only be sustained but further perfected and improved upon for greater degrees of success in its conduct of future elections. We are in this regard, anticipating more superlative performance by INEC in the remaining off-season elections, beginning with the Council elections in the Federal Capital Territory and later on, the gubernatorial elections in Osun and Ekiti states.
“While commending INEC for its unprecedented outstanding performance in the Anambra State governorship polls, we are not, however, unmindful of the manifestations of incidents of hitches experienced in that exercise. IPAC is therefore calling on the INEC to take measures to rectify observed lapses in Anambra.”
He added: “Among others, we noticed that there is the requirement for upgrading the level of the diligence and proficiency of both its permanent and ad hoc personnel on election duties, by way of training, refresher courses and re-orientation. There is a need for a more robust deployment of logistics and greater performance in the distribution of vital election materials.
“Very importantly, IPAC is recommending improvement in the operational conditions of all the biometric gadgets in order to reinforce the growing confidence in their use as reliable technological devices for the enthronement of credible and transparent elections.”