Confirmation procedures pending before the Nigerian Senate regarding presidential aide Lauretta Onochie’s nomination as a commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is one needless burden on the electoral body. Onochie’s antecedents and the polarity of opinion trailing her is totally unhelpful for the agency widely perceived as a dispassionate and neutral umpire in the political space.
President Muhammadu Buhari had on 13th October, last year, written the red chamber nominating his Special Assistant on Social Media, who hails from Delta State, along with three other candidates for confirmation as national commissioners of INEC. He nominated one other person as a resident electoral commissioner. On the heels of Senate President Ahmad Lawan reading out the presidential letter of nominations at plenary, there was an outburst of public objection to Onochie’s candidature for INEC, and the legislative chamber went silent on the issue almost as if it had been discarded. It was after that the first tenure of INEC Chairman Professor Mahmood Yakubu expired and he was renominated for a second term by the President and confirmed by the Senate.
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Eight months on now, the Senate has dug up the contested nomination of Onochie and referred her to its Committee on INEC for screening along with other nominees not being contested. And the move ignited fresh clamour against her candidature by stakeholders who contend that if she gets eventually cleared, her presence in INEC would severely compromise the agency’s integrity and reputation for neutrality. One formidable voice in this regard was the coalition of prominent civil society organisations that petitioned the Senate President penultimate week, arguing that Onochie’s nomination, among other things, contravened the Third Schedule, Part 1, Section F, paragraph 14 (1) of the 1999 Constitution providing that an INEC national commissioner shall be non-partisan and a person of unquestionable integrity. They further argued that by that provision combined with Section 156 (1)(a) of the constitution, Onochie is statutorily unqualified for appointment as a member of the electoral body. But in another letter to the Senate President, another coalition – this time of lawyers led by a professor of Law, Yusuf Dankofa – has taken issue directly with the CSOs’ arguments and justified Onochie’s nomination for the INEC job.
Onochie does have her rights like every other Nigerian to be tipped for political slots by the President, but it doesn’t have to be in INEC that is an apolitical public trust striving to build up the confidence of all segments of the citizenry in its neutrality. Even when she isn’t likely to be able to individually influence the processes of INEC if confirmed, her candidature would be a perception burden the electoral body can do without. If the idea is to reward her loyalty to the President, INEC isn’t the place for that reward. Mr. President, look elsewhere.