The National Secretary of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Rauf Aregbesola, said Monday that the existing procedures of appointing officials for Nigeria’s electoral commission, INEC, including its chairperson, National Commissioners, and Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs), are deeply flawed.
Mr Aregbesla spoke during a panel session on electoral innovation organised by the Athena Centre for Policy and Leadership in Abuja.
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Also on the same panel were Governors Dauda Lawal of Zamfara State, Charles Soludo of Anambra State, and the Chancellor of Athena Centre for Policy and Leadership, Osita Chidoka.
The Chairperson of the Senate Committee on Electoral Reform, Simon Lalong, who was billed to be on the panel, was absent.
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Suggestion
Mr Aregbesola, a former governor and Osun State and interior minister, said trust in elections is usually eroded even before the actual elections are held.
To inspire confidence, he said, “We must start from how we appoint these people who superintend these processes.”
“Let parties with at least five members in the National Assembly nominate people that will be at the helm of affairs at INEC,” he said.
“That solves all the issues. If the parties now betray themselves to allow one of them to run away with it, fine.”
He described the current situation where the president nominates INEC chairpersons to the National Assembly as one where the “principal beneficiary of manipulation nominates who chairs INEC”, essentially dictating what the latter does.
For the ADC National Secretary, a former political ally of President Bola Tinubu, to deny that will be “grandstanding in deceit”.
On his part, Mr Chidoka tried with a similar opinion, wondering how the administrations after the late Umaru Yar’adua have rejected the recommendation of the Justice Uwais committee he set up to review electoral laws, on the appointment of the INEC chairperson.
‘But it continued to plague us,” he said. “Somebody is a participant in the process, and he is choosing an umpire. That creates some issues.”
He also cited how a now-removed REC for Adamawa State, Hudu Ari, wrongly announced election results and declared a wrong candidate as the winner.
Mr Chidoka explained that if Mr Ari were an INEC staff member who was dismissed for such unruly behaviour, he would have lost all his retirement benefits, including pensions and gratuity.
“I firmly support the idea that resident electoral commissioners should be staff of INEC. They should be people that have a stake in the game, whose retirements are tied to behaviour, and not politicians,” he said.
Section 154 of the Constitution empowers the president of the country to appoint the INEC chairman in consultation with the Council of State and obtain confirmation from the Senate.
The tenure of the current chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, will expire before the end of the year, and President Tinubu is expected to nominate his replacement.
Mr Yakubu was appointed by the late former President Muhammadu Buhari.
‘INEC has come a long way’ – Soludo
In his submission, the Anambra State Governor, Mr Soludo, rated the electoral commission highly and noted INEC doesn’t frequently get accolades for all it has achieved.
Mr Soludo, who was the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), said he had evolved from INEC since then up until the 2021 election, where INEC used the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) technology for the first time.
INEC usually keeps sensitive materials, including ballot papers, ballot boxes, and result sheets at the CBN ahead of deployments.
“I happened to have been part of these conversations and even the operations, particularly in 2007. As the governor of the central bank, I knew what happened with the printing of ballot papers and the conduct of elections in 2007. To see where we are today with INEC under Professor Yakubu, we must give INEC some credit,” he said.
He said the commission needs to do more, due to ‘gaps here and there’, but when compared with where the operations of the commission were some years ago, there has been progress.
The Zamfara State Governor, Mr Lawal, called for a legislative process to hold INEC officials accountable for their roles in the conduct of the election.
He called for the fine-tuning of BVAS and the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) to deliver results in real-time from the polling units.
He also noted that the security architecture needs to be improved upon, as it is a major driver of apathy among voters.
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