BY BENEDICT NWACHUKWU, ABUJA
The African Union Special Pre- Electoral Political Mission delegation has made a demand for a possible, peaceful and credible process leading to the conduct of the 2023 general election.
The delegation, led by former vice president of South Africa, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, during a visit to the Independent National Electoral Commission’s headquarters in Abuja on Monday, said the hope of Africans is that the election goes well.
Speaking, Mlambo-Ngcuka said “we are here as partners to do a visit in order to ascertain for the AU that you are on top of it as we anticipate the election. We would like to hear from you how much you are prepared for this exciting election. How much consensus is emerging, on the electoral processes and potential dialogue that you may need to encourage among the contesting parties as well as society.
“We would also like to know that the working relationship between yourself and the contesting parties is proceeding as expected.
We’re also keen to hear about the role and contributions of CSOs, women and young people in particular which we know as people are very much interested in the process and the outcome of this election.
“And in general all methods that you may want to share with us about these elections including how much support you’re financially and the means it takes to work for it. Not everyone has the means. We hope that you have the means and of course, my colleagues here on the other side as we dialogue. Let me just emphasize the fact that we’re here on a supportive mission and we are very keen to ensure that we expect a possible, peaceful and credible process.”
Responding, National Chairman of the Commission, Mahmood Yakubu, said “Conducting elections in Nigeria is not an easy task because of the endowment God has blessed us with. Having the largest population in the African continent, the voter population is 93.5m, 700,000 election duty persons, 1.4m election duty staff for both the presidential and governorship elections. So this is really huge. The country is wide with typography. We have to ensure personnel and materials to all these locations irrespective of terrain.”
“How prepared are we, you asked for the election. We’re in a better position now, than we were on the eve of the 2019 general election. Reason is learning from the experience of the 2019 general election. We made a case for the amendment to the Electoral Act to allow us more time from the nomination of candidates by political parties to the election.
“As against the 60 days we had under the old law, now parties are required to nominate their candidates 180 days before election day. So this will enable us to determine which political parties are fielding candidates for which constituency and to proceed with the procurement processes as well as the production of both the sensitive and non-sensitive materials for the election. We have done very well indeed.
“I’m very comfortable to say that at this point with about three months to the election, we have 50 per cent of the non-sensitive materials already been deployed to locations so we’re making very good progress indeed. The law also requires the executive to make funds required for the election at least one year prior to the election. So in terms of disbursement of funds, we’re also in a more comfortable position than we were before the last election and that’s why we have made the kind of progress we have made.
“You specifically requested to know our relationship with the stakeholders, we have been doing very well in that respect, take the political parties for instance, there is a forum called the IPAC so we meet with them just like other stakeholders, the CSOs, the media, the security agencies every quarter. So once every three months, we meet with stakeholders whether there is something important to discuss or not. We can meet as many times as possible so long as the need arises.
“And where we want to communicate with the political parties, short of following a full blown meeting with them, we then interface with the leadership of the IPAC. So we have maintained a very cordial relationship with the stakeholders, our very vibrant stakeholders I must say. Every quarter we meet with them, we brief them and tell them about our plans, our processes, the innovation we’re introducing and here in this hall we have demonstrated to them some of the new innovations.
“You may have heard that unlike previous elections, well yes, technology was deployed, this time around, we have taken it a lot higher, and we’re deploying the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System. It is called the BVAS.
What it does is to electronically accredit prospective voters using first their PVC to confirm the authenticity of the card and once it is confirmed and we confirm the details of the voter, then we do the authentication using the biometrics, the finger prints, where it fails, we use the facial biometrics. So we have two layer biometrics identification and all these are supported and provided by law.
Yakubu told the AU team that the Commission has tried the technology and it did not fail.
“We have tried them. Fortunately, we have been conducting off-cycle elections between August 2020 and July this year, we have conducted elections for a 105 constituencies, off-cycle and bye-elections and in quite a number of them beginning with Isoko South 1 state constituency in Delta State, we deployed the BVAS technology and in major governorship elections most recently in Anambra, Ekiti and Osun governorship elections.
“So we’re happy that we have discussed this with the stakeholders, we demonstrated to them how it’s going to work in field and we responded to the initial challenges and hiccups and in the last three elections we have conducted, the machines have functioned optimally particularly in the Ekiti and Osun governorship elections. But one of the observations by domestic and international observers in 2019 is that INEC should be more transparent in results management, particularly the results emanating from the Polling Units.
The PUs are the only places where elections take place on election day, what we have subsequently is a collation of results from the ward, to the LG and to state level and for the presidential election to the national level.”
He noted that the Commission has done something that has never been done in Nigerian elections by uploading the PU level result real-time on election day to what is called the IReV.
“As I said, we have done so between August 2020 and July 2022 in 105 constituencies so we are happy with the pilot that we have conducted and these are results that you can still view on the portal and we kept asking particularly political parties to compare the results given to them at the point that is the hard copy signed by their agents and what we uploaded on the IReV portal and we have been asking them if there are discrepancies and so far, all the parties have confirmed that it’s 99.9% accurate so we are happy with that pilot.
“I must say that the deployments of these new technologies for election for voter accreditation, for uploading of PU results have come to stay, it is a requirement of the law and it is mandatory for INEC to do so, there is no going back to the deployment of these technologies.
But I must say that in spite of the progress that we are making, the Commission is still concerned about the security situation generally in the country, particularly the incidence of attacks on our facilities. In the last three weeks, three of our LG offices were attacked in three different states of the federation.
“And the last one occurred yesterday in the south eastern part of the country. Now, although there were no casualties, quite a number of the materials already acquired and delivered for the elections have been lost. Now the good thing is so far, so good, we can recover from all the losses but it’s a source of concern. This shouldn’t be allowed to continue. So we will continue to engage with the security agencies to make sure that these offices as well as personnel and our facilities are protected ahead of the election. We may express some concern about the attack on these facilities but it will never deter the commission from going ahead with the election as scheduled.”
The INEC boss reassured the AU that the Commission may suffer a little hitches here and there but overall, the Commission is required to proceed with the election and to proceed in the manner that the law requires it to do using the deployment of technology for the purpose of accreditation and uploading of PU level result from the PU on election day for transparency and the good thing is that “since we started this process, we hear less and less of litigation arising from the conduct of elections by the commission. Now we have more litigation arising from the conduct of primaries by political parties rather than the main election conducted by the Commission.”
