Expert: Only INEC has the Authority to Conduct Elections

The director of The Abuja School of Social and Political Thought, Dr. Sam Amadi, has criticized Nigerian politicians for thinking that the president conducts elections and awards to whomever he pleases, asserting that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) alone is responsible for holding the elections.

Amadi said this while discussing issues related to the Post-Osun Tribunal Decision and the Policy Dialogue on the 2023 elections on Thursday in Abuja.

According to him, Nigeria’s history of electoral fraud demonstrates that the engagement of incumbents in the electoral process is typically what endangers the integrity and freeness of elections.

According to the director, the President’s sole obligation is to provide security and establish an atmosphere that will allow INEC to fulfill its constitutional role.

He said, “ INEC has expressed worries about the growing insecurity in the country and how it is affecting its preparation for the election.

“ Clearly, the President has a responsibility to ensure free and fair elections. This responsibility is to create an enabling environment for INEC to deliver on its constitutional mandate. The most important aspect of this responsibility is security.

“ The President is not on the ballot, even if his party is on the ballot. Attempts to shame the president into taking sides in the electoral process are efforts to further compromise the credibility of the elections. So far, the President is giving the right signals for free and fair elections in February and March.

“ These politicians should be pressing the President to extract implementation strategies from his military and police chiefs on how to defeat the army of terrorists, insurgents and notorious criminals who would want to undermine electoral integrity through scaremongering and criminal actions.”

Speaking about the underlying failure in the Osun election, he claimed that it wasn’t the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BIVAS), but rather that Sections 60 (4) and (5) of the Electoral Act were not implemented in a practical manner.

He said, “ The relevant officers ought to be vigilant and ensure that the BIVAS accreditation results were fully loaded before ending the process. Even when the losers in the election demanded for the report of the BIVAS relevant INEC officials should have ensured that the full report was sent or if there was extreme urgency they would have accompanied with a letter to indicate its interim nature.

He however said that all these failures reinforce the critical importance of the technical and ethical competences of persons who supervise elections in 2023, adding that INEC should be careful in selecting ad hoc staff.

“ We fear that politicians will like to infiltrate the ad hoc staff list to use the staff to manipulate elections. In requesting for staff of sister agencies, INEC should not take any list from such agencies except the Nominal List backed up by recent salary slips to verify that those persons are real staff of the agencies. Court should rarely be involved in determining who becomes president, governor or legislator.” He said.