Why INEC’s leadership should resign

By

Mohammed Haruna

kudugana@yahoo.com

Not surprisingly the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has been every politician’s favourite whipping boy. As the referee of the Nigerian democratic process – registering political parties, preparing the voters’ register, conducting elections, etc – INEC, in any case, is hardly likely to be everybody’s favourite. However, the commission, under Mr. Abel Goubadia, must accept blame for some, if not much, of its poor image in the eyes of politicians and even ordinary Nigerians.

Take, for example, its handling of intra opposition-party divisions or its handling of the defections of legislators from the parties on whose platforms they received their mandates. In both cases, INEC had intervened in such a manner as to create the impression that it is merely doing the biddings of the ruling party. Such impression may be wrong, but in politics, impressions matter as much as the reality.

Again, INEC’s handling of the last voter registration exercise, characterised by acute shortage and late delivery of registration materials, has been less than satisfactory. In keeping with the times, INEC had decided to change the voters’ register and the voters’ cards from manual to digital. Few people objected to that. Many, however, objected to the rush with which the commission wanted to proceed. INEC tried to ignore such objections, initially. In the end the objections were justified. What is more, even the verification exercise which should have been completed by now, is yet to begin.

As if all this was not bad enough, INEC’s integrity has, along the line, been sullied by an unedifying financial scandal over the legal consultancy surrounding the award of a multi-billion Naira contract for the supply of certain voter registration materials. This has led to the resignation – or is it dismissal? – of one of its National Electoral Commissioners. This scandal has since become a matter of litigation.

In the face of all this it seems hardly surprising that there has been calls for the dissolution of INEC. Inspite of the glaring inadequacies of INEC, we think such calls were somewhat hasty and unfair, if only because much of INEC’s inadequacies have derived from its poor funding by the authorities.

But while we sympathise with the INEC leadership for being saddled with a responsibility without the requisite financial muzzle to carry it out, we must point out that the commission has now managed to box itself into a corner by its recent decision to sue the National Assembly over its over-ride of the presidential veto of Electoral bill 2002.

The president had vetoed the bill, partly because the National Assembly wanted all elections to be held in one day. Quite rightly, the president thought this was unwieldy and impractical. He apparently also thought it was unconstitutional since it is the prerogative of INEC to choose election dates. For all practical purposes, the National Assembly over-ride of the presidential veto was an imposition of an election date on INEC.

It was presumably for this reason that INEC decided to go to court. It may have been within its Constitutional right to have done so, but we wonder if the move was wise. After all the National Assembly’s decision to hold all the elections in one day was not a direct imposition on INEC, since it is still free to pick any day within the limits of the Constitution. Also although conducting all elections in one day is a logistical nightmare, it is not impossible.

Obviously, by choosing to go to court over the matter INEC has boxed itself into a corner, for, in the event that it loses the case, its national commissioners will have no choice but to resign, since their litigation implies an admission that they are incapable of conducting all the elections in one day. However, even if the courts vindicate the commission, it would still have to struggle with the public impression that it was doing government’s bidding.

Therefore, win or lose, the INEC leadership has made its own stay in office increasingly untenable. The honourable thing for it to do in the circumstance is to resign before the calls for its sack become irresistible.