TO TAME INEC BEFORE 2027 ELECTIONS WILL BE THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM FOR NIGERIA

Basil Okoh

MaTaZ ArIsInG
Dallas, Texas

In a 2006 political conference sponsored by the now defunct British Department for International Development (DFID) on political development in Nigeria, a proposal was made during committee deliberations by this writer to split the job of the management of political parties from the work of conducting elections. Mr. Lai Mohammed, erstwhile Minister for information was in that conference as representative of the then ACN.

A political bureau was proposed to be set up to register political parties and oversee their conduct, management. There was proposed to be a possible deregistration when they do not achieve the electoral support threshold required for existence as a registered political party qualified to participate in mainstream political contests.

The job of the political bureau was to be distinct and different from the job of conducting elections at federal, state and now local government levels. INEC as it is today, is overwhelmed with the powers to determine which organizations to register as political parties, organize and conduct elections, determine who participates in elections and by law declares who wins it.

Today, INEC has become an all powerful and Omnibus body, taking on too many responsibilities that it cannot obviously cope with in a burgeoning democracy with a voting population of over 90 million, bigger than the entire population of most countries of the world. The choking responsibilities of INEC has led to too much powers which it abuses flagrantly. Inefficiency has followed rife corruption.

A Central body conducting and supervising elections for every level of government for a population of 220 million people will be subject to inefficiency, rank corruption and abuse. In the 2023 presidential election, INEC assumed the powers to make a president for Nigeria by simply declaring him as winner without the evidence. INEC did not bother to prove even in court that the winner it declared actually won majority votes in the election. The man became President only on the declaration of INEC and the validation of INEC declaration by the courts.

There has to be a system of enforceable integrity tests on INEC. The integrity tests will require that both the organization itself and the people that work in it must be subject to probity in both trust and fiduciary matters periodically, particularly before and after elections. INEC must not be allowed to increasingly operate at a level beyond oversight, over and above the law and the people that it serves. We got to the point in 2023 where a single official of INEC willfully caused a glitch which upended the entire presidential election. That individual remains without legal consequences to this day.

As it is, INEC has become an all powerful leviathan with little legal control and only by the same people it helped put in office. It has powers to make presidents and create governments all on its own. The new INEC chairman now talks imperially over the entire polity. And with the power to register and deregister political parties, the power over and above the Nigerian political system is complete.

To head off the choking imperial powers, gross corruption and inefficiencies in INEC and to grow efficiency in the political system itself, the resolutions of that Abuja conference has to be dusted up and revisited for implementation. INEC has lost the marbles for an efficient electoral system and the INEC chairman along with the courts have assumed the powers to make and choose presidents for Nigeria.

To this day, all the corruption and inefficiencies of the 2023 presidential elections that INEC has been validly accused of has been left unattended. Going into the 2027 elections, this disregard will embolden the culprits high and low and worsen their misdemeanors. It has gotten to the sorry pass where every official of INEC, flotsam and jetsam alike, now tout themselves as having the power to award offices to politicians.

There has been no consequences to the crimes of INEC officials and so it will be open season for politicians who can pay for INEC declared electoral victories.

@basiokoh.

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