The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has struggled with electoral reforms since the transition to civil rule in 1999.
On how to solve them, former acting National Secretary and Director of Operations of the Commission, Okechukwu Ndeche, a lawyer, strongly believes that the country should implement the report of the Justice Mohammed Uwais Electoral Reform Committee, set up during the administration of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, for the country to have a lasting solution.
Ndeche is a political scientist and management expert, who served INEC for 30 years from 1989 to 2019, as director of Operations and director of Planning and Monitoring before retirement.
In this interview, he speaks more on this and other relevant issues.
With several reforms introduced in INEC, do you think the Commission has lived up to expectations?
After the transitional elections in 1999, the commission embarked on the initial stage of reforms, including the introduction of the use of technology for the first time. That was the attempt at biometric capture of voters using the OMR forms and that was in place in 2002 and 2003. It was stepped up in 2006/2007 with the introduction of direct data capture machines under two different chairmen of the commission. In 2007, elections proved to be a challenge to the commission. It so happened that the late President Umar Musa Yar’Adua, admitted that the election that brought him into office was fraudulent. And that the process was also fraudulent and he proceeded to initiate electoral reforms, the first major one at the national level. He set up a panel headed by Justice Mohammed Uwais. That committee conducted far-reaching research and came up with findings that were embodied in two volumes of the report. The main volume captured all that Nigeria needed to do, to make our system work and to meet the basic minimum international standards for elections. That committee signposted a new Nigerian if the recommendations had been implemented. Only a few of the recommendations have so far been implemented. First, the Uwais committee looked at the Nigerian political environment; they looked at what has been happening over the years, during the colonial era, immediate post-colonial era, the Second Republic, and the transition under military rules, and came up with a view that the law was not necessarily our problem, but the operators. The political class didn’t mince words in recommending checks that could contain or reduce the impunity in the system. Do you know what power does? Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and in a presidential system, the president is so powerful, the governor is so powerful, even the chairman of the council because they have inbuilt power to hire and fire, and that gives them leverage over the other branches. So, the committee made far-reaching recommendations on how INEC could be more efficient, including in the appointment of the chairman and members of the commission, to take it away from political influence. Look at the location of INEC (under Section 153), it is located as one of the federal executive bodies. And if you ask yourself who is the chief executive? It is the President who appoints them. Don’t mind the fact that the law says the President shall consult, and you can ask yourself again, how will he consult? Is it over the telephone, over dinner? That is what consultation means, and then he forwards the names to the National Assembly and those people are members of the same party appointing those who are most favourably disposed to them. That is the problem, so the manner of appointment and the quality of the appointment signal a direction, and that could impact public goodwill and confidence. So, the erosion of public trust starts with the character of appointment to the commission. I can tell you from experience that the bulk of the staff members of INEC follow the leadership; they are naturally like the followers. When some leaders in the commission tried to do well staff worked with them. When the time came, during the June 12 election, which was acclaimed as the best democratically conducted election in Nigeria, some staff worked with their leader, who was resolute and committed to the goodwill of the country. They participated in the transition from civil rule, and after that, they continued until many of them started retiring in 2017. You see they followed the leadership of the Commission and if it desires a free, fair, credible election, and goes out to demonstrate transparency in public that they have been seized with these responsibilities and that it has a duty and moral responsibility to all Nigerians to deliver, I can tell you that they will be behind it and it will be difficult for people to plan and act otherwise.
Whenever you see the electoral umpire and other senior staff hobnobbing with the governors, the president, and members of the political class, they exchange visits, they go by night, and they meet, and they also have staff who work with them. They have drivers and orderlies who see these things and they know. And how about the known card-carrying members of the political parties against the express positions of the law, still being appointed as Resident Electoral Commissioners (REC) and other duties during elections? That has always been the problem, and ordinarily, these are the arbiters who also do not help matters; we have conflicting judgments, and the public’s interests are not in consideration. They make policy changes against the express intention of the law. For example, Section 137 of the Electoral Act 2022 (as amended) says in the matter of proving no compliance with electoral processes, it shall not be enough to call witnesses if you have the document evidencing that, but today the judges will say no, that the complainant should provide the BVAS machine, the INEC register, and other witnesses and that is judicial legislation, which is part of the problems.
THE SUN NEWSPAPER
