One Year to Go: INEC Chairman, Yakubu Aiming to Finish Strong

By Jude Opara

In the next one year, the tenure of the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu would have ended. Yakubu was appointed by former President Muhammadu Buhari on October 21, 2015 to replace former acting Chairman, Mrs. Amina Zakari.
However, despite ten fact that he is already on his way out, Prof. Yakubu seems to have decided to end his tenure on the high by working very hard to initiate some positive reforms that if properly implemented will further improve on the nation’s electoral system.
Therefore, it was not surprising that last week, the Commission unveiled an ambitious 142 recommendations that would impact on the entire ecosystem of the conduct of elections in the country.
Addressing members of the Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) at a strategic meeting, Prof. Yakubu said the meeting was focused more on detailed issues of planning and reform learning from the experience of the 2023 General Election.
He noted that in coming up with the far-reaching recommendations, the Commission consulted widely internally with its own officials and externally with all major stakeholders, including the Civil Society Organizations, Security Agencies, the Media as well as the various layer of Observers.
According to the INEC boss, the identified 142 recommendations concern the general state of preparedness, voter management, voter education and public communication, political parties and candidate management, electoral operations and logistics management, election officials and personnel, partnership and collaboration, monitoring and supervision, election technology, voting and result management, election security, electoral offences and the electoral legal framework.
This gesture is very significant because it shows the sincere desire of the INEC Chairman to see a cleaner electoral process, given the fact that by the time these recommendations will begin to yield dividends, he would have left office.
Similarly, to underscore the fact that Yakubu is a team player, he decided to rally the RECs because he identified their pivotal role since they would be expected to drive the reforms in their various states.
“Out of the 142 recommendations, 86 require administrative action by the Commission. It is therefore pertinent that we engage first with our Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) because of your frontline role in the implementation of the recommendations. This is followed by 48 recommendations that require action by a variety of stakeholders, including security agencies, mobile network operators, statutory bodies, political parties, transport unions, civil society organisations and the media”.
On the legal review, the INEC boss identified about eight recommendations that require legislative action by the National Assembly, and promised that very soon; the Commission will make a presentation to the Joint Committee of the Senate and House of Representatives on Electoral Matters who are currently deliberating on electoral reforms.
One of the major highlights of the recommendations is the urgent need of legal clarity in result management, with regard to manual transfer versus the electronic transmission of results. The ambiguity inherent in the Section 60 of the Electoral Act 2022 as amended where election results could be collated and transmitted both electronically or manually should be addressed. If we want to embrace electronic system, let us do that without giving loopholes for electoral manipulation.

Another cardinal point in the recommendations is the Commission’s acceptance that with the introduction of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), the use of the Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs) as the sole means of identification for voter accreditation on Election Day should be reviewed. While those who already have the PVCs can still use them to vote, going forward; computer-generated slips issued to the voter or even downloaded from the Commission’s website will suffice for voter accreditation. If properly implemented, this not only save cost, but also eliminate the issues around the printing and collection of PVCs and the diabolical practice by some desperate politicians who buy up the cards from voters in order to manipulate the process.

In fact, Nigeria must begin to do things like we have seen in other climes, including some African countries. Recently, there was an election in Ghana and on Election Day, it was seamless wit people going to vote with their national identity card and any other government approved data based document.

The unnecessary duplicity of data capturing by every government agency is unacceptable and even unreasonable. The average Nigerian citizen may have been captured about five times in sister general government controlled agencies. We have international passport, INEC registration, drivers’ license, international passport and National Identification Number (NIN). In most countries, all these are easily linked to remove the unnecessary duplications which are fraudulent and waste of time.

Furthermore, the review report also contains recommendations on early/special voting for the millions of Nigerians who have over the years disenfranchised because they engage in election duties and may be away from where they were registered.

Such people include; staff of INEC, security personnel, ad-hoc staff, observers and journalists who are cover the elections.

There are also recommendations in support of Diaspora voting, the unbundling of the Commission with the establishment of electoral offences tribunal and a separate agency to handle the registration and regulation of political parties. Diaspora voting has become imperative because it will give millions of Nigerians living abroad the opportunity to help in choosing those who will lead the country. The importance of giving such critical stakeholders to chance to vote cannot be overemphasized. This group remits billions of foreign currencies to the country; hence they should be given the opportunity to add in shaping the polity.

Another important line in the recommendations is the plan to step up action on voter access and distribution to Polling Units, as well as the effort to develop protocols for the cleaning up of the voters’ register in collaboration with other agencies like the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) and the National Population Commission (NPC).

The Commission must take this very seriously because voters have not been properly distributed among the Polling Units. It is a common knowledge that while in some Polling Units you will see a huge number of voters, in others there will be less than a handful and this creates confusion and chaos on Election Day. There is equally the need to clean the register because since the last election, most of the people currently on the register may have passed on, hence the need to ensure that nobody uses their voters’ cards to vote.

Furthermore, the Commission intends to review the mechanisms for a more effective implementation of agreements on logistics with the transport unions and other service providers by consolidating on the recent experience with early deployment and commencement of elections in the recent Ondo State Governorship election. This is very important because since it is operationally difficult for INEC to distribute materials without the assistance of outsiders, it is imperative to streamline the terms of engagement with these transport unions. It has been reported that at times some of them are sympathetic to some politicians and they sometimes deliberately compromise, thereby injuring the process.

It is highly believed that if all the stakeholders, especially the politicians decide to cooperate with the Commission, elections in the country will become more peaceful like we have seen in other countries, even in Africa.

It is always easy to blame the Commission for every election that appeared to have been manipulated. While INEC may not be completely absolved, the real question we may not have been asking is what powers does INEC have to tackle election malpractices?

The Commission does not have the power to even arrest electoral offenders; that responsibility is reposed on the various security agencies. But each time things go awry, INEC takes the blame.

While I agree that there are some dubious elements in the Commission, it is always the desperate politicians that do compromise them by inducing them with huge amounts of money. The average Nigerian politician especially those in power believe they must not lose elections and they can go to any extent to ensure victory.

Since after the 2915 election where the former President Goodluck Jonathan willingly conceded defeat to then candidate of the opposition All progressives Congress (APC), gen. Muhammadu Buhari, no other Nigerian leader has done that.

In the 2023 election, we saw clear voter suppression in parts of Nigeria where people were prevented from voting on the account that they would not vote for a particular candidate, it was not INEC that asked those to do such and to add to it, the Commission was handicapped because it has no powers to stop such.

So, while Prof. Mahmood prepares to take a deserved exit from the Commission, it is expected that the country would be the better for it with a careful and proper implementation of these recommendations, especially those that will not need legislative actions. The 2025 Anambra state governorship election will be a worthy opportunity to begin the implementation.