THE applauses that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has been getting, says something for the minimal standards under which we operate. People have mostly aligned with the provision of the Electoral Act where “substantial compliance” is acceptable.

Nigerians who were unable to vote in past elections were happy they voted. They still had no way of knowing if their votes counted. Others used improvements in security around polling areas to assess INEC’s performance. Where the opposition won, people also used that to benchmark INEC’s performance.

It seems that Nigerians believe that only those in power can rig elections. If the opposition rigged to victory against an unpopular government, it was alright.

The belief too was that with electronic registration, rigging was impossible. Other issues that arose from the dependence on electronic registration were its limited uses for the elections, its inability to detect under-aged voters and the exasperating challenge of securing ballot boxes.

The unqualified high scores for INEC have not taken into consideration problems of late arrival of electoral materials and the conduct of INEC officials in their offices and at the polling stations.

Use of members of the National Youth Service Corps helped tremendously in making the polls orderly. The security agencies in  some locations received high marks. Yet INEC was not effective in administration, particularly as it affected the candidates. Some aspirants were rigged out of the contest before it began.

There are cases still in court about the list of candidates that INEC accepted from the parties.

INEC did not have a standard, whether legal or an official code for determining who a party’s candidate in the elections was. Interpretations of the legal decisions on the matter varied and it was a major point against INEC.

INEC also failed to monitor the primaries effectively. Most of the intra-party feuds were from INEC’s poor handling of the efforts at internal democracy in the parties. Without establishing that, party chiefs ran the parties for their benefit, contrary to their constitutions while INEC watched.

Events at the polling stations alone, do not determine free and fair elections. Organisation is critical to achieving that landmark. INEC did poorly in that area. The postponement of the elections in many places was an organisational matter that INEC did not handle well.

It is understandable that in some places poor security caused the postponement. In other instances, INEC’s tardiness made postponements inevitable. The suddenness of the changes could have upset voters except that the determination to see the elections through remained high.

Most of the commendations for the success of the elections rest with the voters who exhibited exceptional patience as they waited for INEC.

INEC may have conducted better elections than the ones before last month’s, but there are still many areas for improvement. INEC should look through the lapses in the exercise and not get carried away by the applauses. The elections could have been better, if INEC was not content with judging itself with low standards – standards that were so low that they were very easy to exceed.