With just six days to the February 25 presidential election, and the multi-layered economic, security and political challenges, Louis Achi interrogates the readiness of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to conduct Africa’s most consequential democratic elections
It’s a week to the presidential and national legislative elections scheduled for February 25. The governorship and state parliamentary polls will thereafter be held on March 11. The question agitating the minds of Nigerians is: Are the key constitutional arrowheads responsible to ensure free, fair and secure polls ready?
Like an unending mantra, President Muhammadu Buhari has repeatedly restated his resolve to bestow a legacy of credible elections on Nigeria before the expiry of his two-term presidency on May 29. Significantly, Buhari has proclaimed this resolve both to Nigerians and the international community.
“Having witnessed at close quarters, the pains, anguish and disappointment of being a victim of an unfair electoral process, the pursuit of an electoral system and processes that guarantee the election of leaders by citizens remain the guiding light as I prepare to wind down our administration. It is for this reason that I have resolved to bequeath a sustainable democratic culture which will remain lasting,” Buhari reportedly said on October 1, 2022.
While the president was inaugurating critical operational assets acquired to upscale the capabilities of the police, particularly in crowd control and anti-riot operations, on February 13, he stressed the imperative of professionalism on the part of police officers, while policing the polls.
On his part, the man in the eye of the storm, INEC’s Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, has become something of a songbird of optimism in the face of niggling public uncertainty.
As many times as doubts were expressed as to the readiness of the electoral commission to conduct the 2023 elections on one hand and free and credible elections on the other, Prof. Yakubu had often remained resolute by assuring Nigerians that there was no going back on achieving the mandate.
INEC’s publicist and voter education commissioner, Mr. Festus Okoye, has also repeatedly reassured Nigerians that the general election would hold as scheduled.
These assurances and reassurances became necessary following the concern raised in some quarters that the conduct of the elections may be imperiled by the current socioeconomic and political environment in the country mirrored by the insecurity, fuel scarcity, and the new Naira redesign policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The defunct Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin once reportedly quipped, “Those who cast the votes decide nothing but those who count the votes decide everything.”
Clearly, without their elaborate and critical vote counting and results collation assets, the Yakubu-led national electoral body cannot deliver credible results in the general election kicking off in a few days. This scenario would have profound constitutional implications for the troubled nation.
Yakubu had come out clearly to express his legitimate worries over the unfolding developments. He told the House of Representatives’ Ad-hoc Committee Investigating the Attacks on Offices and Facilities of INEC last year that while the commission was determined to moderate credible general elections, the continued attacks on its facilities constituted a serious threat.
“The attacks have far-reaching implications on preparations for the general election. First, the facilities that are destroyed, especially offices, will take time to rebuild. They are not like items of procurement that you can procure off the shelf. So, an alternative arrangement has to be made,” he reportedly said.
According to Yakubu, when INEC offices are built, destroyed and rebuilt, it puts considerable stress on the electoral body’s resources.
The INEC chairman has found a soulmate in the Inspector-General of Police, Usman Baba, who outrightly accused politicians, secessionists and other prominent personalities of being behind the recent attacks on the offices of the INEC in different parts of the country.
The police boss, represented by the Deputy Inspector-General, Department of Operations, Dandaura Mustapha, stated this when he appeared before the House of Representatives ad hoc committee investigating attacks on INEC assets across the country.
But the encouraging dimension to the INEC boss and Police IG’s bellyaching is that much of these disruptive shenanigans occurred last year. Today, a lot of water has seemingly flowed under both the bridge of election preparations and the preparedness of the relevant security agencies.
Last week, INEC announced elections would not be held in 240 Polling Units across 28 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), for not having registered voters. At a meeting with the national leaders of political parties in Abuja, Yakubu said the February 25 and March 11 elections would now take place in 176,606 PUs instead of 176,846 PUs nationwide.
President Buhari’s quaint concern about bequeathing a credible electoral legacy is perhaps captured by the fact that the majority of poll results since Nigeria returned to civil rule 24 years ago cannot be said to have reflected the wishes of the majority. This certainly makes getting the impending general election right very imperative.
It is worth noting that unfettered political participation is one of the most important indicators of the democratic quality of elections and a prime criterion for defining democratic citizenship. This reality cannot be overstressed. Unimpeded voter turnout in a transparent, free and fair election is the most important form of political involvement and it is an important indicator of the state of health of any democracy.
Given its fundamental importance, both to the integrity of Nigeria’s constitutional democracy and the sustenance of political stability, persistent discourse on the nation’s electoral transparency can never become hackneyed.
The Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and INEC Election Result Viewing Portal (IReV) represent two crucial technological advances for enhancing the transparency of election results and upscaling public belief in electoral outcomes.
According to INEC, these technologies are addressing the 10 most prevalent flaws in the nation’s election result management process. These include alteration of votes at polling units, distortion of a number of accredited voters, collation of false results, mutilation of results and computational errors, swapping of results sheets, forging of results sheets, snatching and destruction of results sheets, obtaining declaration and return involuntarily, making declaration and return while result collation is still in progress and poor recordkeeping.
The dual innovations perform mutually reinforcing and critical functions in elections. The BVAS is a technological device used to identify and accredit voters’ fingerprints and facial recognition before voting and is also used for capturing images of the polling unit result sheet (Form EC8A) and uploading the image of the result sheet online.
On the other hand, IReV is an online portal where polling unit level results are uploaded directly from the polling unit, transmitted, and published for the public. Diverse stakeholders have also described BVAS as an upgrade of the smartcard reader, which was used in the 2019 elections, and a game changer in the country’s electoral progression.
Cut to the bone, the accurate implementation, or otherwise, of these cutting-edge electoral innovations will undoubtedly play an important role in evaluating the integrity of next week’s general election.
The Chief of Defence Staff, General Lucky Irabor, had on many occasions, emphasised and reassured that the military would provide a peaceful atmosphere for the elections to hold across the country.
The forthcoming elections will represent the seventh successive general election in the nation’s 24 years of uninterrupted democratic trajectory.
All Nigerians want to see from the commission is a free, fair, transparent, verifiable and inclusive election on the dates they are scheduled.
