What exactly is INEC’s job? By Tonnie Iredia

In every democracy, there is usually an Election Management Board (EMB) which serves as the electoral umpire to determine the winner of an electoral game. Nigeria’s EMB is the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) whose name has challenged severally over the years. At a point, it was known as the Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO).

It was simply National Electoral Commission (NEC) when it conducted the famous June 12, 1993 presidential election internationally recognized as the country’s best. Thereafter, it was changed to National Electoral Commission of Nigeria NECON – a body which did not conduct any election before it was abrogated. Before the current commission was set up in 1998, it was generally agreed that what was at stake was not name change but a body that would function independently.

Although the term ‘Independent’ has since been added to its name, Nigeria’s electoral body has remained unstable with different interest groups making it impossible for the commission’s operations to be smooth. What precisely is the job of INEC? This is one question that looks easy to answer but hard to comprehend. The law appears to allow the commission to regulate its operations but what is not certain is the boundary of the regulation. INEC had imagined from the beginning that the electoral game would be hard to manage if every association can automatically become a political party that would participate in the electoral process. To this end, it registered some 5 political associations to which it was willing to add just one or two.

But the situation changed radically to about 30 political parties as soon as the judiciary agreed with the late Human rights activist and radical lawyer, Chief Gani Fawehinmi (SAN), that INEC was wrong. According to the Supreme Court, 12 of the 13 guidelines used to register political parties were unconstitutional. Of course, INEC at that early stage of its existence had not made any arrangement for an unwieldy number of political parties. First, how would a ballot paper that accommodates 30 contesting political parties look like? Second, what contingency plan can be made for any election in which fresh associations can on the eve of an election win their cases to be added to registered political parties?

Besides, what can INEC do about certain political parties which after registration may remain inactive winning no contest of any type in any election – local, state or national? Can INEC deregister them? In 2020, the commission courageously deregistered 74 of such parties. But the decision did not originally get the support of the judiciary as INEC was restrained by a federal high court in Abuja. In addition, some politicians claimed that INEC cannot deal with the subject without the concurrence of the state electoral commissions which have powers to conduct local government elections. A year later, the higher courts gave INEC some relief by upholding the power of the commission to deregister redundant parties.

It would be foolhardy for anyone to assume that INEC has since been elevated to a power that can control political parties. To start with, Nigerian political parties are a monopoly. In the absence of independent candidates, no one can contest any election except he or she is sponsored by a political party. What this suggests is that party supremacy holds sway in Nigeria especially as the supreme court has persistently held that judges should hands-off internal party matters. A few judges have however remained recalcitrant on the subject as they still find ways and means of getting involved in such matters through wider definitions of cases before them. In reality however, the position of the law today is that parties should be left to resolve their internal disputes.

If the almighty judiciary can be stopped from intra party disputes, can INEC claim to have a better mandate to interfere in party matters? The answer is certainly in the negative as events have shown that whenever INEC goes beyond its boundary on party matters, it merely gets its fingers burnt. The case of INEC is particularly pathetic because the commission is quite often disowned even in assignments legally given to her. For example, the law says political parties are expected to give INEC 21 days’ notice before embarking on crucial party activities. The directive is clear and unambiguous, but what is the purpose? Is it a purposeless directive? Into what use does INEC put the so-called strategic notice?

What seems to be the purpose of the directive was to aid INEC to prepare to monitor the coming event. Unfortunately, the next thing one hears is that INEC may or may not monitor the same event. In other words, the notice is worthless. If so, as we have always asked, why is INEC given the assignment – is it so as to empower the commission to become fault-finding? Why should a body such as INEC with a tedious mandate of conducting elections in a vast geopolitical terrain with all its logistical impediments be distracted by certain irrelevant assignments? Incidentally, the political parties especially those in the opposition have since come to the conclusion that certain assignments given to them are merely designed to fulfil all righteousness.

Clearly, there is no difference between the party events that are monitored and those that are not. Indeed, there have been cases where INEC has been directed by the courts to accept the results of the primary elections, they did not monitor making it obvious that it is not only the directive concerning the 21 days’ notice that is redundant; also, unessential is the need for INEC to monitor party activities. It seems that the way forward is to allow political parties that are said to be supreme to take charge of their own activities notwithstanding their inclination to be reckless in the management of such activities. In actual fact, quite often, the intervention by either INEC or the judiciary has not proven to be less reckless at any time. Those who teleguide one set can actually teleguide all others.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear to me that a major problem of INEC is that it has been given a mandate that is greater than that of a standard umpire. Between 1987 and 1993, I was deployed from the NTA to serve as the Director of Public Affairs at the electoral body which conducted the June 12, 1993 election. One of the secrets of our success was that we had more powers than an average electoral commission. This is because we functioned as both an electoral umpire and in addition as midwife of the transition programme. We controlled both the voting process and the arrangements leading up to it. We registered parties and even disqualified certain candidates. Our powers were contained in several decrees that could be amended within a twinkle of an eye. We even got a law barring the judiciary from stopping our operations.

Today’s INEC that is purporting to have the same disposition cannot point to any of our type of enabling law. First, Nigeria is now a democracy where an act can easily be deemed to be ultra vires. If the standard role of an electoral umpire is to be the referee between teams during an election, the same umpire has no business getting involved in how some teams picked their players. Going forward therefore, INEC must resist the idea of doing that by remembering that a referee is to deal with contests between teams and not any team’s arrangements for the contests. INEC has powers to make guidelines that would ensure the game flows well. The same INEC cannot break the guidelines it made and be persuaded by those in power that the courts will be made to cover for INEC. It is dangerous to arrive at a situation such as we did in 2023 when the judiciary stated that INEC was not obliged to follow its own guidelines.

Most importantly, INEC cannot perform well, if some of its members are partisan. Since 1999, attempts have always be made by every ruling party whose leader has power to constitute INEC to bring in partisan members who will do its bidding. But on the contrary, INEC, like Caesar’s wife, must be above board. It must not only be neutral; it must at all times be seen to be impartial. The opportunity to constitute an electoral commission is not one for playing politics because the constitution which a president swears to uphold, says electoral officials must be persons of proven integrity who must not have been involved in partisan politics. INEC must have its job cut out for it and must keep to the job’s standard terms. It should not dabble into internal matters of political parties and must be diligent in its performance if it hopes to attain free, fair and credible elections.

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