The Independent National Electoral Commission has stated that it is making preparations for almost 95 million voters in the general elections of next year, but it also issues a warning that the polls could be threatened by the rising level of instability in some areas of the nation.
At a roundtable with members of the Nigeria Guild of Editors on Friday in Lagos, Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu, the chairman of INEC, said this.
He stated, “For the 2023 general elections, INEC is making preparations for approximately 95 million voters. Yes, we have 84 million voters now; we have registered 12 million newly. None of the fresh registrants has been added to the register. We are cleaning up the register.
“A few days ago, some people said they discovered so many fictitious names on the register. When I heard that I asked myself: ‘Which register?’ We have not even compiled it.
“We are cleaning up the data; so, how come that someone already knows the register, which is supposed to be compiled by the commission? It is a very serious matter for us because it touches at the heart of credible elections.
“So, some of the people, out of mischief, are talking about what they don’t know. But let me assure Nigerians that no name from the recent Continuous Voter Registration has been added to the register of voters. The law requires us to clean up the data, which we are doing.
“Thereafter, Section 19, subsection 1 of the Electoral Act says we should throw the register open for Nigerians for claims and objections so that the citizens can also help the commission to clean the register further.
“This will be done for at least one week in all the 8,809 wards in the 774 local councils in the country. We haven’t done so yet, but we will do that so that Nigerians will have the opportunity to look at the new registrants before we add them to the new register. So, there is no new register as such; we are still in the process of cleaning up.”
Yakubu acknowledged that there had been a problem with the gathering of PVCs, noting that the commission had met in Lagos last week with all of its resident electoral commissioners and administrative secretaries to devise plans for ensuring the smooth distribution of the PVCs.
He said, “We really want to make it a pleasant experience for citizens. For the new registration exercise, we collected data, including email addresses and telephone numbers for those that have, including those in rural areas.
“We will reach them either by means of text messages, emails or voice calls to tell them the specific locations where they can pick up their cards.
“We will also activate the portal for the collection of the PVCs. So, those who are savvy can click and know where to collect their PVCs. We are ready to make it a pleasant experience for the citizens.”
Speaking on the importance of a credible electoral process, the INEC boss stated, “Election is only one of the many aspects of our democracy, yet it is perhaps the most significant indicator of our democracy. There can’t be a democracy without elections.
So, democracy can’t exist without elections. But the importance of elections is not difficult to understand. In a single day’s event, the lives and livelihoods, in the case of Nigeria of at least 200 million people, will be impacted upon for the next four years, for better or for worse.
“The beauty of democracy is that this determination, whether for better or for worse, is made by the people themselves.
“Now, elections test the collective capacities and weaknesses of a country to its limit. Election preparations, deployment and implementation constitute the most expensive mobilisation that could happen in a country, whether in peacetime or war. Elections happen in every nook and cranny, every village and every part of the country at the same time.”
He said the commission would deepen the deployment of appropriate technology for the conduct of elections and reassured the citizens that the 2023 polls would be credible.
Yakubu stated, “Our vision for the 2023 general elections is to conduct one of the best general elections conducted in Nigeria, which are going to be free, fair, credible, transparent, inclusive and verifiable.
On possible threats to the conduct of the elections, the INEC boss stated that the security situation in some parts of the country was of major concern in addition to the negative use of social media and politicians’ anti-democratic tendencies.
Yakubu stated, “The first one is the security situation in the country. We have to deploy to all nooks and crannies of the country. We have been speaking with the security agencies and will continue to speak with them because it is their responsibility to secure the environment for the commission to deploy for elections.
“So, we are keeping our eyes on the security situation in the country. In the last two elections, 2015 and 2019, insecurity was confined to a particular zone – the North East – even so in three states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa.
“This time, it is more widespread. So, the security situation is going to be a big challenge.
“The other one is social media. The events of the last few days have driven this idea home. There was a report that INEC PVCs were found in drainages and inappropriate locations on social media. We set up a committee and they are about rounding up this investigation and there were interesting findings.
“But we ask those who made these revelations to as a matter of patriotic responsibility deliver those allegedly discovered PVCs to any of our 774 local government offices or 36 state offices so that we can look at those cards and make some determinations.
“We are still waiting on them and we have seen that the clip is mutating with changing locations.
“The third one is the attitude of the politicians. You can’t have a flourishing democracy without democrats. Sometimes I am amazed that when someone votes in an election, immediately he or she loses, he will say that his mandate has been stolen.
“But power in a democracy belongs to the people; you don’t come with it from your house. So, if you don’t get it, it must have been stolen. So, the attitude of the political class is another big challenge.”
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