Buhari, it’s time for electoral reform!

On October 30, 2019, the Supreme Court panel of seven led by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Tanko Muhammad, dismissed the appeal filed by the Peoples Democratic Party and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, challenging the victory of President Muhammadu Buhari in the February 23, 2019 presidential election. The CJN said the reasons for the decision of the court would be made known at a later date. This judgement has once again polarised the polity with the ruling party lauding the verdict while a section of the opposition political parties castigated Their Lordships for failing to give victory to Atiku and the PDP.

Well, congratulations are in order to the President and his party, the All Progressives Congress, for winning the legal challenge. The long-drawn legal fireworks had begun immediately after Buhari’s re-election in February. For six months, the Court of Appeal, serving as court of first instance in a presidential election petitions, had heard the PDP’s and Atiku’s petitions and on September 11, a five-man panel of jurists led by Justice Garba Mohammed gave victory to President Buhari.

At the meeting with the Resident Electoral Commissioners last Thursday, the Independent National Electoral Commission’s National Commissioner and chairman of its Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, said 807 election petitions were filed as of October 25, 2019. Out of this number, “petitioners withdrew 190 petitions while 570 were dismissed; four are still pending, while 42 of the petitions were determined in favour of the petitioners.” Considering the fact that over 23,000 candidates contested the 2019 general election, this shows that the elections, though marred by irregularities in some places, largely reflected the wishes of the Nigerian electorate.

Now that the legal challenge mounted by aggrieved political parties and candidates have been resolved by the courts, it is time to earnestly prepare for the next general election coming up in 2023. After all of the post-election review sessions conducted by INEC and Civil Society Organisations which played key roles in the elections, it is now time to reform our electoral process in order to enhance more credible polls in future.  Truth be told, there is a big room for improvement in our electoral process as many of the teething problems of previous elections are still with us 20 years after the return to democracy and after six electoral cycles.

For instance, Nigeria is still grappling with serious challenge of electoral violence and vote trading. The electoral management bodies viz. the Independent National Electoral Commission and the state Independent Electoral Commissions are still facing the knotty issue of logistics so much so that all the general elections held since 1999 have had to be rescheduled in some parts of the country or nationwide. Recall that in 2015, the elections were postponed for six weeks and in 2019, it was rescheduled nationwide for a week. There is also the unnerving challenge of newly registered voters not being able to locate their Polling Units or not being able to find their names on the voter registers. It is quite unfortunate that successive elections in Nigeria have been recording low voter turnouts which are below average.

In fairness to President Buhari, he did assent to five constitutional alterations last year. These include the widely acclaimed Not-Too-Young-To-Run Act which lowers the age qualifications for presidential aspirants from 40 to 35 years and those of House of Representatives and state Houses of Assembly from 30 years to 25 years. Other alterations include the one that precludes Vice Presidents and deputy governors who served out the term of their principals from holding the office for more than another term in office. Last amendment also gave financial autonomy to state Houses of Assembly and state Judiciary while there is now a time limit for pre-election matters to be disposed off while INEC has now been constitutionally empowered to deregister political parties that do not win 25 per cent of votes in presidential, governorship or Area Council elections or win any seat at the national, state or local council polls.

While those amendments are laudable, however, the President in an unprecedented manner rejected the Electoral Act amendment bill four times for reasons bordering on inelegant drafting, cross-referencing errors or simply due to the closeness of the amendment to the last general election. It behooves the President, if he wants to leave a lasting positive legacy on Nigerian elections like former President Umaru Yar’Adua did in 2007, to promptly set up a small committee to articulate all the major electoral reform issues from the Justice Muhammadu Uwais electoral reform committee to Sheik Ahmed Lemu committee on post-election violence of 2011 to the 2014 National Conference report to the Senator Ken Nnamani presidential committee on electoral reform down to all major election observer reports and submit to the National Assembly for prompt legislative action. Unlike in 2015 when the National Assembly spearheaded the electoral reform process, President Buhari must, this time round, seize the initiative.

Some of the recurring key electoral reform issues include the need for electronic voting and electronic transmission of results; granting of voting rights to Nigerians in the Diaspora through Out-of-Country voting; enhancement of participation of marginalised groups in the electoral system through affirmative action for women, youths, and persons with disabilities; provision for early voting for millions of Nigerians who are disenfranchised from voting due to their election-day duties.  Such disenfranchised groups include poll workers, accredited observers, security agents on election duty, journalists covering elections as well as people on emergency duty during election days. There has also been a call for the upward review of the 180-day time limit for presidential election petitions given the vast area covered by presidential candidates.

Besides, there has also been a clamour for the funding of the State Independent Electoral Commissions to be put on the First Line Charge of the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the federation as well as constitutional guarantee of administrative autonomy of the SIECs. Other reform agenda include the review of Section 68 of the Electoral Act which makes pronouncement of INEC Returning Officer final subject to only court review; campaign expenditure ceiling should be scientifically and logically fixed; stricter sanctions against electoral offenders as well as sundry other issues such as forestalling abuse of state administrative resources for electioneering purpose. This is also the time to look at issues around reduction in the number of seats in the National Assembly or scrapping of the Senate as well as alteration of Section 147 (3) of the Constitution which makes it mandatory for the President to appoint at least a minister from each of the 36 states.

It is imperative for all electoral reform issues to be dealt with next year in order to give ample time for electoral planning based on the new electoral laws ahead of the 2023 general election. While all the advocated legal and administrative reforms are ongoing, key election stakeholders, particularly the political class must reform themselves by imbibing positive attitudes towards elections.