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INEC ready to implement new Electoral Law –Aluko

Victor Aluko is the Director of Voter Education and Publicity of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). In this interview monitored on Arise Television, he speaks on the preparedness of the electoral umpire ahead of the 2023 general election, use of the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) as well as campaign funding and financing by political parties. ANAYO EZUGWU reports

 

With the general election one year ahead, is INEC prepared for the election or is the commission just beginning to prepare for the election?

 

What INEC did on Saturday, February 26, was to comply with the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and of course the Electoral Act 2022.

 

The commission released the timetable and schedule of activities for the 2023 general election. You talked about releasing funds for the commission a year ahead of the election, of course, the commission is discussing with the government of Nigeria because the commission gets its funds from the government.

 

We are not a revenue-generating institution, so we get all our funding from the government and the government has never disappointed in terms of funding.

So, we believe that the government would do the needful. The commission is in contact with the government and we believe the right thing would be done. You also talked about the issue of electronic transmission of results, of course, Section 50 is clear on that and the commission is actually looking into it. At the appropriate time, the commission will inform Nigerians about the details of what happened.

 

But we must all agree that it is a welcome development for our elections that we would be able to transmit results electronically from the polling units to the ward collation centres, to the local government collation centres, to the state collation centres and for presidential elections, of course, to the presidential collation centre in Abuja.

 

It will make our processes more credible and at the end of the elections, we believe that we would be able to perform more credibly. You also talked about the issue of electronic verification of results and other issues, you know full well that we started what we called the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) to be able to accredit voters and of course to be able to ensure that voter impersonation is stamped out of our electoral process. We have been doing that for a while now and we will continue to do that for the benefit of Nigeria and for the benefit of Nigerians.

 

You also talked about the issue of rights of disabled people, of course, the commission already even before all these, established a full department which we called the Inclusivity and Gender Department to be able to ensure that the rights of people with disabilities and the rights of the marginalized groups are respected within the electoral process and those rights are entrenched in our guidelines for elections and all we do.

 

How will the 2023 general election be more credible than that of 2019 with the assent of the Electoral Act 2022 by the President?

 

Of course, with the new Act, INEC has been given a leeway to be able to make the elections more credible. You know that in the past, our hands were tied in various areas.

 

For example, you talked about compulsory issuing of Certificate of Return no matter what happens, especially where our returning officer was forced to make a declaration. Of course, Section 65 actually clearly gives the commission a leeway to review that process. In other words, we are trying to stop a situation where we have election gangsterism, where someone puts a gun on the head of the returning officer.

 

And of course, you know that once that declaration is made, it is only the court that can settle the matter. But now, the law gives INEC the leeway to be able to do a review.

 

I think this one should pass a clear message to our participants in the election and candidates who may think that whatever they do, there will be no way we can review their activities. I think this will make the process better because it will serve as deterrence to those who want to do the wrong things and always boast and say let them go to court.

 

I think that section is a good one from the National Assembly and INEC is extremely happy about that. And, of course, you also talked about the various ways of making the elections more credible and I talked about the issue of extensive use of technology in the elections.

 

Of course, we have to reduce the issue of the human angle in terms of conducting elections. We know our history in this country and we have been able to do a lot of research into the problems we had before and it is the result of all this research that informed the input INEC made into the bill.

 

Of course, the National Assembly was gracious in terms of the relationship with the commission. We made input into that bill and of course, a lot of our input was taken and reflected in the fi-nal act that was signed by the President.

 

And of course, we believe that things will go on much better now for the commission and the country. We all look forward to elections that are very credible and clean and we are all working for the Nigerian people. The best thing for any election is we are able to guarantee what we call ‘one man one vote’ because every vote must count and that is the only way we can consolidate our democracy.

 

People should be able to go into elections with confidence that if they contest, the system will be fair, that the process will be clean and that whoever wins will be announced. We do not want situations where actors within the process will be stronger than the law.

 

We want the law to prevail and of course, INEC as a credible organisation would always apply the law and ensure that everybody complies with the law.

 

The new law talked about campaign funding and spending and that there is going to be an audit report; how do you verify such audit report?

 

Of course, the responsibility for that belongs more to political parties and it is a time for what I will call electoral responsibility on the part of all stakeholders.

 

The political parties know the law and they have lawyers among their executives, and of course, among the candidates they have lawyers. They need to study the law and comply with the law in terms of campaign financing and campaign funding.

For us in the commission, the  constitution gives us the power to audit the accounts of political parties and we do that regularly and we submit the reports to the National Assembly.

 

On the issue of compliance with the law on campaign financing, it lies with the political parties and they should not break that law. They should keep to the law because laws are made for compliance and laws are made for them to comply with.

The issue of how much you can spend for presidential elections and how much you can spend for other elections is clear. I think the National Assembly did not make any mistake in setting this threshold, so the parties along with their candidates should comply with all these.

 

About the issue of over-voting, the law also provides that the number of accredited voters would play a powerful role in determining that aspect of the process because we are using BVAS now.

So, we are going to accredit persons and, of course, if there is a voter that does not have the voters’ card and is not in the register, we will not accredit him or her.

 

So, the number that is accredited will be used to determine all other things at the polling unit. I think that is better than the system before where you talk about the total registered voters in a polling unit.

 

I think we have moved past that now and we have moved to a better way where it is actually those who appear at the polling units that will vote because voting is not by proxy.

 

It is only those who come to the polling units and get accredited would be used in determining the winner. It makes the system better and more credible.

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