SINCE her political independence in 1960, Nigeria has held not less than 11 national elections aimed at choosing democratic leaders at all levels. Ironically, none of these elections was conducted under exactly the same pattern. While many of the changes made to the electoral processes were sincerely motivated to add credibility to the system, others were borne out of the modifiers’ intention to manipulate the polls in their favour.
In 1979, when the journey into the United States’ presidential system of democracy was embraced, the presidential election was the last to be held. However, following the controversies and court cases that trailed the victory of the National Party of Nigeria(NPN) at the presidential poll, the then president, AlhajiShehu Shagari and his Federal Government took to slightly amending the electoral process by allowing the presidential election to hold before any other one in 1983. The focus was on the bandwagon effect of a presidential victory on other elections afterwards.
Indeed, Shagari won the election with a landslide. Many states that never wanted to be in opposition to the federal authorities followed suit by embracing the NPN candidates for election into governorship positions.
However, the outcry that followed the results of the year’s elections in addition to other recurring decimal in the nation’s democratic governance such as corruption, election manipulation, and bad economic management led to the overthrow of the elected government by the military junta led by the duo of Major General Muhammadu Buhari and Col. Tunde Idiagbon. The plotters of the coupe d’état cited the fact that the politicians; “have not learnt their lessons” as the main reason for the illegal take-over of governance.
In dealing with the electoral challenges of the 2nd republic (1979 -1983), Professor HunpheryNwosu, the national electoral umpire chairman, in his professorial wisdom introduced the option A4 system of voting during the electioneering period of the 3rd republic (1992 – 1993) wherein voters were mandated to physically queue up in front of the photo image of their preferred candidates during the presidential election of June 12, 1993.
Though the system produced a winner in the person of late Chif M.K.O Abiola, the result was annulled by General Ibrahim GbadamasiBabangida, the then Military president of the country.
The myriad of anomalies in the country’s democratic governance – electoral fraud, corruption, wrong choice of competent leaders has continued to manifest in the 4th republic (1999 – date). While his period of leadership lasted, President Olusegun Obasanjo who led the nation between 1999 and 2007 approached his own reforms from the fight against corruption by establishing the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission, ICPC.
As these efforts appear to be yielding some positive results, especially since the complete overhaul of Nigeria’s leadership choice process by the UmaruYa’adua (late) and Goodluck Jonathan’s administrations (2007 – 2015), the already gained momentum received a somewhat dampening hope from the election into office of former President MohammaduBuhari in 2015 through the present time.
From 1979 to date, there has not been an elected president of Nigeria who was not dragged before the courts beginning from the electoral tribunals to the Supreme Court before being affirmed as truly winning the polls.
Of all these, the election of 2023 holds the record of being the most intriguing. The choice of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the president of the country based on the outcome of the election attracted legal protests in Nigeria and the US. At last, the man won his cases despite all odds. Those who are not certified with Tinubu’s final emergence heaped their grudges on the door steps of the Independent Electoral Commission( INEC) and the nation’s judiciary. But the chairman of the electoral umpire, Professor Mahmood Yakubu seems rather surprised that citizens of a nation where common labour and professional union elections often result to court cases are blaming him for the people’s character deficiencies.
It is therefore not surprising that INEC, after the assessment of its election activities of 2023 and the off-cycle governorship elections of Edo and Ondo states on 21 September 2024 and 16 November 2024 respectively decided to embark on a transformative journey to redefine Nigeria’s electoral system. The Commission has identified 142 recommendations aimed at enhancing the electoral process.
Developed through internal and external engagements, these recommendations intend to address critical aspects of the electoral system, including voter management, voter education and public communication, political parties and candidate management, electoral operations and logistics, election officials and personnel, partnerships and collaboration, monitoring and supervision, election technology, voting and result management, election security, electoral offenses, and the legal framework.
The Chairman of the organization, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, unveiled a comprehensive roadmap for these reforms during a consultative meeting with Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) held in Abuja on Thursday, December 12, 2024.
He described the meeting as an opportunity to consolidate INEC’s achievements and chart a forward-looking path. A reflection of her activities in 2023 and the off-cycle election in Ondo and Edo states gave rise to a 524-page report that further enhanced the umpire’s reforms proposals.
The major highlights of the proposal by INEC to the National Assembly include a provision for early voting – to allow people on essential duties to vote, diaspora participation in elections, establishment of special electoral offences tribunal, establishment of political parties registration and regulatory agency, provision of legal clarity on the use of manual versus electronic result transmission to enhance transparency and build public trust in election outcomes, the expansion of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) to accept computer-generated voter slips, downloadable from the Commission’s website with the aim of streamlining accreditation and reducing malpractices and printing costs. INEC also demands that the federal government should allow it to appoint state Resident Electoral Commissioners and fill vacancies when they occur within a specified time frame. These are just few of the 142 items on the proposed reforms.
Even though these propositions are more of face-saving measures by the INEC aimed at absolving it from the nation’s failure to conduct credible elections, some of them, especially with little or no economic strains on government deserve to be considered for approval before the 2027 elections come. Others such as the inclusion of diaspora voting should be ignored until the nation is satisfied that resident voters’ confidence on our electoral process have been so restored that a good percentage of registered voters are willing to participate in the country’s elections – a departure from the 2023 arrangement where over 83m Nigerians were captured in the voters’ register but less than 27m people voted. This is in addition to the fact that INEC is yet to account for about N305bn it spent on the 2023 elections publicly.
Given the colourless ideologies of political parties in the country and the unstable nature of political actors, the federal government and the National Assembly must urgently go beyond the proposals of INEC and do what they can in the direction of restoring the people’s confidence on elections and democratic governance in Nigeria. The people must be convinced about the meaning of democracy – a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
The forthcoming Anambra state off-cycle governorship election coming up in November 2025 offers INEC an opportunity to do the needful if it actually means well for the democratic development of Nigeria.
