An Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) official holds up a ballot paper during Nigeria’s presidential and general election. (Photo by PIUS UTOMI EKPEI / AFP)

Election monitoring group, Yiaga Africa, has stressed the need to revisit the executive powers of appointing officials into the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for Nigeria to achieve its dream of free, fair and credible polls.

The board chairman, Dr. Hussaini Abdu, made the appeal yesterday in Abuja at the electoral reform roundtable convened by the Kofi Annan Foundation and Yiaga Africa on a post-mortem of the 2023 general elections.

He said his position was a way of trying to protect the independence of the commission and prevent it from any form of political interference or manipulation.

Abdu said: “The first thing that the Uwais committee recommended is that the President should not appoint Chairman and Commissioners into INEC, that power should be vested in another institution, but the judiciary, to a large extent, has taken some decisions that have really put the question to its independence, as well as its credibility.

“So, in line with Justice Uwais recommendations, one of them is to review the appointment process of Commissioners and Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) into INEC.”

Lamenting ambiguities in election result collation and inadequacies with the legal framework, Abdu harped on the need to strengthen the law to make it compulsory for electronic transmission of results to deepen the integrity of the process.

Also speaking, a member of the House of Representatives, Dachung Bagos, who urged civil society organisations (CSOs) to spotlight local councils, noted that most of the election-related issues in the country emanate from primaries conducted by political parties.

The Guardian