Imperative of e-transmission and collation of election results

 

Periodic elections are one of the cardinal principles of any democracy. It is not enough to hold elections but such polls must be deemed free, fair, peaceful and credible.  This is a sensitive exercise given the fact that it is a political and governance leadership recruitment exercise. Nigeria’s electoral democracy started in 1923 after the enactment of the 1922 Clifford Constitution.  This 98-year old journey has been characterised by all manner of intrigues, charades and shenanigans so much so that the Transition Monitoring Group official report after the 2003 general election was titled, “Do the votes count?”

It is noteworthy that badly conducted elections were stated among the reasons for many of the military coups. Let me affirm that controversial elections are not peculiar to Nigeria. It is a global phenomenon. In fact, the last presidential election in the US was widely condemned by the members of the Republican Party especially those loyal to former President Donald Trump who believed that the poll was fixed to favour the Joe Biden.

In order to shore up the credibility of elections in Nigeria, there have been a number of institutional, legal and administrative reforms. The National Assembly in the course of this Fourth Republic has passed three Electoral Acts in 2002, 2006 and 2010 with an amendment in 2015 since inception of this republic in 1999. The federal lawmakers passed another Electoral Bill in 2018 which was not assented to by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) while another one was passed in July 2021 ahead of the annual vacation of the lawmakers. There were also constitution amendments aimed at strengthening the legal framework of our elections in 2010 and 2018. The Independent National Electoral Commission, as the main electoral management body, has also been carrying out a lot of institutional and administrative reforms in order to enable it improve on its service delivery to the nation. The commission has carried a number of internal restructuring of its departments, directorates and units as well as operational procedures.

The credibility of any election is incumbent on all the actors and stakeholders in the electoral process. It behoves INEC, National Assembly, political parties, civil society organisations, media, security agencies, the judiciary and indeed the electorate to play their individual parts in order to ensure reliable electoral outcomes.

Since 2011, both national and international election observers have adjudged Nigeria’s elections as improving and largely reflecting the will and wishes of the electorate. However, as the saying goes, you can always better your best. INEC and CSOs have consistently partnered the National Assembly on ways and means of tightening the nuts and bolts of the legal framework for elections. So, after the missed opportunity of amending the Electoral Act in 2018, the Ninth National Assembly after inauguration in June 2019 pledged electoral reform as part of its legislative agenda and has so far kept to that promise.

Not only have the federal lawmakers passed the Electoral Bill 2021, the Senate has also gone ahead to pass the elusive Electoral Offences Commission Bill which has been proposed since 2008. However, the pending challenges now are that the Senate and the House of Representatives passed different versions of the electoral bill. This comes as a surprise as both chambers agreed to set up a joint committee on electoral reforms and the advantage that should have accrued from this is to have a harmonised bill that will be passed thereby making it unnecessary to set up a conference committee to unify their different positions.

Not only was there a joint committee of the Senate and House of Representatives that worked on the electoral bill, there was a larger technical committee which I learnt comprised the Senate Committee on INEC, House of Representatives Committee on Electoral Matters, representatives of the Office of the Attorney General and Minister of Justice and representatives from INEC. Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre provided support to the technical committee. It is therefore shocking to see that different versions of the bill were still passed in July. While the most controversial aspect of the bill is Clause 51 (3) of the Senate Electoral Bill which states that “The Commission may consider electronic transmission of results, provided that the national coverage is adjudged to be adequate and secured by the Nigerian Communications Commission and approved by the National Assembly”, PLAC’s review of the versions passed by the two houses shows a total of 18 differences. The clauses that need to be harmonised are: 1, 5, 6, 15, 16, 22, 23, 24, 35, 42, 48, 49, 51, 61, 74, 85, 131 and 151.

All said and done, the stage is now set for the two chambers to name the conference committees to harmoise their different positions on the 18 aforementioned clauses. When this will be done is not known but it is hoped that it will be attended to urgently before the National Assembly will become overwhelmed with the 2022 budget considerations which may be presented to the parliament in a few days from now. Ahead of the work of the conference committee a lot of lobbying is now going on at the level of CSOs and interestingly, INEC. It is noteworthy that before the passage of the Electoral Bill on July 16, 2021, the House of Representatives had invited the NCC to ascertain if INEC would be able to transmit election results electronically. At that meeting, the NCC Executive Commissioner, Technical Services, Ubale Ahmed Maska, said it was impossible for the INEC to transmit results electronically across all polling units. INEC however came out publicly to disagree with that position. The Commission said the NCC and mobile network operators had as of August 2018 affirmed to INEC that electronic transmission of result is doable and feasible.

INEC in a position paper titled, Electronic Transmission of Election Results, made public last Friday, September 24, 2021, stated that the answer to the question of the desirability of electronic transmission of election results in Nigeria today may be summed up in three words – trust, efficiency and safety. It went ahead to articulate 11 advantages of electronic transmission and collation of election results.  The Commission in the position paper took time off to lucidly explain what is meant by Electronic Voting System. According to it, there are four components to this; the first is building a robust biometric register of voters. The second is electronic accreditation of voters. The third is electronic balloting and the fourth is the electronic transmission and collation of result.

Legally speaking, INEC says it is only on the fourth track that it is seeking legal backing. Unknown to many Nigerians, the Electoral Act has empowered the Commission to conduct electronic balloting. INEC said Section 52 (2) of the 2015 amendment to the Electoral Act 2010 empowers the Commission to determine the procedure for voting in an election. This has removed the encumbrance to the outright prohibition of electronic voting under the principal law. By this amendment, the Commission is empowered to determine the procedure for voting which may include electronic balloting when it considers it appropriate.

On the issue of electronic transmission and collation of election results, INEC said it had been conducting pilots of this since 2011. It said, “The conclusion that the Commission draws from these diverse pilots conducted since 2011 is that the country is ready for electronic transmission of results. The national ICT infrastructure is also adequate for the purpose of electronic transmission of results. This is underscored by all the discussions we held with the Mobile Network Operators and the regulator, Nigerian Communications Commission over the 10-year period of these pilots, but especially between 2018 and 2019”. On the knotty issues raised by Senate in Section 52 (3) of the version of the Electoral Bill it passed, INEC has this to say, “Put simply, to require INEC to obtain attestation from the NCC and approval of the National Assembly to implement electronic transmission of election results will be in breach of the Constitution. Indeed, INEC should rather impose the necessary duties on the NCC to ensure that the electronic transmission of election results is actualised.”

Given what the Senate spokesman, Ajibola Basiru, said in Abuja on Friday, September 17, 2021 at a “Stakeholders’ Reflection Roundtable on Electoral Reform” organised by YIAGA Africa and European Union it would seem the Senate has already made up its mind to stick to its controversial clause 52 (3) despite provisions of Sections 78, 118, 160 and Paragraph 15 (a) of the Third Schedule of the  Constitution which has given powers to INEC to organise, undertake and supervise all elections…” The implication of this turf war between NASS and INEC may mean that, as it happened in 2018, the President may veto the bill which will then mean that all the time, energy and financial resources channelled into making our future elections better will once again go down the drain. My demand is very simple, let’s make our election transparent, accountable, credible and incorruptible.