PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari, last week, swore in the new Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmud Yakubu, and five National Electoral Commissioners.
With the Kogi State gubernatorial election coming up tomorrow, the new INEC boss is going to have his first litmus test less than a fort- night after assuming office. But we have no doubt that he will weather the storm, especially when President Buhari has promised not to interfere with the affairs of the com- mission and expressed faith that Yakubu would discharge his duties diligently. It is also reassuring that the INEC chairman has promised free and fair elections in the country during his tenure.
We believe that Yakubu will not disappoint Nigerians. There is no doubt that he is eminently qualified for the job. He was educated in Ox- ford and Cambridge Universities. Before his appointment, he was the Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) where he received many accolades for his good work.
The INEC Chairman bears enormous responsibility for the success or
failure of democracy in the country in view of his pivotal roles during
elections. His duty demands that he must, like Caesar’s wife, be above
board. Yakubu is stepping into the shoes of a predecessor, who left a
fairly good record. The least Nigerians would expect from him is an
improvement on Jega’s records.But we are much more confident that he will exceed those marks and improve on the electronic innovations and experiments introduced by his predecessor.
It is gratifying that the INEC boss has assured Nigerians that he would lay emphasis on the use of new technologies to enhance the credibility of our elections. We wish him a successful tenure. How- ever, it should be noted that Jega’s experiments with the card reader created so much anxiety because it was not tested enough. We have no doubt that Yakubu would have learnt a lesson from those experiences.
Therefore, he should utilise the opportunity of the impending gubernatorial polls in Kogi and Bayelsa states, to improve on INEC’s performance in the use of the new technologies.
We urge him to do everything humanly possible to improve the work ethic of both the INEC and ad-hoc staff the commission would engage for the elections. Let INEC stick to time-table in the conduct of future elections. The failure to deliver election materials on time has been the bane of most elections conducted by the commission.
We want a departure from such avoidable pitfall. No doubt, the drawbacks adversely affect the way most elections are perceived by observers and voters alike.
Such inadequacies are almost ab- sent in other countries’ polls, and there seems to be no good reason they should occur in our clime other than our inability to organise ourselves and insist that people should do the right thing.
We believe that elections are so important that the electoral umpire should test-run its logistics to see if they can work before polling would commence. Such system checks go a long way in reducing errors and revealing some weaknesses that should be rectified.
The number of elections that end up in the tribunals and other law courts, sometimes, is an indication of the quality of the elections. When an election is conducted in accordance with the extant rules and regulations, any litigation tends to be superfluous.
Nigerians would also like to know how much our elections cost, what the budget is and how it is spent. Nigerians are eager and willing to vote in the nation’s elections. It is the duty of INEC to ensure that every eligible voter is given the opportunity to vote and that the rigours of voting be considerably reduced.
Indeed, Nigerians are looking for- ward to the new INEC boss to go beyond Jega’s legacies and make it possible for them to vote electronically. A situation where less than 35 per cent of eligible voters cast their votes, as in the last election, is an indication of apathy or tedium which we expect the new INEC chairman to reduce and make elections more interesting to voters.
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