2019 polls, INEC and challenges ahead

In this piece, Group Politics Editor, KUNLE ODEREMI, writes on the activities of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the outgone year vis-à-vis the challenges ahead of the commission in 2020 and beyond.

With the dust arising from the last general election over, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) appears to be fast settling down for off season polls in 2020, including bye-elections.  The outgone year was hectic for both the commission and other major stakeholders in the polity. And in preparing for the challenges ahead, the commission has taken the time out to take stock of its activities under the current chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, with a view to raising the bar and re-setting the clock.

The self-appraisal by the commission also brought out the seeming inadequacies of other major stakeholders, especially on where a few things, perhaps, ought to have been done differently in order to achieve optimal results. To unveil the INEC agenda for the New Year and beyond, as well as assess the commission under the current chairman was his chief press secretary, Mr Rotimi Oyekanmi. He shed light on the activities, progress report and challenges of the INEC.  He painstakingly addressed issues bordering on the issue of smart card reader, logistics, security deployment, electoral offences and the overzealousness on the part of some politicians.

To underscore the importance the INEC attached to planning, the commission had designed what it called the Strategic Plan 2017 – 2021, which Oyekanmi explained was the product of a comprehensive review of the Strategic Plan 2012-2016.  Specifically designed to assist the INEC develop a pragmatic roadmap that will serve as a practical, action-oriented guide for its work over a five-year period, the process of developing the strategy was guided by the need for ownership of the process by INEC staff members and engagement with key stakeholders. Oyekanmi stated that the plan was designed to provide actions to be taken to achieve its mandate given the international and national context of INEC’s operations. The commission also proposes what needs to be done by the organization to achieve its mandate following a review of the previous strategic plan; provide a framework and focus for improvement within the commission as a whole; optimise the commission’s organisational systems and structures; provide guidance to managers for day-to-day decisions; provide a monitoring and evaluation framework for measurement of the performance of the commission and create a sense of common ownership of the work of the INEC among staff and commissioners. According to him, the five strategic objectives of the document are to provide electoral operations, systems and infrastructure to support delivery of free, fair and credible elections; improve voter education, training and research; register political parties and monitor their operations; interact nationally and internationally with relevant stakeholders and strengthen INEC for sustained conduct of free, fair and credible elections. Under the INEC strategic progamme of action (2017 – 2021), the commission outlined the major activities to be undertaken to achieve each objective, the time frame and the envisaged outcomes.

Body parts for N90,000!

The commission acknowledged the general belief that the conduct of elections in the country constituted huge logistic undertakings. This, Oyekanmi said, was majorly because of the country’s landmass, difficult terrain, number of constituencies, size of voter population and the number of staff required to conduct a general election, all of which make planning and management of elections very complex, hence the commission had to institute the practice of developing and implementing an Election Project Plan (EPP).

The 2019 EPP is the second since 2015 and was designed to ensure the implementation of the 2019 general election as a single coordinated plan to deepen the voter experience and deliver better services. He revealed that the 2019 general election took place in 1,558 constituencies, comprising one presidential, 29 governorship, (seven governorship are off-season), 109 senatorial, 360 federal, 991 state and 68 area councils in the Federal Capital Territory            (FCT). There are 119,973 polling units across 774 Local Government Areas in 8,809 registration areas.

Giving further clarifications the INEC disclosed that it conducted 195 off season bye, re-run and end-of-tenure elections, including the governorship elections in Kogi, Bayelsa, Anambra, Edo, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun states, which enabled the commission to fine-tune its processes and procedures for the general election.  He spoke on how the INEC stepped up efforts on the continuous voter registration exercise, noting that before exercise held between April 27, 2017 and August 31, 2018, the total number of registered voters in the country was 69,720,350. The figure rose to unprecedented 84,004,084 after the exercise conducted in all the 774 INEC local government areas offices and other designated centres nationwide based on the laid down procedures. He said the commission verified and confirmed 14,283,734 new registrants. The total number of registered voters now stands at 84,004,084. This is unprecedented. It was the first time that the INEC would undertake the CVR on a continuous basis as prescribed by law.

Party registration

There are reports that a number of political associations are seeking for registration as full-fledged political parties. Only 38 parties out of 30 registered parties partook in the 2015 general election. But by 2019, the commission had registered 91 political parties, with 73 of them fielding candidates for elections. The number of parties has since swelled by one after the general election following a court order. Therefore, for the 2019  elections, the INEC monitored 29, 607 party primaries across the country comprising presidential – seven; governorship – 853; Senate – 2,357; House of Representatives –7,337 and State Houses of Assembly – 18, 990. Similarly, a total of 335 Observer Groups (OGs) applied for accreditation for the elections, made up of 293 domestic and 42 foreign observers. The Commission accredited 159 OGs (120 Domestic and 39 Foreign). They deployed 73,562 personnel out of which 71,256 were domestic and 2,306 foreign. Out of the 71,256 Domestic Observers deployed, 51,320 were males and 19,936 females. Out of the 2,306 Foreign Observers deployed, 1,711 were males and 595 females. Only 42 domestic observer groups have so far submitted reports on the 2019 general elections.

Bayelsa, Kogi elections 

Aware of the general interest in the last governorship elections in Bayelsa and Kogi states, the INEC explained the “adequate preparations” made to conduct the elections in both states on November 16, 2019.  It recalled that it initially released the Timetable and Schedule of Activities (T&SA) on 9th April 2019, fixing the date of election for 2nd November. However, following appeals from the Bayelsa State Government, the Commission shifted the date to 16th November. The Commission also combined the court-order for Kogi West Senatorial re-run and Brass I State Constituency supplementary elections with the governorship elections. It is noteworthy that by combining the Kogi West Senatorial District Election with the Kogi Governorship Election, the Commission saved N300 million that would have been spent if the election had been conducted as a stand-alone.  Because of the importance attached to the election, the INEC on May 16, 2019 unfolded a chain of 14 activities which were meticulously carried out and so, for the first time in the history of such elections in the country, the INEC organised two stakeholders’ meetings in both Yenagoa (Bayelsa) and Lokoja (Kogi) to implore political actors and their supporters/sympathisers and other stakeholders to play by the rules of the game. The process culminated in the political actors signing a peace accord committing themselves to be law-abiding during the November 16 2019 elections, just the commission carried out its Risk Assessment of the two states and shared its findings with the security agencies which the INEC also consulted widely with under the auspices of the Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security (ICCES), chaired by the National Security Adviser with the INEC chairman as co-chair. However, despite the peace accord, the INEC said some political actors still hired thugs to disrupt the polls in some areas by snatching and destroying ballot boxes apart from unleashing terror on people in some places. The situation forced the returning officer for the Kogi West senatorial election to declare the election inconclusive, while returns were made for the governorship elections in the two states. Nonetheless, the INEC maintained that the reported disruptions were not so widespread enough to prevent the commission from announcing the overall results.

Court cases

The report of the INEC concerning the 2019 elections showed that a total of 807 post-election petitions were filed at the tribunals, out of which 582 were dismissed; 183 withdrawn by the petitioners; 30 for re-run and 12 for the issuance of Certificates of Return. By implication, the INEC required to conduct re-run elections in 30 constituencies across 12 states involving two senatorial districts out of 109; 13 federal constituencies out of 360 and 15 state constituencies out of 991. In a majority of cases, elections are to be re-run in just a few polling units, some of them in only one polling unit in the entire constituency. Recall that elections were held in 1,558 constituencies nationwide in the 2019 general election. The 30 constituencies into which re-run elections will be conducted represent 1.92% (approximately 2%) of the total number of constituencies. Accordingly, the commission said this represented a significant progress in the conduct of elections in the country. “For instance, in the 2015 general election held in 1,490 constituencies (excluding the 68 constituencies in FCT where elections were not due as was the case in 2019), re-run elections by court order were held in 80 constituencies (5.37%) made of 10 Senatorial Districts, 17 Federal Constituencies and 53 State Constituencies across 15 states,” the INEC said.

The media and the Electoral Act

More importantly, the commission said collaboration with the media in the implementation of its mandate remained critical and therefore called on the media to assist in exerting pressure on the National Assembly for a holistic amendment of the Electoral Act 2010 and relevant sections of the 1999 Constitution to block the loopholes being exploited by politicians to commit electoral offences. For instance, the INEC said the section of the law that stipulates that once a returning officer makes a declaration (even if it is done under duress) only a court of law can upturn it needs to be amended. “Some politicians now take advantage of that loophole. They now kidnap a Returning Officer and force the hapless Returning Officer to declare them winner at gun point,” he noted. On the issue of smart card reader, the INEC promised to engage the National Assembly on the “status of the Smart Card Reader (SCR).” It will be recalled that INEC chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, had unequivocally said “the SCR has come to stay,” that “it cannot be jettisoned or abandoned. Rather, the Commission will seek ways by which its utility in elections can be enhanced for the triple objectives of verification of the genuineness of the Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs), confirmation of ownership and fingerprint authentication of voters.”  He had equally said: “The status of the SCR must be provided for and protected by law. Similarly, accreditation data from the SCR should be used to determine over-voting and the margin of lead principle. The judgement of the Supreme Court on the primacy of the voter register as the determinant of over-voting in law merely draws attention to the lacuna in the electoral legal framework which must be addressed through immediate and appropriate amendment to the Electoral Act. The Commission will present a proposal to the National Assembly on this matter as well as other areas in which further deployment of technology will deepen the integrity of our electoral process.”

Electoral offences and impunity

Like many others, the commission said it was seriously worried that elections, especially for high prolife offices, had become a do or die battle. It particularly decried that the contest for executive position were increasingly characterised by gross impunity thereby posing a major challenge to INEC’s preparations. However, it proffered a solution to what it described as the bane of elections in the country: “The best antidote to impunity is the enforcement of sanctions under our laws without fear and favour. Where offenders are not punished, bad behaviour is encouraged.” The INEC noted that for more than 40 years, virtually all our elections had been accompanied by the report of one committee or another on electoral reform. He cited the Babalakin Commission of Inquiry into the affairs of the defunct Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO, 1986); Uwais report on electoral reform (2008); Lemu Committee on post-election violence (2011); Ken Nnamani Committee on constitutional and electoral reform (2017); various administrative reports by INEC; investigation reports by the security agencies (the Nigeria Police and the Nigerian Army). Others are the independent studies by the National Human Right Commission (2015 and 2017), the judgments of the various election petition tribunals, the reports of domestic and international observers, record of public hearing for the amendment of the electoral legal framework by the National Assembly and even confessional statements by some political actors. Therefore, the INEC promised that it would continue to partner the National Assembly and all stakeholders for the establishment of the Electoral Offences Commission and Tribunal as recommended by the Uwias, Lemu and Nnamani Committees.

No doubt, as the commission prepares for the rerun polls, as well as the governorship election in Ondo and Edo states, the lessons learnt by all major stakeholders in the political space will be required to reset the chart of the electoral process. However, the need for sustained public enlightenment cannot be over-emphasised, given the crash failure of members of the political class to lead by examples and precepts.

Nigerian Tribune