Public Affairs Analyst

“Let me use this opportunity to sound a note of warning to all judicial officers. Do not allow any political party or politician to compromise your integrity or your future. We must never again be used as tools to truncate our nation’s democracy. ” — Chief Justice of Nigeria, Mahmud Mohammed, on February 3, 2015. On February 3, 2015, the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mahmud Mohammed, inaugurated 242 judges carefully selected from the Nigerian courts to sit on election petitions to be filed by candidates and political parties after the 2015 general elections. Justice Mohammed action was in accordance with the provisions of section 133 (3) (a) & (b) of the Electoral Act 2010, (as amended) requiring that election petitions tribunals must be established 14 days prior to the elections, and that the secretariat of the tribunals must be opened seven days before elections. It should be noted that post-election dispute resolution is a key activity which brings a final closure on ...

“…It must be stated, by way of emphasis, that the Armed Forces have no role in the conduct of election (and) must not be involved except perhaps, in the area of providing logistics services to the agencies of government in the preparation for the election. ” — Justice Abdul Aboki of Court of Appeal, Abuja, on Monday, February 16, 2015 The courts have spoken! The Nigerian judiciary has ruled that the deployment of troops for election purposes is an aberration, an infraction on the Nigerian constitution and the Electoral Act. First, a Federal High Court sitting in Sokoto on Thursday, January 29, 2015 had declared that the deployment of military for election duties in the country is unconstitutional. Justice Mohammed Rilwan, who gave the ruling while delivering judgment in a suit challenging the deployment of the military for election duties, said that apart from protecting Nigeria’s territorial integrity, there is no constitutional provision for the deployment of the military for ...

I was facilitating a training session for party agents last Saturday at the Distance Learning Institute of my alma mater, the University of Lagos, when the news broke that the Independent National Electoral Commission had shifted the scheduled elections for this weekend by six weeks. Holy Moses! I tried to establish the veracity of the news from senior INEC officials that were co-facilitating the training with me and they debunked it. According to one of them, the commission was still meeting and had not yet addressed the press on the issue. I kept getting calls from several friends and family members trying to confirm what had spread like harmattan fire. Of course, it was not until about 11pm that INEC chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, addressed a world press conference where he confirmed the purported rumour. Truth be told, like many Nigerians, I am not happy about the postponement of the elections. Not that I believe INEC was fully ready, however, I wanted the brewing electoral stor...

The countdown to the 2015 general elections has begun and it is a few days to the presidential and National Assembly polls scheduled to hold on February 14, 2015. The Independent National Electoral Commission had released the timetable for the elections on Friday, January 24, 2014 so that all actors and stakeholders in the electoral process will have ample time to prepare for the polls. As at today, there are 28 registered political parties but only about half of that number will be contesting the presidential elections. Even at that, many perceive that 12 of the 14 contenders are pretenders while only two; the Peoples Democratic Party and the All Progressives Congress are the real contenders. Quite a few things are unique about the forthcoming elections.  For example with the merger of three political parties to form the All Progressives Congress and the approval of the merger by INEC on July 31, 2013, the unprecedented had happened. It was the first time political parties had m...

The countdown has begun and it’s 10 days to the presidential and National Assembly elections coming up on February 14, God and court willing! I said court willing because there are overt and covert attempts by some elements to use the instrumentality of the courts to have the elections postponed in order to serve their vested interest despite repeated assurances by the Independent National Electoral Commission that it is ready for the polls. With public opinion more in support of the elections holding as scheduled in spite of some challenges with the preparations, I want to use this opportunity to enjoin all those who have yet to collect their Permanent Voter Cards to do so without further delay. It is agreed that the Independent National Electoral Commission has not been optimal in its preparations for the polls especially with the sloppiness in the procurement and distribution of the PVCs and the card readers. We must however situate INEC’s tardiness in the commission’s inability ...

In an unprecedented manner and in consonance with its statutory functions, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has trained and deployed campaign finance monitors in all the states of the federation in Nigeria. The training of the Commission’s Political Finance Desk Officers took place at Hotel De Bentley, Abuja from December 22 – 23, 2014.   The training workshop was conducted by INEC in collaboration with Centre for Social Justice, Abuja. The facilitators at the training were Executive Director of CSJ, Eze Onyekpere, a veteran journalist and lawyer, Charles Odenigbo and I. It was a highly participatory and illuminating two days with a lot of enthusiasm shown by the participants. It is true that the capacity building workshop was late in coming, more so as the campaigns had already started weeks before the deployment of the monitors, it is still commendable that INEC decided to take this giant step. This initiative is being complemented by the International Fou...