Agenda for INEC’s housekeeping

A few weeks hence, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) should perform a shibboleth and a rite: It should conduct a housekeeping or in-house post-mortem of the general elections it has conducted. This post-mortem will involve an analysis and reflection on how the elections were conducted, based on its template; the challenges; the successes recorded, […]

A few weeks hence, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) should perform a shibboleth and a rite: It should conduct a housekeeping or in-house post-mortem of the general elections it has conducted.

This post-mortem will involve an analysis and reflection on how the elections were conducted, based on its template; the challenges; the successes recorded, if any; and the lessons learned. The outcome of this reflection should feed into a robust report on the conduct of the 2023 general elections. Such a comprehensive report will account, among others, for the innovations it introduced and the N305 billion appropriated for the elections and recommend ways our elections can be improved in due course.

Such post-mortems are usually forthright. Staff of the commission are invited to speak candidly. They are assured, in the manner of Chatham House, the British foreign policy think tank, that they would be protected from sanctions for speaking their minds or unbraiding the commission.

Unlike other recent post mortems, this election cycle’s should not merely go through the motions, or as the trite saying goes, “fulfill all righteousness”. It must be thorough, rigorous and exacting. This is because the 2023 general elections were unusual and peculiar. First of all, the elections were undergirded by the introduction of two major innovations: the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV).

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These two technologies were aggressively and relentlessly marketed by the commission. And in turn, they were subscribed to, wholly, by Nigerians and members of the international community. They were expected to game-change the elections and to further add lustre and sheen on INEC’s, and by extension, the country’s image. They were expected to engender greater transparency to our elections and earn more trust for the Election Management Body (EMB).

They were expected to further consolidate our democracy and solidify our place as the foremost democratic lodestar on the African continent. Alas, in the course of the presidential election (which seemed to matter most to Nigerians, on account of the lower voter turnout that visited the second tranche of elections) the upload of the polling unit results on the IReV failed. Logistics also dogged the first set of elections.

Second, the elections were themselves framed by, and preceded by a number of challenges. Following the currency re-design by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the country was afflicted by an acute cash crunch. This brought untold misery and hardship on Nigerians. It saw the commission, go cap in hand, begging for cash to facilitate its logistics.

By the same token, there was scarcity of petroleum products across the country. This necessitated the commission to secure the assurances of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPCL) to provide the products at its designated stations to fuel INEC’s marine, air and land logistics. Additionally, insecurity though lowered at the eve of the elections, on account of the onerous efforts of our gallant security agencies, still lingered. It reared its ugly head and marred the conduct of the elections. Collation centres were attacked willfully and some election officials were abducted.

Third, never since the advent of this democratic dispensation in 1999, have our elections been so keenly and testily contested. For the first time we saw a presidential contest in which there were more than two front runners or major contestants. The emergence of four major candidates, coinciding with a time when there was a huge clamour for presidential power to rotate to the southern region, implies that whoever won the election would present the country with Frederick Forsyth’s DEVIL’S ALTERNATIVE scenario or its equivalent: the victory of any of the four major contestants was likely to provoke controversy, if not disquiet, in some quarters.

Fourth, the elections coincided with a time when the country had a youthful population bulge. By INEC’s records, most of the voters were of the youthful category. Most of these youths voted for the first time. And most of them, in the fashion of Frantz Fanon, wanted to foster a generational change and to chart a path in variance with the ANCIENT REGIME.

Against the background of these challenges and great expectations, of Dickensenian proportions, this election cycle’s housekeeping must be robust, detailed and engaging. It must go beyond the protocols of a review. It should debrief all those who played pivotal roles in the elections. This is key given the fact that following the glitches that the commission had with the upload of the results on the IReV. It took 24 hours into the conduct of the elections before it tardily issued a statement. This prompted other stakeholders to take command and control of the narrative concerning the elections and to issue lurid and sensational conjectures.

Even though the proceedings of the election tribunals and courts are beginning to proffer an outline and a hint of what transpired in the crucial and first 24 hours during the conduct of the Presidential and National Assembly Elections, INEC must provide the critical and requisite details thereafter.

It must do so in concert with its core principles and values of transparency, honesty, integrity, impartiality, and accountability. These details must be forthright. They must be couched in parliamentary language. They must be cogent. And they must be compelling. This way, Nigerians will not feel taken for granted or assume that their collective intelligence is being insulted.

This way, INEC can fully atone for its failings and once more, earn the trust, respect and confidence of Nigerians. This way, INEC will fill the yawning gap that presented itself when it chose to keep sealed lips, against the grain of its Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), which demands upfront and proactive information when it is in a crisis mode.

The commission must honestly supply answers as to why it jettisoned its SOP with regard to upfront information. It must tell Nigerians why, and on the same day, the National Assembly Elections results were uploaded on the IReV but the presidential ones were not. It must explain, lucidly and succinctly, the nature and proportion of the glitches it faced in the upload of the presidential election results for the record. Was it that it was overwhelmed by these glitches? It must explain the logistics challenges it faced and why they appear to be perennial and to adversely affect the quality of our elections.

It is this honest and cogent explanation that will assuage the anger of Nigerians and assure them that there was no hanky panky in the conduct of the elections. It is only such a truthful and unambiguous accounting that will persuade Nigerians that the elections were not, ab initio, configured or calibrated to favour any candidate, which action is in breach of INEC’s hallowed policies of neutrality and provision of a level playing field for all contestants.

It is such an honest telling that will rekindle the faith of Nigerians in the electoral process. It is this kind of reckoning that will present INEC as being run by decent persons who can make honest mistakes and plead for understanding. And it is this kind of coming to terms that will change the perception of INEC as an institution governed by haughty persons.

The report of this housekeeping should thereafter be put in the public domain for stakeholders to peruse and comment upon. This, in my humble view, is the path of restitution and catharsis for the Commission and the electoral process.

 

Nick Dazang is a former Director at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)