In its recently released report, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) contends that the sum approved for it to conduct the 2023 General Election was insufficient.

The electoral body argues that out of the N355.2 billion approved and appropriated for the conduct of the 2023 General Election, only the sum of N313.4 billion was released as of September 2023. According to the Commission, initially, the National Assembly approved and appropriated the sum of N303.1 billion for the conduct of the 2023 General Election.

However, due to spiralling inflation as well as the widening differentials in the foreign exchange rate in the country by January 2023, it was clear that the approved amount would not be enough for the conduct of the General Election. Consequently, the Commission was compelled to request for supplementary appropriation in the sum of N52 billion from the presidency.

The request was duly considered and approved for appropriation by the National Assembly, bringing the total funds approved and appropriated to the Commission for the conduct of the 2023 General Election to N355.2 billion.

With the benefit of hindsight, the conduct of the 2023 General Election was far from satisfactory and rarely a good time for the umpire to complain about funding. The truth is that the 2023 General Election was sufficiently funded.

In fact, INEC got a 62 per cent increase in funds over what was spent in the conduct of the 2019 General Election. The reason for this increase was not only to improve the electoral process but also to make the system more credible through the introduction of new technologies such as the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Result Viewing (IREV) portal.

These technologies were expected to provide foolproof authentication of voters and near-real-time uploading of results to the point where electorates would have been able to do their own computation and calculation of votes even before the official declaration of results at the INEC collation centre in Abuja.

The BVAS is a technological device used to identify and accredit voters’ fingerprints and facial recognition before voting, while the IREV is an online portal where polling unit-level results are uploaded directly from the polling unit, transmitted, and published for the public.

It is alarming that despite the increase in its funding, INEC still believes it could do with more. Yet, many Nigerians are not satisfied with its performance, especially on electronic uploading and release of election results. The commission certainly can do better in conducting free and fair elections, even though Nigerians are difficult to assuage; and they are very litigious.

The commission should be worried that many of its decisions on the 2023 elections were overturned by the courts, signposting that the courts are doing more than INEC to enthrone governors and state and federal legislators. Eight governors have so far been so enthroned by the courts. Though not perfect, the Electoral Act provides INEC with a framework with which it can credibly conduct a credible election. However, INEC still remains impotent.

Instead of more money, therefore, there is a need for INEC to undergo fundamental reforms to make it a more credible election umpire. The late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, on August 28, 2007, instituted a 22-member Electoral Review Committee, headed by former Chief Justice Muhammadu Uwais, to critically examine the electoral process in the country and advise on areas that require reforms. Unfortunately, since the committee submitted its report in 2007, it has yet to be implemented.

Sadly, successive governments in the country have failed to heed the calls to implement the report. It is believed that if the Uwais Report is implemented, it will reduce the overbearing powers of the executive arm over other arms of government in the conduct of elections in Nigeria.

Among others, the Uwais Committee had recommended that if Nigeria intends to conduct a credible election, it must set up a truly neutral and independent electoral commission imbued with administrative and financial autonomy.

The Committee believes that Nigeria needs an electoral process that would enable the conduct of elections to meet acceptable international standards, legal processes that would ensure that election disputes are concluded before the inauguration of newly elected officials, and mechanisms to reduce post-election tensions, including the possibility of introducing the concept of proportional representation in the constitution of government.

To this effect, the Committee stated that the INEC chairman and members of the electoral body cannot be appointed by the President because such an appointment deprives the INEC chairman and members of the electoral body of the autonomy and independence necessary to function as impartial umpires in the electoral process.

According to the committee: “The classification of the commission as a federal executive body in section 153 of the 1999 Constitution also brings it under the oversight of the executive arm of government, just as its funding through the same executive renders it vulnerable to manipulation and undue influence by that organ.

Also, the absence of effective democratic oversight of the commission, for example by parliamentary committees, is another factor.” The Committee therefore recommended that: “In terms of qualifications, the chairman, deputy chairman, and members of INEC should be persons of integrity, non-partisan, possess vast professional, administrative or academic experience, be not less than 50 years of age for chairman and deputy and not less than 40 years for the others; and the chairman and deputy chairman should not be of the same gender.

The Committee recommends that the composition of the membership of INEC should be reviewed periodically to ensure that the chairman, deputy chairman, and other members of INEC are non-partisan and have not been registered members of any political party during the preceding five years.

It recommends that section 153 of the 1999 Constitution, which classifies INEC as a federal executive body, should be amended, while the funding of INEC shall be a first-line charge on the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation rather than the Presidency and National Assembly. In short, the committee wants Nigeria to adopt all the standards set by reputable global agencies.

President Bola Tinubu-led government should endeavour to implement the report. For an electoral process to be perceived as fair and credible, the body responsible for conducting the elections must be seen as independent and free from political interference.

The funding of INEC directly from the federal government should stop. Such a manner of funding could compromise the independence of the electoral body. He who pays the piper dictates its tune. If INEC relies heavily on federal funding, it can hardly be an unbiased umpire in the electoral process. Public perception is fundamental in an electoral process. If INEC is continually funded by the federal government, the perception of bias in favour of the ruling party will persist, thus eroding the trust in INEC and the legitimacy of election outcomes.

The funding of INEC directly from the federal government should stop. Such a manner of funding could compromise the independence of the electoral body. He who pays the piper dictates its tune. If INEC relies heavily on federal funding, it can hardly be an unbiased umpire in the electoral process.

Public perception is fundamental in an electoral process. If INEC is continually funded by the federal government, the perception of bias in favour of the ruling party will persist, thus eroding the trust in INEC and the legitimacy of election outcomes.

Racoon:
cc Bluntcrazeman

BluntCrazeMan:
THE BEST WAYS THE PARTY-AGENTS OF THE POLITICAL PARTIES SHOULD BE RAISING THEIR DISPUTES DURING THE ELECTION COLLATION EXERCISE..


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This topic became necessary after observing the past series of elections,, and taking serious notes of how wantonly the collation-officers (and even the returning-officers) were disregarding and/or paying less attention to the disputes which were raised by the various aggrieved party-agents during the collation exercises at the various collation centers.

Meanwhile, most of the observed party-agents were merely wailing and ranting at the collation-centers - and almost getting themselves on the verge of staging fights at the collation-centers in an Orubebe-Styled manner, without actually stating the exact figures that are being disputed, and thus, they were left unattended to; since they actually have no facts-and-figures to be looked into.

Thus, going forward, the party-agents should endeavour to do the following while raising their disputes at the Collation-Centers...
They should be very calm, soft-voiced (but loud enough to be heard), and then, TAKE THE WHOLE TIME TO GENTLY READ OUT “EVERY DISPUTED FIGURES” ACCORDING TO ALL THE AFFECTED POLLING-UNITS, and most-importantly have the party-agent recorded on video-camera while presenting the disputes as well as capture the collation-officers’ response on video-camera too.

There are two main reasons why the above-listed steps are very necessary during disputes:

1. These steps would help the Party’s Situation-Room to properly trace the originating points of all the mistakes and errors in the tallying and calculation of results,, as well as to trace all the originating points of all possible fraudulent manipulations of results, and communicate them to the party-agents on the field, for them to use the data in further butressing their disputes.

2. These steps would also help the Party to EASILY GATHER ALL THEIR EVIDENCE ahead of time, including all the necessary video-evidence, for them to be used during their election petition tribunal, Where all such erring collation-officers would also be joined as respondents in the election-petition -- (as stipulated in the Electoral-Act-2022)


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WHAT EXACTLY ARE THE PARTY-AGENTS SUPPOSED TO BE SAYING WHILE RAISING THEIR DISPUTES.??

Like I pointed out earlier,, the party agents are actually supposed to calmly and gently read out “all the disputed figures” according to all the affected polling-units. The polling-unit-number and NAME must be mentioned for all the affected polling-units.
(The figures must be read out according to the various polling-units, in addition to being lumped or summed together according to the wards, or LGAs, or States)

The reason why the figures must be read out according to the polling-units is because, ALL THE BVAS-MACHINES FOR ALL THOSE AFFECTED POLLING-UNITS THAT WERE CALLED-OUT (AND DISPUTED) ARE SUPPOSED TO BE BROUGHT THERE AT THE COLLATION-CENTER, and be used to settle all those raised disputes..
That is what the Electoral-Act-2022 says in Section-64-(sub-section-6).

Assuming the party-agents lumped the figures according to the Wards collated-figures, or LGAs collated-figures, or States collated-figures, without naming all the affected polling-units, it would be very hard for the collation-officer to settle the disputes in accordance with the Electoral-Act-2022, because there were no BVAS-Machines used at these Wards, LGAs, or States levels.


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From all the above descriptions, it simply means that the party-agents MUST be physically present at the WARDS Collation-Centers., and start there to raise their disputes wherever and whenever they detected errors and discrepancies between the figures which the collation-officers are announcing and the figures that were contained inside the BVAS-machines.

These party-agents at the Wards would now communicate those disputes that were raised to the party-agents at the LGAs collation-officers (according to the exact polling-units and each of the exact figures as they were disputed and the correct summations for all the parties and votes cast -- including the wrongly summed figures which were announced by the INEC’s collation-officers). It is the duty of the party-agents at the upper level of collation to cross-check the summed figures which the collation-officers at that particular upper level of collation would announce.
If the figures happen to be the wrong summations,, then the party-agents would raise the disputes by first pointing out the wrong summations,, and then break the whole wrong results down into the various polling-units -- AND DEMAND FOR ALL THE AFFECTED BVAS-MACHINES OF ALL THOSE MENTIONED POLLING-UNITS TO BE BROUGHT “UNTAMPERED” TO THE COLLATION-CENTER FOR VERIFICATION AND CONFIRMATION.


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WHAT WOULD THE POLITICAL PARTY DO IF THE PARTY-AGENTS AT THE WARDS AND LGAS (LOWER-LEVEL COLLATION-CENTERS) WERE FORCEFULLY NOT ALLOWED TO ENTER THE VENUE OF THE COLLATION.??

If the authentic party-agents who were supposed to be at the Wards and/or LGAs Collation-Centers were forcefully blocked off from entering the venue of the collation,, such affected party-agents should make a video of the incident, calling his/her name and showing his/her face as the authentic party-agent for such a center, and also showing good evidence of forceful barricade, and then declare inside the video that whatever that happens inside that particular Collation-Center (as also named inside the video), that the party is not aware of it, and that the process is flawed and no more transparent and credible..

The reasons for making such videos 📷 are very simple.

According to the Electoral-Act-2022, all the party-agents must have submitted their names and photos to the INEC, and must have even submitted samples of their signatures too before the election..

Thus, such videos would help the party’s situation room to know the Collation-Centers where their Authentic Party-agents were prevented from entering, and start early enough to call the attention of the State’s Securities to attend to such centers. It would also help the party in establishing the case of “fraudulent and non-transparent collation” at the election tribunal should in case the matter gets to the tribunal, because the case of forceful exclusion could easily be established from the videos.

The various political parties should be very much aware that without such videos, they cannot establish that there was forceful exclusion or forceful barricade from the venue of the collation,, and thus, the opponent may quickly assume that the Party-agents WILLFULLY ABSCONDED, since there were no evidence to prove that there was forceful barricade,, and thus, such opponent would use the Section-43-(subsection-3) of the Electoral-Act-2022 to assume that the party-agent willfully absconded from the venue of the collation, and use such provisions of the law against him/her.
Therefore, the party-agents must be very very cautious, and very careful for them not to play into the cunning hands of their opponents..

This video would also help the party-agents at the upper-level Collation-Centers to already be aware (ahead of time) that the Lower-Level party-agents were not able to raise disputes at the Collation-Centers due to undue forceful blockage from entering the venue of the Collation-Centers,, and thus the party-agents should raise the matter up at the upper-level Collation-Center, and call for a full review of all the previously collated results so-far by invoking the Section-64-(subsections-6-&-7) of the Electoral-Act-2022.
(YESSS..!! The Electoral-Act-2022 allowed for the whole Results to be re-collated ALL-OVER AGAIN FROM SCRATCH, USING THE WHOLE OF ALL THE BVAS-MACHINES OF ALL THE WHOLE POLLING-UNITS,, IF THERE WERE ESTABLISHED INCONSISTENCIES DURING THE VERIFICATION AND CONFIRMATION OF THE ALREADY-COLLATED RESULTS..)

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I greet you all.

Have a nice day.

Racoon:
"The BVAS is a technological device used to identify and accredit voters’ fingerprints and facial recognition before voting, while the IREV is an online portal where polling unit-level results are uploaded directly from the polling unit, transmitted, and published for the public.

These technologies were expected to provide foolproof authentication of voters and near-real-time uploading of results to the point where electorates would have been able to do their own computation and calculation of votes even before the official declaration of results at the INEC collation centre in Abuja...."

The same technologies including the server vehemently denied by INEC? Until INEC is truly independent, forget free, fair or credible election in Nigeria. Meanwhile, reforms cant and will never start with Mahmud Yakubu.

ThinkSmarter:
INEC is not independent.
Politicians are very much afraid of fully implementing the New Electoral Acts cuz of fear being caught by their own trap (Acts they proposed and signed).