- Safiu Kehinde
The Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) Chairman. Prof. Mahmood Yakubu says the commission has recorded incremental improvement in its electoral conduct since the 2023 general election.
Mahmood made the claim while receiving the new European Union Ambassador to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Gautier Mignot, at the Commission’s conference room in Abuja on Tuesday.
Reflecting on the EU and Nigeria’s partnership, the INEC boss, in his address, held that incremental improvement in electoral process over the last six electoral cycles.
According to him, the Commission, at the conclusion of the 2023 election, received 23 recommendations from 206 206 national and foreign groups, and international organisations accredited to observe the elections, including the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU-EOM).
However, only eight of the recommendations required immediate action by INEC as the remaining 15 were directed to the executive, legislative, and judiciary arms government and other stakeholders.
Mahmood gave account of the Commission’s actions to the recommendations among which include the dissemination of the Commission’s regulations and guidelines for election, training of election duty staff, deployment of electoral technology, result management process, continuous registration of voters, the cleaning up of the voters’ register, the participation of marginalised groups in the electoral process and voting by Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).
He narrated how the Comimssion had acted on the recommendation by improving quality of training given to ad hoc staff in deployment of the Bi-Modal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machine and the swift upload of election results on IReV portal.
“Since the 2023 General Election, the Commission has received reports from many of the 206 national and foreign groups and international organisations accredited to observe the elections, including the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU-EOM) which made a total of 23 recommendations of which eight require action by the Commission and 15 by the executive, judiciary and legislative arms of government as well as other stakeholders such as civil society organisations, the media, faith-based organisations and political parties.
“For our part, the Commission undertook an extensive internal and external review of the 2023 General Election involving the participation of our own officials and stakeholders across the board.
“We produced a 524-page main report and a 74-page review report containing 142 recommendations.
“The two reports have already been uploaded to our website. We have similarly commenced the implementation of aspects of the recommendations that only require administrative action by the Commission.
“For instance, in some of the off-cycle, re-run and bye-elections conducted since the General Election, there has been improvement in the quality of training of ad hoc staff involving the deployment of more BVAS machines for this purpose.
“There has also been tremendous improvement in the functionality of the BVAS in voter accreditation using fingerprint or facial authentication.
“Furthermore, election results are more speedily uploaded to the IReV.
“Voter registration in Edo and Ondo States ahead of the Governorship elections was better coordinated and collection of PVCs almost seamless with 80% of the cards collected by eligible voters.
“The perennial problem of logistics was also vigorously addressed in the recent Ondo State Governorship election.
“We are working hard to improve other aspects of electoral operations.
“The arrival of your mid-term mission later this year will provide an opportunity for a full review of the 2023 EU-EOM report.” Mahmood said.
The INEC Chairman assured the new EU Ambassador of continous engagement and collaboration.
“We welcome the EU’s assurance of continuous engagement and collaboration with the Commission as we approach the third phase of the European Union-Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria (EU-SDGN) under which funding support is provided to several institutions and groups that play a role in democracy and governance in Nigeria from INEC to the National Assembly, the judiciary, political parties, security agencies, civil society organisations, the media and the National Peace Committee.
“The EU Ambassador and the INEC Chairman serve as co-chairmen of the Steering Committee of the EU-SDGN initiative.” He added.