….As NISS conducts postmortem on 2023 election security

Omeiza Ajayi, Abuja

The Inter Party Advisory Council IPAC, a platform for all Nigeria’s registered political parties, has disclaimed comments by some partisans to the effect that the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC did not deploy its much-touted Bimodal Voter Accreditation System BVAS for the 2023 general election.

IPAC Chairman, Engr. Sani Yabagi made the declaration on Thursday at a one-day workshop organized by the training arm of the Department of State Services DSS, the Nigeria Institute of Security Studies NISS.

At the event, Commandant of the NISS, Ayodele Adeleke urged well meaning Nigerians to contribute to the development of the institute.

He said; “Our dream is to make the NISS the ‘Camp David’ of Nigeria and we call on well meaning Nigerians and corporate bodies to invest in the institute”.

According to him, the workshop was to critically evaluate the security dynamics that surround Nigeria’s electoral process.

He said the forum would provide a platform for cross fertilization of ideas among stakeholders in order to develop actionable recommendations that can be implemented to enhance the security of the electoral process.

The workshop which had as its theme, ‘The 2023 General Elections: Security Stakeholders Review’, drew high level participants from the nation’s defence, security and intelligence services.

BVAS controversy

Yabagi in his remarks said the challenges encountered during the election with regards to the technologies deployed by INEC were because some people decided to act contrary to the guidelines provided by INEC.

He said; “Security is every important and elections in this country have been characterized with some of these untoward developments; lives have been lost and property destroyed and this is why issue of security in election must be intentionally addressed with people who have the experience and expertise so that the ugly experience that we have had do not repeat itself.

“Yes, we can say that the last election we had was a point of departure from what used to be in terms of killings and destruction but a lot still needs to be done. We need a transparent process that can be interrogated by anyone. It is the impression that votes might not count that in most cases make people take laws into their hands.

“INEC introduced a lot of technological innovations that attempted to eliminate the involvement of politicians in the process and that was why we had the BVAS and IReV introduced and on their own, the technology did not fail. It is because we ourselves did not follow the rules and regulations we made for ourselves.

“If you understand the attitude that people go into election with and you manage it with the kinds of people that INEC has to manage including the ad hoc staff, then you will see the inherent weakness in the organization and I think people tend to take advantage of that weakness.

“What happened in the past election was because INEC did not know most of the people involved in helping it conduct the elections. We have to be very sincere with the realities that they have to contend with”.

On the appointment of INEC Chairman and National commissioners, the IPAC chief said it would be good to implement reports of past committees on electoral reforms and ensure that the president would not have the sole powers to make such appointments.

Some of the speakers at the event recommended early release of funds for INEC, systemic and gradual withdrawal/reduction in the size of election security personnel to project its civility, as well as enforce, punish, prosecute all elections offenders.

Others were that political parties should promote internal party democracy while the National Assembly should support elections security through good legislations.

A National Commissioner at INEC, Dr Baba Bila who represented the chairman said the commission was also in the process of organizing a very comprehensive stakeholders summit to review the 2023 election security.