‘2015: We don’t have a settled electoral law environment’

Do we have a settled law environment to conduct the 2015 general elections?We do not have a settled law environment to conduct the 2015 elections. When proposals are made to a legislature that certain aspects of the law be amended, unless and until those amendments are taken and incorporated into law, we cannot say that […]

Do we have a settled law environment to conduct the 2015 general elections?
We do not have a settled law environment to conduct the 2015 elections. When proposals are made to a legislature that certain aspects of the law be amended, unless and until those amendments are taken and incorporated into law, we cannot say that we have a settled law environment. But that is not to say that the law (Electoral Act 2010) as we have it cannot be used for the conduct of 2015 elections. We can use the law as we have it for the conduct of elections, but it may not satisfactorily carry all the things we need. We used it in the 2011 elections; we can still use it for the 2015 elections but to make better the legal framework we need to make some changes to perfect the imperfection we have observed in the implementation of the law. That is why we cannot say that we have a settled law.
What has been your experience operating the Electoral Act 2010?
The Electoral Act 2010 as amended has improved greatly in certain aspects with respect to the way litigations are filed against the commission. First, is the fact that unlike the law before, if you want to sue INEC and its officials you must list out all the names of its officials .The law has now changed so that if you want to sue INEC, the officials are deemed to have been joined because you have sued their principal.
Consequently that has changed,  to some extent, the way petitions used to be struck out  by reason that the INEC and its officials were not adequately  presented in the petition. So once you put INEC, you don’t need to mention the various presiding officers at the various polling units. So the former practice of listing thousands of INEC officials as respondents in election petition has gone for good.
The Electoral Act 2010 has also greatly changed in respect of how political parties conceive and bring up their candidates. Now there is a clear provision in the electoral act that says political parties must conduct primary elections and the Supreme Court has interpreted that, even though Section 31 of the Electoral Act 2010 has said that political parties shall present candidates. Even with this proviso there, the Supreme Court said that that presupposes that the candidate they must provide must be in accordance with Section 87 of the Electoral Act 2010 on conduct of primaries.
So it is now clear that there are some improvements on the law but to make the law clearer, if you remove the proviso that said provided that “INEC shall not disqualify”, INEC is not saying that you cannot disqualify but to say that “if a person never emerged through the process.” Some people have interpreted that to say that INEC is disqualifying. These are some of the inadequacies in the law that we believe should be made clearer.
There are also certain other areas, if for instance everybody is going electronic, if INEC wants to test run the use of electronics in the conduct of elections  in Nigeria , it cannot because there is clear provisions in Nigeria that say electronic machines cannot be used for the conduct of elections.
All these are things that would not create improvement in the electoral process but if such provisions are removed, those new provisions will now clear the way for implementing new methods of voting, new techniques and so on will be put into use.  But as it is we have now circumscribed everybody into a jacket  hole and you enter through it. You cannot conduct elections, no matter how bad it is , no matter how good the improvement you want , you cannot do it because everything is written in black and white which is not supposed to be the purpose of law.  The purpose of law is supposed to allow some flexibility. If human beings require that certain other methods be tried  then every day you have to go to the legislature and change the law before you try anything. So that is why we say that there are good aspects of the law but still there is room for improvement.
The CJN has specifically made a call that in the governorship election, petitions should terminate at the Court of Appeal as was obtained before now, what is your take?
The truth is that it has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage we had with governorship election petitions going to the SC is the fact that the SC has now streamlined the law. We had situation where one division of the CA made one decision or  pronouncement which necessarily does not tally  with the pronouncement by another  division of the CA. But what the amendment sought and if it is achieved is that there is now uniform approach to issues. But the disadvantage is that when you look at it from the burden of work on the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court is supposed to handle less work to be more focused on handling very serious issues brought before it.
Now every junk from the governorship petition must get to the Supreme Court and you know the politics in Nigeria and the attitude of our political class is that no matter how flimsy the case is, it must get to the last court and, every case no matter how worthless, must get to the Supreme Court and so the Supreme Court gets overburdened. That is the disadvantage of it but in terms of its streamlining issues and bringing out the law clearly for people to understand, the amendment has really served that purpose.
Specifically what sections of the 2010 Electoral Act urgently need amendment before the 2015 elections?
We submitted these areas through the NASS and even when the civil society groups discussed the areas submitted by INEC which was done in consultation with them.
INEC held series of meetings where major stakeholders, political parties and civil society groups were invited and we were able to identify changes that need to be made to the Electoral Act, specifically Section 31 for example.