Public Affairs Analyst

As we countdown to Nigeria’s next general election which is 80 days away, I took it upon myself to unravel the mystery of the country’s electoral albatross and found out that legally speaking, the framers of our laws have done the needful to ensure credible elections. Today, am looking at the provisions of the law meant to enhance political accountability and electoral integrity. Starting with the appointment of leadership of the electoral body, I mean Chairman and 12 national commissioners as well as the 37 Resident Electoral Commissioners of the Independent National Electoral Commission, better known as INEC; they are meant to be men and women of integrity. In fact, their appointments are “double decker “. Though they are appointed by the president, however, this is subject to the confirmation by the Senate. According to Section 14 of the Third Schedule of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as amended, these appointees shall be non-partisan and persons of u...

We’re on the fourth day of campaigns for the 2019 general election. According to Section 99 (1) of the Electoral Act 2010, as amended, herein referred to as Act, “…campaigning in public by every political party shall commence 90 days before polling day and end 24 hours   prior to that day”. Hence, open campaign for presidential, senatorial and House of Representatives candidates began last Sunday, November 18, 2018 and will end on February 15, 2019 while candidates for governorship and state Houses of Assembly seats will begin theirs on December 1, 2018 and end on March 1, 2019. Now that official campaign for the next general election has started, do the stakeholders know the role they are supposed to play during this period? Are the political parties and candidates vying for the various political seats during the next elections aware of the laws regulating campaigns in Nigeria? What role has been assigned to security agents? Any duty for the electorate, media and civil society...

It’s exactly 94 days to the first tranche of elections holding on February 16, 2019. This Sunday, November 18, 2018, presidential and National Assembly (Senate and House of Representatives) the official campaign will start in accordance with the provisions of Section 99 (1) of the Electoral Act, as amended. That section says, inter alia, “…the period of campaigning in public by every political party shall commence 90 days before polling day and end 24 hours prior to that day.” Against this backdrop, it is needful to interrogate what kind of campaigns that will define the 2019 elections. Will it be issue-driven or smear campaign? Before going into the kind of campaigns I look forward to, let me recap some of the major political activities that have so far been carried out in preparations for the all-important sixth general election in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic which commenced on May 29, 1999. Hitherto, there had been registration of political parties, (now we have 91 of them officia...

“The level of impunity has assumed a frightening dimension under the leadership of our national chairman, who once prided himself as an apostle of change and the curative medicine to ‘godfatherism’. The primaries conducted so far by the leadership of the APC across the 36 states of the country are not only shameful, disgraceful, undemocratic, and a charade, but also threw many states into mayhem…Any party that fails to recognise the inputs of women and reward them with positions commensurate with their painstaking efforts to ensure victory is not only doomed but will suffer defeat.” – State Organising Secretary of APC in   Edo State, Aisosa Amadasun, while leading a protest of aggrieved female politicians   in Benin on November 2, 2018 The primaries of the political parties may have been conducted and concluded but the ripples and dusts generated by the exercise held from August 18 to October 7, 2018 have yet to settle.   Today, I have decided to chronicle the thoug...