As INEC Moves to Entrench Credible Elections 

Davidson Iriekpen writes that in view of the Independent National Electoral Commission’s perceived assaults on its laudable technological innovations in the 2023 general election, the sincerity in seeking to propose an amendment of the Electoral Act 2022 to integrate electronic transmission of election results and the willingness of the National Assembly and the Presidency to accept the proposal will remain in doubt

As part of efforts to ensure credible elections in 2027, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) penultimate week announced plans to seek an amendment to the Electoral Act 2022. The amendment, it said, is to clarify issues surrounding result management, particularly the manual transfer and electronic transmission of election results.

The commission’s Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, while speaking during a meeting with Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs), said that the proposal is one of eight legislative changes arising from the 2023 general election that require the National Assembly’s action and attention.

The commission’s effort to ensure credible elections is not new. Prior to the 2023 general election, INEC had introduced laudable technological innovations for free, fair and credible elections.

But it jettisoned these technological innovations during the elections despite all the promises it made to civil society groups, the international community and Nigerians.

During the 2023 general election, INEC’s credibility was thoroughly questioned as a result of its failure to rely on election results uploaded on the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) portal. 

Curiously, the commission blamed a system glitch for its inability to upload results on the portal. This contradicted its firm promises before the elections that it would rely on the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the IReV portal.

After blaming the ‘glitch’ and shifting to manual collation of results, the electoral commission later claimed that the IReV portal was only intended to enhance transparency in the election process, and not to serve as a system for result collation or transmission.

This argument was upheld by the Supreme Court to the shock of the opposition parties, which described it as akin to “shifting the goalpost while the game was ongoing.”

The apex court held that the non-availability of election results on the IReV portal was not a legal ground for the nullification of the February 2023 presidential elections as canvassed by opposition parties.

Election observers and legal experts, thereafter, recommended the amendment of the Electoral Act to provide for the compulsory electronic transmission of election results.

It would be recalled that the enactment of the Electoral Act 2022 was predicated on the belief that a new electoral legal framework would address the intractable problems of election manipulation, electoral impunity, operational inefficiencies and weak democratic institutions plaguing Nigeria’s electoral process.

The Act, widely adjudged as the most progressive electoral legislation in Nigeria’s recent history, produced positive outcomes in the last elections. However, several loopholes were exposed and exploited during its first application in the 2023 general elections, including the uncertainty regarding the stage for comparing physical copies of results and electronically transmitted results. 

These ambiguities were the grounds for extensive legal fireworks after the elections.

The intention of the framers of the Constitution in Section 160 and Section 148 of the Electoral Act 2022 was to donate discretionary powers to INEC to determine the procedure for results transmission. These provisions ultimately protect INEC’s independence as a regulatory institution and provide it with the flexibility required to facilitate operational innovations in the electoral process given the dynamic nature of the electoral process.

But since 2015, the courts have maintained that innovations like Smart Card Reader, BVAS and IReV require statutory enactment to enjoy the force of law.

 This position of the Supreme Court creates contradictions in the electoral system.

Many have argued that when a principal legislation confers powers on an institution to issue guidelines for its operations, such guidelines should have a binding effect because they derive from the principal Act, especially where the institution exercised the power within its scope.

 They argue that it is illogical for the courts to maintain that electronic transmission into the IReV portal is not a legal requirement simply because it was introduced in the guidelines rather than in the Electoral Act.

The courts, in several cases such as Jegede v. INEC and Wike v. Peterside, have established that INEC regulations and guidelines have no binding effect. 

This judicial position is what INEC wants to cure with its proposal to seek amendments to the Electoral Act to explicitly accommodate electronic transmission of results in order to give future elections the desired credibility.

Responding to INEC’s proposals to seek amendments to the Electoral Act 2022, the Executive Director of Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo, said it was commendable, adding that the Electoral Act should be amended to integrate electronic transmission of results into the country’s results collation process to further improve the electoral process.

He also lauded the proposed use of computer-generated slips for voter accreditation, saying that “allowing voters to cast their ballots with an official form of ID, as long as their names appear on the register and their biometrics can be verified through the BVAS, addresses a critical issue in Nigeria’s electoral process -voter disenfranchisement due to delays or challenges in distributing Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs).”

While Yakubu is seeking an amendment to the Electoral Act 2022, many insist that he should also be bold enough to speak truth to power by questioning appointments and imposition of card-carrying members of political parties as national commissioners and Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) in the commission which has in no small measure discredited the commission and its electoral process.

The appointments are flagrantly in violation of Section 14(2a) of the Third Schedule of the 1999 Constitution, as amended which states that “a member of the commission shall be non-partisan and a person of unquestionable integrity.”

Nigerians have continued to witness the biases exhibited by these INEC National Commissioners and RECs during elections, thereby tainting the polls and embarrassing the commission.

Perhaps, the icing on the cake came last month with the seamless conduct of Ghana’s 2024 presidential election. Former President John Mahama emerged winner of the election after his main opponent, Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, conceded defeat.

Besides the transparency that characterised the election, the results were known within 24 hours after the polls, unlike the Nigerian presidential election conducted under Yakubu’s watch which took five days.

 Many Nigerians feel that with the massive investment INEC made in technological innovations, Yakubu had the opportunity to conduct the most transparent and acceptable elections in Nigeria’s history. Instead, it is believed that the commission allowed itself and its own technology to be manipulated to undermine the essence of democracy.

For now, Nigerians are anxiously waiting to see if the commission is sincere in its current proposal and if the National Assembly will agree to the commission’s proposal to improve the country’s electoral system.