By Chukwudi Nweje
Issues around Nigeria’s electoral integrity and credibility resonated recently in Abuja when the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) presented its final postmortem report on the 2023 general elections.
The EU EOM conducted the postmortem between January 11 and April 11, 2023, at the invitation of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
The report said although the 2023 general elections showed the commitment of Nigerians to democracy, it also exposed enduring systemic weaknesses in the electioneering process that calls for further legal and operational reforms to enhance transparency, inclusiveness, and accountability.
The report identified six priority areas Nigeria must work on to strengthen the electoral process.
According to the Chief Observer of the mission, Barry Andrews, who presented the report, the areas include removing ambiguities in the electoral laws; establishing a publicly accountable selection process for the recruitment of INEC officials; and ensuring real-time publication of and access to election results.
Other areas are providing greater protection for the media; addressing discrimination against women in political life and addressing impunity regarding electoral offenses.
He said that shortcomings in the identified areas hinder the conduct of well-run and inclusive elections and damage trust in INEC.
Furthermore, he said political will is crucial in achieving improved democratic practices in Nigeria and pledged the readiness of EU EOM to support Nigeria.
He said, “We are particularly concerned about the need for reform in six areas which we have identified as priority recommendations, and we believe, if implemented, could contribute to improvements for the conduct of elections.”
If the report is anything to go by, it shows Nigeria still has a long way to go to attain a solid electoral system despite the innovative reforms that stood the 2023 elections out.
Nigeria’s work-in-progress electoral system
Nigeria’s democracy remains a work in progress since the return to democracy in 1999. Pro-democracy groups and civil society continue to push for reforms after every transition election.
The first major push to reform the electoral space was in 2007 when late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, after taking the Oath of Office and the Oath of Allegiance admitted that the election that brought him to the office was flawed and subsequently set up an 18-man panel headed by former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Muhammadu Uwais to explore ways to reform the electoral process. The panel submitted its report in December 2008 and recommended among other things, the unbundling of INEC, a change in the mode of appointing the INEC Chairman, an amendment of the 1999 Constitution and the Electoral Act 2006, as well as the creation of an Electoral Offences Tribunal to prosecute and punish electoral fraud.
Months after the Uwais panel submitted its report, the Yar’Adua government set up a three-man White Paper Committee to study the recommendations, the government at the end rejected the White Paper and most of the recommendations of the Uwais panel. However, successive governments continue to from time to time take aspects of the panel’s report in piecemeal to incorporate into electoral reform laws passed by the legislature.
For instance, in 2010, the 6th National Assembly under Senator David Mark as Senate President passed the Electoral Act 2010 which among other things, granted INEC financial autonomy and administrative independence.
The 7th National Assembly continued with the amendments when it granted INEC power to determine the balloting system to deploy at elections ahead of the 2015 general elections.
Section 52 (2) of the Electoral (Amendment) Act 2010 (as amended in 2015) provides that “Voting at an election under this Act shall be in accordance with the procedure determined by the Independent National Electoral Commission”, and it was this amendment that enabled INEC to introduce Card Readers that kick-started the use of technology and electronic transmission of results, which INEC test-ran during the Nasarawa State bye-election, and in the Edo and Ondo 2020 governorship elections.
The 8th National Assembly with Senator Bukola Saraki as Senate President was not lucky in electoral reforms.
The three attempts the legislature made at electoral reforms March 2018, September 2018, and December 2018 were vetoed by President Muhammadu Buhari.
In April 2018, Buhari said that the amendments would usurp the constitutional powers of INEC if he assented, and during the attempt in December 2018, he said that amendment was too close to the 2019 general elections and may create room for ‘disruption’ and ‘confusion’ during the 2019 elections.
The 9th National Assembly after an initial setback following Buhari’s refusal to assent to the bill in November 2021, reached a compromise to include the direct and indirect primary options for primaries in the bill.
The House of Representatives re-amended the bill to include the direct and indirect primary options while the Senate re-adjusted it to include the direct, indirect, and consensus modes of selecting political parties’ candidates.
Both chambers later passed the harmonised version of the bill and it was assented to by Buhari in February 2022.
Still not Uhuru
According to the EU EOM, although the Electoral Act 2022 (as amended) introduced new innovations that showed the country’s commitment to democracy, there are still obstacles in the way to a credible electioneering process in Nigeria such as ambiguities in the law, and delayed transmission of results must be eliminated.
It said, “There is a need to protect the free expression of the will of the voter and the integrity of elections by establishing a robust, transparent, and easily verifiable results processing system with clear rules. These include uploading polling unit results from the polling unit only and in real-time, at each level of collation results forms to be uploaded in real-time, and all forms to be published in an easily trackable and scrapable database format.”
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party (LP) petitions at the Election Petition Tribunal against the victory of President Bola Tinubu of the All Progressive Congress (APC) mainly highlight the failure of INEC to follow procedure.
INEC had repeatedly announced before the election that the results would be uploaded in real-time to its result viewing portal (IRev) but while the National Assembly election result was uploaded, the result of the presidential election was not uploaded until days after Tinubu was declared winner of the election.
Dr Yunusa Tanko, spokesman for the Peter Obi- Datti Baba Ahmed Campaign Organisation said there is more to that.
He said, “The February 25 Presidential Election left a lot of undesirable outcomes that gave rise to the level of litigations. Three elections were held on February 25, 2023, and the results of two the Senate and the House of Representatives were announced and uploaded according to the rules set by INEC but surprisingly, the result of the major election of that day, the Presidential Election, was not announced according to the rules.
“The failure of INEC to follow its own rules created doubts in the minds of the local and international observers as well as the electorate that voted.
“INEC deliberately prevented the presidential election results from being uploaded to their server or viewed on the IReV. These technologies that INEC failed to utilise were what gave hundreds of thousands of Nigerian youths the hope that the process would be free and fair.”
The PDP and LP in their separate petitions also point out that Tinubu did not meet the constitutional requirement to be declared the winner of the presidential election.
Tanko added, “If we follow the constitution, we should be able to know what to do and what not to do. In this case, INEC did not follow the provisions of the constitution. The LP won the Federal Capital Territory Abuja and that signifies the popularity of the LP. Nigerian leaders like to go abroad to enjoy all the goodies there because the rules and regulations are obeyed, so why don’t we like to obey rules and regulations in Nigeria?”
President of the Middle Belt Forum (MBF), Dr Pogu Bitrus also shares the same view.
He said, “We have a condition precedent for a candidate to be declared the winner of the presidential election. The condition is that the candidate must win 25 per cent of votes cast in two-thirds of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. Did Tinubu get 25 per cent of the votes in Abuja? He did not.”
On the recommendations for appointing the INEC Chairman, Commissioners, and Resident Electoral Commissioner (RECs), Prince Adewole Adebayo, the Presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), agrees that people of integrity are needed in the electoral commission. He however said that the recommendation of the Uwais Panel that the power of appointment should be removed from the president and vested in the National Judicial Commission (NJC) will not suffice since the President also appoints the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) who presided over the NJC.
He said, “I have concluded that the way INEC is currently configured, those in the status quo cannot be surprised by the political outcome. If we want to do something about the political space, we must first do something about the overbearing influence of INEC in the internal affairs of political parties.
“The reforms we need are not cosmetic changes, if other institutions, including the judiciary, political parties, the media, among others work well, INEC mischief will be minimised. The INEC should be limited to conducting elections, and all other supervisory roles over political parties should be removed.”
Other recommendations of the EU EOM include: providing greater protection for media practitioners, including freedom of expression by developing a comprehensive operational framework underpinned by the skills and means for ensuring prompt investigation and prosecution of all types of attacks against media practitioners; addressing discrimination against women in political life through urgent and robust affirmative action to ensure meaningful women’s representation through special measures in line with the Beijing principles and the National Gender Policy to increase the representation of women as candidates and in elected office, further supported by cross-sectoral, intensified, and sustained capacity building and sensitisation to eliminate discrimination; addressing impunity regarding electoral offences through robust, well-defined, and effective inter-agency coordination governed by clear rules on non-partisanship, optimisation of resources, delivery of effective investigation and sanctioning, and provision of regular public consolidated information on outcomes.
Presidency disagrees
The Presidency however faulted the EU EOM report and described it as a poorly conducted desk job that relied on rumours.
In a statement, Special Adviser to the President on Special Duties, Communications and Strategy, Dele Alake said the report seemed to rely on a few instances of disruptions in less than 1,000 polling units, despite the over 176,000 polling units where Nigerians cast their votes on election day.
“Sometimes in May, we alerted the nation, through a statement, to the plan by a continental multi-lateral institution to discredit the 2023 general election conducted by the INEC.
“The main target was the presidential election, clearly and fairly won by the then-candidate of All Progressives Congress, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.”
Atiku claims vindication
Meanwhile, the Presidential candidate of the PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar hailed the EU EOM report. He also lambasted Alake, for trying to discredit the report.
In a report, the former vice president stated that even the dead knew that the last election lacked credibility and even the INEC had been unable to explain why nearly five months after the election, it had refused to upload the full result on its result viewing portal.
He said, “How can an election in which the full results have not been fully uploaded after nearly five months be described as credible by any sane human being?”
Last line
15 years after the Uwais panel recommendations were dumped in the government archives clamour for its implementation has remained unabating. The reason is because it contains solutions to Nigeria’s electoral challenge which explains why stakeholders continue to call for the implementation.
Former President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Dr. Olisa Agbakoba reiterated the call and urged President Tinubu to revisit the Uwais report on electoral reforms.
Agbakoba, who made the call in commemoration of the 87th birthday of the former CJN said that the best gift Tinubu can give Uwais is to implement his electoral reform recommendations.
In his letter to the President, Agbakoba stated: “The longest serving CJN, Justice Muhammadu Uwais, has been blessed by God to reach the milestone age of 87.
“Tinubu’s special gift to him should be to implement the far-reaching electoral reforms of the Uwais Committee. I was honoured to serve on that committee. President Tinubu, please implement those recommendations.”