Eternal vigilance is the price you pay for democracy. This means that no institutional assurances by INEC or personal surety by the Chairman of INEC can substitute for the vigilance of the people in the protection of democracy. Power corrupts and absolute power corrups absolutely. Allowing any institution the power of absoluteness without checks and balance will simply impose on the institution the power of absolute recklessness. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is the institution constitutionally imbued in paragraph 15(a) and (e) of Part 1 of the third schedule to the 1999 Constitution, as amended, with the power to organise, undertake and supervise all elections to the offices of the President and Vice-President, the Governor and Deputy Governor of a State, and to the membership of the Senate, the House of Representatives and the House of Assembly of each State of the Federation; arrange and conduct the registration of persons qualified to vote and prepare, maintain and revise the register of voters for the purpose of any election under this Constitution. In the prosecution of those powers, INEC is constitutionally reportable or accountable to no one.

However, those powers are largely ceremonial and not actual. The first limitation on the powers of INEC is the legal process of the method of appointment of its members. The Independent National Electoral Commission which comprises a Chairman and twelve other members known as National Electoral Commissioners are appointed by the President subject to confirmation by the Senate, so also are the 37 Resident Electoral Commissioners who undertake the functions of INEC in all the States of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory. The major qualification of these members is that they should be non-partisan and persons of unquestionable integrity. Presidents from 1999 have been guilty of the desecration of this provision by appointing persons who are card carrying members of political parties and who are persons of questionable character. A President has openly boasted that he had the power to influence INEC decisions through a mere phone call. The gubernatorial result in Anambra State in one certain year was more than the registered members in INEC register. The INEC register itself was so bloated with fictitious names that candidates were winning with millions of votes even in the smallest of States. Names like Mike Tyson, Michael Jackson appeared in INEC register. It was so bad that President Umaru Yar’Adua called the election that brought him to power flawed. It was his regime that embarked on the first serious journey towards electoral reforms due to the outcry of the citizens. His reforms led to the Electoral Act 2010 as amended.

INEC also depends on the executive arm of government to make funds available to enable it carry out its constitutional duties. The only thing a sitting government needs do to frustrate INEC from not fulfilling its mandate is to starve it of funds, afterall who that pays the piper dictates the tune. A court of law recently chided INEC for stopping the registration of voters about 90 days before its constitutional limit was attained for no legitimate reason. Unfortunately, the court couldn’t order INEC to complete the registration in arrears because the constitutional window has been closed. All those not registered have now been officially and illegally disenfranchised with no remedy in sight. We must therefore urge INEC to release the remaining PVC’s in their custody and embark on publicity to encourage the registered persons to go and collect their own. Some of them may not even be aware that their PVC’s are ready.

The first activism for Electoral reforms then should be channelled towards the amendment of the laws. Till date persons who are partisan and of questionable integrity still find their way into the Commission. There has to be a method of appointing these officers that will make it possible that partisan persons with questionable character will not be found in there. Some have suggested that the power to appoint should be domiciled in persons who are not partisan, like the Nigerian Judicial Council or the Judiciary, effectively taking it away from the Presidency. As laudable as this suggestion may be, every reasonable person understands that everyone is partisan even if the person is discreet about it. Changing the appointors without changing our attitude towards electoral offences will yield no results. Politicians worldwide know how to corrupt citizens with money and power that irrespective of whoever is appointing, without the vigilance of the people, the officers can still rig elections in favour of their preferred candidates.

Abroad, in most advanced countries, it’s the President that appoints the members of the Electoral Commission and their members do not rig elections. That’s character. Afterall his appointment is subject to approval by the Legislature made up of all the major parties in the country. In all honesty, I am not part of the people that support that our judiciary should be drawn into politics in any way imaginable. In the unlikely event of the judiciary being involved in the appointment of the members of the Commission, it means that the Judiciary will be officially involved in the lobbying of the members of the National Assembly to approve their appointment. This will lead to their hobnobbing with Politicians and it will not be good for the dispensation of justice which requires independence and impartiality. They should be isolated completely from anything politics and partisan. Let the citizens take up their role as the check on the excesses of Politicians. Eternal vigilance is the only answer.

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The citizens, through continual agitation, have gotten the amendment of the Electoral Act 2010 to be transformed to the Electoral Act 2022. Gov Adeleke of Osun State stated unequivocally that the difference between his losing and winning elections in 2018 and 2022 is the difference between the Electoral Act 2010 and Electoral Act 2022. The 2010 Electoral Act contained some absurdities which made free and fair election difficult. INEC, for instance, didn’t have the power to reject any candidate presented to it by any Political Party even if the Political Party did not conduct any primary election and even if the candidate was not a citizen of Nigeria. Only the courts could. INEC was a zombie with no powers whatsoever. The Act calculated over-voting based on the manual register not based on accredited voters leading to the absurdity that the total number of votes on election day may be higher than the number of people that presented themselves to vote without any legal remedy whatsoever once it’s lower than the number of voters in the manual register. Also the 2010 Electoral Act did not legitimise the use of the card reader leading to the use of incidence forms to accommodate those that the card reader couldn’t identify.

However, through the agitation of the citizens, the Electoral Act 2022 has taken care of all that. Without BVAS, there will be no voting. Over voting is now calculated based on the accredited voters. If the result is more than the voters accredited, the votes are void and INEC has the right to reject them. INEC also has the power to reject candidates who did not evolve from validly conducted primary elections. These changes made the gubernatorial elections in Anambra, Ekiti and Osun reflect the wishes of their citizens, reduce the incidences of litigation and after election violence. As can be seen, different political parties triumphed in the three States. APGA took Anambra, APC took Ekiti while PDP took Osun. This is the laudable way to go and the eternal vigilance of the people accounted for it.

The issue of security is even more intriguing. The power to command the armed forces which include the military and para-military forces lies squarely with the President and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. This creates a challenge in the protection of INEC offices, materials and personnel. One centralised police force that is not properly manned, equipped or technologically driven cannot supervise effectively more than 176,846 polling units on election day and all the INEC offices scattered all over the 774 Local Government Areas in Nigeria. Recently INEC offices with the uncollected PVC’s of Nigerians have been set ablaze by unknown gunmen who were neither apprehended nor prosecuted. This gives impetus for other sponsored lawless touts to do the same with the attendant consequences that the 2023 general elections are already marred with rigging by using aggression to deter the voters of opponents. Political opponents have come under assassination recently. The Labour Party women leader in Kaura, Kaduna State, Victoria Chintex, was murdered in cold blood by unknown gunmen. The killers have not been arrested or prosecuted. This is sheer tactic to forcefully scare citizens from supporting the political party of their choice

The main reasons for the destruction of INEC property include the rejection of the Nigeria State by some unknown gunmen to press in their point that they are tired of the Nigerian nation and want an independent country. There is also the strategy of crude and archaic politicians who want to destroy the PVCs of many voters in their areas of weakness and their opponents’ area of strength. It could still be the work of insurgents who want to prove that they have already won the battle to take over the government of the areas they are occupying by chasing away the armed forces of the government of Nigeria. This was what happened during the Boko Haram take over of some parts of Borno State and exerted its authority over them. It took the Nigerian government 6 weeks postponement of the election to be able to deal with the insurgents and flushed them out before election could take place in those places. Another reason is share frustration of some citizens and their tendency to vent their anger on governmental institutions to press home their points.

Whichever is the reason for the destruction of INEC property, the National Chairman of INEC, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, has warned that there’s a limit to what they can bear and replace. He made it clear that they can replace the damaged property and print new PVCs but that if the attacks continue, the Commission may not be able to cope with the financial burden of the elections. We must all rise up to the challenge of assisting INEC and the security agencies in confronting these electoral criminals who are working hard to truncate the 2023 general elections through violence. The Government should use both the carrot and stick approach to assuage the feelings and agitations of all their citizens. However, eternal vigilance of citizens is still the best key to achieve free, fair, peaceful and credible 2023 election.