The attempted electoral manipulation in the Adamawa State governorship election, where a Resident Electoral Commissioner usurped the powers of the Returning Officer to illegally declare a winner, has again triggered the need for a review of the appointment process and quality of persons to be appointed into the Independent National Electoral Commission, DIRISU YAKUBU writes

The long-awaited 2023 general Election may have come and gone but the aftermath of the exercise is likely to leave a lasting impression in the minds of Nigerians. Given the assurances given by the Independent National Electoral Commission, the huge resources spent on the procurement of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, allowances paid to security personnel and ad hoc staff engaged by the during the exercise, among others; many Nigerians expected a credible exercise devoid of manipulation and avoidable irregularities.

Apart from the bypass of BVAS in some polling units, the refusal of Inec to upload polling unit results in the February 25 presidential election also generated concerns. Already, that result upload issue is one of the basis for the election petitions filed by the presidential candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party and the Labour Party, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi respectively. Overall, they are challenging INEC’s declaration of Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress as the President-elect; perhaps.

Meanwhile, some persons have described the biggest shame of the exercise as the drama that characterised the collation of the supplementary election in Adamawa State, where the Resident Electoral Commissioner, Hudu Yunusa-Ari, usurped the role of the Returning Officer, Prof Mohammed Mele, by announcing Aishatu Dahiru, popularly known as Binani, as winner of the election, while collation of the supplementary polls was still in progress.

Yunusa-Ari has since been suspended by INEC with calls for his prosecution getting louder by the day. However, his whereabouts at the time of filing this report was unknown.

Disturbing as the conduct of Yunusa-Ari was, he wasn’t the first INEC official to perpetrate such an irregularity. In 2021, a High Court sitting in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital, sentenced Prof Peter Ogban to three years in prison, having found him guilty of manipulating election results in the state in favour of the APC. Ogban was the Returning Officer for the Akwa Ibom North-West Senatorial District election in 2019.

In the build-up to the 2023 polls, a coalition of over 70 civil society organisations under the aegis of the Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room tasked the Senate Committee on INEC to reject nominees of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd), for the position of Resident Electoral Commissioners on the grounds of partisanship.

In a statement they jointly signed, the CSOs had noted, “Appointments into INEC have grave implications for the credibility, independence and capacity of the commission to deliver credible, transparent, inclusive and conclusive elections. It is for this reason that the constitution prescribes the criteria and procedure for appointments into INEC to protect the commission’s neutrality, objectivity, and non-partisanship.

“Section 156(1)(a) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria clearly prohibits the appointment of any person who is a member of a political party as a member of INEC. To further ensure the neutrality of the members of INEC, the constitution clearly mandates in the Third Schedule, Part 1, Item F, paragraph 14 (1) that commissioners shall be non-partisan and persons of unquestionable integrity. In his letter to the Senate, President Buhari asserts that the request for the confirmation of the nominees was in accordance with the provisions of Section 154 (1) of the Nigerian Constitution. Our investigation and analysis prove the contrary.

“Some of the nominees of the President fail the constitutional test of non-partisanship and unquestionable integrity. Evidence abounds that some of the nominees are either partisan, politically aligned, or previously indicted for corruption. To mention a few, Prof Muhammad Lawal Bashir from Sokoto was a governorship aspirant under the All Progressives Congress in the 2015 election cycle. Mrs Sylvia Uchenna Agu, the nominee for Enugu state, is believed to be the younger sister of the APC Deputy National Chairman, South-East…”

Despite the reasons so clearly advanced, the Ahmad Lawan-led ninth Senate went ahead with the confirmation, with some of them taking the customary bow in the Red Chamber.

But that wasn’t the first time presidents would flagrantly disregard constitutional provisions by attempting to appoint partisan persons into INEC.

In 2011, the Action Congress of Nigeria (one of the constituent parties that formed the APC in 2013) rejected President Goodluck Jonathan’s nominees for appointment as RECs. The party’s National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who is now the Minister of Information and Culture, lambasted the Jonathan government for the nominations.

In a statement on August 8, 2011, Mohammed said Jonathan betrayed Nigerians who expected him to show transparency and probity in managing the electoral process.

He had said in the statement, “Nigerians had expected that in line with some of the recommendations of the Justice Mohammed Uwais panel, the President would have caused the vacant posts of the RECs to be advertised and the names of those shortlisted published so Nigerians can scrutinise them before they are interviewed and the successful ones among them appointed.

“Rather, the President opted to stick to the old, discredited way of doing things by handpicking known members and sympathisers of the PDP. This is wrong and calls to question the President’s commitment to his so-called transformation agenda.”

Jonathan eventually dropped the nominees and replaced them.

Interestingly, Mohammed, who faulted Jonathan, defended Buhari for committing the same disregard for the constitution by appointing persons said to have political affiliations.

When asked in September, 2022 why the government ignored calls to withdraw nominations, dismissed the opposition to the nominees as media trial, saying, “As to the nominees that are being challenged by social media warriors and some critics, I don’t think it is the business of the President to immediately throw out the nominees based on allegations which have not been proven.

“I think the whole idea is that these people will go for confirmation in the National Assembly, the same questions that are being raised in the public domain will be asked there. I think this media trial is quite worrisome because even when these people are cleared of any wrongdoings, nobody comes back to apologise to them. So, my advice is, yes, there will be allegations against anybody. It does not mean that that fellow is guilty. Let’s wait for the process to be completed.”

Typical of the Lawan’s Red Chamber, the nominees were cleared despite the concerns raised over their neutrality. Even the rejection of Lauretta Onochie’s nomination as a National Commissioner of INEC by the Senate was due to federal character principle, in which case there was another serving commissioner from Delta State, where she hails from.

Thus, the Senate’s decision not to confirm her was not because of the concerns raised by critics, who cited her affiliation with the governing APC. She had until then served as Buhari’s Special Assistant on Social Media.

Meanwhile, the need to avoid the appointment of RECs and other INEC officials that are partisan to engender credible and transparent elections was part of the recommendations of the 2007 Justice Mohammed Uwais Report, which among others, called for an amendment to the 1999 Constitution to insulate INEC from the manoeuvering of the executive arm of government, particularly its funding and composition.

The Uwais panel recommended that the power to appoint INEC board should be taken away from the Office of the President and be vested on the National Judicial Council with funding of the commission to be a first line charge from the Consolidated Revenue of the Federation.

The Uwais Panel further recommended among others, “That no elected person should assume office

until the case against him/her in the Tribunal or Court is disposed of; the amendment of the constitution for the appointment of a single date for presidential and governorship elections which should be held at least six months before the expiration of the term of the current holders of the offices; and an amendment of the constitution to appoint a single date for National and State Assembly elections which should hold two years after the presidential and governorship elections.”

Speaking with Saturday OsunDaily News, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mike Ozekhome, called for an amendment to the constitution to make way for the appointment of INEC chairman by the National Council of State.

“The way to go is to amend the laws by removing the sole power of appointing INEC Chairman, National Returning Officers and RECs from the President and vesting it in the National Council of State,” Ozekhome said. “This is to be approved by the Senate. Right now, neither the Chairman nor the National Commissioners or RECs are independent. They always tilt towards the president, the appointor. They are not independent at all. He who pays the piper dictates the tune.”

Speaking further on how the Adamawa REC almost threw up a constitutional crisis, Ozekhome said, “Binani was declared the winner of an election whose supplementary results were still being collated and counted. It was done by an unauthorised and illegal person – the state REC, rather than INEC’s appointed Returning Officer.

“This was even while she was trailing her main opponent, Governor Ahmadu Fintiri, by over 31,000 votes. Wonders shall never end! She had wanted to foist on INEC, the courts and sympathetic Nigerians a situation of fait accompli. She would then tell Fintiri to ‘go to court.’ The INEC REC’s audaciousness and brazen acts appear modelled after the INEC leadership itself, which had condoned and facilitated huge electoral malpractices, told Nigerians to go to court.”

On his part, former Secretary General of the Arewa Consultative Forum, Anthony Sani, said the President should continue to appoint INEC officials while lawmakers should be empowered by law to sack them when they fall short of expectations.

He said, “When you suggest proper scrutiny of appointees to positions in INEC, you make one to feel there have been lapses in the appointments. That may not be the case. This is because human frailty would always be found in organisations. I therefore suggest that in order to give the INEC Chairman, Commissioners and RECs confidence to work without fear, the removal of such personnel should be done by two-thirds of the senators.

“That is to say the appointments can be by the President while the removal should be left for the Senate. This, I believe, would serve as checks and balances for the management and leadership of INEC and the larger interest of the country.”

In his view, the Executive Director, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, Emmanuel Onwubiko, described the Uwais report as a resource document and manual in the sphere of election and election management.

He added, “That panel report is one that had a lot of philosophical ideas, rational, objective and factual recommendations made by a team of experts spanning many professional callings. It was a beautiful piece of work put together by men and women who had distinguished themselves in their professional calling. That is why the report is still a reference point for successive administrations since 2007.

“Sadly, successive National Assembly and constitutional amendment committees set up over the years have refused to take essential elements of the report, particularly regarding appointments into the election management body because if you appoint crooks into INEC, the system will be messed up and we will all suffer from it. It is a shame that some so-called professors have shown that the learning they acquired is of no benefit to the nation. They have learning but no character.”

He said further that some INEC officials were not different in character from political thugs who carted away ballot boxes in different places during elections. “The only difference is that they have academic titles to their names, procured whether meritoriously or otherwise,” he added.

Onwubiko noted that there was a need to have a comprehensive report on what was needed to have a better commission. “We already have reference materials, so we don’t need to set any other committee to resolve this issue. There is no need to amend the constitution again. Implement the Uwais Report and we are good to go,” he added.

Taking a different position, the Director of Programs, YIAGA Africa, Ms Cynthia Mbamalu, raised a number of issues ranging from the credibility of persons appointed to the commission and the flagrant disobedience of constitutional provision particularly as it concerns political neutrality of persons to be appointed.

She said, “The Adamawa REC debacle during the supplementary elections and other allegations questioning the integrity and capacity of some Commissioners in INEC once again raises the question of the quality of the appointment process into INEC. The constitution currently empowers the President to appoint the Chairman, National Commissioners and Resident Electoral Commissioners of INEC, subject to confirmation by the Senate. It further provides important criteria requiring that a member of the leadership of INEC shall be a person who is non-partisan and of unquestionable integrity.

“However, the non-compliance to this important rule remains a major issue with negative impact on the quality of the electoral process. This is a direct outcome of the disregard for the constitutional requirement of non-partisanship and unquestionable integrity. Secondly, the disregard for standard requirement of appointing people with requisite capacity to occupy appointive offices is an issue.

“This remains a threat to the quality of election, especially when appointments are influenced by a political party’s interest, party’s strategy to win elections at all cost and a persisting patronage system. The experience in the 2023 general elections indicates the need to review the appointment process and perhaps revisit the proposal from the Uwais report to identify opportunities to ensure that only non-partisan citizens with integrity and requisite capacity are appointed. This can include a more open system that allows competitive application for these offices, with clearly spelt out criteria with respect to requisite capacity, character and neutrality.”