Engr. Yunusa Ya’u is the convener of the Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room, NCSSR, and executive director of Centre for Information Technology and Development, CITAD. In this interview, he speaks on electoral reforms that will ensure credible elections in 2027 and what the next national chairman of the electoral commission must have, among others. Excerpts:
During one of the NCSSR’s engagements with the Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ) in Abuja early this year, you said after the 2023 elections no serious electoral reform had taken place. What is the situation now? Any progress made?
There are a couple of proposals before the National Assembly. We are yet to see how this would be concluded and whether the president would assent to the bill that comes out of the National Assembly. What is important apart from making a clear declaration that the regulations of Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has the force of law and must be respected by all, we think the next most important, is the nomination of the INEC leadership. The provision of non- partisanship must be respected. The tenure of current Chairman of INEC will expire in October and we have provided minimum requirements for the process of his replacement.
So you mean at the moment, the bulk of the job of the electoral reform lies with the National Assembly, National Assembly, NASS?
Yes, but also with the public. Citizens need to keep demanding proposals that can improve the credibility of the election. We cannot leave it to the National Assembly to do as they like.
What do you mean?
Members of NASS are supposed to be representatives of the people and that means they have responsibility to listen to the citizens and act on the basis of the aggregate demands of the citizens. If citizens do not speak out, the NASS people will do as they like.
On INEC, what are the requirements you proposed or expect the next chairman to meet?
The person must not have been card-carrying member of a party in the last 15 years, he or she must not be found wanting in character, must be knowledgeable about election management and should be transparently vetted by the Senate with full publication of his or her dossier and the public given sufficient time to scrutinize and comment on the candidate, including those who have cause to submit petition against the person. He or she must have previous work experience of not less than 15 years.
Some months back, there were speculations that President Bola Tinubu had sacked Prof. Mahmood
Yakubu and replace him with a Yoruba man. There were outright reactions before the presidency cleared the air or debunked the story. Looking at this scenario, are you also mindful of this? As in, the region where the next INEC chairman should come from?
That is not in the law, so he can come from any part of the country. What is important is that the person must be competent, have integrity, with vast knowledge of election matters and must not be partisan.
So as for the NCSSR, what aspect would you like to see the NASS improving on as you await the proposal?
We need emphatic declaration on electronic transmission of results. There is the need to make digital upload of polling unit results to the IRev portal mandatory within two hours of declaration at the polling unit. We need the creation of Electoral Offenses Commission to ensure that we end electoral impunity. People who commit any electoral infraction should be prosecuted. We need special reserved seats for women to promote inclusion. We need improved criteria for the appointment of INEC Chair, National Commissioners and Resident Electoral Commissioners. We need safeguards against misuse of AI in election. These are some of the issues we want to see legislated in the new electoral law.
Given the perennial and historical poor logistics management by INEC, we at the NSCSR have also advocated for the establishment of a National Election Logistics Agency to handle election logistics and the Political Parties and Campaign Finance Commission to monitor campaign spending as part of the greater process of unbundling of INEC.
What do we need the creation of electoral offence commission for? Won’t it be duplications of effort with what the police is already doing?
It is not duplication. This is one of the key recommendations of the Uwais Committee. We have not been prosecuting election offenders because INEC has consistently said it has no capacity to do so. It should focus on conducting elections. Many election offenders are either INEC staff or officials. As it is, even if INEC has the capacity, it cannot be the prosecutor of itself. We need to take prosecuting election offenders seriously if we want to stamp out electoral impunity. We see instances in which politicians and INEC officials or staff will connive and rig election and no one is punished. How many of the cases of people caught red- handed tempering with election or results have been successfully prosecuted and concluded? Very few, almost inconsequential. That is one of the banes of our flawed elections. We want special electoral offenses courts to be established with a 180-Day trial completion target. Furthermore, the electoral Offenses Commission when established should provide to the public quarterly scorecard of arrests, prosecution and conviction, disaggregated by offense type, location, sex and party affiliation.
Do you also consider that the proposal look into calls for all election petitions to be concluded before swearing-in of the elected officials? Is this doable?
This is important because when you allow people to assume office before the cases are decided, they then use state resources and power to influence the tribunal rulings. This does not allow for level ground for impartiality. We believe that it is only reasonable for all petitions to be concluded before swearing-in. The fact that tribunals are given deadlines within which to conclude their cases means that already there is a thinking about not dragging cases to unreasonable dates. And we think allowing people to assume office before conclusion is an unreasonable extension of the trial. Concluding the cases before swearing-in is not a big task. It is doable. All that is needed to ensure that our courts are adequately staffed with trained and experienced personnel, including the number of judges needed, and given the funding to work and be allowed freed hand to conduct their processes.
How do you view constitutional provision for a single term of six years for *the president and governors in view of abandonment of governance, use of state resources for re-election and the attendant high cost of campaigns?
The high cost of campaign is not limited to reelection. It is the same whether for first timers or second term seekers. The problem there is not about term type but the excessive monetization of our politics and second, the very fact that we have no effective way of monitoring campaign- spending and certainly, no enforcement of campaign-spending limits in the country. People there feel they are at liberty to spend as much they could in order to win the election. So, when you reduce the number of terms to a single one of six years, it will not necessarily bring down the cost of campaign.
I think the focus on shifting from two terms to single term is running away from the problem and amounts to chasing shadows. In fact, if you reduce the terms to a single term of six years, you are likely to increase the rate of corruption because an elected executive would now think he has just six years within which to enrich himself or herself (because that is what it is) than potentially having eight years. So, while it will not solve the problem of campaign spending, it will farther consolidate office corruption. I think the problem of campaign- spending should be addressed at its own level, which is, what can we do to reduce cost of campaign? This would require us to find ways to de-monetise our elections, at the same time, establish transparent and enforceable campaign spending limits with clear mechanisms for monitoring and heavy consequences for violation of these limits. It is this light we have called for the establishment of Political Parties and Campaign Finance Commission to monitor campaign spending and ensure that parties do operate and campaign within the law and providing space for internal party democracy to flourish.
