The appointment of the new Independent Electoral Commission Chairman, Joash Amupitan, by President Bola Tinubu, was on Thursday ratified by the Senate. The Kwara-born professor has taken upon himself the most thankless job in the country. I pity him. The electoral body has consistently fallen below expectations and the outcome of each electoral process is hotly and sometimes violently disputed.
So, the question to ask the new man at INEC is how would he want to be remembered on leaving the office? Is he going to be that Chairman that would stick to the very rules and regulations that they have set for themselves or is he going to be like his predecessor, Mahmoud Yakubu who mouthed procedures and guidelines that he fell short of on election day?
Amupitan must know that the only reason voter apathy has continued to increase is because there is a general lack of integrity, trust and confidence in the process.
Is he, therefore, prepared to reassure Nigerians that he is ready to walk his talk? Does he have the capacity, conviction and character required to be a fair and just umpire?
The 2023 general elections brought about an increased awareness and registration of voters because Yakubu promised that all election results would be transmitted straight from the polling units. The younger generation and some hitherto indifferent voters believed Yakubu and rushed for their voter cards. It was a case of trust betrayed by Yakubu.
During Amupitan’s screening, the senators questioned him on his impartiality, legal background, and plans to strengthen the country’s electoral process, etc.
Responding, Amupitan dismissed reports linking him to the All Progressives Congress (APC) legal team during the 2023 Presidential Election Petition Tribunal and subsequent Supreme Court proceedings.
He underscored the critical role of technology in promoting electoral transparency and credibility.
Amupitan said that the misinterpretation of the Independent National Electoral Commission Result Viewing Portal (IReV) as an electronic collation system had created public confusion.
“Not until the Supreme Court came out to say that IReV was not an electronic collation system, that position was not properly clarified before the election.”
That is not Not true.
He also said, “The IReV was supposed to be a safeguard for comparison because the laws made by this distinguished Senate did not do away with manual collation. However, it was intended to provide checks and balances.”
Mr Amupitan said he would order a comprehensive audit of INEC’s technological infrastructure to ensure its reliability before future polls.
He also pledged to collaborate with other relevant agencies to uphold the integrity of elections and ensure that outcomes reflect the will of voters.
He assured lawmakers that his leadership would prioritise credible elections where “losers will congratulate winners.”
He also promised to reform the commission’s logistics operations and introduce cloned security features on sensitive materials to prevent electoral malpractice.
He promised reforms including deployment of drones, where necessary, to enhance electoral outcomes.
First, Amupitan must realise that there is no amount of technology that would be deployed or Electoral Act or guidelines that are reformed that will guarantee a transparent election if the electoral body itself is insincere. There cannot be any transparency in a process where the drivers or operatives are crooked.
We have enough laws to deliver transparent, free, fair elections. After all transparent elections have always been conducted outside our shores, before the ICT and internet revolutions. It’s not entirely about technology but more about the operators of the laws and technology.
No matter how advanced the technology is, if the operatives have ulterior motives they can always circumvent the process. That is our bane not technology. Human deceit, dishonesty and fraudulent conducts.
Prior to the 2023 elections, Prof. Yakubu had promised that the results of the general elections would be transmitted electronically.
It was against the backdrop of calls for transparency in the system that the Electoral Act was amended by the National Assembly. President Muhammadu Buhari on February 25, assented to the Election Act 2022 after its passage by the National Assembly.
One of the key provisions of the law is the deployment of technology in the electoral process.
Section 52(2) of the Act says: “Subject to Section 63 of this bill, voting at an election and transmission of results under this bill shall be in accordance with the procedure determined by the commission (INEC), which may include electronic voting.”
Yakubu said the transmission of elections results from the polling units (PUs) would be a permanent feature in the nation’s electoral processes.
“Yes, it is going to be permanent in all elections conducted by the commission going forward.
“It was actually in August 2020 that we deployed that for the Nasarawa Central State Constituency by-election, the first election conducted under COVID-19. So, if you look at the IReV Portal, you could see all the results from the 2020 to the Ekiti and Osun governorship elections and all the other by-elections we conducted,” Yakubu promised.
The election was conducted against the backdrop of a new electoral law and innovations introduced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to enhance electoral integrity and inspire public confidence in the process.
The twin technological innovations are the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and INEC Election Result Viewing Portal (IReV).
INEC said these technologies are addressing the 10 most pervasive weaknesses in Nigeria’s election result management process which include falsification of votes at polling units, falsification of number of accredited voters, collation of false results, mutilation of results and computational errors, swapping of results sheets, forging of results sheets, snatching and destruction of results sheets, obtaining declaration and return involuntarily, making declaration and return while result collation is still in progress and poor recordkeeping.
The BVAS is a device used to identify and accredit voters’ fingerprints and facial recognition before voting. It is also used for capturing images of the polling unit result sheet (Form EC8A) and uploading the image of the result sheet online.
IReV, on the other hand, is an online portal where polling unit level results are uploaded directly from the polling unit, transmitted, and published for the public. At the front end of the online portal, members of the public can create personal accounts with which they can gain access to all uploaded results stored as PDF files.
Yakubu told us that the general elections will follow the examples of Anambra, Edo, Ondo, Ekiti etc, off-cycle elections.
Unfortunately, what we got on election day was in total contrast to what Yakubu promised. The results of the Senatorial and House of Representatives polls were largely transmitted to the IReV from the polling units but that of the presidential election was not transmitted.
And whether we want to admit it or not that was complete failure on the part of INEC because the major reason there were renewed interest in that process was as result of the presidential poll and the promise by INEC to send the results straight from the polling unit thereby jettisoning the use of the collation centres where all the electoral heist are perpetrated.
There was no misconception or wrong understanding of the process, as Amupitan seems to be alluding to, what Yakubu promised and what he delivered were diametrically opposed. He fell short of his own promise, standard and guidelines. That was responsible for the hullabaloo around the outcome of the polls.
Amupitan will do well to come clean in dealing with the people rather than dancing around with words that are neither here nor there. Tell the people what the process and guidelines of the election would be and stick to them on election day. He should stop citing Supreme Court judgements and their interpretations. The courts are themselves struggling with integrity issues.
