INEC and electoral justice – Dr.Muiz Banire SAN

The Independent National Electoral Commission (the Commission) is the body set up to conduct elections into the various elective offices in Nigeria exempting those of the state local government councils in the country. It is a body meant to be independent and impartial, as the name suggests, in the conduct of its affairs.

Towards the last election, the Commission boasted of having the technological capacity ever witnessed in the country in the conduct of elections. A lot of new developments in the electoral business towards ensuring the conduct of free and fair elections in the country came on board. Right from registration where permanent voter’s card became the evidence of eligibility to vote, through the creation of the electronic voters’ register, the use of Biomodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) in the accreditation of eligible voters, to the electronic transmission of results.

Through the various educational and enlightenment outreaches and advocacy, the Commission was able to convince an average Nigerian of the potential of conducting a transparent election. Undoubtedly, this galvanized a lot of eligible voters to register and trooped out on the days of the various general elections, with the expectation and hope that this will be a different election in the history of Nigeria. The political party’s campaigns equally aided the participation of the greater number of Nigerians, particularly the middle class and the elite who, in the past, were often lackadaisical in the use of their franchise. Strangely, however, the multitude referred to above can only be in terms of the unusual voters, that is, persons other than the traditional voters who used to be the vulnerable. As remarked above, the presidential election particularly witnessed the turnout of the elite, who in the past never took interest in the country’s elections.

The excuse of the elite used to be that they lacked confidence and trust in the electoral process. The point I am struggling to make here is that, despite the gigantic interest shown in the elections, the outcome did not indicate any improvement in voters’ apathy that was becoming a pattern in the country. The previous elections witnessed the turn out of 29,432,083 voters in 2015 and 28,614,190 voters in 2019. This last election of 2023, however, turned out 25,286,616 voters in all in the presidential election. The interpretation of this implies so many things, the main of which is that the use of technology such as BVAS in the accreditation process has reduced largely the incidents of multiple thumbprinting and ballot stuffing, which means that the previous elections experience such vices on a large scale.

The enthusiasm shown by the new category of voters became however dampened when most of the promises of the Commission in the efficient management of the elections turned out to be fake news. In the bid of the Commission to market its capability, it overpromised and under-delivered as it failed to realise that the first thing to master and perfect is the technological capacity to ensure effective performance by which the glitches it suffered would not have occurred. For instance, the real time transmission of results suffered several glitches which the Commission probably did not envisage out of grandstanding. I say this because every user of technology knows that there are always chances of errors in the performance of such devices and equipment.

While the Electoral Act provides for instances of failure of BVAS machines by way of seeking replacement or rescheduling the election in the affected units, same cannot be said of the situation of glitches in electronic transmission. Again, while the Act does not specifically provide for real time transmission which is remote in a country like ours where the technological capacity is unenviable, the officials engaged in atrocious interpretation and probable misuse of language in their communications. Some of these issues have now become object of agitation before the court and the Tribunals. That is not to say that failure of real-time transmission of results onto the server has any effect on the validity of the results obtained in the polling units as the mode of delivery of results is entirely a different ball game when the authenticity of the results itself is the key issue. Electronic transmission of results is meant to guarantee transparency to build voters’ confidence in the results and the failure to effectively transmit onto the server may not necessarily destroy the authenticity of the results.