The 2022 Electoral Act may need to be further amended, according to election monitoring experts at the Centre for Transparency Advocacy, in order to address some of the issues the Independent National Electoral Commission will face in the general elections of 2023.
In order to deal with electoral offenders, they argued for the creation of an Electoral Offences Commission and Tribunal.
The suggestion was made by Faith Nwadishi, Executive Director of CTA, in Abuja during the presentation of three reports on the general elections of 2023.
‘The 2023 General Elections Observation Report: A Perception Study on the Understanding of the Mandate of the Electoral Umpire by Stakeholders’ was one of the reports that was presented. Additionally, there is “A compendium of the 2019 general elections and off-season elections conducted by INEC up to 2022.”
Despite ongoing difficulties, according to Nwadishi, Nigeria’s electoral system has improved despite concerns about voting procedures, logistics, vote buying, intimidation, and violence.
There are some areas we suggested that should be reviewed, she said. For instance, you may be aware that the Electoral Act mentions civic and voter education, and that INEC was given the responsibility. However, we also know that civic education should be the responsibility of a national orientation agency. Voter education is not the same as civic education. Civic education includes a voter education component. We must be able to delegate INEC’s responsibility for civic education to the organisation that has legal authority to carry it out.
“We also request that those in charge quickly establish an electoral offences commission. The course we are on cannot be maintained. People do commit crimes, but because INEC has the authority to prosecute, we claim that INEC is the organisation that does so most frequently.
“We observed officers from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent Corrupt Practises and Other Related Offences Commission on election day. But how successful was that? It would greatly improve our electoral process if we had a dedicated commission charged with the task of prosecuting electoral offenders. With high profile cases and all of that, I believe it will significantly contribute to our electoral system’s rule reform.
Nwadishi also demanded penalties for political parties that fail to send enough poll workers to polling places on election day.
“Polling places are where elections are won and lost because that is where voters gather to cast their ballots and where results are announced prior to being taken for collation. There should be a sanction for a political party that is running for office but is unable to deploy party agents at that level because if you don’t have people representing you there, you won’t have a copy of your results, she said.
Emeka Ononammadu, a former resident electoral commissioner in Enugu State, suggested that INEC review its policies regarding political party primaries.
Ononammadu emphasised the need for INEC to continue utilising technology in the electoral process while stating that INEC must be permitted to focus on the technical administration of elections.
“First of all, I believe that the Electoral Act needs to be revisited with regard to political party primaries,” he said. This is because, as we all know, the test of political party primaries almost graduates to the general elections, and that particular law does not appear to make political party primaries more inclusive of a larger population of the party members, who are Nigerians.
“I believe that regardless of how well the election administration agency performed each year, there continue to be issues with how the public perceives it. The main way to reduce this perception—whether it is accurate or not—is to advance technology in our elections.
Additionally, there have been ongoing discussions about creating an electoral offences tribunal, but I believe that adding INEC’s investigative authority would be excessive.
He also requested that INEC review the process for hiring and using ad hoc staff, arguing that the problem of impersonation needs to be seriously considered.
