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As the 2027 general election draws nearer, the National Assembly's lukewarm approach to electoral reform has raised concerns about lawmakers' commitment to ensuring credible polls, Davidson Iriekpen writes
Since May 12, 2025, when the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu, disclosed that the commission had forwarded 142 post-election recommendations to the National Assembly, with eight of them requiring amendments to the 1999 Constitution or the Electoral Act 2022, nothing has been heard from the lawmakers on the matter.
Some of the recommendations centred on voter accreditation, result transmission and stronger sanctions for electoral offences -- issues that tainted the credibility of the 2023 polls.
However, the 10th National Assembly has been somewhat lukewarm on legalising these anti-electoral fraud tools, even when they are more than halfway through their tenure.
While the lawmakers are busy holding debates on constitution review, they are silent on issues bordering on electoral reforms which many Nigerians consider a priority.
Analysts have argued that if the lawmakers were truly sincere and determined, the process should have been completed within the second year of their tenure to allow for proper test runs through a series of by-elections and off-season gubernatorial polls. They fear that the delay in ensuring the speedy passage of the Act is a plot to manipulate the process ahead of the 2027 elections.
Ironically, the opposition political parties are daily boasting to send President Bola Tinubu back to Lagos in 2027 without proper focus on and intensifying their clamour for improvement on the Electoral Act.
While the current Electoral Act 2022 was adjudged as the most progressive electoral legislation in Nigeria's recent history, several loopholes such as widespread vote manipulation, voter suppression, compromised technology, legal ambiguities, and post-election injustice, were exposed. These ambiguities were the grounds for extensive legal fireworks after the elections.
Even when INEC was vested with the power to review declarations/returns made involuntarily or contrary to law, regulations and guidelines, the modalities and procedures for exercising this power were not prescribed in the Act or INEC guidelines, leaving room for controversies and uncertainty.
A cumulative reading of Section 65(1) of the Electoral Act 2022 and Regulation 90 of INEC regulations does not indicate who can file a report, nor does the procedure for filing a report indicate a declaration/return made under duress or contrary to law, regulations and guidelines.
Analysts have posited that, though to some extent, the IREV and BVAS helped in improving the 2023 and 2024 elections, the fact that the judiciary did not deem them as adequate electoral legal tenders is a red flag for future elections, which the National Assembly needs to fix quickly. This should have been done long before the series of state elections and by-elections that usually precede the general election.
Because the BVAS and IREV were not made compulsory by the 2022 Act, the new amendment needs to include such a mandatory clause. The contents of BVAS must be made compulsory for the determination of election results.
The failure to grant legal teeth to both BVAS and IREV led to the protracted battle among the trio of President Bola Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar, and Mr. Peter Obi over the 2023 presidential election, a battle that dragged up to the Supreme Court.
The apex court held that the non-availability of election results on the IReV portal was not a legal ground for the nullification of the February 2023 presidential election as canvassed by opposition parties.
Since 2015, the courts have maintained that innovations like Smart Card Reader, BVAS and IReV require statutory enactment to enjoy the force of law. This position of the Supreme Court creates contradictions in the electoral system.
Analysts point out that when a principal legislation confers powers on an institution to issue guidelines for its operations, such guidelines should have a binding effect because they derive from the principal Act, especially where the institution exercises the power within its scope.
It is illogical, they argue, for the courts to maintain that electronic transmission into the IReV portal is not a legal requirement simply because it was introduced in the guidelines rather than in the Electoral Act.
However, the courts, in several cases such as Jegede v. INEC and Wike v. Peterside, have established that INEC regulations and guidelines have no binding effect.
It is these judicial positions that INEC seeks to address with its proposal to amend the Electoral Act, explicitly providing for the electronic transmission of results to enhance the credibility of future elections.
Another reform that enjoys wide public support is the unbundling of INEC into separate bodies -- the Political Party Registration and Regulation Commission, the Electoral Offences Commission and Tribunal, and the electoral body itself. This proposal, which has also received the backing of several past reform panels, aims to relieve INEC of multiple responsibilities so that it can focus solely on conducting elections.
Notably, both the Mohammed Lawal Uwais Electoral Reforms Committee and the 2014 National Conference made similar recommendations. The committee, established by the late President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, and led by the former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Uwais, proposed sweeping changes to strengthen the electoral process, including the creation of the Political Parties Registration and Regulatory Commission and the Electoral Offences Commission and Tribunal.
The Political Party Registration and Regulatory Commission will be saddled with the responsibility to register political parties, monitor the organisation and operation of the political parties, including their finances, monitor political campaigns and provide rules and regulations which will govern the political parties, among others.
On the other hand, the Electoral Offences Commission will be saddled with the responsibility of investigation, coordination, enforcement and prosecution of all electoral offences as well as enforcement of the provisions of the Electoral Act, the constitution of registered political parties and any other Acts or enactments.
As part of its work, the commission, according to the Uwais report, is to adopt measures to identify, trace and prosecute political thuggery, electoral fraud, political terrorism and other electoral offences, among others.
Other reforms being sought include allowing Nigerians in the diaspora the opportunity to be part of the electoral process by casting their votes during elections in the country, and early voting for those involved in election duties, such as reporters, security agents and inmates in correctional centres.
Whether deliberately or inadvertently, all these have been ignored in all previous amendments to the electoral Acts, which many Nigerians feel should be incorporated into the new Act for sanity in the country's electoral process.
The appointments and imposition of card-carrying members of political parties as national commissioners are flagrantly in violation of Section 14(2a) of the Third Schedule of the 1999 Constitution, as amended which states that "a member of the commission shall be non-partisan and a person of unquestionable integrity."
Nigerians have continued to witness the biases exhibited by these INEC National Commissioners and RECs during elections, thereby tainting the polls and embarrassing the commission.