INEC Can’t Conduct Credible Elections with Partisan RECs, Says Falana

Chuks Okocha in Abuja

Human rights lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana (SAN), at the weekend, warned that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) can’t conduct credible elections with card-carrying members of political parties as the commission’s Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC).

The Senate had last Thursday, confirmed the three remaining RECs after the first seven of the 10 appointed by President Bola Tinubu on Wednesday.
But Falana in an interview during a television programme at the weekend, said it would be difficult for INEC to conduct credible elections by appointing card-carrying members of political parties as RECs.

He said: “Since 1999, we have had this terrible experience of a ruling party trying to populate the electoral body with party loyalists and sympathisers, and that was what led to the amendment of the constitution.”

Falana explained that “successive regimes in Nigeria, Yar’Adua’s regime, Jonathan’s regime, and Buhari’s regime have all set up electoral reform committees or panels to make recommendations that will assist the government to have credible elections. In the case of President Tinubu as a leader of the APC, he set up a committee for electoral reforms to campaign for the implementation of the recommendations of the Uwais Panel, and one of them is that we must have independent umpires in every material particular.

The human rights activist continued: “You can’t have a card-carrying member of a political party or a loyalist of a political party to be a Resident Electoral Commissioner or a national commissioner; you complicate the problem for INEC to have credible elections.”