Imperative of e-transmission and collation of election results

Jide Ojo

Periodic elections are one of the cardinal principles of any democracy. It is not enough to hold elections but such polls must be deemed free, fair, peaceful and credible.  This is a sensitive exercise given the fact that it is a political and governance leadership recruitment exercise. Nigeria’s electoral democracy started in 1923 after the enactment of the 1922 Clifford Constitution.  This 98-year old journey has been characterised by all manner of intrigues, charades and shenanigans so much so that the Transition Monitoring Group official report after the 2003 general election was titled, “Do the votes count?”

It is noteworthy that badly conducted elections were stated among the reasons for many of the military coups. Let me affirm that controversial elections are not peculiar to Nigeria. It is a global phenomenon. In fact, the last presidential election in the US was widely condemned by the members of the Republican Party especially those loyal to former President Donald Trump who believed that the poll was fixed to favour the Joe Biden.

In order to shore up the credibility of elections in Nigeria, there have been a number of institutional, legal and administrative reforms. The National Assembly in the course of this Fourth Republic has passed three Electoral Acts in 2002, 2006 and 2010 with an amendment in 2015 since inception of this republic in 1999. The federal lawmakers passed another Electoral Bill in 2018 which was not assented to by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) while another one was passed in July 2021 ahead of the annual vacation of the lawmakers. There were also constitution amendments aimed at strengthening the legal framework of our elections in 2010 and 2018. The Independent National Electoral Commission, as the main electoral management body, has also been carrying out a lot of institutional and administrative reforms in order to enable it improve on its service delivery to the nation. The commission has carried a number of internal restructuring of its departments, directorates and units as well as operational procedures.

The credibility of any election is incumbent on all the actors and stakeholders in the electoral process. It behoves INEC, National Assembly, political parties, civil society organisations, media, security agencies, the judiciary and indeed the electorate to play their individual parts in order to ensure reliable electoral outcomes.

Since 2011, both national and international election observers have adjudged Nigeria’s elections as improving and largely reflecting the will and wishes of the electorate. However, as the saying goes, you can always better your best. INEC and CSOs have consistently partnered the National Assembly on ways and means of tightening the nuts and bolts of the legal framework for elections. So, after the missed opportunity of amending the Electoral Act in 2018, the Ninth National Assembly after inauguration in June 2019 pledged electoral reform as part of its legislative agenda and has so far kept to that promise.

Not only have the federal lawmakers passed the Electoral Bill 2021, the Senate has also gone ahead to pass the elusive Electoral Offences Commission Bill which has been proposed since 2008. However, the pending challenges now are that the Senate and the House of Representatives passed different versions of the electoral bill. This comes as a surprise as both chambers agreed to set up a joint committee on electoral reforms and the advantage that should have accrued from this is to have a harmonised bill that will be passed thereby making it unnecessary to set up a conference committee to unify their different positions.

Not only was there a joint committee of the Senate and House of Representatives that worked on the electoral bill, there was a larger technical committee which I learnt comprised the Senate Committee on INEC, House of Representatives Committee on Electoral Matters, representatives of the Office of the Attorney General and Minister of Justice and representatives from INEC. Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre provided support to the technical committee. It is therefore shocking to see that different versions of the bill were still passed in July. While the most controversial aspect of the bill is Clause 51 (3) of the Senate Electoral Bill which states that “The Commission may consider electronic transmission of results, provided that the national coverage is adjudged to be adequate and secured by the Nigerian Communications Commission and approved by the National Assembly”, PLAC’s review of the versions passed by the two houses shows a total of 18 differences. The clauses that need to be harmonised are: 1, 5, 6, 15, 16, 22, 23, 24, 35, 42, 48, 49, 51, 61, 74, 85, 131 and 151.