Says INEC went ahead with collation instead of providing clarity

•Alleges consistent disparity 

  in commencement among regions

•’This exercise was missed opportunity’

Charles Kumolu, Deputy Editor

Programme Director of leading election monitoring body, YIAGA Africa, 

Cynthia Mbamalu, in this interview, provides answers to questions regarding the poor handling of penultimate Saturday’s presidential and National Assembly elections by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.

The elections have come but not gone. What can you say from the standpoint of an observer?

This election was a missed opportunity for Nigeria to consolidate the gains of the electoral reforms to have a transparent system. Before the elections, there was consistent advocacy for electoral reforms. And the electoral reforms led to the Electoral Act 2022, which was signed into law.

That was one year before the elections. The law provided the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, with some powers that allow innovations in the system, which a lot of people believed would create transparency. I think that is why there is this level of dissatisfaction among the citizens. We all experience elections differently. However, as someone who was part of the electoral reforms and work with YIAGA Africa, there were a lot of expectations. If you ask me my general assessment, I would say that this election was a missed opportunity. A lot of people had high expectations and these expectations were not met.

However, the elections experienced some positives irrespective of the negatives. In some states, some people were known to be powerful enough to win the elections, but we saw them losing the elections. States that were expected to vote in some particular ways, saw the opposition winning in those states. For me, that was one of the positives. The other positive was inspired by Nigerians, who regardless of logistics challenges, waited late into the night to vote and have their votes counted. Some people came out to vote as early as 4 am. They didn’t conclude the process until evening. Nigerians who came out to vote showed a high level of commitment, regardless of the frustration were part of the positives.

Deployment of technology

Not all parts of the deployment of technology worked. The deployment of technology for this election was two folds. The first was to accredit voters using the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System ,BVAS. The second part was to transmit results electronically by uploading them on the result portal, still using the BVAS. The first part worked well, but not 100 percent. In our data, BVAS was used for accreditation in 99 percent of the polling units. There were areas where it malfunctioned and also places where it was replaced. In one percent of the polling units across the country, we weren’t sure BVAS was used for accreditation. That raised questions about the deployment of technology.

What about issues about functionality of the BVAS?

The BVAS was made to be a mandatory feature in this election. And for it to be mandatory, it required uniformity in the application, deployment, and compliance with the rules. The requirement is for it to be deployed uniformly across board and used diligently. It was not for it to be used in some locations while it won’t be used in other locations. The other part of the conversation was the result upload part. I want to talk about why the upload of the results was very important. In the history of elections in Nigeria, the collation process has always been the weak link. INEC used BVAS in Ondo and Edo elections. And by midnight, over 90 percent of the results were already uploaded to the portal in those two elections.

 It was used in Anambra and subsequent bye-elections. It was used in other off-cycle elections and FCT Area Council elections, Ekiti and Osun. The goal was to have transparency in the process of collating the results, which is why the citizens, civil society and the media fought for there to be electronic transmission of results in the Electoral Act. If you could remember, at one point, the Senate wanted to subject INEC’s power to transmit results to the Nigeria Communication Commission, NCC, and there was an uproar. The argument was that INEC’s power can’t be subjected to NCC, which was established by statutes. A lot of people insisted that INEC’s power to transmit results should be in the Electoral Act. At one point, the Senate President said citizens should stop calling him about that because he has one vote.

 He said citizens should also call other lawmakers. Nigerians ensured that electronic transmission was included in the Electoral Act because the commission had said it was the way to go. And Nigerians supported INEC when the National Assembly acted as if they were not including it. In this particular election, in the voter education that we did, a lot of groups talked about the importance of the BVAS and IReV. The chairman of INEC had also at several fora, talked about the ability to upload results to the viewing portal. Expectations were raised. And I could remember him telling citizens to vote, observe the counting and go home to download their results. He said everyone can have a copy. In such an important election, arguments about whether it is mandatory or legal are one of the flaws in this election. 

For this important feature that should have encouraged transparency to be having issues of compliance, isn’t good for the process. As of 10 pm on election day, no polling unit result was uploaded on the portal for the presidential election. As of March 1 when the result had been declared, only 70 percent of the polling units’ results had been uploaded. The question remains: what happened to the collation of results? Was there a decision to set aside some parts of the collation process? Was that decision communicated?

Logistics

The 2023 election cycle was supposed to have been an improvement on past elections. But in every general election, logistics remain a major challenge. On election day, many polling units opened late. Many had insufficient election materials. Some polling units didn’t even have officials. The logistics were a huge disappointment. In some polling units, there were no elections. In some, the BVAS didn’t work. That was why INEC said elections would be conducted in places where elections didn’t hold on Sunday. But our findings showed that at some polling units, elections were not conducted on that Sunday. Out of our sampled polling units, 20 didn’t have elections on Saturday. We deployed elections to those polling units on Sunday, 13 of these sampled polling units still didn’t have elections. 

There was the likelihood that there were polling units across the country where elections did not hold. This election had poor logistics management, and late opening of polls, especially the disparity across the region. We observed a consistent trend in that regard. In 2015, 2019 and 2022, among the regions, the South-East and South-South always have the least percentage in terms of the time polls opened. For example, as of 9:30 am, 46 percent of the polling units had opened in the North-Central zone. 46 had also commenced accreditation in the North-East. 44 percent had commenced accreditation and voting in the North-West. 63 percent had commenced in the South-West. However, in the South-East zone, only 11 percent of polling units had commenced accreditation as of 9:30 am. 

In the South-South, only 32 percent had commenced. Nationally, only 44 percent of polling units had commenced accreditation and voting as of 9:30 am. The question is: why the disparity in commencement? There is that question of what really happened. And I put it in the context of the fact that our election materials were produced in the country. We all commended INEC for that because, in previous elections, the challenge was that we produced election materials outside the country. This time, we celebrated the fact that we produced it in the country. We also celebrated the fact that INEC had its funds released early enough unlike past elections when funds were released a few months before the election.

Despite the cash crunch, INEC received sufficient funds in new naira notes. At one of the briefings before the elections, INEC chairman said they had all they needed to run the elections. When you put these into context, you can’t but ask; what went wrong? INEC cannot say that insecurity affected the deployment of materials for the elections. Beyond the attacks in four local governments on the eve of the elections in Niger State and the attack in Borno, we didn’t have any major reports of security breaches. INEC cannot say the deployments were not done early because of insecurity. The cases were isolated. When you think about the election, you will realise it was a missed opportunity. The idea was to build on the gains of the electoral reforms and the people had high expectations, but some challenges shouldn’t have happened.

The general observation is that INEC failed to comply with the rules governing the elections, especially the provision for the upload of the results on the portal at the polling units…

At first, on Election Day, the commission didn’t speak when it was difficult to access the portal. They spoke late and the statement they released indicated that the platform didn’t have the capacity for national deployments because it was used in off-cycle elections. That was quite worrisome for the commission to have said that because IReV wasn’t an introduction of an outside entity. It was introduced by the electoral body. And the election didn’t come like a thief in the night. The elections were planned for. At the mock accreditation conducted on February 4, 2023, INEC also tested the portal. The mock accreditation was conducted in some polling units. Part of the features that were tested was the upload to the result portal. The result portal that was shared had not just the result that was uploaded, but also the accredited voters. That was also important because accredited voters figure is used in determining over-voting during elections.

A commission that had an election at hand should have done what it ought to do technology-wise. It should have scaled up its portal to cater for a high volume of results coming from across the 176, 000 polling units where elections were to be conducted. The commission said it had done all the scaling up that it needed to do. In Osun, we observed that around 6pm, there was a downturn on the portal. And one of the reasons for that was that a lot of people were on the portal at the time because that was when the results were coming up. Because of that, INEC was advised to increase the capacity of the portal to be able to accommodate the pressures on election day.

The commission said it had upgraded the portal and it could take like one hundred million people. We were saying a hundred million may not be that high, but a hundred million Nigerians cannot be on the portal. A hundred million could also mean people from outside Nigeria who would try to access it. A lot of assurances were given. Yet, this particular process was not adhered to.

 The commission didn’t provide clarity on what happened. It proceeded to collate the results. And when questions were raised about the results, the commission had the power in Section 65 of the Electoral Act to review results. That section says where results are declared involuntarily or in breach of the Electoral Act, the guideline and the manual, the results can be reviewed within seven days. INEC guidelines said a report should be made. When questions were raised, the commission had the power to address the people and explain to people beyond the press statement that was issued.

The commission was also expected to have given contenders the opportunity for reviews of the results. It could have simply said it would set up a committee to allow those who have issues to come up with them. And such a committee doesn’t need to be chaired by the INEC chairman. It can be chaired by some other individuals. For me, different steps should have been taken if part of the collation process was not adhered to.

The reason a lot of people are objecting to the result is because IReV would have solved the problem of transparency. The idea was to upload the results for it to be accessed from anywhere. But that was not done. Elections are highly contentious. It is about competition of ideas and the moment you create an element of doubt, it raises questions on everything. This is the issue now.

There was an element of doubt. When such happens, the process and the outcome are questioned. And this would have been avoided by simply adhering to the guidelines for the elections. I understand the conversations around IReV because there were a lot of expectations around this process. And the electoral commission sold this idea to the people. The people supported INEC during the electoral reforms to ensure the law recognised it. When people fight for your innovations when there was a threat, it is expected that you reciprocate by adhering to the rules because you created that expectation.

INEC is facing the heat for not abiding by the rules governing the process. What lessons do you think the commission can learn from the exercise?

For the electoral commission, the first thing to do is to commission a comprehensive audit. There should be an investigation internally to first unravel what went wrong or what led to the delay in the upload on the IReV. There should be an audit around its logistics management and operation. What went wrong? Funds were sent to the states and there were still delays because transporters refused to move because they were not paid. What went wrong with the sources money was released to in the states? Who failed to pay? Who has the money? For every naira that was deployed for the election, can they provide accountability? INEC needs to do that level of internal audit. There is a need for fundamental reforms of the electoral commission.

And perhaps we need to ask questions about alternatives in the event of issues around logistics. Is it time to start looking for a partnership with businesses that are known for logistics management? Internally what level of control needs to be reviewed to ensure people do not hold the system to ransom?

These should be communicated to the people to know what INEC is doing. INEC needs to review its communication strategy to rebuild trust and confidence in not just the electoral process, but in itself as an institution. At this point, it is about crisis communication and intentional communication to help build the broken trust. Beyond that, we have another opportunity for electoral reforms. If you go back to the Uwais Committee Electoral Reforms, part of its recommendations was the unbundling of INEC. 

We keep running away from it, but it seems it is time to look deeply into it. The commission has numerous responsibilities from conducting elections to monitoring the activities of political parties and other functions. Not just that, its operations are so centralized that you can’t just question capacity at some levels. Most times. We keep making references to the Uwais committee because the report is comprehensive. It also made recommendations on the appointment of the leadership of the commission.