LIFE is dynamic, so also is the method of achieving excellence and credibility in service delivery. The method of service delivery is often determined by local conditions and situations as well as best global practices. With these at the back of our mind, THE HOPE is unpleasantly amazed at the refusal of the Senate at ratifying Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)’s proposal of electronic transmission of election results, after votes have been cast and counted.
IT is a known fact that the electronic transmission of results would not only reduce the risk involved in travelling to deliver the results, but would also ensure the speedy collation and declaration of election results. We are of the opinion that while INEC had lived to its responsibilities by requesting for this provision, the election manages may not have sufficiently educated the Senate about the need to embrace the new changes.
WITH the global pandemic in its third and more deadly wave, INEC should have been given the independence to conduct elections in the freest and safest methods it deemed fit. The entire country applauded the e-registration adopted by INEC in the registration of new voters and the update of the old voters’ register. We expect INEC to continue in this spirit and even push for e-voting in the 2023 elections in Nigeria. With the adoption of the e-voting platforms, voters’ apathy could have been reduced, so also are the vices that accompany elections in Nigeria.
FURTHERMORE, e-voting system would have seamlessly allowed the electronic transfer of votes, and reduced the incidences of manipulation, destruction, and replacements of result sheets during transit to collation centres. It is therefore unthinkable, to us, that having witnessed the contributions of smart card readers to the achievement of credible elections; the Senate would refuse the introduction of more technological approaches to peoples’ political participation and electoral decisions.
WHILE the Senate could have objected to the electronic transmission of results due to perceived challenges in the process, they goofed by throwing out the baby with the bath water. Innovations often come with their teething problems, but it is when in use that such problems can be identified, studied, and solved. There are still bye-elections as well as State Gubernatorial elections that would be conducted before the general elections of 2023. The Senate should have allowed the electronic transfer of election results thereby giving INEC the legal backing to test run their technology in the various pre-General elections in the country. After all, the E-transmission of results was experimented, and successfully, in the Edo and Ondo States’ governorship elections the commission conducted in 2020.
CHALLENGES or no challenges, The Hope expected that the Senate would have read between the lines Clause 52(2) of the proposed amendment which gives a conditional provision and discretion to INEC that in the e-transmission of election results, ‘ The commission MAY (emphasis ours) transmit results of elections by electronic means WHERE AND WHEN PRACTICABLE (emphasis ours)’. This clause aptly captures the intention of INEC to ensure transparency, accountability, and fairness in election result collations, but the Senate is not ready to allow the baby to crawl, not to talk of running.
SENATE decision, which seemingly, is tainted with party loyalty, informs that progress of our democratic practice could be retarded by peripheral primordial considerations that question the national loyalty of elected representatives. The decision also calls to question the actual independence of the nation’s electoral body in designing a template that would promote free, fair, and acceptable elections in the country.
HOWEVER, given that the passed Bill needs the approval of the President before becoming a law, the appeal goes to the President to scrutinize the amendments with the spectacles of best global practices, the integrity he professes and the need to leave a lasting legacy for a true democracy; and insist on the independence of the Electoral body.
FURTHERMORE, given that these reforms could have been a foregone conclusion in the last Senate, but for the President’s excuse that it was too close to the general elections, THE HOPE enjoins him to give the consideration of the bill the urgency, which it deserves. It is expected that the President would think in the direction of hapless Nigerians, and in the spirit of the members of the House of Representatives, and the Constitution that he swore to protect, and endorse an Electoral Act, which in truth, in letters and in Spirit, would consolidate the nation’s democracy.