The Federal Government has been urged to ensure that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is properly funded in line with the Electoral Act 2022.
Mainasara Umar, the director of legal services, National Board for Technical Education, made the call as part of solutions to electoral violence, ahead of the February 25 presidential election.
Umar, who was the lead discussant on “Avoiding electoral crisis in the 2023 general election: The role of INEC and other stakeholders”, said Nigeria must be prepared to penalise wrong doers and urged relevant security agencies to apprehend those that would foment trouble during the elections.
Umar also called on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to release whatever INEC needs this week to enable the commission have what it takes to conduct elections to avoid postponement of elections which could cause violence.
According to him, “for INEC to be truly independent, all funds due to it must be given to it, one year ahead of time, otherwise the CBN can strangulate it and we will have incidence of postponed elections, which can provoke electoral violence
Umar, while also charging INEC to make the electoral process easy for the people by making voter’s registration a continuous process, stated that by so doing, “it will avoid the situation where many people could not obtain their permanent voter’s cards.
“With the provision of section 1, 2,3,4,6,7,& 8 of the Electoral Act, INEC has the responsibility to design, identify, print, secure and distribute voters cards.
“INEC is old enough to develop a system for continuous registration process and this will reduce the issue of sending the electorate to their villages some of which have been taken over by bandits,” he said.
“Amendment of Electoral Act is a very serious, revolutionary stride for the electoral history in Nigeria,” he added.
Also speaking, Festus Okoye, INEC national commissioner and chairman information and voter education committee, listed the measures the electoral body has put in place to check the menace and what other stakeholders must do to have a seamless process.
Represented by Chukwuemeke Ugbaoja, the deputy director, voter education and publicity, INEC, Okoye said one of the major issues that may cause violence on election day is late arrival of staff and materials at the various polling units.
Consequently, the commission has devised a means whereby all election personnel and materials will be camped Registration Area Centres (RACs) in every ward so that they will arrive early for the exercise so as to avoid flayed nerves that will degenerate into violence.
“They are camped with both sensitive and non-sensitive materials. That is where they sleep that night. They are given refresher courses on BVAS (Bimodal Voter Accreditation System), on the filling of result sheets and all what they should do so that very early in the morning of election they are moved within 30 minutes they will get to the various polling units.
“INEC will make sure that men and materials are quickly deployed on election day so that passions would not be flared, so that people will not get to the polling units and they do not see INEC staff and materials and they start making trouble.”
Ugbaoja also said for transparency and the reduction of tension, party agents will be allowed to inspect election materials such BVAS before the commencement of election in every polling unit to ascertain their authenticity.
“They (agents) will be allowed to inspect the ballot boxes to make sure that no ballot paper is stuffed before the commencement of election. They will also be allowed to inspect the result sheets to see whether they are original or fake.
“By the time they have seen these things there will be no more apprehension of any kind of manipulation in the process. They will be satisfied that the election will start on a very clean note.
“At the end of the election they will also witness the sorting and counting of ballots, they will also witness the computation of the result sheets and of course they will also be asked to append their signatures on the result.
“They will also witness the pasting of when will call the peoples’ result sheets Form EC8 will be filled, signed by the presiding officer and pasted at the various polling units so that anybody can go there and see the PUs results. These are some of the things that will flare passions if there is no transparency for the people to know what is transpiring at the polling units,” he stated.
Goodknows Igali, chairman of the event, described the current election as a very important opportunity for the country, to retrieve their nation back from misrule and bad governance.
Igali described the forthcoming election as an opportunity to invest in the future of the country by electing the right leadership.
“This is what matters most to us as a nation and has to be pursued with the highest levels of diligence”
Tracing the history of elections in Nigeria, Igali noted that the nation’s democracy is growing from adolescence into maturity.
“It is time to set the right agenda for our leader. somewhere inside all of us, there is power to change our country. We do not have a government by majority but we have a government by majority of those who participate in the election. So, if you want to
He noted that properly conducted elections guarantee trusts, adding that those who are unfit can be stopped from occupying the leadership position, when elections are truly free and fair.
