In the period leading to the 2023 general elections, there were a lot of expectations from the Nigerian populace, much of which was placed on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the body saddled with election management in Nigeria.
The level of concern by citizens, particularly the youth, on what the outcome of the general elections would be was unprecedented in the history of the country. In what seems like the ripple effect of the #ENDSARS protest, citizens’ interests have suddenly shifted to public accountability, good governance and more importantly, the electoral processes that get their leaders to positions of power. Owing to recurring cases of election irregularities in the past, there were hopes that the proposed technological innovations to be deployed in the 2023 general elections would advance the election integrity and increase chances of having a free and fair electoral exercise.
Apart from youths’ active involvement in the campaign and electioneering processes, the INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu during the Third Quarterly Meeting with political parties for year 2022 at INEC Conference Room in Abuja revealed that among the 9,518,188 million newly registered voters during INEC’s Continuous Voter Registration (CVR), 7.2 million new voters (equivalent of 76.5 percent) were young people between the ages of 18 – 34 years.
This period also witnessed a series of preliminary activities from the electoral umpire, INEC, with preparatory activities ranging from the adoption of the 2022 Electoral Act on February 25th 2022 which included newly incorporated features to improve the electoral system in general to the introduction of new technologies, the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IREV). These technological innovations were introduced to further enhance the credibility of the electoral system in Nigeria, with the expectation that BVAS and IREV would eliminate multiple voting, election rigging, voter identity theft, improve voter authentication process, and electronically transmit election results.
Unlike the last three general elections in Nigeria, which were postponed, the 2023 federal elections were held as scheduled, but the state elections were rescheduled. However, this is still an improvement, albeit little. For instance, the 2019 general elections and consequently state elections got postponed less than 5 hours to the start of the poll in a short press address by the commission’s Chairman, Yakubu Mahmood, at exactly 2:44am on Saturday, February 16th, 2019 with reasons attributed to logistics and operational glitches. Apart from being a recurring event in the country’s electoral history, there were concerns about possible postponement of the general elections as a result of the persistent cash crisis in the country which would have been a perfect excuse for postponement.
Despite INEC’s efforts to organise a hitch-free general election, several flaws manifested on the election day. First, was the late arrival of electoral officials in some polling units, insufficiency of election materials, inability of some electoral officials to operate the BVAS machine, to mention but a few, were visible.
Apart from the above listed inadequacies, the new technologies did not ultimately meet citizens’ expectations. As noted on Dataphyte Elections Platform, the BVAS machine was reported to have malfunctioned in several polling units, including Obingwa Local Government Area of Abia State and other areas across the country. Also, the IREV portal was initially configured to request login requirements before citizens would be able to access it. Despite that, new users could not register on the election day until the following day, and registration was suspended on the portal for over 24 hours. This development negates INEC’s promise to make the IREV portal accessible to Nigerian citizens. The restriction temporarily disabled citizens from following results updates from the portal, hence, responses from pundits and commentators. Some say it’s a tactic by the commission to rig the election and alternate popular choice.
The aftermath removal of the login requirements after three days from the election day seems to solidify these allegations against the commission. Why would INEC include a login requirement to the portal at the initial stage when it was to be removed afterwards? Why was registration on the portal suspended on a sensitive day like the election day? These and more are the questions Nigerians keep asking.
Contrary to INEC’s promise to upload all election results to the IREV portal directly from all polling units, up till this moment, results are yet to be completely uploaded in some local government areas in Abia, Benue and Lagos states. The Presidential Elections Results Sheet pasted on INEC Viewing Portal shows that 166,923 results out of supposed 176, 606 have been uploaded on the IREV portal with a deficit of 9,724. Where results have been uploaded in states like Jigawa, a substantial amount of them are blurry, generally not legible.
Having identified the deficiencies with INEC’s election administration, one could imagine the magnitude of the impact such have had on public trust in INEC. Voting was delayed in the affected areas. Some voters were automatically disenfranchised while some electorate were frustrated with the whole process. More so, analysts have raised questions as to whether the poor preparedness of INEC could have affected the total number of votes cast, inadvertently impacting the voter turnout numbers.
The integrity and competency of INEC continue to be a subject of national and international scrutiny. To corroborate this, a survey by Afrobameter on public trust in the electoral management body in 36 African countries between 2014 and 2015 revealed that only 31 percent of Nigerian citizens trust the integrity of their electoral system compared to 74 percent each in Namibia, Niger and Burundi, respectively.
While INEC achieved enviable success in areas like the deployment of technological innovations and accurate scheduling of the 2023 general elections, the flaws in its coordination and implementation process are indelible stains on Nigeria’s democracy and, to an extent, the legitimacy of the process that brought in those elected at every strata of political offices. INEC is expected to scale up its operation in subsequent elections to fulfill its constitutional duties to Nigerians.