Benjamin Babine, Abuja
The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Youth Initiative for Advocacy Growth and Advancement (YIAGA) have called on the Federal Government to lead a reform in the electoral act and electoral processes before 2023.
NLC and YIAGA who made this call, yesterday, in Abuja, emphasised that this reform should start from stripping the president the power to appoint chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)
Speaking to journalists, the Executive Director of Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo said: “I think the priority issue is with respect to the Independence of INEC. The appointment process needs to be open and more transparent. The power to appoint the commissioners and the chairman should be divested from the President. It will go a long way to guarantee the independence of the commission. There is need to actually provide clear legal timelines for the release of funds to INEC.
“In the 2019 election, the funds that INEC actually required for the election wasn’t released to the commission until few weeks to the election. That, to a large extent can undermine the integrity of elections. The other issue is around section 68 of the electoral act, and that is the provision that politicians have capitalized on to force INEC officials to declare results under duress. Another issue is around the electronic accreditation and electronic transmission of results. Nigeria is at that point where we need the technology to improve the transparency of our result collation process.
The last issue is around candidate selection process, the cost of politics is very high. It is despicable for police parties to charge N45m and N22m for party nomination forms. That is why you have a political process today that is meant for the highest bidder and highest spender. That is an issue that this 9th assembly needs to address. Limit the cost of campaigns, limit the cost that parties charge aspirants.
Also speaking, the President of NLC, Comrade Ayuba Wabba, explained why its important that a reform is made now and not at the eve of elections. He recalled that past reforms have been called during the eve of elections which at the end yields no fruit.
“Having participated in the process of election from 1999 to date, we have seen that there is still a lot of room for improvement in our electoral process. Be it on the aspect of the law, be it on the aspect of how to choose candidates, be it in the aspect of inclusion of a particular gender and inclusion of youth. Those are the areas that we need critical reforms. Therefore, we don’t want reforms that will come at the eve of elections. We want these reforms to come earlier before elections so that people will get used to those reforms or amendments to the act and I think this is the right time to canvass for that.
“We have got the commitment of the National Assembly, they say that they willing and ready to make sure that reform processes are driven much earlier. They gave commitment to the effect that by December, we should be able to be discussing the new electoral law. You remember that in the last dispensation, the president was not able to ascend to the amendments that were made because it was at the eve of the election.”
On the particularly areas requiring reform, he said: “The first is the persons that are appointed into INEC, these people have to be truly independent and they have to also conform to the principles of independence at all levels. Those are issues that we think must be looked at, if we must strengthen the electoral process.
“The second is the issue of making sure that people that perpetuate violence during elections are not allowed to go scot-free. Importantly is also the issue of leveraging on technology to make sure that we are able to give some credibility to our elections so you can know who voted and who didn’t. We have to look at the issue of synchronising our identity system so that it can be able to reflect in our electoral process.”